Page 91 of Desperate Victory

“How much longer?” I asked, glancing at my watch, though it hadn’t changed in the twenty seconds since I last looked at it.

“They’re close,” Bodhi answered. He stood with his hands braced on the back of the sofa. Since arriving to help us with the body, he’d been steady as hell. I’d killed before. Katerina was not my first.

When I poisoned King and slit Wallace Graham’s throat, it had been thought out ahead of time. Planned. Well, to be fair the slitting of Graham’s throat had been a bit more of an impulse for how we would kill him. Killing him had been at the top of the list since I learned what he’d done to Ezra.

However, those impulses had been tempered by planning and foreknowledge. When we went to the print shop today, I’d been more curious than anything. So far, every avenue we’d taken to find Andrea found us at an impasse.

What could a print shop possibly have to do with anything? The woman had sputtered a bunch of half-formed lies when she found us inside. The fact that her gaze kept sliding off and she went from defensive to belligerent back to defensive told me a lot.

Grandfather once stressed that finding the truth meant listening to more than just the content of what was being said. Observe how it was being spoken. How direct were the speaker’s actions. Did they make eye contact?

Beyond the physical cues, there were also the nonverbal, verbal adjacent cues found in tone and word choice. Liars tended to use far more hyperbole. They cursed more, used distracting word choices, and hedge words.

Nothing was ever their fault. A dozen different explanations. Conversely, when that didn’t work, go on the offense. Attack the interrogator. The strangest part of it all… Liars tended to use far longer, more convoluted sentences than people telling you the truth.

Katerina had checked off every single box. Evasive. Abusive. Pleading. When she finally gave me the name of a school, it had been more in terror and pain than anything else.

The realization that I’d pulled out all of her nails without hesitation began to sink in. When I would have retreated, taken a breath, she’d taunted that I was probably too late anyway. There was a huge auction coming and little virgin westerners were very popular.

Rage spilled into my veins. Without an ounce of cool contemplation or remorse, I’d swung the wooden brace I’d been holding. Not once, but twice.

The first time had been a reaction. The second? Pure action. Both had come from the frenzy of pure fury. Selling people in the first place was disgusting. The fact she’d actually participated in getting my sister here just?—

No, Katerina needed to die. We’d wrapped the body in shrink wrap from one of her many machines. A crew would come to deal with the scene, while another took care of the body. It had all gone surprisingly smooth.

On some level, it should likely trouble me that we could make people disappear like this. Not only could we, we had been. One by one, we scratched off from the list of who had wronged us.

Harper.

Karagiani.

Wallace.

King.

Katerina.

There were more. There would be more. As unsettled as I was following the interaction, I wouldn’t hesitate to line the streets with bodies if we had to. I wasn’t leaving without Andrea.

Bodhi’s phone vibrated, as did Milo’s. Mine was on the table, so maybe it did as well. Less than a minute later, the front door to our rental opened. Adam was the first one through.

Pivoting, I went straight to him. He opened his arms and wrapped me up tight. “Lainey,” he murmured, the name a hug and chastisement in one. The trembling increased, even as I fisted the back of his jacket. He squeezed me to him, lifting me right off the floor as he moved us back into the apartment.

Ezra closed the door and followed. Half of me was aware of him. The worry rolled off him in waves. It rippled through the room, colliding with the concern coming off Milo and Bodhi.

“I’ve got you,” Adam said, his arm around my middle a steel band. I squeezed him tighter. Tucking my face against his neck, I let him do the carrying right now. “Where’s the photo?”

“Table,” I murmured even as Pretty Boy echoed the same word in a much clearer tone. Not letting me go, Adam moved toward the table. When he sat down and settled me in his lap, I finally lifted my head.

The shaking was worse. But Bodhi was already holding the photo out so Adam could see it. His harsh exhale echoed the one that ripped through me at the shop.

It felt like centuries since the last time we’d seen her. I drank in the image, studying the way her hair was styled, the light cosmetics on her face, and the absolutely wrong shade of lipstick she loved to wear.

I’d told her once that shade of pink was too much. She’d laughed and said she wore it because she liked it. My heart crushed as if someone were balling it up like paper to discard.

The pink was just a little too bright. A little too pastel. A little too… pink. Yet, Andrea liked it. I wanted to trace over the lines with my fingers, but I couldn’t look away from it.

“She looks older,” Adam said, the hushed observation adding to the unsettled feelings in my soul. “Am I imagining that?”