did to this poor girl, and while you’re at it find the one that’s still breathing and tell her to watch her back.”
I hung up the phone and squeezed it so hard in my hand I was surprised it didn’t break in half. I looked at Reeve, who was watching me solemnly.
“Grab whatever you brought with you. We’re leaving.” I didn’t ask her.
She blinked at me slowly and her dark eyebrows pulled together. “I already told you I left in a hurry, and that I don’t have anyplace to go.”
“I have a place that will do for now. A body just showed up on the docks and apparently she bears an uncanny resemblance to you. That means Roark already knows you’re here and I think he’s letting us know he’s pissed about it. Some poor girl got murdered just because she had the same hair and eye color as you, Reeve. Doesn’t that tell you how dangerous this is for you? This guy is a sociopath.” And I had zero time to figure out what had triggered him, what had started his rampage and how to stop him.
She climbed to her feet and I saw the way her eyes shifted when I mentioned the dead girl. She was capable of regret and remorse. That was good to know and it made me feel a little less like shit for wanting to push her back up against the wall and continue where we had just left off.
“Where exactly do you want me to go, Detective?”
“When Bax got locked up he was staying at this crappy little studio just outside of the District. I didn’t know he bought a house before he got arrested. When he got out of jail and hooked up with Dovie, he left the place in the city and took her out to the burbs. Well, I paid the rent on the studio in advance for a few years so that he would have someplace guaranteed to go back to when he got out. It’s been empty for a while and it’s only about half a step up from this place, but it’ll do until I can figure out something more secure.” I cut her a hard look. “Besides, everyone knows how Bax feels about you, so no one would ever think you would be anywhere near his place.”
She couldn’t afford to forget that there were enemies around every corner and all of them would be happy if she suddenly stopped breathing.
“Titus . . .” Her voice was quiet and her eyes bored into mine when our gazes locked. “I came back to help you out. I don’t want to be the reason you and Shane end up back at odds. I know how hard it was for you to almost lose him. That’s not what any of this is about for me.”
Her eyes drifted up to the white spot in my hair that was a constant reminder of how far my little brother was willing to take things. Unlike me, Bax didn’t have a cage he kept his wild side locked away in. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, and that made him unbelievably dangerous. That’s why she needed me. Bax and I might not always be on the same page and there was still an ungodly amount of tension between us and how we viewed the right and wrong of things, but he respected me enough, cared about me enough that if I could sell the act that this woman mattered to me on some deeper level, he would back off. He wouldn’t like it. In fact he would absolutely hate it, but he would still do it.
“Bax is my problem. He always has been and you probably don’t want to call him Shane to his face.”
She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I watched Dovie fall in love with Shane, not Bax. He seems less scary as Shane.”
I grunted because Shane and Bax were two parts that made up the entire man. Both were equally scary and equally dangerous but she didn’t need to know that, so I motioned to the dingy room and ordered, “Grab your stuff.”
She gave me a lopsided smile. “I don’t have any stuff.”
She had said that but I hadn’t really believed her. What kind of woman could run with literally just the clothes on her back? One that was built to survive no matter what. I answered my own question.