Leather & Lark: The Ruinous Love Trilogy (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, 2)

I stride through the doors of Shoreview Assisted Living and check in with the reception desk, the staff regarding me with somber smiles. When I get to Ethel’s room, Lark’s parents are already there. Damian’s hand gently caresses Nina’s back as she smooths Ethel’s silver-white waves. I scan the room but find nothing of Lark’s on the chair in the corner where she usually leaves her bag and jacket.

“Lachlan, thank you for coming.” Though Damian tries to keep his tone even, I still catch the wary notes in his voice. I can’t blame him for it either. I wish it could be different for Lark’s sake, though, at least on a day like today.

“Of course. I’m so sorry for your loss. Ethel was …” I find that my throat grows tight as I picture Ethel at the brunch when I met Lark’s family for the first time. She was so wicked and funny and sharp. So full of life. And I respected the hell out of her. Even knowing how sick she was, it seems inconceivable that she’s simply gone. “Ethel was a force of nature. I’m grateful to have known her, even for a little while.”

“Thank you.” Nina gives me a weak smile, her eyes shining. Her brow furrows. “Where’s Lark?”

“I thought she’d be here already. She was at home when she called to give me the news. She said she’d be coming straight here.”

With a glance toward the door, I pull out my phone and type a text.

Everything okay?

“Maybe it was the stress of losing Stan,” Nina says as she runs a tissue beneath her lashes and straightens her shoulders. “They were close friends for many years. Maybe it was just too much for Ethel to handle.”

Damian says something reassuring but I lose track of what it is as I pace toward the door and back again, the phone clutched in my hand. The message was delivered, but there’s no response from Lark. Something grips my guts and twists.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to Damian and Nina, willing my voice to remain steady.

I leave the room and head down the corridor toward the reception desk. I look out the sliding glass doors hoping to catch a glimpse of an Uber dropping Lark off, or her mass of blond waves catching on the breeze, or that giant feckin’ bag that weighs nearly as much as she does bouncing against her hip. But there’s nothing, just an empty sidewalk and cars that pass by on the road.

I select Lark’s number and ring it as I head back toward the room. It goes unanswered. I hang up when it gets to Lark’s voicemail.

“Has Lark contacted you?” I ask as I step back into Ethel’s room. Nina and Damian both shake their heads. My pulse quickens and I open my messages again as I hope for the dots of an incoming reply, but they don’t come.

Let me know you’re okay, duchess

My plea is as much to the universe as it is to Lark. But still there’s no response.

“Fuck.”

I can feel the tension erupt in the room like a malevolent phantom. Damian takes a step closer. “What’s wrong? Is Lark all right?”

“I don’t know, she hasn’t responded. She should have been here by now. Even with waiting for an Uber she was still closer than me.”

I’m about to call her a second time when my phone rings in my hand, but my momentary relief is cut short when I see Conor’s name on the screen and not Lark’s.

“Is Lark with you?” I ask by way of greeting.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“No, man. Sorry,” he replies with confusion in his voice. “But I’ve got something from Stan’s videos. Paranoid old fucker had everything encrypted and I just got past it about ten minutes ago. Sending you a screenshot now.”

I pull the phone from my ear and place the call on speaker as I wait for Conor’s text to come through. When it does, I see an image of a man standing over Stan’s body. His features are obscured by the angle of the camera and the ball cap he wears, the brim pulled low. He clutches a weapon in his hand, not a normal knife but something small and irregularly shaped. Something familiar.

“Can you—”

“Already on it, bro.”

A second text comes in from Conor, this time a zoomed-in image of the tool. The man’s palm covers most of the black handle, but not the ring of gold that attaches the sharp head of the edge beveller. I can see the brand name—WUTA—stamped on the stainless steel.

“Fuck, fuck.” Blood freezes in my veins as my heart tumbles into my guts. “That’s mine.”

“Bro, what the fuck? He was in your shop?”

Images click together like pieces of a puzzle as Nina and Damian ask questions that I don’t answer. “Get me a better picture of the hat.”

A handful of heartbeats later, a new image of the man comes through, his face still mostly in shadow, but the Carhartt logo clearly visible on the front of the cap.

“Motherfucker.” I scroll through my recent appointments until I find the last name that suddenly escapes me as disbelief and panic creep through my flesh. “Get me everything you can find on Abe Midus. I’m going home to look for Lark.” I disconnect the call and face Nina and Damian, their eyes wide with confusion and concern. “Abe Midus. Do you know that name?”

