By the time Vincent bounded up the front steps to Jill’s apartment, he was completely beyond knocking.
He’d called her at least a dozen times on the way over, and she hadn’t picked up once. If he barged in and found her mad, and screening his calls, fine. If he barged in and found her naked and in the bubble bath, fine. If he barged in and found her with another man…
Not fine. Not fine at all.
But they’d deal with it. He’d win her back.
He just needed her to be okay.
He knocked once with his fist even as he shoved his spare key into her lock and pushed the door open. “Jill! Henley, so help me, God—”
She wasn’t there. He knew the moment that he stepped inside that Jill wasn’t in the apartment.
Vincent checked anyway. Checked every corner. The tub, the bedroom.
She wasn’t there.
“Fuck.”
He stood in the middle of her apartment, hands plowed into his hair as he tried to think. Tried to tap into the strange buzzing that was roaring through him, trying to tell him… something.
Something important.
Vincent’s instincts were never wrong, and right now they were telling him that Jill was in trouble, and that she needed him, and he didn’t have a fucking clue—
His eyes locked on the stack of papers on the living room floor.
Jill always did her case research on her living room floor. Said it was where she thought best.
Vincent fell on them like a dying man, but forced himself to pause before diving into the content. To remain perfectly still as he assessed.
A quick scan of the stack in the middle showed the name Lenora Birch several times.
No surprise there. He’d been doing some research on his own as well.
But something about the way these were arranged—one big stack in the middle, two individual sheets on either side.
As though she’d held one in each hand, separate from the pile.
Slowly, Vincent picked up the papers on the right and left, separate from the main pile. Both were scanned newspaper articles. He read the older one first, silently cursing the terrible quality of the image because it took him twice as long.
By the time he reached the end, his heart was pounding.
The second article, the newer one, confirmed his fear.
His Spidey sense—the one that had refused to kick in during the entire Lenora Birch case—was now going off in large, whooping alarms.
He was on his feet and racing toward the door even as he raged out loud at an absent Jill. “Goddamn it, Henley, why didn’t you wait for me?”
Vincent’s car was in motion even as he reached for the radio to call for backup.
The uniforms would beat him there, but that was fine. As long as someone got to Jill, he didn’t care about anything else.
Vincent’s breath was ragged as he sped all the way back to Manhattan.
Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay, and I’ll do anything, everything. I’ll hire a sky writer, and write poetry, and go on bended knee, and I’ll eat Goddamn fondue on Valentine’s Day…
It was the longest ride of Vincent’s life, and he could have sworn his heart stopped a million times along the way.
But when he finally pulled up in front of Dorothy Birch’s apartment building, his heart really did stop.
There were the expected squad cars, of course. A half dozen of them.
But there was an ambulance too. And there were his brothers. His brothers who beat him, because they were already in Manhattan when shit went down.
Luc’s and Anthony’s faces were unusually somber as they watched a stretcher be loaded into the ambulance then.
He saw it then. The blond hair. The small frame.
“No. No!”
Even in the chaos, his shout had carried, and people turned to stare as he half ran, half stumbled toward the ambulance as the stretcher disappeared from view.
His brothers caught both of his arms before he could throw himself into the back.
“Easy,” Anth muttered. “Let them work.”
“What happened?” his voice cracked. “What’s wrong with her?”
“They found her unconscious,” Luc said quietly. “They think she was drugged, but they don’t know with what. They’re searching the place now.”
Drugged. That old bitch had drugged her.
“Where is she?” Vin snarled, glancing around at the squad cars, searching the backseats for a white head.
Both brothers were silent for a moment.
Anthony finally answered. “There was no sign of Dorothy Birch when the uniforms got here. It was just Jill slumped on the couch. Judging from the open dresser drawers and clothes strewn on the bed, we’re guessing she made a run for it.”
Vincent’s eyes came back to Jill’s body. He could barely see with the paramedics moving in every direction, but she wasn’t moving.
She wasn’t moving.
“I’m going to find Dorothy Birch,” Vincent said, his voice harsh and grating. “I’ll fucking find her!”
One of the paramedics started to close the back of the ambulance door, and Vin reached out to grab it before it could shut in his face.
“Sir, you can’t—”
“I’m a cop,” Vincent ground out as he launched himself into the back of the ambulance.
“And this is my partner.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE