“More light is what Ann believes in.”
“Oh, I know,” Garrick says.
“She thinks I’ll get the answers that way.”
“You sure the fuck will. A story like this and everyone comes out of the woodwork. We’d have to leak out some of those pictures of you. Have you sign a blanket consent. We have the pictures.” He says something about her phone being cloned.
“I’ll do it,” I say, knowing what the world will see. Me on that patch of grass. Me eating like a savage. None of it matters anymore.
His fingers fly over his phone. “If I say I’m delivering Savage Adonis, I need to deliver Savage Adonis.” He lowers his voice, his tone very nearly sexual. “I’m talking about you turning on that growly thing. Giving the juicy stuff. You’ll hold back some details for my story, though. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say through gritted teeth.
He reaches up and messes up my hair. It’s all I can do not to break his hand. “We’ll let your shirt hang open so they can see the scars. And make that stormy face you do. Where you look like you’re lost and you want to kill somebody.”
My pulse races as he messes up my hair some more.
“That’s it, Kiro—that’s the look! Fuck—yes. Do that up there and you’ll be trending on Twitter and showing up on half the phones in America. Nothing held back. Paraded up there with that angry lost hot guy look…you have to have that look.”
“I’ll have the look,” I say.
“I’m callingBMZ Confidentialright now. You sure you’re serious? You gonna fuck me?”
“I’m not going to fuck you,” I spit out.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Aleksio
The desk inour suite at the Sky Slope Hotel overlooks the endless pine forest. But I’m not looking at the view; I’m examining the images from the cave again. A few of the bodies are impossible to ID.
Our guy got DNA, and he’s flying back. We’re hoping Kiro isn’t among the dead.
We got there just a few hours after the attack. So fucking close. We could’ve been there. We could’ve helped him. Instead it was just carnage.
Is Kiro among the dead? Is he wounded? Was he taken? He had a journalist, A.E. Saybrook, with him. Are they still together? Or is she dead, too? Some of the bodies are badly mauled.
I sent Viktor to his room to cool down. I’m hoping he doesn’t break anything. Mira’s on the bed, fucking around online.
I zoom in on a tattoo on one of the dead. I can’t imagine Kiro would have tattoos. And honestly, I can’t imagine that Kiro, a man who lived more than half his life in the wilderness, would be ripped apart by wolves.
There’s a tip that a gunshot wound went into Duluth Memorial Medical Center—something out of the wilderness area. I sent a guy to check it out. They’re saying it’s a hunting accident.
Probably is.
“Aleksio!” Mira screams. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
“What?”
She’s off the bed. She’s shoving the phone at me. “Look!”
I take a look and the world drops out from under me. I’m staring into the face of Kiro. My brother.
His lips are moving. Talking. It’s a gossip website of some kind. Underneath him in a blaring red rectangle, it says, “LIVE REPORT:Savage Adonis is alive and well, and you won’t believe where we found him.”
“What the fuck? This is live? Where is this?” I fumble on the sound.
Mira grabs the laptop. The shot switches to a reporter asking a question about his feet. Something about bare feet in the snow. There’s a mob of reporters out in front of him.