From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(67)

He could be anywhere else.

She wondered how deep he’d gone in getting new identification and guessed it would be all the way, as meticulous as he’d been to that point. He would have needed a connection, some way to get fake IDs. But Rhodes had no one to trust. He was antisocial and reclusive, and she didn’t believe he would clue anyone in who could be linked back to him. He would have been more likely to seek out someone sketchy in a seedy bar under an alias than to ever discuss something so direct with anyone he knew.

She’d stop by and talk to his coworkers for good measure, but she didn’t suspect she’d find much. Rhodes was smarter than that; he’d been getting away with actual murder for thirty years.

Her only other idea was to paper junkyards with flyers, hoping someone would remember him and praying he hadn’t bought his getaway car off Craigslist.

Dread crept into her stomach as it dawned on her for the first time that she might never find him. There might be no justice, no closure. It might never be over, and she didn’t know how she could move on.

She pushed the thought away and stood, looking over the room a final time before making her way back downstairs and through his kitchen to descend the stairs of his basement.

Josie swept her small light around the cold, dark room, and a shiver rolled down her spine. She fought the urge to turn and run back up the stairs and had to force her legs to move her through the room.

A weight bench and elliptical as well as a rack of free weights were the prominent decor. The only other items in the room were an old couch and coffee table that sat in the nook created by the stairs. As she walked over to the furniture, she couldn’t stop thinking how odd it was that a couch and table were there when the room was so sparse. There was no TV to watch, no bookshelf. Just a couch and a coffee table and a bunch of weights.

She wondered why she’d never considered it before, a sick feeling of realization rolling through her.

The crawl space opening was blocked by cardboard boxes, and she knelt down to move them out of the way, shining her flashlight inside.

Something had been hidden there.

Her heart pounded. She could see the square in the dust on the ground where it had rested and drag marks where it had been pulled out. Her mind flashed with the possibilities of what it might have been as she stared inside.

It almost killed her not to know.

She stood and turned as she let out a breath, looking over the basement with an icy hollow in her chest. She was standing in the room where he’d killed them. Somehow, she knew. He had brought them to that room and murdered them, and their last moments had been filled with the rafters and naked light bulbs, the cold concrete underneath them and Rhodes’s face above, the smell of the musty basement in their noses as they had taken their last breaths.

He had killed them, wrapped them up, taken them away, and dropped them in the river to be forgotten.

But Josie would never forget. And she would make him pay for every one.





“I actually hate not letting Josie find that card.” Dita sank into her overstuffed couch and tugged her throw over her legs.

“I know, but damn, that would have been a disaster.” Perry pulled her black hair out of its knot and shook it out with her fingers.

“I still cannot believe that Artemis did all this.”

“Maybe Artemis does know something you don’t. Maybe Josie has some psychic superpower.”

“You know good and well she doesn’t. But if Jon can find something before Josie does—”

“He could take that to her—”

Dita nodded. “And she’d let him help. She’s going to go after Rhodes, but I’d feel loads better if Jon went with her.”

“Well, you’d definitely have a better chance at winning.”

“What?” Dita wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be asinine. That is seriously the last thing I’m worried about right now.”

Perry raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe not the very last thing, but it’s not on the level with keeping them safe, not even close. Rhodes is dangerous, and if Josie’s on her own with him…”

“Yeah, I don’t want to think about it.” Perry paused, clearly thinking about it before changing the subject. “Well, your plan sounds solid. I think you can make it work.”

“I can definitely make it work, but I’m still worried.” Dita put her forehead in her hands. “I am so tired, and I am beyond mad at Artemis. Look.” She held her trembling hand out flat to illustrate. “I mean, what if they can’t catch him?”

“Poor Josie. This is so hard on her.”

Dita’s anger rolled around in her, and she felt herself scowling.

“Did you sleep?”

“Nope. After my meltdown yesterday, I was sure I’d pass out. After you guys left last night, I took a super-long bubble bath and read, but when I lay down, I couldn’t sleep. I stared out the window until the sun came up.”

“Did you doze at all?”

Dita took a deep breath. “Yeah. Not okay.”

“Want to tell me?”

“Not the details, but last night was the Adonis show. He died over and over again in my arms, and I couldn’t stop it. Then, I’d realize that I was holding the knife, and the dream would start over.”

“Gods, Dita.”