Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(64)

I laughed a little. “No, definitely not.”

He nodded, relieved he didn’t just rat Niklas out.

“So, what can you tell me about this Jackie?”

The owner gave me her description, and said he thought she lived in a trailer park somewhere, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Are you gonna pay for that?” he asked about the broken lock just before I went to leave.

I gave him enough cash to pay for the lock, and Niklas’ rent for another three months. Just in case.

I did have a bad feeling about his disappearance, but at the same time, it was typical of Niklas, and certainly wasn’t the first time he’d left without telling anybody. He could handle himself. Besides, I had begun to realize that going there to recruit him was the worst idea ever anyway. He was worse than Victor when it came to letting me go on missions, and worrying about me all the time. And then something hit me:

“If Fredrik sent Dante to Mexico, and Victor sent Iosif, then who did Niklas send? He had to have sent someone—there’s no way in hell he would’ve let me go on that mission without sending someone too.”

I pace the floor of my living room for a long time talking to myself, pondering the whole revelation.

Then I stop mid-stride as the pieces begin to come together. I go over to my laptop on the coffee table and research the Lockhart Family; a knowing grin spreading across my face as I see a photo of Mr. Lockhart’s daughter, Frances, standing beside him at some kind of college function. She definitely wasn’t the Frances Lockhart I saw at the auctions. And apparently, Cesara didn’t look hard enough, or she would’ve found the same picture, buried about twenty pages into Google images. Maybe she gave up on page nineteen, like I almost did.

I conclude that the woman I saw at the auction had to be someone Niklas sent—that’s why I felt as sorry for her as I did for Dante. Could she be this mysterious Jackie, perhaps? I may never know. Because just like Fredrik, and Victor, I may never see Niklas again.

For now, at least, it looks like I’m on my own, and I’m going to make the most of it. Maybe this is the way it was always meant to be; this is the place fate was leading me when I hid in the back of Victor’s car. Not into his arms, but into the start of a new life—my life—the one I was born to live, that only Victor could show me.

Victor…

I will always love him, and despite what he wanted me to do, I will never stop loving him; I will never stop looking for him; and I will never put him out of my mind.

Because I know one day we will meet again.

As lovers? Friends? Enemies?

It is the one thing I fear and desire more than anything else. To see him again; to feel his hands on me; to look into the eyes of the man who made me…understand who I already was.

Victor…