23. Twenty-Three

Chloe and Lucifer spend all day Thursday fighting. 

Well, okay, not fighting fighting. It’s more like...silence. Brooding, annoyed, frustrated silence. 

It sucks.

It starts the moment Chloe wakes up. She’s exhausted. There’s a dull headache throbbing in her temples. Her eyes feel like they’re burning, which always happens when she gets overtired. She’s a little nauseous too, another symptom of lack of sleep. If her discomfort was a result of stargazing all night with her boyfriend, she thinks maybe she’d be able to say it was a fair tradeoff. But she can’t say that because they didn’t stay out all night and that’s not why she’s tired. She’s tired because of her nightmares. 

They’re fucking awful.

She and Lucifer have established something of a routine since that first dream in Vegas. She wakes up at some point every night, gasping or sobbing or trying not to scream. He holds her until she settles down. When she’s breathing normally, he pulls her back onto the mattress and she falls asleep again, soothed by the gentleness of his fingers stroking through her hair. 

Last night, though, it didn’t go like that. Last night, she had two nightmares. The first was bad. The second was worse. After the second one, she couldn’t fall back asleep. She didn’t want to. She was afraid if she did there would be a third, so she stared at the stupidly cheerful painting hanging on the wall near the bed and tried not to think about how much she missed her kid and her home and her job and the L.A. sun. Eventually exhaustion pulled her under, but by then it was early in the morning. Her sleep was fitful at best. 

Now she’s awake. She wishes she wasn’t. She rolls toward Lucifer’s side of the bed, seeking warmth and comfort, but finds cold sheets and empty pillows instead. There’s no note. She rolls back to her side of the bed and checks her phone, but he didn’t text her either. He just...left.

She stares at the place where he should be, and then irritation flares in her chest. She sighs and throws the sheets off her body and stalks to the bathroom. 

She’s in the shower when he returns from wherever it is he disappeared to. He doesn’t come into the bathroom to greet her. There are plenty of reasonable explanations for that, but it makes irritation flare in her chest again. When she gets out of the shower, she doesn’t go out into the room to greet him. She’s not sure why. It’s not like she’s punishing him or anything. She’s just...annoyed. How hard is it for him to just be there when she wakes up?

When her hair is dry and her makeup is on and the only thing left for her to do is get dressed, she finally emerges from the bathroom. She finds him standing by the window, his back to her. When he turns to look at her, she’s surprised to see a glass of whiskey in his hand. Usually in the morning, he drinks his liquor with coffee or from his flask. She wonders what it means that he’s gone straight for a glass this early. 

“Good morning, Detective,” he greets.

“Hi.” 

He nods at the dresser. “Coffee’s there, though I suspect it’s cold by now.”

She tightens her hold on the towel wrapped around her body and tries to determine whether the phrase by now is a statement of fact or an irritated judgment. 

“You know I’d go with you if you would just wake me up,” she tells him.

He shakes his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m perfectly capable of fetching coffee on my own.”

Irritation flashes through her again. “Right,” she says sharply. “Of course you are.”

She strides toward her suitcase without another word. He watches her rifle through her clothes, and the silence between them swells. If he crossed the room and reached for her, she’d go willingly into his arms. If she took a deep breath, acknowledged that her exhaustion and grief is making her short-tempered, and crossed the room to reach for him, he’d come just as willingly. But he doesn’t move, and neither does she. He just stares at her, and she waits and hopes and then realizes that he’s not going to take the first step because he never fucking does, so she grits her teeth and grabs her clothes and disappears into the bathroom with a slam of the door. 

It all just devolves from there. 

Despite his assurance that it’s terrible, she decides to peruse the continental breakfast in the lobby before they leave. That annoys him. As she eats a bowl of cereal, he announces that he’ll be driving all day because he can’t stand her deference to speed limits. That annoys her. It’s his day to pick what they listen to on the radio, and she hates what he picks, so she grabs the earbuds he left in the glove compartment and shoves them in her ears. They disagree about where to stop for lunch, but instead of the affectionate exasperation they usually bicker with, there’s an edge to it. She glares at him when he’s sarcastic with the waitress. He sighs at her when she stops to coo at a baby in a stroller and gets sucked into a conversation about teething with the baby’s mother. 

After lunch, Chloe tries to read a book she found at a gas station in Colorado. She can’t because Lucifer won’t stop tapping his hands on the steering wheel like it’s a damn drum set. She retaliates by returning the earbuds to her ears and using her phone to watch a Netflix show that he’s repeatedly said he wants to watch. She drinks too much iced tea and makes him stop at a rest stop, and he complains about losing all the time he’s saved them by speeding. He eats an entire bag of cool ranch puffs and gets cool ranch dust everywhere. It makes the car smell.

When they stop for gas about an hour outside of the tiny Illinois town where they’re planning to spend the night, Chloe goes into the gas station to get coffee and a bottle of Advil. Lucifer follows her. He hovers behind her like a shadow while she examines the coffee options, and then he’s rude to the cashier when they go to pay. The cashier is a jerk and he deserves Lucifer’s ire, but Chloe is tired and cranky and unwilling to admit that. So, as soon as they get back in the Escalade, she snaps at him. 

That’s when the dam breaks. 

It’s not pretty. It starts out passive-aggressive and slides into snide and then escalates until their voices are raised and they’re shouting at each other. It ends with both of them saying hurtful things they don’t mean. Chloe wants to cry but she refuses to give Lucifer the satisfaction of knowing he hit a nerve, so she glares out the window with her arms folded over her chest. 

