Lovegame(101)

“No.” I push back from the table, climb to my feet. But I stumble again, nearly fall. I catch myself on the edge of the table, but can barely hold myself up. The room is spinning around me. “That’s not true. That’s not…”

“I’m so sorry, darling.” My mother is on my side of the table in seconds, pulling me into her arms. “I’m so sorry he hurt you.”

I sag against her, too tired and worn down to do anything else. There’s a part of my brain that keeps telling me Ian wouldn’t do this. That he wouldn’t lie to me, wouldn’t use me as research for his book. Not when he held me so tenderly last night. Not when he took such good care of me.

I reach for the folder, scatter the contents drunkenly across the table. There’s not much there. Just the announcement of the book deal, several pictures of Liam Brogan who is obviously William Vargas, pictures of a few of his blond-haired, blue-eyed victims. Young girls, all of them, many of whom looked an awful lot like I did when I was young. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

“I’m going to be sick,” I say as I lurch away from my mother and half-stagger, half-run across the kitchen to the sink. I barely make it in time.

My mom stands right there through it all, rubbing a soothing hand up and down my back. When it’s finally over—when I have nothing left to vomit up—she gets me a glass of water. Helps me rinse my mouth.

I’m moving slowly, the shock of it making my body weak and my mind sluggish.

“I need to sleep,” I say, leaning heavily on my mother as she helps me cross the kitchen.

“I know, darling. I know.” She takes me down the hall to the elevator and as we step on, I bury my head in the crook of her neck. The room is spinning, my vision going dark and shadowy, and it’s all I can do to stay on my feet.

A couple minutes later we’re in the Picasso room, though I don’t have a clear recollection of how we got there. Then again, it’s not like I care. My thoughts are getting wilder and more confusing and all I want is to check out for a little while. To disappear into sleep where I don’t have to think about the fact that last night I told Ian everything he wanted to know, every dirty, disgusting detail of what William Vargas did to me.

God, I’m so stupid.

“Sit down, darling,” my mother says from what sounds like far away. “I’m afraid you’re going to fall down.”

I ignore her, bracing my hands on the bed as I kick my shoes off. And then I’m falling facedown into the white comforter, falling down, down, down the rabbit hole, and sliding—blessedly—into sleep.





Chapter 29


Where the f*ck is she?

I check my phone for the twentieth time in as many minutes, hoping—praying—that I missed a text. A phone call. Something. Anything.

But there’s nothing…of course there’s nothing, considering it’s only been about thirty seconds since I last checked.

The profiler in me knows it’s crazy that I’m getting this worked up. After all, Veronica texted me hours ago to let me know that she had a busy day planned and that she’d call me tonight when everything was done. Considering we’re not officially together, that’s more than I have a right to expect. It’s not like she owes me an explanation for where she is.

I’m calling bullshit on the thought even as it’s running through my mind. After everything we’ve shared the last few days, after everything that went down between us over the last twenty-four hours…she doesn’t owe me an explanation, but she sure as shit should be giving me one anyway. And she sure as shit should have woken me up before she left this morning.

Because…busy day or just running away? That’s the question I want an answer to.

Running away is a perfectly normal response to what she told me yesterday—she’s feeling vulnerable, fragile, maybe even humiliated. Needing time to get her head on straight and deal with all of that is perfectly normal. Perfectly acceptable.

Unfortunately for me, knowing the psychological process she needs to go through right now doesn’t make it any easier to accept that she’s gone. That she’s somewhere licking her wounds right now and I can’t get to her. I can’t help her. I can’t even hold her as she goes through the pain.

It makes me crazy.

As does the idea that someone is gaslighting her, trying to get inside her head. Trying to make her question her sanity—or worse, ride her so hard that her sanity actually becomes a question.

I wish I knew more about Veronica, about the people that she lets close to her. Because right now I’m standing here trying to figure this out, but I feel like I’m flying blind. I don’t know enough of her life—enough of her people—to even formulate a hypothesis about who’s doing this to her.

That needs to change though, and it needs to change quickly. Because whoever is doing this is escalating quickly, pushing her toward an endgame that I can’t quite put my finger on yet—except to know that it’s going to be bad for Veronica. And that is not acceptable to me.

She’s been through enough. There’s no way I’m going to let her suffer any more than she already has.

I glance at my phone again. Still nothing. I’ve already texted her twice, once to check in and once, ostensibly, to let her know that I was leaving her house and to ask if she wanted to give me the code so I could set the alarm.