“You get me to that fucking venue,” I snapped at him, and he was already nodding, crapping himself in the driver’s seat.
Every second felt like a year on that journey. The tracker was in some house down on the west side. Another hovel on top of a hovel.
The tracker didn’t move a meter the whole journey.
“Come on,” I snarled at the driver. “Faster.”
He couldn’t go any faster. There were drunken assholes in the street singing bullshit songs and swaying across the road when we tried to pass them. So, I did it. I used the Morelli title to get me what I wanted, regardless of the cost. I ordered the cab driver to run the assholes down, but he was a statue in his damn seat until I barked at him.
“Run the drunken cunts down! Now! Or I’ll get you the fuck run down next time you step out in this place!”
He listened. Good call, asshole. The cab screeched forward, and the morons bailed out of the way. Just the one of them was slow enough to smash off the front bumper and collapse to the floor. I didn’t even glance behind to see if he was moving.
“Faster!” I snapped again, and the driver was nodding, screeching that cab around the street corners.
He pulled up outside the house so fast that the brakes slammed on and sent me lurching forward. I didn’t care. I was already scrambling out of there. The cab pulled away from me at full acceleration without waiting for the fare, and I didn’t care about that either. It was a house party, and I was straight up to the front door of the shithole, elbowing my way past fools and storming my way towards my Elaine.
Because that’s what she was.
She was my Elaine. My Elaine Constantine.
I barged my way through the final few partiers, plowing into a mess of a kitchen space, but she wasn’t there. There was a green-haired slut standing where the tracker was pointing me, and one shove of her aside told me all I needed to know.
Elaine’s clutch bag was on the sideboard amongst the beer bottles.
My blood froze in my veins.
I grabbed it and looked inside. Everything was still in there – cell, keys, and cash. Her stash of coke was in the lining, untouched.
No. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be fucking gone.
But she was.
My Elaine was gone.
I gripped that clutch tight and charged around that place like a maniac, looking in every single damn space and shadow on the ground floor. I grabbed people and barked out the questions, where is she? Where the fuck is she? until the whole place was on edge, looking at me. I didn’t fucking care. All I cared about was that pretty little fool.
I climbed the stairs, leaping over people fondling each other on the landing, shoving some of them aside. If she was up there . . . if she was up there and taking his dick . . . my blood boiled at the thought.
The first bedroom I burst into had girls giggling on the bed with a wine bottle being slugged between them. The second had couples littered all over it, grunting and fucking. The third bedroom was in darkness, and I pawed for the light. No sign of my pretty fool, but her pussy boy bestie was in there with his mouth around his loverboy’s dick.
He recognized me.
Pussy boy recognized me.
The Blue Hawk freak rocker let out a groan of a fuck you, fuck off out of here, but I was already on him, shoving him down onto the floor.
I was on pussy boy in a heartbeat, my face right up to his as I held her clutch up high.
“Where the fuck is she?”
He knew who I was talking about. He swallowed hard but he shook his head. “Stay away from her.”
Turns out pussy boy had bigger balls than I thought.
“I asked you once, where the fuck is she?” I hissed. “You know what’s coming to you if you don’t open your fucking mouth.”
He did know. I could see it in his eyes. Still, that didn’t matter. He was a brave little pussy boy after all.
It was the Blue prick who came for me, reaching out to wrestle me with weedy arms.
“Stop!” pussy boy yelled to him before he could grab me. “That’s Lucian Morelli; don’t go near him!”
Blue prick knew who I was well enough to stop in his tracks and back away.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Holy fucking fuck . . .”
“I’m not asking you again,” I told pussy boy. “Where is Elaine Constantine?”
It was the Blue prick who answered. He answered in no time at all.
“That little blondie is Elaine Constantine? Whoa, shit. She’s downstairs with Stephen Cannon,” he said, and I turned to him, seething.
“If she was downstairs, I’d have found her already, idiot. Where the fuck has she gone?”
“Don’t tell him!” pussy boy yelled, but the Blue prick was staring at him with saucer eyes.
“That’s Lucian Morelli, of course I’m fucking telling him!” The guy shot his stare back to me, and he was shitting himself. He tossed me some keys from his jeans pocket. “She’s on fifth Avenue, top floor of block twelve.”
“No!” pussy boy cried, but I elbowed him straight in the face, knocking him out cold.
Blue prick went to scream, but he was next in line. Another elbow right to the jaw saw him in a heap on the floor, unconscious.
They were lucky I didn’t break their necks before I left, but I didn’t have the time.
The bass was still booming and people were still drinking when I charged back down into the kitchen. I tore my way through the drawers until I found what I needed. One hell of a knife slipped straight into my jacket, and then I pushed
