Page 31 of The Darkest Chase
His voice feels like a cloud of frost. I shiver.
My eyes widen as I hug my arms around myself.
Suddenly, I can’t even feel the cool night breeze.
I’m too hot, burning from my scalp all the way to my toes.
Breathe.
I count three breaths in, three breaths out, reminding myself I can’t get so flipping worked up over a guy saying my name, even if it’s with a voice like frozen sin.
“You wanted to talk about Xavier Arrendell?”
“Yes,” he answers, suddenly all business. His voice drops from cool to downright frigid. “How much do you know about the Arrendells’ scandals?”
“Um…” I bite my lip, racking my brain. There’s so much, growing up in this town, let alone the news lately. “I mean, until the last year or two, it was all rumors, right? The kind of stuff where you never really know what’s true and what’s gossip. I know the oldest son, Vaughn, he left a long time ago and no one knows why. But people think he did something really awful. And Montero, he’s a known womanizer. He and Lucia act like they kind of hate each other. I don’t know why they stay married.”
“Go on.” Micah nods.
“…but they know a lot of big celebrities and power broker types, don’t they? And people think Lucia’s connected, like using her money for dark stuff and not just charity, buying off rich folks for favors. Plus, all the rumors about the missing girls, but that turned out to be Ulysses and that whole rotten business with the new teacher. Then the Faircrosses and their trouble... I heard Aleksander jetted around the world, throwing wild parties with sex and supermodels before he started to settle down—” I stop and clear my throat. “I mean, before he tried to marry his half sister. Gross.”
“Nasty as hell,” Micah rumbles. “What else? What do you know about Xavier?”
“Xavier… I guess nobody talks about him as much. He’s older and not as flashy as the other two. But I thought there were rumors he’s been in and out of rehab since he was a teenager? He’s kind of standing in everyone else’s shadow, but it’s more like he’s a shadow himself.” I let out a rush of breath after tumbling over those words. “Did I miss anything?”
Micah’s eyes sharpen.
He lets out this low, rolling laugh like sandstone and grit. It lights up his face in a way I couldn’t have imagined, like a glacier catching the sun.
“Glad your lungs are doing better,” he says. “I don’t think you even stopped for breath once. When you showed up wearing the same color, I admit you had me worried.”
I glance down, blushing at my windbreaker. “This? It’s just my coat.”
“And the gloves, the purse. Does all that pink give you some special powers with your woodwork?”
“Hey! You can’t come at a girl for having a favorite color and a sense of fashion.” I turn my face up mockingly.
He chuckles like thunder moving in.
God help me, I can feel it in my bones.
“Whatever, Strawberry Shortcake. I really am glad you’re doing better, well enough to launch into speeches and all.”
With my face on fire, I clear my throat and fiddle with the wrists of my jacket. “It’s just a little stream of consciousness. I guess I just got carried away.”
“It’s fine,” he says, though that cryptic smile lingers. “It means I don’t have to catch you up on much. I expected you’d know more than I would, growing up here. I’m just a transplant. But I also have sources you don’t—and those sources know a hell of a lot more about Xavier Arrendell than any vague rumor mill.”
“Like what?” Alarm thumps through me.
“Like the fact that he may be more than a drug fiend. He’s in deeper, and I think it’s connected to the Jacobins. Linking them together with solid proof, that’s the trouble.” He shakes his head with a weary sigh. “Those hillfolk have been here for generations. They know how to hide their shit too well, how to make themselves invisible. It doesn’t help that Chief Bowden lets them off lightly. He treats it like something harmless, like it’s petty crime and a little rotgut moonshine won’t hurt anybody.”
I shrink back, staring at him.
“You think it’s more than moonshine?”
“I do,” he snarls without hesitation. “Something uglier that reaches far beyond the borders of Redhaven, or even North Carolina. I think one reason it’s so easy to slip under the radar is the power and influence the Arrendells have to make things magically disappear.”
“But… but Chief Bowden, you said? You think he’s part of it?” It almost hurts, thinking the kind old chief could join up with something bad. “He’s always been so nice.”