This was so not how I wanted the night to go. Not only had I exposed myself in front of basically the entire town, but I had made a fool of myself in a place I was supposed to run. This officially could not get any worse.
“Char?” Dalton’s voice boomed in my ear like a firing squad cocking their guns. He had just walked in and (if there was a God in heaven) maybe he hadn’t seen everything I had to offer.
“I can’t right now,” I said, trying my best to move away from him.
The place was crowded, though, and the guys here didn’t seem as though they wanted to help a buxom (and basically topless) woman run away.
“I just wanted to say hey,” he said, weaving through the crowd with irksome ease.
Hey,” I said, over my shoulder, still moving, still intent on getting out of this with at least a little of my self-respect intact.
“Well, I mean, and to say congrats.” He was close now—so close I could feel his breath on my neck.
He swung in front of me, stopping me where I stood. My shirt dripped onto the floor, I stunk of alcohol, and worst of all, every inch of breast that wasn’t covered by my hands, might as well have had a blinking arrow pointing to it.
I sighed, accepting defeat. “Thanks.”
“Oh, wow,” he said. His gaze lingered where everyone else’s had, but to his credit, he forced his attention upward to my face. “That’s a lot of—”
“Yes, it is,” I answered. “And there are a lot of people here, so if you don’t mind—”
“Right!” Dalton said. “On it.” He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over my chest. “There we go,” he said, looking at me again. “I wanted to tell you congratulations on the opening.” He grinned. “Though, if I’m being honest, I sorta want to congratulate you on other things now.”
“I’m mortified,” I said with a groan, but he just scooped me up into a hug. “I just flashed the entire town.”
“Lucky bastards,” he muttered.
Though I tried to fight it, I couldn’t help but smile. Sure, I had embarrassed myself. And I had probably given Ester at least a month’s worth of ammunition. But things felt better in Dalton’s arms. He was warm. He was dry. And what was more, he was inviting—the sort of inviting I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said, in a slightly more serious tone.
And the thing was, at least for a moment, I believed him. Maybe everything would be all right.
A huge boom rocked from above. I jerked, looking up. Another boom shook the roof, followed by the creaking and breaking of wood beams.
The entire club ground to a halt, music and all. Everyone looked up, staring at the source of the strange noise. Then another crack erupted, and something crashed through the ceiling.
A woman screamed. Her scream became many screams. People ran, some filing for the door, some too drunk to know where the door was. I weaved through the crowd, easier to part than it had been minutes ago.
And as I neared where some of the crowd had gathered, I saw exactly what had shaken them up so much.
Lying lifeless and bloody on the floor, covered in scratches and bite marks, was a woman. A woman with dark hair and bright eyes.
A woman—another one—that looked a lot like me.
Chapter 6
I hadn’t been inside The Castle in days. No one had, what with the crime scene tape stretched across it, blocking the entrance with its creepy yellow and black barrier. That didn’t stop people from talking about it, though.
Not five minutes went by without me overhearing someone recall that gruesome moment. Either they were recounting what they saw firsthand (with a few embellishments thrown in for good measure) or they were repeating what they heard from a friend who had been there. No one seemed to have seen exactly the same thing. The only thing everyone agreed on was that they were absolutely, never ever, under any circumstance, without question, going back to that club.
They had even taken to calling it “The Casket” instead of “The Castle.”
Turned out the only thing worse for a business than a small town murder was an unsolved small town murder. And worse for me, the girl—like every other who seemed to get herself in trouble within a twenty mile radius—looked disturbingly like me. But she wasn’t me. I was me.
In the two days since that girl came crashing through the roof, I had been through three rounds of police questioning, and within the confines of those sessions, I learned that Abram had only moved to town a few months prior. I also learned that he came from old money. I did not, however, find out Abram’s address. And since he had deliberately been sending me to voicemail for days now, I was starting to worry.
It wasn’t that I cared, per se. He was, after all, an arrogant prick. But his business had fallen through, the last time I saw him, he was sick, and if I knew the people in this town the way I thought I did, there were probably more than a few who thought he was the murderer.
Which was absolutely ridiculous. Abram was a lot of awful things, but he wasn’t a killer. He just wasn’t.