They drive the rest of the way in complete silence. By the time Chloe slips the card key into the reader and then shoves the door of their hotel room open, the silence has become painful. She’s trying to decide whether they should talk now or eat some food first when Lucifer speaks. 

“I’m going out for some air.”

Chloe turns toward him with a frown. “What?”

“Air,” he repeats as if she’s an idiot. 

She folds her arms. “What are you going to do, take a lap around the parking lot?”

He narrows his eyes at her. “I’m going to fly.”

“What if someone sees you?”

“I’ve had wings longer than you’ve been alive, Detective. No one will see me unless I want them to.”

“Well where are you going?”

“For Dad’s sake,” he says, throwing up his hands. “Are you capable of turning off your incessant need to interrogate everyone, or should I just learn to grin and bear it?”

Hurt blossoms in Chloe’s chest, and it must show on her face, because Lucifer goes suddenly still. 

“Detective,” he starts.

“Do whatever you want, Lucifer,” she cuts him off. “I don’t care.” 

She turns away from him, snatches the TV remote off the dresser, and then collapses onto the bed. She turns the TV on, and after a beat of silence, the sound of the local evening news fills the room. 

Lucifer doesn’t move. Chloe can see him out of the corner of her eye, pressing his lips together the way he does when he’s trying to make a decision. She’s mad and hurt and tired, but somewhere beneath all that, she wants to say get over here and cuddle me because I’m tired of fighting.  

She doesn’t though. He doesn’t say anything either. He just sighs heavily, turns on his heel, and leaves. 

As soon as the door slams shut behind him, Chloe buries her face in her hands. Tears prick her eyes. She shouldn’t have let him leave. She shouldn’t have snapped at him in the Escalade either. She shouldn’t have...well, she shouldn’t have done anything she did today. But it’s not like this is all her fault, right? He shouldn’t have snapped at her just now. He could have stayed, and he didn’t, and he could have apologized and called a truce at any point today just like she could have. But he didn’t, and now he’s gone, and it’s all just…

This day sucks. 

She watches the local news for a while. She isn’t really paying attention. There’s a story about a fall festival in a nearby town, and another story about a local high school football team. The weatherman’s suit is so ill-fitting she mutters Shit that’s bad under her breath. If Lucifer were here, he’d…well, it doesn’t matter. He’s not here. He’s off flying around, free as a bird, and she’s stuck in this damn hotel room watching a weatherman in a terrible suit. 

A thought suddenly occurs to her. Is she really stuck? Does she have to stay here? Lucifer left the car keys sitting on the desk. She’s got cash and a fake ID and they’re in a tiny rural town where no one knows her. She hasn’t eaten dinner yet. Why can’t she go out and grab some food, or maybe find a bar and have a beer? She doesn’t know if there are any good bars or restaurants around, but anything would be better than sitting on this bed, watching the local news and waiting for Lucifer to decide he’s had enough air.

Her sudden thought that Lucifer might be out there sitting at a bar, eating dinner and drinking whiskey and flirting with the bartender while she’s sitting here waiting for him, is the last straw. She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and searches for restaurants nearby. There aren’t many, but there’s a place called Teddy’s Bar and Grill about two miles away. She studies the menu and decides it’s appealing enough. At the very least, she can drink something other than absurdly expensive liquor for a change. 

She climbs off the bed and grabs the car keys and her wallet and a room key. She tucks the Glock into the back of her waistband since she’s going out alone. Her blazer is cut in such a way that no one will notice that she’s carrying, and she feels safer when she’s armed.  

She hesitates halfway out the door though. Should she at least text Lucifer and tell him where she’s going? Or maybe leave a note? He might worry if she doesn’t. 

Then again, he didn’t tell her where he was going. He was annoyed when she asked. Why should she give him a courtesy he can’t give her? She’s spent years wondering and worrying about him when he pulls his disappearing act. Let him wonder about her for a change. 

She doesn’t have trouble finding the restaurant. There’s a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk out front that says parking is in the back, but she drives past it slowly a few times first so she can gauge how crowded it is inside the restaurant. It doesn’t look busy, so she pulls around to the parking lot in the back. She double checks that she’s got her fake ID in her wallet, and then gets out of the car and heads for the door that’s marked with a sign that says Enter Here beneath the word Teddy’s.

She walks down a long hallway with several closed doors, and then finally steps into the main dining area. A jukebox in the corner is playing a rock ballad with a lot of electric guitar. She scans for cameras, but there aren’t any. There aren’t many people either. There’s a family with two young kids seated in a booth by the front window, and a group of men her age wearing Chicago Bears gear and sitting at a round table. Nobody sends more than a cursory glance her way, so she heads for the bar and slides onto a stool. 

There’s a football game on the TV, and the score line at the bottom says it’s the Packers versus the Bears, which explains the group of guys in Bears gear. Chloe glances at them over her shoulder, but they’re all focused on their food or the TV at the other end of the bar. 

“Hi there.”

Chloe turns around to find a guy standing behind the bar in front of her. He’s about her age, and he’s built like a linebacker. His blonde hair is cropped close to his head, and his eyes are an obnoxious shade of blue. A few years ago, she might have thought he was cute. Nowadays, though, she prefers her men tall, dark, and filled with innuendos.

The bartender smiles at her. “What can I get you?”

Chloe glances at the beer taps nearby. “Blue Moon,” she replies. “Please.”

