All of a sudden, there’s a noise coming from behind a closed door in the room. Trouble and I both stalk over to the door. I wrench it open and find a woman huddled against the wall with a gun with a suppressor pointed in our direction. Her facial expression is hard, and she’s shooting daggers from her eyes at Trouble and me. She’s trying her best to appear brave, but I see the gun trembling in her palm.
I step between her and Trouble, the gun pointed at my chest.
“Who in the fuck are you?” I demand. It’s probably stupid to address someone with a gun in such a harsh way, but I’ve never let fear stop me before, and this small woman won’t make me start now.
“Who are you?”
“You first.”
Her hand wavers fractionally, but her voice is strong. “Melody.”
Fucking hell!
I hold back my shock at her answer. I feel Trouble move up beside me, no doubt just as surprised as I am.
“Melody Lancaster?” Trouble inquires.
Her eyes narrow. “I don’t go by that last name anymore. It’s Corrigan.”
“You do that?” I ask, tossing my head to the side, indicating the body on the bed.
“Yes. He deserved it.”
I jerk my chin up. “He didn’t; he deserved a hell of a lot worse.”
Her eyes widen, and her hand drops further. “Who are you?” She repeats her earlier question.
Trouble takes a tentative step forward; his hands palm out in front of him as if to calm the girl.
“Do you remember Sweet Haven?”
Her body jerks. I tense, prepared to shove Trouble away in case she raises the gun again. Thankfully, she doesn’t.
“Yes,” she whispers. “I-I used to live there.”
Trouble looks at me, then back to Melody, taking another step in her direction.
“So did we.” Her throat bobs as she swallows. “You were only eight years old when your father took you from Sweet Haven, so you may not remember us. I’m Trouble”—he jerks his head my way—“and this is Emo.”
Her eyes widen and her lips part. Her brows pull down in concentration as she flicks her eyes back and forth between Trouble and me, looking at us closely.
“Elijah?” She squints when she looks at me. “Aziah?”
I can hear the smile in Trouble’s voice when he speaks. “Yes. That’s us. Why don’t you come out of the closet and we’ll talk downstairs?”
After a brief moment of hesitation, she nods. The hand holding the gun drops to her side, and it’s then that I notice she’s wearing black latex gloves, just like me and Trouble.
“We need to wrap this up and get the hell out of here,” I comment as we walk back down the stairs. “Someone could have heard her shoot him, so the cops could be hot on our ass any minute.”
“No one heard me.” I raise a brow. “Even if the suppressor didn’t silence the shot enough, no one in this neighborhood would call it in. Having cops around is the last thing anyone who lives here wants.”
“That may be so, but I don’t want to chance it.”
We all stop in the kitchen and turn to face each other.
“That was your father,” Trouble states.
Melody shoves the gun in the back of her pants and pulls her shirt over it. “Yes.”