Bloody Love (Lilah Love 6)

“Lilah—”

“He’s not dead, so don’t say whatever you’re about to say or I might fly to L.A. just to beat your ass.” I end the call and switch back to Lucas. “What do you know?”

“I hacked into the coast guard’s telecoms. They’re on a search and rescue mission, but it sounds to me like they believe there are survivors.”

The thought that there might be survivors is new, but there’s nothing about this conversation that tells me Kane is alive. And hope is a brutal bitch who builds you up and tears you down. And I don’t need hope, I remind myself. Kane is not dead.

CHAPTER FIVE

Some people treat emotions like they do chocolate—as if you can never get enough.

I treat chocolate like chocolate, and that means in excess, but emotions are another story. I treat them like whiskey, a nosy neighbor, and my brother. A little goes a long way. Right now, a little is really fucking going a long way. I’m a bomb rolling around a public place looking for the best spot to explode. Therefore, I need to get the hell out of here but I’m not sure what I’ll do when I leave. And there’s a dead guy upstairs who needs me to be here right now otherwise he’s left with Officer North, in charge.

I’ll stay.

For now.

Pocher has no idea how good that is for his health.

I search the dead guy’s desk. Considering my current state of mind, which could mean I miss something, I shoot pictures of documents, lots of pictures. When I’m done, and nothing has caught my eye, I slide my camera back inside my bag. I’ll relook at everything once Kane is home.

I’m ready to get the hell out of here when a member of the forensics team pokes his head in the door, a silent question in the lift of his eyebrow. I answer first by standing up. “You can have the room,” I say, “but make sure you search each book on the shelf.”

I leave him to it and still considering how Rip Vaughn ended up dead tonight, I seek out the kitchen, looking for something he may have eaten, thankfully without being stopped, prodded, or poked about Kane. The kitchen is large, with a navy-blue island, mounted with a wood counter. In the center of the counter is a box of chocolate. Bingo. I walk to the box, grab the tiny little envelope on top of the box and pull out the note inside. It reads, “One more for the record books,” with no signature. I set the note down, shoot a photo of it, and stuff it back in the envelope before setting it aside.

Next, I open the box of chocolates to discover they’re custom-made, designed with numbers on them that range from one to thirty. Number one and two are gone. My first thoughts are that a custom item is always a good item to find at a crime scene. Custom means traceable. And if I’m right, and only one of the chocolates was tampered with, that means the killer knew the victim well enough to know he was methodical—he’d start with number one. However, my guess is number two had the weapon inside it, especially since there was no chocolate sitting around near the body or in the bedroom. Rip downed the candy, and the candy downed him.

Officer North appears at the end of the island. “Seems like he drank himself dead, right?”

I decide right then that while I often believe people, in general, irritate me, I’m wrong on that note. People don’t irritate me. Dumb people irritate me.

“Right,” I say. “Maybe the blades that expanded in his throat and cut him open were hiding in the ice in his drink. Maybe he just swallowed a big chunk of ice and boom. He was dead. Oh, wait. There was no ice.”

“It could have melted.”

My lips press together and I force myself not to tell him he’s an idiot, not tonight when I don’t have time for his defensive reply. Somebody needs to, though. “How often do you swallow the ice in your glass, Officer North?”

“It happens,” he insists.

And I’m done with him, I think.

I grab my camera, take a photo of the missing candy, and then reseal the candy. There’s no label on the box. “You think it was the candy,” he observes now.

He’s slow on the uptake, but his version of stupid isn’t a lack of smarts. It’s an overabundance of arrogance that blows up his head and squeezes his brain. “Yep.”

“But it’s down here and he’s upstairs.”

“The best way to keep yourself from eating the whole box is to leave the box behind,” I say.

He removes the box lid and eyes the chocolates. “He ate two pieces. The killer only rigged one piece of candy. Whoever sent this knew he’d follow the order.”