Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Except one slot is a hole. No name. No face. No dots to connect. Just a void that eats the grid around it.
“The chef,” Vinnie says. “Our phantom. I’ve got Lucía, Mateo, Rosa—hell, I even found a retired dog that used to patrol the east wall. And not only that, I found Serena tucked away—the woman your father was hiding from my grandfather all those years, and he hid her well. Still, I found shit on her. Everybody’s got a footprint. Except that fucking chef. He wiped himself and the paper he stood on. No income or customs trail. No apartment leases. No medical records. No goddamned shadow.”
Raven crosses her arms. “And Gordon Brown?”
“Pops up everywhere,” Vinnie says. “Which is exactly the problem. It’s a smoke grenade of a name. Public raffles, PTA lists in three states, a hobbyist chocolate blog that looks like it was built last Tuesday. All dead ends. Not one of them is the man who cooked for your father, Dani.”
My stomach flips. The memory of that Valentine’s Day card sits cold behind my ribs. The chocolates. And the roses—blood-red blooms strangled by rusty barbed wire so the thorns were redundant.
“Did you hear anything while you were down here?” I ask Vinnie. “Footsteps? Doorbell? Something?”
He shakes his head. “Anyone who came through would have to go through the security gate. I’d have gotten a call.”
“Yeah,” Raven says, “but here’s the thing. The DHS thing for Dani was a decoy. Judge Matthews checked it out for us this morning. So we figured—”
“Fuck,” he says. “You figured it was a way to get the two of you—or at least Daniela—out of the house.”
“Right,” I say. “So was anyone here?”
“Like I said, they’d have to go through security.”
“Not if they had a clicker,” Raven says. “Was anyone here?”
“I’ve been here the whole time, baby.” Vinnie grabs Raven’s hand.
“I know, but you’ve been focused and sleep deprived. Can you check the security footage?”
“Baby…”
“Please,” she says. “Humor us.”
He exhales hard through his nose and then wakes a different keyboard. The security grid comes into view—front door, garage, side gate, patio, back door, entrance to my mother-in-law suite. Time stamps tick green in the corners.
“Front door was good until—” Vinnie pauses. The box blinks, shows static, and then black. “Until thirty-nine minutes ago.”
“Thirty-nine minutes?” Raven’s voice sharpens. “While we were at the courthouse.”
I don’t realize I’ve started shaking until I see the tremor in my knuckles. I press the hand flat to the desk again, hard enough to feel bone. “Belinda’s room,” I say.
Then I run.
Out of Vinnie’s office, down the hallway, up the staircase.
Belinda’s door is ajar. I push it open with two fingers.
Everything looks exactly as we left it last night because it is exactly as we left it last night.
Except—
On her monitor, a new document sits open. I know it’s new because the cursor still blinks in the last blank space like a heartbeat.
If you want your starter back, give me dessert.
My mouth goes desert dry. “Starter,” I whisper, the word sticking like grit.
Raven’s beside me now. “Starter?”
“It’s her,” I say, and it comes out strangled. “Belinda. She’s the starter. The appetizer. Because… Because she’s so young.” My stomach lurches.
Raven goes pale. “What?”
I shake my head. “What I mean is… He used to say I was dessert. After he gave me a cooking lesson, he’d ask for dessert.” Shame burns my cheeks. “He thinks he’s being clever.”
“I’ll fucking kill him.” Vinnie’s voice is low and menacing. I’d be frightened if I didn’t know him.
“He wants a trade,” I say. “Me for her.”
“Dani, we don’t know that,” Raven says, her voice shaking.
I shiver despite the heat. I know it as well as I know my own name, as well as I know how his disgusting cock tasted in my mouth. Some things you can’t forget, no matter how much you want to.
“Trust me,” I say, trembling. “That’s what he wants. He’s asking for a trade.” A chill runs over my neck. “No. Not asking. Telling us. Me for her. Or he’ll…” I can’t finish.
“No.” Vinnie’s voice is iron. “No trades.”
“He’s not bluffing,” I say. “He means it. He always means it.”
Raven takes a breath that looks like it hurts. “Even if he does, we don’t know where to bring anything. We have nothing that tells us where he is.”
“We have the pattern,” I say. “He leaves clues. He always leaves clues for me. He likes the theater of it. He wants me to know it’s him.”
Vinnie scrubs a hand over his face. “What clues? We already bagged the card. The chocolate was obvious—Colombia. That was your ‘it’s me.’ The roses were their own sick poem. The teddy bear had a live grenade tucked inside it, for Christ’s sake. There’s not a riddle left that doesn’t blow our hands off.”
I flinch at the memory of the bear. We were inches from an obituary. We’re still inches from one.