Page 139 of Unholy Masks

“What am I supposed to do, Ryden? I can’t go through that again. Seeing Kat like that—it took everything in me to keep going. Now…”

He looked just as bad. Pale, panting, panicked.

“We’ll find her. We must find her,” he whispered, rubbing his hands together. He was comforting himself more than he was comforting me. “She wants to become a cop. A Fed. She is fine. She has to be.” He chuckled and blinked. His eyes… oh so broken.

“She told you that?”

“She told me she’d leave me alone as long as you loved me.” He frowned when his phone rang. Enzo’s name flashed on the screen.

“Did you find anything?” Ryden asked, putting it on speaker.

“She wasn’t at the coffee shop. Trish was. He… said Trish was crying when she was looking for Irene. He doesn’t know anything else. I also asked around, but no one saw her.” Enzo took a sharp breath. “Why did she go alone? After… after…”

I understood why she did it. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t angry.

When Irene wanted something, she wanted something. But she wasn’t stupid. She was too clever to walk into a trap.

Someone knew more than they were letting on. Someone was lying. They’d left a thread loose. I just had to find it and pull.

Enzo cleared his throat. “I’d never forgive myself if she… I failed Hanna. I can’t fail Irene.”

“It’s not your fault. Irene’s alive, and we will find her,” Ryden said, eyes burning with determination.

Enzo hung up, and Ryden turned to me.

“What do you want to do now?” Ryden asked.

I stared over his head, my eyes blurring, every color bleeding into black, every emotion draining to leave only dread.

I wanted to sit in the middle of the road and scream and weep and die and kill.

“I don’t know. It looks like she’s going to win again. After all this… I still don’t know her. She knows every fucking thing about me, and I know nothing. I found her, but what’s the use, really? She’s still winning.” I yanked my hair, anger mixing with helplessness.

I felt like I was spinning, spiraling.

“No, she isn’t,” Ryden said, voice stern, comforting. “She won’t win.”

It felt like I had been to the orphanage a thousand times in the past few weeks. I stepped out.

Ryden and Enzo followed me in. Darkness chased us relentlessly, as small flickers of light tried to overcome the shadows. And failed, failed miserably.

Sister Mary Elizabeth was sweating when she greeted us by the door. She wiped her eyes. I had called her to ask her to find Kurt.

“I checked everywhere. Kurt—Kurt is not here. He… is gone.”

I was right. I was fucking right.

“But why would he…”

“He’s not doing this for himself. He’s doing this for… someone else.”

“Why? God, why?” Sister Mary Elizabeth looked like she would fall any moment now. “And you said… he might have helped murder Sister Serena.”

“What are the cops doing?”

“It’s beyond them now,” Ryden said with a sigh. “We need to find out where Kurt went.”

“Is anything else missing?” Enzo asked, surveying the yard.