His smile widens. “That’s what I drink too.” He grabs a pint glass and starts to fill it, but his eyes are fixed on her instead of the glass. Chloe glances back at the TV and pretends she doesn’t notice him studying her. She can’t tell if he recognizes her, if he’s about to hit on her, or if he’s just friendly. Her fingers twitch, ready to reach for her gun.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he says. “It’s a small town so I know everyone, and I’ve never seen you in here.”

“I’m just passing through on the way to a family funeral,” Chloe lies, giving him a tight lipped smile. The mention of funerals is usually enough to shut people up.

The guy grimaces. “Ah, I’m sorry. Someone you were close to?”

“Yeah. My grandfather. I don’t really want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

The guy nods. “Yeah, sure. No problem.” He sets the beer in front of her, and then leans against the bar. “So where you from?” 

Chloe has to try very hard not to sigh and roll her eyes. So much for social cues. At least he doesn’t recognize her from Hot Tub High School. If he did, he’d have already mentioned it and he’d be staring at her boobs instead of her eyes. If she was in L.A., she’d “accidentally” set her badge on the bar and that’d be enough to spook him out of wanting a conversation. But she’s not in L.A., and she’s currently a fugitive and not a cop, so she has to lie again.

“Chicago.”

He smirks. “City girl, huh?”

“Yeah,” Chloe says, forcing herself to laugh a little. “Born and bred.”

“You got a name, city girl?”

“Kate,” she tells him, because that’s the name on her ID.

He smiles and holds out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Kate. I’m Justin.”

Chloe shakes his hand quickly. “Nice to meet you. Hey, can I order food?”

“For sure,” Justin says. “You want a menu?”

“Nope,” she says, shaking her head. “Just a cheeseburger and fries. Please.”

He nods. “You got it.”

He finally, finally turns away from her and heads back toward what appears to be the kitchen. Chloe quickly pulls her cell phone out of her pocket so that when he comes back, she’ll have an excuse to ignore him. Once it’s out, though, she finds herself staring at the screen, unsure of what to do. This isn’t her phone. It’s the phone Javier gave her a few days ago. The only number programmed into the contacts is Lucifer’s. There are no text messages, no emails, no photos. No social media apps to browse. 

She pulls up an internet tab and opens a search, and then types out the handle for her Instagram. She’s not going to log in or anything—that’d be stupid, because she’s sure the LAPD is watching all her accounts. She just wants to see some photos of Trixie. 

When she clicks on the link and her page appears, a few dozen familiar photos fill the screen. The most recent one makes her heart twist in her chest. It’s Trixie on her bicycle. She’s looking over her shoulder and smiling so wide the corners of her eyes are crinkled. The L.A. sky in the background is a gorgeous shade of blue, and there are palm trees lining the sidewalk. They were on their way to get ice cream when Chloe took this picture. Trixie smeared her sundae all over the front of her shirt somehow, and it took Chloe quite a bit of effort that weekend to get the stains out. She’d give anything to be back in L.A. right now, scrubbing ice cream stains out of one of Trixie’s shirts and fussing at her daughter to do her homework. 

Chloe swallows around the lump in her throat and keeps scrolling slowly through her page, desperate to see as much of Trixie as she can. She lingers on each photo for a minute or two, trying to memorize her daughter’s face. Scattered throughout the pictures of Trixie are a few snapshots of random scenery or a sunset. Trixie gets steadily younger as Chloe scrolls farther and farther back. A photo of her and Dan on their wedding day, which she posted on their last anniversary before things got rough, makes her wonder if Dan has posted anything lately. 

She tagged him in the photo, so she clicks his handle. He doesn’t post often. His most recent photo is a picture of him and Charlotte, which makes Chloe’s chest ache. But there are a few photos of Trixie before that one, and Chloe studies them hungrily. She’s gazing at a photo she can’t remember seeing before—it’s her and Trixie, who appears to be about three, at the beach, and Dan captioned it beach day with my girls—when Justin the bartender sets a plate of food in front of her. 

“Here you go. You need anything else?”

“Nope,” Chloe says, flashing him a brief smile before burying her nose back in her phone. “Thanks.”

Justin lingers for a second, maybe hoping that she’ll notice him still standing there and look up from her phone, but when she doesn’t, he wanders away. 

Chloe breathes a sigh of relief and refocuses on her phone. The photo of her and Trixie at the beach is staring up at her, reminding her of the last time she saw Trixie at the beach, and her throat suddenly feels like it’s closing up. 

Maybe she should look at something else before she starts crying in the middle of this bar. 

She closes the internet window and opens a new one and Googles her name, curious to see if the LAPD has any leads on her and Lucifer. She blinks at the screen for a second once the results load, taken aback by the sheer number that pop up, and then clicks on the first as she reaches for a french fry. She nearly spits it out when she reads the words The FBI conducted raids on several of Mr. Morningstar’s properties early this morning. 

From there, she falls into a black hole of news coverage. She reads article after article while she eats her dinner. In every piece, Lucifer is portrayed as a ruthless crime lord who preys on everything and everyone. How she’s represented, on the other hand, seems to vary based on the reporter. Some of them think she’s an innocent victim. Others think she was in on it all, just as guilty as Lucifer but now being protected by the LAPD so they can save face. And then there are the gossip columnists, those who seem more interested in her days as an actress and the “potentially romantic nature of Decker and Morningstar’s partnership.” 

She’s on the last few sips of her beer when she comes across what appears to be a video from KTLA’s evening news. It was posted just a few minutes ago. She fishes one of the earbuds she used earlier in the car out of the pocket of her blazer and slips it into her ear, then presses play. The video buffers for a moment and then starts rolling.

