“I swear my husband designed this place to be as complicated as possible.” Toby laughed. “We’re almost there though, I promise.”
Lifting my arm, I let my fingers drift across the unwrinkled wall. Our shadows danced alongside us, and I decided these hallways felt a lot like tunnels.
I liked this tunnel much more than the last one.
This one had Daddy at the end.
Toby glanced over his shoulder. “You must be working on something important if Benji called you here.”
“I thought maybe he was going to yell at me because I haven’t found the ghost yet.”
He probably still will.
“Who is Ghost?”
“Oh, ghost is just a nickname for the man who wants to kill Mr. Thomas.”
Toby froze mid-step.Oomph. My chest collided with his backpack. I stumbled and my hands shot out, searching for something to grab. I came up empty, but managed to get my feet back under me before I hit the ground.
Toby rotated, his chin brushing his shoulder as he looked back at me. “What did you just say?”
“Ghost is the nickname for—”
“The man who—” His words dried up mid-sentence and what left him instead was an ugly noise. A shadow rolled across his throat, and I watched it bob violently, as though he’d forgotten how to swallow.
“Toby?”
“There’s a man who wants to… kill my husband?” His backpack fell to the floor with a loud thunk. He was facing me fully now, fisting the fabric of his sweatpants. “Is that what you just said?”
“I—”
“He’s… he’s a mob boss. Benji has lots of enemies but he’s not in like…danger, right?” His eyes weren’t green anymore when I looked into them. The glitter was still there, but what it circled was a ring of darkness that vibrated with each heave of his chest. “Right?!”
“Ghost is the one who hired Hugh Laughton.”
“Who the hell is Hugh Laughton?”
I rubbed at my chin and my eyebrows felt tighter.Didn’t he remember?
“Who is he, Silas?”
Ohmygod.
“He didn’t…” My stomach clenched. “Mr. Thomas didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Ohmygod.
I shook my head but all it did was make me dizzy. “Ghost is… he put out an ad to… to hurt Mr. Thomas. Tokillhim. Hugh was going to take the money but Daddy killed him. You… you didn’t know?”
A puff of breath left him, and it sounded a lot like the wordno.
My heart fell right into the pit of my stomach, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to dig it back out.Bad. Bad. Bad.Hands quivering, I wrapped them in the ends of my sweatshirt and hunched in on myself. My skin was shaking so hard, I thought it would drip right off my bones and make a puddle at my feet. The urge to run kicked me square in the chest but my feet were too heavy when I tried to lift them.
The glitter around Toby’s eyes acted as a beacon in the shadows, highlighting his features and the tears that stained them. They were the bad kind of tears—and it was all my fault.
“I’m going to find him,” I promised.