“No,” Damian says. Nina shakes her head next to him. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’ve got him on video, the man who killed Tremblay. And he did it with a tool from my shop.” I try ringing Lark’s phone one more time as her parents pepper me with more questions, but again my call goes unanswered. “Something isn’t right. I’m going to find Lark.”

Nina clamps her hand over her mouth, muffling a strangled cry.

Damian surges forward. “I’ll come with you.”

“No. Stay and text me if Lark shows up.” I stride down the corridor, Damian’s footfalls an echo behind me as we head into the lobby. “Texan accent, short gray hair, five-foot-eleven, medium build, tattoo of a Bible and cross on his right forearm. Call me right away if you see him.”

“Oh, you lookin’ for Steve? I think he left about an hour ago,” one of the nurses says from where she sits at the reception desk.

“What?”

“Steve. The temp guy. Likes his Bible quotes.” Confusion deepens in the nurse’s expression as her eyes dart between me and Damian. “We had a few people out sick yesterday so we called the staffing company for a temp worker to cover.”

Damian and I turn to each other. His face crumples. I try to swallow the lump in my throat.

“My daughter—”

“I will find her. Even if I have to kill every person in this goddamn city to do it.”

Damian gives me a single nod and I take off at a jog, calling Fionn as I run to my car on the off-chance Lark might still be with Rose. I’m speeding through a red light when he says he hasn’t seen her, but he tells me they’re in their rental and not far from our building, ready to help. By the time I reach our street, they’re already parking next to the entrance.

My heart races. My hands shake. I try her phone again as Fionn and Rose meet me at my car, but Lark still doesn’t answer.

“We called Rowan but he and Sloane are in Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. They’re on their way home but it’s gonna take a while.” Rose’s face is creased with worry as I withdraw my gun from the glove box. “What’s going on? Where the fuck is Lark?”

“I don’t know. She called me to say her aunt died. She was supposed to meet me at the nursing home, but she never showed.” I lead the way to the main door and grab the door handle only to find it unlocked. It swings open to the textile production floor where there’s no sign of anything amiss. “Conor just found information about the man who’s been targeting her family. And now Lark won’t respond to any of my calls.”

I stride toward the stairs, taking them by twos, Fionn and Rose close on my heels. The worst fears I never could have imagined suddenly pile up around me with every step I take.

“The guy was right fucking there. He was in my goddamn shop. He spoke to Lark, shook her hand. He’s been around us this whole time and I had no fucking clue.”

By the time we reach the apartment I feel like I might vomit. The desperation and panic are so foreign they’re overwhelming. I keep hoping my phone will suddenly ring, that Lark’s smiling face will pop up on my screen. But it stays silent. And I’m not sure I can survive what I might find on the other side of the door.

I hesitate for just a moment, letting Rose and Fionn know with a nod that they need to stay behind me. And then I twist the handle and push it open.

Blood coats the floor and my knees buckle. It’s my brother who holds me up long enough to stumble into the room and regain my balance.

“Lark.” My despondent plea receives a pained whine in reply. I surge forward into the living space and find Bentley lying on his side near the table, blood coating the white patches on his fur. He whines again, a sorrowful cry that incinerates my crumbling heart.

“Save that fucking dog,” I order my brother as I scramble for tea towels from the kitchen and toss them to Fionn.

“I’m not a vet—”

“I don’t fucking care, save that goddamn dog.”

I stalk toward the corridor where the bedrooms are, calling to Lark as I go. My efforts are unrewarded. I check the bedrooms and bathrooms, but there’s no sign of Lark, nothing out of place except her absence. I return to the living room with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and clippers clutched in one hand and my gun in the other. Rose has bloodied towels pressed to Bentley’s side as Fionn threads a needle.

“I’ll do what I can to stop the bleeding now and get him to the vet,” Fionn says. I hand him the clippers and he shaves off a line of fur next to what looks like a deep stab wound. When he glances up at me, Fionn’s expression is grim. “Do you have any idea where Lark could be?”

“No.” I scan the room and spot her phone near the coffee table, a broken lamp nearby on the floor. There’s a bloody streak across the screen. My missed calls and texts and notifications from the Uber she never took flash on the backlit glass when I pick it up.

Lark needed me. And I wasn’t there.

An anguished scream fills the room. It comes from me.

Tears fill my eyes as I toss the phone on the couch. I want to pace. To run. But there’s nowhere to go to escape the way I feel.

