Mine to Keep (Mine #2)(58)
Author: Cynthia Eden

The line ended.

What. The. Hell?

Chapter Fourteen

“He’s insane!” The woman screamed the instant she saw Trace and Skye. “He has a gun!”

Trace shoved open the door to Skye’s studio. He made sure she got inside first, then he turned to confront Drake. “Have you lost what little sanity you had?”

“No, I found it…when I found her.”

Drake pushed the woman inside.

Trace made certain that he secured the lock behind them all.

Skye hit the lights, and the illumination flooded down on them, giving Trace his first good look at the woman.

This just keeps getting worse.

The woman—a drenched redhead with flashing green eyes—was as pale as death. Her high cheeks gave her a hallowed out, frightened look—or maybe that look just came from the absolute terror that was reflected in her eyes.

“H-he tried to drown me,” she whispered. “Then he put his g-gun to my—”

Drake shoved the gun into his waistband. “I found her at Navy Pier. Right before some ass**le slammed a board into the back of my head and dumped me in the water. Now she won’t tell me who her partner is, but the lady did confess to one thing. According to her, she’s Anna Jean’s sister.”

Trace studied the woman’s face. “Yes, I can see the resemblance.” The eyes weren’t the same shade of green, and her hair was the wrong color. Anna Jean’s face had been more classically beautiful. Cold perfection—that was what he’d thought of when he saw Anna Jean.

“What in the hell is happening down here?” A snarling voice demanded. Then footsteps thudded down from the upstairs apartment.

And Noah appeared.

Noah?

Claire was right behind him, peering nervously over his shoulder.

Noah’s gaze darted over to Drake and then that golden stare narrowed when he saw Drake’s guest. “You.” He lunged toward the woman. “Anna Jean.”

“No!” The woman cried out as she tried to back away from him, and she thudded into Drake. “I’m not. My name’s Piper! I-I’m her half-sister.”

Noah’s doubting gaze swept over her. “Nice trick. Got some collagen in your lower lip. A nose job. Died your hair.” He peered at her. “And I’d wager those are contacts, just to make your eyes look a little different, right?”

“No!”

“Bullshit. I saw you walk away today. I know that walk. I know you. You always were a good actress, Anna Jean. Too good.”

Her frantic green stare flew around the room and locked on Skye. “Help me,” she begged. “This isn’t why I came here. I-I needed to talk with you.”

“So talk,” Trace invited.

Skye edged around him. “Talk to me.”

The woman’s chest shuddered. She glanced over her shoulder at Drake, then her terrified stare came back to Skye. “Y-you’re in danger,” she said. “I-I had to tell you. You needed to be warned.”

Trace stiffened. “Did you just threaten her?”

“No, Trace,” it was Skye who answered, her voice calm, “she didn’t.”

The woman—Piper or Anna Jean or whoever the hell she was—told Skye, “You have to get away from him.”

Skye glanced back at Trace.

“He’s a killer,” the woman threw out, breath heaving.

Skye already knew that.

“He…he was my sister’s lover. He killed Anna Jean, and I’m afraid he will kill you, too.”

The hell, no.

***

All of the players were assembled. They’d gathered. Drawn in close.

Now it was time for the chaos.

Time for vengeance.

They were all to blame, so they would all suffer.

In the end, no one would be left.

I will win.

Trace Weston—oh, he would lose everything.

The bodies would start falling now. If they’d thought the blood ran heavily on the streets before…

It’s nothing compared to what I am about to do.

***

“Hell.” Noah sounded stunned. “You screwed her, too, Trace?”

Skye kept her eyes on the woman called Piper. “You’re lying.”

Piper shook her head. “No, I’m not! My sister was in a hospital, some hole-in-the-wall in the middle of Russia. I barely got to her in time. She was dying. He’d stabbed her and left her for dead—”

“I stabbed her,” Drake said, his voice thick.

The woman stiffened. “Y-you?”

Skye watched as shock seemed to flare in the woman’s eyes.

“I stabbed her, and I’m the one who left her for dead.” He flashed her a hard smile. “And you know what? I’m the one who f**ked her, too. So if you’re looking for someone to blame for all that…look right here.”

She slapped him. A hard, vicious hit that seemed to echo across the room.

Then the woman fell to her knees. She wrapped her arms around her stomach. Shuddered. “I-I found the dog tags. She had them. She told me…” Her head lifted. Her face was a mask of confusion and rage. “Trace. He was the one. He killed her. He screwed my sister and he left her to die.” Tears leaked from her eyes as she looked once more at Skye. “And he’ll do the same to you! He’s a killer! A killer!”

Skye shook her head. “No.”

“It was me,” Drake said again. “Me.”

Claire tried to ease past Noah. He caught her arm and pushed her right back behind his body. “Don’t get close to Anna Jean. She’s a viper.”

“I’m not Anna Jean!” The woman yelled. “Anna Jean died in a Siberian hospital. She lost her fingers and her toes to hypothermia. She struggled to live—for days and days, but the fluids built up around her heart. Or, around what was left of it. She died, broken and in agony.” Now her gaze swung wildly around the room. “I-I thought it was just Weston, but it was all of you. All of you!”

Then she whirled around and grabbed at Drake. No, not at him. Her fingers latched onto the gun he’d tucked into his waistband. She yanked the weapon up.

Drake’s fingers locked around her wrist. “Let go.”

Trace flew across the room.

Skye didn’t move. Her eyes were on the scene before her. Piper seemed so broken.

She came to warn me?

Piper let go of the gun. She whirled back toward Trace. “Y-you were going to do the same thing to Skye. I saw in the papers…you were with her. You were going to kill her, too.”