“And now, an update from KTLA’s own Anna Morgan about the ongoing search for a missing LAPD detective,” a bearded news anchor with a very prominent chin says. He tilts his head. “Anna?”

A pretty blonde woman appears on screen. She’s holding a microphone and standing outside the downtown headquarters of the LAPD, her hair blowing a little in the breeze.

“Thanks, Alex,” she says with a nod. “It’s been nearly a week since LAPD Homicide Detective Chloe Decker was kidnapped by Lucifer Morningstar, owner of the famed Lux Nightclub downtown.”

A photo of Chloe and Lucifer briefly appears on screen. Her hands are curled around the edges of her blazer and she’s looking off to the left, her eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. Lucifer is looming behind her, his body bent slightly and his head tilted toward her like he’s whispering something in her ear. 

Chloe’s never seen this picture before. She wonders where they got it, and if they picked it because Lucifer looks like the Devil whispering in her ear.  

“Despite concurrent raids conducted by the FBI early this morning on nearly a dozen of Mr. Morningstar’s properties, the LAPD appears to be no closer to locating Detective Decker or their former consultant. My sources tell me that despite repeated public assurances that the interagency taskforce has several promising leads, high-ranking officials have expressed behind closed doors that they are increasingly concerned about Detective Decker’s safety and whether she is, in fact, still alive.”

The screen cuts to what appears to be a press conference, and Chloe’s heart aches when she realizes it’s Jax behind the podium. He looks exhausted. 

“We’re not giving up,” he says, his voice like steel. “Detective Decker is one of our own, and we’re going to pursue every lead to get her back. We’re confident that we’ll find her alive and well, and that we’ll successfully bring Mr. Morningstar to justice.” 

The screen cuts back to the blonde reporter. “The LAPD has requested that anyone with information about the whereabouts of either Mr. Morningstar or Detective Decker please call the tip hotline listed on the homepage of their website. There is a reward available for any information that leads to the successful location of either party. In the meantime—”

Chloe pauses the video and stares at the frozen face of the blonde reporter. She can’t seem to wrap her brain around all this. The FBI is raiding Lucifer’s properties. There’s an interagency taskforce whose sole mission appears to be finding her and Lucifer. There’s even a reward. She didn’t see any national headlines about her or Lucifer during her earlier scan of the news—all of the media coverage is from California—and the taskforce clearly has no idea that they left Los Angeles, so she doesn’t think she needs to be worried about getting caught at a bar in a tiny town in rural Illinois. But that doesn’t change the fact that back in L.A., everyone thinks she might be dead.

Does Trixie think her mother is dead?

Chloe knows that pain. She knows how it feels to lose a parent—that gaping black hole that never seems to fill, that ache that’s so deep in your bones that nothing seems to soothe it—and the idea of Trixie feeling that way, of her falling asleep every night with tears in her eyes the way Chloe used to…

That’s too much. 

She pushes her beer glass away and gets to her feet. She doesn’t want to be here anymore. She wants to go back to the hotel and curl up in bed, and when Lucifer gets back from wherever it is he disappeared to, she wants to pull him into bed with her and tell him she’s tired of fighting and she just wants him to hold her. 

She’s pulling a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet when Justin the bartender appears. 

“Leaving already?”

“Yeah,” Chloe says, setting the twenty down next to her plate. “I’m tired and I’ve got a long day of driving tomorrow.”

Justin nods. “Yeah, I get it. Well it was nice to meet you, Kate.”

“You too. Thanks.”

Chloe grabs her phone and slides it in her back pocket, and then heads toward the back of the restaurant. She’s halfway down the long hallway leading toward the parking lot when she sees a shadow appear on the wall next to her. 

She frowns and starts to turn around, her hand moving toward her gun, but she doesn’t get the chance to grab it. 

Pain explodes in the back of her skull, and everything goes black. 

Lucifer isn’t flying. 

He was flying. Despite his distaste for his wings and all that they represent, he’s always loved the freedom of flight. It’s the only time—other than when he’s plastered or entertaining a crowd or in the middle of a very good lay—when he doesn’t feel like he’s weighed down by millennia of darkness. 

Well, that and the Detective. He feels light whenever he’s in her presence. But she’s mad at him at the moment—very mad at him—and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t even know what he did. 

Well, all right, he knows he was a bit of a prick today. He snapped at her several times, including just before he left. And they had that fight in the Escalade, when they shouted at each other about nothing and everything and all the things in between. But he doesn’t...he doesn’t understand why she’s so angry.

Or maybe he does. Maybe it’s exactly what he’s always been afraid of. Maybe she’s finally sick of him. Maybe she’s realized how much effort it is to be with him. Maybe she’s decided she’s had enough. Enough of the celestial craziness, enough of the pain, enough of trying to love the world’s most loathed enemy.

Enough of him. 

That’s why he’s not flying. Because it hit him just after he left, when he was a thousand feet in the air above the hotel, that there was nothing stopping her from leaving him. He has no claim on her. She loves him, but he’s seen enough Hell loops and met enough unhappy couples to know that love isn’t always enough. It’s like the way water weathers rock. The storms seem inconsequential, at first. What could possibly break down a rock? But the storms don’t stop, and the water keeps flowing, and eventually the rock wears down and everything falls apart. 

