From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(66)

It was just after dusk that evening, the sun slipping away with Josie’s hope. She shifted on her aching feet, standing on the porch of one of Rhodes’s neighbors, who apologized for not having more information before closing her door.

Josie turned and walked down the steps. She had spoken to anyone who would listen as she waited for the police team to leave Rhodes’s house. But, of course, no one had seen or heard anything, and she found herself feeling helpless and numb and empty.

It was the worst kind of tired, like nothing mattered enough to stop you from curling up wherever you were, closing your eyes, and sleeping forever. She had no new information by the close of the day, and neither did Hank.

There was only one thing left on her list for the day—break into his house.

Josie walked down the block and to the alley, stopping by her car to grab her gloves and picks before making her way up his driveway, sneaking into his back gate and quietly closing it behind her, ignoring the police tape. It wasn’t the first time she’d broken into his house, though she’d never been there at night. It was eerily quiet as she unrolled her leather pick case and pulled on her gloves.

She looked around the door for a tamper seal, but there was none. Hank had said they hadn’t found anything other than his fingerprints, which were a match to the one on Anne’s necklace. Rhodes had been raised from potential suspect to wanted man, but nothing in his home connected him with any other murders or indicated where he’d gone. Josie wasn’t convinced that she would fare any better, but she had to do it.

She had to see for herself.

Josie turned on her flashlight, gripping it between her teeth to illuminate the lock as she slipped her picks in, twisting and wiggling them to manipulate the pins inside, smiling when she heard the click. Her gloved hand wrapped around the knob and pushed, and the door swung open into the dark kitchen. She gathered her things and stepped across the threshold, closing the door behind her with a soft snick.

The only light in the silent house was the small beam from her flashlight as it swept the room.

“Where to start?” she whispered to herself.

The quiet house was neat and tidy, everything dusted and symmetric, which had always creeped her out. In the living room, two love seats faced each other. His TV hung on the wall, flanked by two paintings of a landscape, almost identical. She thumbed through the contents of his built-in bookshelves, noting all the generic reading material, classics that people were supposed to read and enjoy, lest they become social lepers, and she wondered if he’d read a single one. The spines were perfect.

As she climbed the stairs, she noticed that nothing seemed out of place. There were no signs of a hasty exit throughout the house, strangely not even in his bedroom where the bed was neatly made and topped with throw pillows, the drawers all buttoned up tight. Josie opened them anyway, and though they were almost bare, everything left was folded in neat little rows. She rummaged through his nightstand, looking for any papers he might have scribbled a note on, but found nothing.

There was nothing.





Artemis looked in as Josie walked into Rhodes’s office and sat down to go through his desk drawers. When she opened the long middle drawer, Artemis thought of the business card, and it appeared in a corner where Josie wasn’t looking as she sorted through rubber bands and paperclips. The name and information of a man who knew who had helped Rhodes get away were printed on it, and Artemis sat back, smiling. Josie would find him, and she’d be on her way after Rhodes in no time.



Dita gasped when she saw it, instantly recognizing the logo with the fat panda on it. “Perry! Look at that! What the fuck?”

“Get rid of it! Dammit, hurry!” She slapped Dita on the arm.

“Good gods.” Dita huffed, and the card disappeared just as Josie turned her attention deeper in the drawer where the card had been. Dita sat back on her couch. “That was close. She never would have accepted Jon’s help if she’d found it, and my plans would have been fucked sideways.”

“Crisis averted.”

“For now,” Dita said, not feeling so sure.





Josie smelled roses and looked up, baffled. She glanced around, certain that Rhodes wasn’t the type to keep flowers in his home, but shook her head when she found nothing amiss and turned back to the drawer.

She felt around the base as she always did, looking for a false bottom. Just once, she wished she would find one, just for novelty’s sake, but she was pretty sure IKEA didn’t make furniture with secret panels.

Leaning back in the office chair, she looked around the room, wondering how long before he’d sat in that spot and what he had been thinking. Where he would go.

Earlier that day, Josie had called in a favor to a friend who worked at a big bank chain where Rhodes had an account. Off the record, no large amount of cash had been withdrawn, though he’d been steadily pulling out several hundred dollars in chunks from ATMs ever since Anne was killed. And with that, she knew he’d planned on leaving all along.

Her job was infinitely more difficult with that knowledge. He wouldn’t have slipped up, not with time to prepare.

So the question was, where had he gone?

There were so many things he would need to be able to disappear, including a new identity and a car since his was still in his driveway. He wouldn’t go where anyone would recognize him, so the New York City area was out, as was Boston and Deer Lodge, Montana.