Murder Girl (Lilah Love 2)

“Got it,” she says. “I’ll send it when we hang up.”

“I need you to call him and tell him it’s urgent I talk to him in case he doesn’t take my calls. And text him.”

“His phone is off, but I’ll try. Do you want to give me details?”

“No. I don’t.”

I hang up and dial Eddie once I receive Alexandra’s text with his information. His line goes direct to voice mail. “Lucas is nearby,” I say, glancing at Kane. “We have to go to his house. He’ll find Eddie.”

Without one bitchy word, Kane pulls a U-turn. That’s the thing about Kane. He knows when to let things go, except me. And I thought he had. Maybe he did, and I showed back up and shook his world. I don’t like where that leads me, and that path is not one I need to travel now, or perhaps ever.

My phone buzzes with a text message, and I glance down to read: Eddie’s phone is off but I left him a message.

I could say thanks, but I guess it really isn’t my thing, at least not with a woman who might well have set me up to be raped and murdered. And Lord help her and me if I find out that’s true.

Kane and I pull up to Lucas’s house and walk to the door. I ring the bell over and over, and he doesn’t answer. I try the door. It’s unlocked. It’s one of the rare moments that people being stupid works in my favor. Kane and I walk inside and down the hallway and holy shit. There is a naked woman sitting on top of Lucas on the couch. Her gaze lifts to mine and she gasps. “Shit. Shit.” She climbs off Lucas, who makes a pained noise that sounds a bit like a wounded animal.

“Baby, what is happening? We were fucking.” He must see where her attention rests because he twists around.

“Oh fuck. He’s finally going to kill me, isn’t he?”

“Kill you?” The woman gasps and looks at us, pulling a dress over her head. “I didn’t see or hear anything.” She grabs her shoes and runs toward us and past me.

“Ellen!” Lucas shouts, standing up, as naked as the day he was born. The door opens and shuts.

“Jesus, Lucas,” I spout. “Put some fucking clothes on.”

“Do you know how to knock?” he demands. “I was fucking enjoying fucking.”

“I need you to find Eddie Rivera,” I say. “His phone is off and his life is on the line, but clearly you’re too damn sloshed.”

“I told you,” he says. “I can hack the United States government shit-faced.”

“Then do it now,” I say.

“Hack the United States?” he asks, and he’s so damn drunk that he’s serious.

I walk to him and lean on the couch. “Unless you’re trying to impress Kane with the size of your dick, get dressed.”

He grabs his pants. “You’re right. I need to get dressed before he realizes what a threat I really am.”

“Don’t taunt him, Lucas,” I warn, turning to face Kane, my hand flattening on his chest, and while his expression is indiscernible, his eyes glint with the kind of hate that no man wants from Kane Mendez. “He’s drunk.”

“And stupid,” Kane replies, his tone lethal. “More so than he realizes.”

“Because,” I repeat, “he’s drunk.”

“I need his phone number,” Lucas says from behind me. “Or do I have to get that myself, too?”

I rotate to find his drunk ass dressed and sitting on his coffee table facing us, his blond hair standing on end, with a laptop in his hands. “I have it,” I say, fishing my phone from my pocket and reading him the number. He keys it into his laptop and, in about sixty seconds, says, “The last GPS location was the docks down at Halsey’s Marina.” He presses a few more keys and adds, “He owns a boat that is parked at lot 11105 at the west end. Now what?”

Now I need to know if he’s alone, I think. “Where are my brother and father right now?”

He doesn’t ask for those phone numbers, keying them in from memory, and a few seconds later, he says, “Both phones are at your father’s house, so one would assume the people who own them are as well.”

“Oh shit,” I breathe out, turning to face Kane. “Eddie isn’t with them.” I dash for the door, and Kane is immediately by my side.

“You’re welcome!” Lucas shouts as we exit the house, but I can’t think about his drunk attitude and anger now. Right now, I’m thinking about saving the family asshole, or at least one of them. If Eddie isn’t already dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Kane is on the phone the instant we are outside Lucas’s house. By the time we are inside his Roadster, he’s hanging up. “I have men on the way to the marina now.” He cranks the engine and pulls forward.

“How long will it take them to get there?”

“Twenty minutes longer than it will take us to get there, but we’ll have backup.”

I open my mouth to reply, and a horrible thought hits me. “Oh God.” I face Kane. “What if this was all a setup? What if Ghost was planning to take out my father and brother? And getting us out of town and focused on Eddie when we returned was a diversion to ensure we don’t interfere?” I don’t give him time to reply. “Go to my father’s house.”

“Ghost was not taking out your family,” he says. “He knows what kind of enemy that would make me on your behalf.”

“I have to know they’re okay.”

“I’ll go to your father’s house,” he says. “But that is twenty minutes out of the way. Those minutes may cost you Eddie and the Gamer.”

“This is my father and brother we’re talking about.”

“I know that,” he says. “And I wouldn’t risk what is important to you, ever. Ghost is not coming after you or your family. The Gamer might come for you. We need to get to him before he does.”

“My family—”

“Eddie lives close to your father. My man is still there. He can be to your father’s ten minutes before we can.”

“Send him,” I say. “Send him now.”

Kane punches a button on his phone and then speaks in Spanish to his man before hanging up. “He’s going to walk to the door when he gets there and tell them to call you,” he says. “Just like he did with Alexandra.”

I nod and face forward, immediately dialing my brother, only to get his voice mail. I dial my father with the same result. “Damn it. Fuck. Damn it.”

“Relax.”

“Do not fucking tell me to relax, Kane, or I will slap you again but harder.”

“Ghost is not going after your famil

y, Lilah,” he says. “You know me. My word should mean something to you. And I’m giving you my word that, under the present circumstances, Ghost will not go after your family.”

“Is that a promise, Kane?”

“If you live by the words you speak, you shouldn’t need to fluff it up with the word promise. And I mean the words I speak.”

“You just don’t always speak the words I want to hear.”

“That’s a trap that leads to lies, and if my word isn’t enough for you—”

“Of course it is.”

He glances over at me. “Because you trust me?”

“I trust you,” I say, despite the fact that I know this pulls us closer when I have been trying desperately to keep him at a distance. “You’re the only person I do trust right now.”

“And yet you doubted my efforts to avenge your attack?”

“You kept things from me, Kane. And I know you. I knew what you were doing regardless of the reasons.”

“The Society was the reason. I could not have you chase them and end up dead.”

“So what? I should just forget my attack? I should just get over it because it was them?”

“Do you think, do you really fucking think, that is what I want or will accept? Don’t you think I have a plan to make them pay?”

I press my hand to my temple. “Now is not the time for this.”

“It’s the perfect time for this,” he says. “Anytime we finally talk about this is the right time.”

“Fuck you, Kane.”

“Anytime. Anywhere.”

I look at him, and I’m about to blast him when I realize what he’s doing. “Holy hell. You’re distracting me from freaking out.”

“That doesn’t make this conversation any less important.”

I turn away from him. “Damn opportunist.”

“That’s a mild statement for you, Lilah Love. Where are all the F-words I so love and expect?” His cell phone rings and he answers it, listening for a few beats before hanging up. My phone rings instantly. “That will be your brother,” he says.

I let out a breath and answer the call. “Andrew.”

“What the hell is going on, Lilah? Why do I have a man that I don’t know who doesn’t speak English at my door saying ‘Call Lilah’?”