He felt suddenly sick at the thought, so he hovered for a while instead of flying. The clouds wrapped around him, and the wind buffeted his suit, and he wondered: Were he and the Detective wearing down? His feelings for her hadn’t changed and they never would, but that doesn’t mean hers never would. 

He wanted to go back to her. He knew he should. He promised her that he wouldn’t run away anymore, and he was breaking that promise by hovering a thousand feet above her instead of staying at her side, but he just...he couldn’t. Because if she was down there planning how to let him go gently—it’s not you, it’s me—then he’d lose everything. He wasn’t ready to lose everything. 

He wasn’t ready to lose her. 

So, he’s here. Here being the middle of the woods in bum-fuck-nowhere Illinois, in a small clearing that probaby hasn’t seen anything but wildlife in decades. He’s sitting on a tree stump that is probably doing terrible things to his beautifully cut Prada suit, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

His hands are on fire. He’s been practicing. The Detective teased him yesterday that his laser beam hands make him look like the celestial version of Iron Man. He’s a little horrified by her comparing him to comic book heroes—he makes everything look good, but even he would have trouble pulling off the underwear-outside-his-pants look—but it made him wonder if he could make his light do other things than just the stuff she’s seen in the movies.

And, as it turns out, he can. It takes a considerable amount of concentration—and by concentration he means thinking about how much the Detective means to him and how warm he feels whenever she says I love you—but he can do things with his light. 

He can control how hot it burns. He can make his hand blaze like an inferno, the temperature so scorchingly high that when he presses his palm into a large rock, it leaves a handprint. He can do the opposite too. He can make his flames mild enough to heat the surface of the rock just enough to feel pleasantly warm, like it’s been sitting in the afternoon sun for a few hours. 

He can control the heat of his light beams as well. He can bring them to a boiling point that creates a softball sized hole straight through a tree trunk, or cool enough to leave just a small indentation in the bark.

But the best part? He can shape it. 

It starts as a light ball of sorts. Instead of expelling the ball from his palm like a projectile, he focuses on keeping it close. He shapes it between his hands the way someone might form a snowball, and he’s able to make it bigger. He makes it smaller after that, and then more elongated. He stretches it out longer and longer and lets one end go until it curls at his feet like a rope, sizzling against the leaves like a whip of fire. 

He suddenly wonders if, since it looks like a rope, he can use it as a rope. He feels like an idiot when he starts swinging a flaming length of light around his head like a Prada-clad cowboy, but when he flings the rope away from him and curls it around a tree branch and tugs, it brings the branch crashing down to earth.

“Bloody hell,” he murmurs.

He has to tell the Detective. 

He unfurls his wings and takes off, his jaw set in determination. She’s mad at him, but she’s been mad at him before. She gets mad at him all the time. All he needs to do is say something romantic to her, maybe pull her close and whisper that he’s sorry he left and he missed her while he was gone—both of which are true—and she’ll forgive him. She always forgives him. Maybe someday that might change, but he won’t let that day be today.

He touches down behind the hotel, folds his wings away, and strides around to the front entrance. He hurries toward their room, his heart racing, and then shoves the card key into the reader and pushes the door open.

“Detective,” he calls. “I know you’re angry, but—”

He stops short with a frown. She’s not sitting on the bed where he left her. The room is empty. He turns toward the bathroom but the light is off, and she’s not in there. 

She’s gone.

When Chloe comes to, the back of her head is throbbing. She winces and tries to lift her hands to rub it, but she can’t. Something is wound tightly around her wrists, and her arms are pulled behind her back. It feels like…

Duct tape.

She’s suddenly wide awake. She snaps her head up as her detective instincts kick into high gear. She’s sitting in a chair, and her arms are bound behind her. She appears to be in a basement of some sort. There are stacks of boxes, and shelves filled with cleaning supplies and other random items. A few empty kegs are clustered nearby. She can see a sandwich board sign leaning against a wall not far from where she sits, and it’s emblazoned with the words Teddy’s Bar and Grill.  

She must be in the basement of the bar. But why? How did she get down here?

She hears a door creak, and the rock music that was playing in the restaurant briefly floats down the stairs before the door creaks again and the music cuts out. She hears heavy footsteps on the wooden stairs. She watches as a pair of work boots appear, followed by jean clad legs and a navy shirt. 

Justin the bartender stops at the bottom of the stairs, meets her gaze, and grins at her. 

“Well look who’s awake. It’s Kate from Chicago.” He tilts his head. “Except that’s not your name, is it?”

Chloe swallows around the lump that’s suddenly in her throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What the hell are you doing? You can’t just tape people up in your basement. Let me go.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” he repeats. “So you’re not Chloe Decker then?”

Panic flares in Chloe’s chest at the sound of her name but she ignores it. “I don’t even know who that is.” She tugs against the tape holding her wrists. “Seriously, let me out of this. This isn’t funny.”

He shakes his head and stalks toward her. “You know, I knew I recognized you from somewhere. I couldn’t figure out where though. And then it hit me. You’re that chick from Hot Tub High School. The one who gets out of the hot tub.” He leers at her. “Naked.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He stops in front of her. “I Googled you just to make sure I wasn’t wrong. Found out some real interesting stuff. Did you know you’re wanted by the LAPD? Apparently there’s a reward for you.” He reaches behind his back and pulls her Glock out. “Explains why you had this in your pants.”

Every muscle in Chloe’s body tenses. 

Justin must notice, because he shakes his head. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry, I didn’t feel you up without your consent or anything. But I did have to pick you up to bring you down here, and that’s when I felt it. You know, you’re supposed to have a license to carry this around in Illinois.” He grins at her. “But I’m guessing you don’t really care about the law seeing as you’re on the run and everything.” 

