The Taken

is hollowed out by parasites and your eye sockets squirm with maggots.”

Paul’s larynx dropped, and didn’t rise again. “It’s always midnight, a week after the showing,” he croaked.

The showing. A memory of Charlotte’s open, trusting face as she gazed up at Chambers flashed, striking Grif so squarely that he almost missed what Paul said next.

“… in the casino Chambers was building. His pet project-he’s gonna splay his name across that big tower. Or he was until the financing fell through. That’s why…”

“That’s why he runs women and blackmails men. It’s how he plans to raise enough capital to finish it. Bribing, selling, killing.” Grif swore. “You said midnight?”

Paul nodded as best he could, but the Pure energy was fading. He wouldn’t be of any use much longer. That’s okay. It was just after ten now. Grif still had time.

“But the pre-show starts an hour earlier.”

“Pre-show?”

Paul’s careless shrug had his shoulders drooping low. “Yeah, you know. Like a warm-up act. Girls who might be a little used up but have volunteered for kink-tie ’em up, tie ’em down. It lets the Richie Riches play out their S &M or rape fantasies, the girls get extra coin, and no one gets hurt.”

Unless they were being tied down against their will.

You should teach her a woman’s place… or someone else surely will.

“Where, Paul?” Something in Grif’s tone snagged Paul’s wandering attention.

“Wait a minute… you think Kit…?” Paul tried to access more of his maggot-laced brain, but quickly gave up. “No way. Why would anybody want her…”

“Where, you rotting meat suit?” Grif’s breath was full in his chest now, heart throbbing so hard it felt like it’d rip right through the flesh. “Tell me now or I’ll slit you back open, pop that bag of organs sitting in your stomach, and let the coyotes feed while you watch.”

“Jay-sus, Grif,” Courtney whistled, but Grif’s sight was red. Red as the blood that had once spilled from his body. Red as his wife’s nails had been when he’d allowed her to die. He wasn’t going to allow it to happen again. He certainly wasn’t going to allow this dead guy to damn Kit to death.

“At the old white elephant sitting in the middle of the Strip, man. The lot where the Marquis used to be.”

Grif didn’t hesitate, just growled at Courtney as he whirled away. “Re-bury him. Or don’t. I don’t care.”

“Wait!” Courtney called after him. “You’ll need me to navigate. You don’t know where you’re going!”

But Grif just broke into a run. He knew exactly where Chambers’s pet project stood. After all, he’d died there once before.

Chapter Twenty-Six

How long had it been since she had been taken?

Kit turned her head from side to side, like that might help her see. Only hours. Not days. Not yet. But it was full dark now. She couldn’t see the sky, not inside what sounded like an empty warehouse, or from behind the folds of the sleek, thick blindfold, but she could sense the night lying atop the city like an opaque veil. Yet unlike her midnight drives along Vegas’s bowl-like rim, there was nothing comforting in this darkness. This was both an abyss and a dead end. It felt as if she didn’t get out of here soon, she’d be trapped in blackness forever.

Be positive, she told herself, lifting her chin and swallowing hard. It helped that they hadn’t hurt her. After she’d stopped shaking, after she’d muted the panic that threatened to crawl up her belly and through her throat in an inhuman scream, she’d heard Schmidt tell his partner that there wasn’t to be one mark on her. So maybe Chambers just wanted to scare her out of pursuing this story. To force her to back way off, and warn her of what would happen if she didn’t.

Yet when they were left alone, Schmidt’s anonymous partner had run rough hands along her limbs, too intimate and too long, claiming with a smile in his voice that he was just making sure she was in good health. She knew then that this was the same man who’d accompanied Schmidt to her home and attacked her the first time, and she shivered with the memory, though she knew that it could have been worse.

It might be worse yet.

As if she’d voiced these worries aloud, the door to her prison opened, and he was suddenly there. She knew his boot steps already, the same way a trapped mouse might know the slithering sound of a snake’s belly. She sensed his movement like she sensed the night. The man approached, footsteps deliberate and heavy, and stopped too close, his hot breath and cool attention squarely on her. Kit felt that, too. But if she could just get him talking, it might buy her time. And if there was a person alive that Kit couldn’t get to talk to her… well, she hadn’t met him yet.

However, just in case this one had more on his mind than talking… “I have to pee.”

“I don’t care.”

Despite the ice in his voice, Kit rose from the chair she’d been ordered to sit in and said, “Seriously, I really have to go. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.”

“Fine.”

An immediate shove, like he’d been planning to do it anyway, and she crashed into a wall, hunching there until she was sure that was all he was going to do. Silence met her attempts to right herself and she fought the urge to scream. Instead, she patted at the wall, looking for a door, yet rammed into a table, and elicited a curse from behind.

“No bruises, you idiot.” Another shove and her blindfold was lifted. She blinked, though the light was dim, and peered up into a hard, stubbled, and familiar face. “Hitchens.”

No wonder she hadn’t been able to get the police to help. No wonder even Dennis had seemed deaf and mute to her pleas for prompt assistance and investigation. Was he in on it? Had he been party to Nic’s death? “Where’s Dennis?”

Hitchens laughed. “Dennis is too soft to be of any use to us.”

“But… he’s your partner,” she said feebly. She was having trouble ordering her thoughts amid all the latent panic and adrenaline and fear.

“Chambers is my partner,” Hitchens shot back with such vehemence she immediately knew he only wished it to be so. He also knew she knew it. His round jaw clenched. “I thought you had to piss.”

Swallowing hard, she looked around. A trailer, double-wide, uninspired. Typical. The bathroom was behind her. She’d run into a fold-out table.

“Oh, this is for you, too.” Hitchens pulled his other hand from behind his back and threw a wad of black material at her. Kit looked down at the strips of fabric in her hands, wondering what she was supposed to do with them. Wipe?

“Put that on when you’re done. Do it quickly and quietly or I’ll put it on you. And you won’t like that.”

Kit couldn’t help it. Her chin began to wobble.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t enjoy it. Your type isn’t even close to appealing to me.”

“My type?” she parroted.

“Yeah, you know…” The depths of his eyes lit, a bare bulb of meanness shining right through to spotlight her. Kit expected the vulgar and the familiar-sluts, whores, bitches-so Hitchens surprised her entirely when he said, “Weirdoes.”

Slumping, Kit looked down at the “clothing” in her hands. She didn’t have to think now because there was nothing to figure out. She knew exactly what was happening here, and could pretty well guess what would happen next. In case there was any doubt, Hitchens held out a pair of black stilettos, too. Taking them, Kit bit her lip. She’d always told herself, and believed, that knowing was key because knowledge could keep you safe from harm and all the things you didn’t know. Not the easy answer, like her dad had said, but the truth.

The truth was that she might not ever step foot outside of this trailer again.

Tears welling, she looked back at Hitchens. “You killed Paul, didn’t you?”

“He was an asshole.”

Her fingers tightened against the thin silk. “And Nicole?”