Page 158 of To Have and to Stalk
It was gone, like her phone was off.
Or smashed.
Three heartbeats?—
Butcher.
I ran outside, grabbing him by the collar to slam him back against the wall. The cigarette between his lips fell to the ground, smoldering black ash on the pavement.
He laughed, the sound stilted and choking in my hold “Something wrong?”
I fought the urge to slam my fist into his face. “What the fuck do you know?”
He grinned. “That youreallyaren’t in the position to bargain.”
One deep breath.
Two.
Fuck it.
I slammed him against the wall another time. “You knew she was going to be taken.”
He shrugged. “I knew he was running out of options. This was just a happy coincidence.”
Happy?
I was going to kill this fucker.
After he told me where Shay was. “Where the fuck is she?”
He yawned, like this was just any other fucking day. “Ready to accept my offer?”
Almost a decade ago a man I’d never met approached me. He told me my brother wished he could have come. In his hand was a picture of Stone, sitting alone at a prison cafeteria table, unaware a photo was being taken.
For a brief, shining moment I thought maybe I would get out of this world. I would get the girl.
“Fine,” I spat.
Butcher grinned, teeth white and sharp. “Let’s go save the girl, hero.”
chapter
fifty-four
SHAY
“Let’s try one more time, darling. Log in to your computer.” Graham waved his gun away from me, gesturing to the computer.
I eyed the steel weapon in his left hand, absently remembering Graham was left-handed. He’d forced me at gunpoint to come to work. Sat in the back seat of the car, the gun pressed against the car seat.
It could shoot through the fabric, he’d assured me.
Now we were here, in my office, empty because it was a Saturday.
And I still had no fucking clue what this was about.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, vaguely recalling something my sister had told me about some of the murderers she worked with, how some of their victims had escaped.