Chloe presses her lips together and doesn’t say anything.

He tucks the gun into the front of his waistband where she can see it, and then he puts his hands on his hips and grins. “So what now, Chloe Decker?”

Chloe stares up at him and weighs her options. She could keep insisting that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but what’s the point? If he Googled her, he saw pictures of her. He knows who she is, and she’s not going to be able to convince him otherwise. The time to pretend to be Kate from Chicago has passed.

But what’s her next move then? He’s twice her size and he’s got her gun. If she had her hands free she could probably hold her own long enough to make a break for it, but her hands aren’t free. She’s duct taped to a chair. She could scream, but between the music and the football game on the TVs upstairs, she doubts anyone will hear her. Her phone is still in her back pocket. But she can’t reach it, and even if she could, it’s not like Justin would just stand and watch while she calls Lucifer. 

She needs to negotiate. 

“If it’s the reward you want, I’ve got money,” she tells him. “I can pay you more than the LAPD.”

Justin tilts his head, apparently considering the offer. “Where’s the money?”

“In my hotel room.”

He snorts. “You think I’m going to let you go to your hotel room and just trust that you’ll come back?”

She shrugs. “Come with me then.”

“No way,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ll scream as soon as we get out of here, and I can’t be seen shoving a girl with a duct taped mouth around town.” 

“Fine. The card key is in my wallet. Go get it yourself.” 

And hopefully run into my boyfriend the Devil, she thinks. 

A smirk spreads slowly over his lips. “No, I don’t think so.”

Warning bells start to blare in the back of Chloe’s mind. She knows that look. She’s seen it from dozens of men, usually guys who want her to reenact their favorite scene from Hot Tub High School. 

Justin bends forward. “I think we can come up with a better way for you to buy your freedom, can’t we?”

Panic snakes around Chloe’s chest and squeezes until she’s breathless. He’s got her gun. Her hands are duct taped behind her back. No one’s coming to save her. No one even knows she’s here. She didn’t tell Lucifer where she was going because she was being petty and stupid, and now she has no way of—

Wait. 

Lucifer. 

Lucifer is an angel. 

And angels can hear prayer. 

Justin leers at her, oblivious to her thoughts. “Let’s make a deal.”

Chloe grits her teeth at the mention of a deal, calls on every ounce of knowledge she has about her boyfriend, and reaches out to him in desperation. 

Lucifer, I’m in the basement of Teddy’s Bar and Grill a few miles from the hotel. Some guy has me duct taped to a chair and I could really use a Devil rescue.  

Justin reaches out and brushes his fingertips over her cheek, and Chloe jerks away from him in disgust.

“Oh come on, don’t be like that,” Justin says. “Just think of it as a business deal. You give me what I want, and I’ll let you walk out of here without telling the cops where you are.”

The way he’s looking at her makes Chloe want to vomit. She has no way of knowing whether Lucifer heard her prayer, but she doesn’t need confirmation. Nobody knows him better than she does—nobody has more faith in him than she does—and she knows he’ll come for her. It doesn’t matter where she is or where he is or how angry they are with each other. He’ll come for her. He’ll always come for her. 

She just needs to stall a little and give him some time to get here. 

“Are you religious?” she asks Justin.

The bartender frowns. “What?”

“Religious,” she repeats. “Do you believe in God?”

He snorts. “No.”

“What about angels?”

He gives her a bewildered look. “Are you some kind of weird church chick? No. That shit isn’t real.”

“So you don’t believe in the Devil then.”

Justin blinks at her for a second, and then he smirks. “If you’re trying to make me feel guilty, it won’t work. I don’t believe in that shit.”

“Well I do.” 

He shrugs. “So?”

An earsplitting crash fills the air. Justin straightens in surprise, whirling toward the stairs leading up to the restaurant, and Chloe glances toward them too. The basement door, ripped clean off its hinges, is clattering down the steps. It skids across the floor and then slams into a shelving unit and stops. 

Chloe smiles up at her captor. “So I think you’re about to believe in him too.”

“What the—” Justin starts. 

He doesn’t get to finish. One second it’s just him and Chloe in the basement and then suddenly Lucifer is there, his eyes blazing red, his fingers wrapping around Justin’s throat as he hauls him off the ground and into the air so that the bartender’s feet are dangling above the cement floor.   

“If you touched her,” Lucifer snarls, his fingers tightening around Justin’s neck, “I will tear you limb from limb and incinerate the pieces.”

Justin chokes, clawing at Lucifer’s hand around his neck with a terrified expression. His other hand fumbles down toward the gun in his waistband.

“Lucifer,” Chloe warns. 

Lucifer glances down, sees what Justin is reaching for, and yanks the gun away from him. 

“This isn’t yours,” he growls. He hurls the bartender away from him, and Justin crashes into the cluster of empty kegs and then collapses on the floor, gasping and grasping at his throat. 

Lucifer glares at him as he tucks the Glock into his own waistband. Instead of striding after his prey, though, he turns to Chloe. The red in his eyes disappears as he crouches before her, reaching up to hold her face in his hands with a gentleness that seems shocking after what he just did.

“Did he hurt you?” he murmurs, his eyes dark with fear. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She smiles at him. “Really glad to see you though.”

