Page 99 of Rune
“What kind of deal?”
“We are always honest about what we’re dealing with, so the other can worry appropriately.”
“That seems fair. Though, fair warning, I’m terrible at communicating.”
“No shit, really?” he asked, snorting.
“So you might need to drag stuff out of me.”
“I bet I know a way or two to persuade information out of you.” His fingers teased up my side.
“I think you’re probably right.”
My phone beeped, making Rune reach for it to hand to me.
“More pictures from Sof?” he asked as I unlocked it and downloaded the attachments before scooting up next to him to swipe through them.
Thanks to the stupid brace making my fingers clumsy, I accidentally toggled back to my whole library.
Before I could click one of the pictures again, though, Rune stiffened beside me, his whole body going ramrod straight.
But when I scanned my grid, I didn’t see anything scandalous. Certainly nothing worth getting all tense about.
“What’s the—” I started, only to be cut off when Rune snatched my phone from my hand.
He clicked the picture he was fixated on, making it fill up the screen, then turning it to me.
“Carmen, why the fuck are you in a picture with Vicky’s killer?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rune
It was just supposed to be a sexy, fun, easy night after a long and, ultimately difficult, day. Lounging in bed talking, looking at pictures of Sofia and Hamster in various locations through different states.
And the process of tracking down the guys trying to kill us was meant to take days or weeks of work on the parts of Junior and the club. With a little help from us, maybe, if they made some progress.
Then, once we found the bastards, I figured it would be a quick and relatively easy process to track them down and take them out… without Carmen having to be involved in any sort of way.
One picture changed that.
Because right there, with his arm thrown around the shoulders of a smiling Carmen, both of them squinting at the sun, with a familiar little cafe in Puerto Rico… was Jon. A face I’d never forget. Even if this version of him was smiling and the one I knew had nothing but cold indifference in his eyes as he lifteda gun to a beautiful young woman’s head… then snuffed out her life. Like it was nothing. Likeshewas nothing.
My heart fell to the pit of my stomach just looking at the bastard’s face.
“What?” Carmen asked, brows pinching. “That’s Jack,” she said, looking over at me like I’d lost my mind. Then she said words that had my stomach twisting. “My cousin.”
Fuck.
Some part of me, to save her the heartache, wanted to look closer at the image, decide I was mistaken, and declare I was wrong.
But I wasn’t wrong.
I wasn’t wrong.
This was the man who’d mercilessly murdered a woman in front of my eyes.
You didn’t forget the face of the man who changed the course of your life.