“I wasn’t here,” I whisper.

A hand wraps around my forearm and squeezes, and I look down to meet Rose’s fierce determination.

“Think,” she demands as the dog whines behind her. “There’s got to be something. Something weird. Something out of place.”

I press my eyes closed and search the darkness. At first, all I see is Lark’s face. How beautiful she is when she’s trying to get under my skin. How she looked on that stage, singing to me. Her body beneath the sheets the first night we spent together, the way she smiled when I turned for one last glance from the doorway.

And then it strikes me, an image that burns brighter than lightning.

“Across the street. He was across the fucking street.”

I stride toward the door, Rose right on my heels. “I’m coming with you,” she says.

“Rose, don’t,” Fionn says, his voice breaking. “Please.”

We stop just long enough for Rose to turn and face him. He’s kneeling on the floor, a hand still placed on Bentley’s side. “Lark is my girl. I’m going to get her back.”

“But—”

“I love you, Fionn Kane.”

Shocked silence fills the room. I expect Fionn to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. It’s as though her words are so unexpected that he can’t process them.

Rose takes a step backward toward the door. Fionn stares at her like he’s frozen. Rose takes another step away. “Save the dog or this asshat will kill you.”

Then Rose strides past me, pulling a huge hunting blade from a sheathe hidden beneath her shirt. When I turn toward my brother, there’s anguish in his eyes.

He swallows, but his voice still comes out uneven when he says, “Keep her safe.”

“I will. I promise.”

I jog to catch up with Rose. When we reach the bottom of the stairs we burst into the cold air, heading for the building across the street.

“So who is this guy?” Rose asks as we get to the locked door. I’m about to try shooting it when she pulls out a small black case from the bag slung across her shoulder and fits a pin and snap gun into the lock. With a few clicks and turns, it’s open and we step inside. The former industrial building has been converted to small offices on the main floor with apartments on the second.

“He said his name was Abe Midus. He booked an appointment at my studio and brought in a saddle for repair. But I know nothing about him aside from he’s a religious guy. Conor is working on it.”

We run up the stairs to the second floor and head to the apartments that face our building, of which there are only three. We stop at the door at the end of the hall, the one most likely to align with our windows, and listen for sounds within. Nothing comes. I keep my gun pointed to the wood as Rose fits her tools into the keyhole. When the bolt gives, I motion at her to stand aside. Then I turn the handle and push the door in.

“Well,” Rose whispers as I lead the way over the threshold. “I think we got the right place.”

There’s no one here. But the evidence of his obsession is everywhere.

Charcoal drawings line the walls, images of crosses with quotes scribbled in margins, sketches of houses and unfamiliar places and people. There are several drawings of an older woman with a Bible spread open on her lap. Handwritten notes are piled on every surface. Times and dates and locations. A colorful strip of paper sticks out among the white ruled sheets, and I pick it up. KEX, with Lark Montague, the ticket says.

Fire fills my chest with a burning ache.

My phone rings and I scramble to pull it from my pocket. It’s Conor.

“Anything?” I say.

Rose watches from where she stands next to a scope mounted on a tripod, the lens pointed to our apartment.

“Nothing for an Abe Midus. He’s a ghost.”

“Did you check records for Texas?”

“I checked records for everywhere. There’s no one who’s feasibly within the range of your description.”

I let out a string of swears as Rose shoots me a worried look. She starts searching through a pile of syringes and vials arranged on a tray on a side table. Conor is rattling off different iterations of Abe’s name and everything that he’s searched as Rose opens a Bible that lies near the table’s edge. Her eyes go wide as she whips it off the surface and thrusts it toward me, pointing frantically at the name.

“We found something. It’s Abe Mead,” I say to Conor. The realization hits me right in the chest. “Oh shit. Mead. Harvey Mead is that bloke Rowan and Sloane killed in Texas. He must be related.”

Conor’s fingers tap furiously over the keyboard. There’s a brief pause that feels like an eternity. “It’s his brother,” Conor finally says. “I’m coming up with an address for Oregon. I’ll need to get to Leander’s and search from the office for anything more than the basics.”

“His history isn’t going to tell me where he’s taken Lark,” I bite out.

“No,” Rose says as she points to the closed front door behind us. There’s a map taped to the wood. “But maybe that will.”

We step closer.

Portsmouth, the title says.

I rip the map from the wood and throw the door open. Then I run down the hallway, feeling like I’m being burned alive, one cell at a time.