He strokes his thumb over her cheek and smiles briefly, and then drops his gaze to look her over. When he notices that her hands are duct taped behind her back, his eyes narrow. He exhales a sharp, angry breath through his nose, and gets to his feet. He strides around to the back of the chair, and a second later Chloe hears the telltale sound of duct tape ripping. 

She pulls her arms forward and then peels the duct tape from around her wrists as she gets to her feet. She expects it to hurt since it’s stuck to her skin, but is surprised to find it doesn’t. 

Lucifer appears in front of her, and lifts his hands to her face again. “You’re certain he didn’t harm you?”

“Yeah,” Chloe replies, reaching up to wrap her hands around his forearms. He feels warm, and she squeezes him reassuringly so he won’t light up. “I’m okay, Lucifer. Nothing happened.”

Lucifer seems unsatisfied by her reassurance. “Was he planning to harm you?”

Chloe opens her mouth but nothing comes out because, well, they don’t lie to each other. 

Lucifer’s eyes flare red again. “I’ll kill him,” he hisses. 

“Lucifer—”

He ignores her, wrenching out of her grasp and striding toward Justin. The bartender sees him coming. He scrambles to his feet, grabs an empty keg, and hurls it at Lucifer with a grunt of effort. Lucifer bats it away like it’s a fly and keeps walking. Justin bends forward and grabs another keg, flinging it wildly in Lucifer’s direction. 

This time, Lucifer catches it. He pauses as his fingers wrap around the edge of the steel barrel, which hovers in mid-air in his grip. Chloe isn’t sure how much an empty keg weighs, but Lucifer’s holding it in one hand as easily as he’d hold a feather. 

Justin’s eyes widen in fear. “Oh my god.”

Lucifer shakes his head. “Dad won’t help you.” 

He pulls his arm back and then hurls the keg at Justin like a baseball. It smashes into the shelving unit less than a foot to Justin’s left with a deafening crash. The contents of the shelves explode into the air and land on the floor in a wild cacophony of sounds. 

Justin drops to his knees amidst the rain of items and curls into a ball with an inhuman wail that sends a shiver drilling down Chloe’s spine. She knows that if Lucifer wanted to hit Justin with that keg, he would have. But that doesn’t comfort her. She can feel the rage coming off of her boyfriend in waves, and she knows he meant what he said. He’ll kill Justin if she doesn’t stop him. 

Lucifer starts toward Justin again, and Chloe darts forward to grab his arm. “Lucifer, no.”  

Lucifer pauses just long enough to gently extricate his arm out of her grip. He doesn’t take his eyes off Justin. “If you’re uncomfortable, Detective, you can wait upstairs. I won’t be long.” 

He starts walking again, his expression murderous, and she lunges forward to put herself between him and Justin.

“Lucifer, stop,” she says, pressing her hands against his chest. “You don’t need to do this.”

He finally looks down at her. His eyes are blazing red. “He intended to harm you, and I intend to send him to Hell.”

He tries to step past her, but she steps in his way again.

“We solve murders, Lucifer. We don’t commit them.”

“You don’t. I do.”

“That’s not true and you know it.” 

Lucifer clenches his jaw but can’t argue.

Chloe tilts closer to him. “He didn’t do anything to me. You stopped him, okay? You saved me. Let’s just go.”

“He must be punished, Detective.”

“Someday he will be.”

“That’s not enough,” he thunders. “It starts now.” He wraps his fingers around her wrists and lifts her hands off his chest with a gentleness that belies the rage in his eyes and his voice. “This is who I am, Detective. If you don’t—”

“It’s not who you are,” she cuts him off. She yanks her hands free of his and reaches up to hold his face. “You don’t destroy things, Lucifer. You create. Remember?” 

He goes still. The fury in his expression shivers slightly, like he’s suddenly unsure of his decision, and she presses her advantage. 

“You’re not venom, babe,” she whispers. “You’re light. Be light.” 

Lucifer stares down at her. His chest is rising and falling faster than normal, like he’s an enraged bull who’s ready to charge, but he doesn’t move. Chloe can see in his eyes that he’s conflicted. He wants to listen to her. 

She pushes him a step farther. 

Please, she prays.

His gaze softens immediately. Chloe holds her breath. A beat passes, and then Lucifer exhales and leans forward to press his forehead against hers. 

“You’re okay?” he whispers, his hands sliding along her waist.

“I’m okay,” she promises. She drapes her arms around his neck. “We’re okay.”

“What the hell? ” an unfamiliar voice demands, shattering the moment.

Chloe snaps her eyes open and turns toward the stairs. The group of guys who were upstairs watching the football game are clustered on and around the bottom of the stairs. 

“Steve,” Justin rasps from the floor behind Chloe. “They’re trying to rob the bar. They want to kill me.”

Lucifer turns toward the bartender and growls—literally growls—and Justin cowers with a whimper.

Chloe squeezes Lucifer’s arm but keeps her focus on the guys standing by the stairs. 

“That’s not true,” she tells them. “This is all just a misunderstanding. All we want to do is go.” She grabs Lucifer’s hand and tugs him after her as she steps toward the staircase. “Just let us through and we’ll be out of your way.”

The guy in the front—Steve—sizes her up and then turns to look at one of his buddies. “Call the cops.” He turns back around to look at Chloe. “You’re not going anywhere until the police say you can.”

Lucifer pulls his hand gently out of Chloe’s then steps in front of her. “Stand back, Detective. I’ll move them out of our way.” 

He lifts his hands, and she knows he’s about to light up, and she can’t lunge at him fast enough. 

“Lucifer, no,” she hisses, grabbing his arm.

He shoots her an exasperated look. “I can manage the heat, darling. I won’t kill them.”

“That’s not the point,” Chloe mutters, glancing at the guys from the corner of her eye. “Normal people don’t just burst into flames. If you light them up, they’ll call the news once we’re gone. Everyone back home will know where we are.”

Lucifer sighs. “Fine.” He tugs on his jacket and then turns back to the men. “Right, it appears she’d prefer that we do this the old fashioned way. So which of you cretins would like their ass kicked first?”

“Is he serious?” one of the guys standing on the stairs asks.

“Oh yes, quite serious,” Lucifer confirms. “If you’re not going to move, then I’ll make you move.” He flicks his fingers over his arm as if he’s brushing away dust. “Try not to bleed on my Prada though, will you? It’s been through enough today.”

The men by the stairs exchange incredulous looks. 

Lucifer stares at them for a beat, and then he throws up his hands. “All right then, fine. Dealer’s choice.” He points at Steve. “You. Steve, is it? Let’s see what you can do.”

He strides toward Steve. Steve blinks at him in surprise, seems to realize that Lucifer is not joking, and then sprints toward him with a yell. 

Lucifer grins wolfishly. He dodges a punch, the top half of his body bending to the side, and then kicks his foot out and swipes Steve’s legs out from underneath him. Steve hits the ground in a heap. Lucifer bends down, grabs two fistfuls of Steve’s Chicago Bears sweatshirt, and then flings him toward Justin like he’s a frisbee. 

The other men on the stairs spring to life. They hurry toward Lucifer, their faces set in determination. Chloe watches as Lucifer catches a punch that’s thrown at him, and then twists the man’s wrist so hard a sickening crack fills the basement. The man screams, and Lucifer shoves him out of the way just in time to duck the next punch with ease. He pops back up like a jack-in-the-box, and as he does he delivers an uppercut to the bottom of the guy’s chin that’s so forceful it lifts the guy’s feet straight off the floor. 

Chloe’s mouth falls open. She’s seen Lucifer fight before, but she’s never had a front row seat with no distractions. Now that she does, she can’t take her eyes off him. He’s so damn smooth. Every movement is fluid and lethal, and there’s something about knowing that he’s keeping himself in check purely for her sake that’s…

Well, it’s kind of hot. 

“Get her,” Chloe hears Justin rasp from behind her. “He’ll stop if we have her.”

Chloe spins to face them, and is just in time to find Steve reaching out to grab her arm. His fingers close around her and squeeze. She digs her nails into his skin and rips his hand off of her, and then follows it up with a punch across the jaw.

Steve bellows in pain and stumbles backward. When he straightens and gapes at her in shock, she grins at him and lifts her fists. 

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Steve narrows his eyes at her, and then charges. Chloe sidesteps him with ease—he’s big but unathletic and she’s pretty sure he’s half drunk—but dodging his punch doesn’t keep her out of harm’s way. Justin lunges forward to grab her foot. His fingers wrap around her ankle and he yanks, and she loses her balance and careens backward. She lands on her back, and her head snaps backward so hard that her skull smacks into the cement floor. 

It should hurt like hell. It should knock her unconscious or, at the very least, make her world spin. But it doesn’t. In fact, it doesn’t hurt at all. She barely even feels it. 

She doesn’t have time to be confused, though, because Justin is crawling on top of her, his hands grabbing at her wrists to pin her hands above her head. Chloe fights against his hold, gritting her teeth, but he’s stronger than her. 

He grins down at her. “Not how I thought I’d end up on top of the Hot Tub High School girl, but I’m not complaining,” he sneers.

Rage simmers in Chloe’s blood. She hooks her leg around his hip and then bucks upward and twists, and they roll across the floor so that she’s on top. He still has a firm grasp on both her wrists, but she leans all her weight onto her left knee and then brings her right knee straight up and into his crotch. 

Justin’s eyes bulge and he chokes on a strangled cry of pain. His grip goes slack, and Chloe yanks her hands free. 

“I don’t think you’ll be on top of any girls for a while,” she says, grinning at him.

She’s climbing to her feet when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and she turns around just in time to get a fist to the face.

That doesn’t hurt either. 

Steve blinks at her in shock, and Chloe blinks at him too, and then she snaps to attention and punches him in the mouth. His hands fly up to his face, and when he pulls them away, there’s blood on his fingers and spilling from his bottom lip.

“You fucking bitch,” he snarls. 

He pulls his arm back as if he’s going to try to punch her again, but his fist stops in mid-air when Lucifer catches him by the wrist. Steve turns around, and when he sees Lucifer standing behind him, eyes blazing with fire, he whimpers. 

Lucifer yanks on Steve’s arm, and Steve lets out a bloodcurdling scream of pain as his shoulder jerks violently and something snaps. Lucifer, undeterred by the screaming or the snapping, tugs Steve backward and slams him into a nearby shelving unit, pinning him in place with a forearm to the throat.

“I’m going to rip your tongue out of your mouth for that,” Lucifer snarls.  

“Lucifer,” Chloe warns. 

Lucifer sighs at her in frustration, but Steve’s tongue stays in his mouth. Lucifer’s eyes dart toward the shelf next to Steve’s head, and then he leans forward. 

“She won’t let me send you where you belong,” he hisses in Steve’s face. “But I’m going to make sure everyone knows what you are.”

He snatches a Sharpie off the shelf, bites the cap off and spits it out, and then proceeds to scrawl something across Steve’s forehead. When he’s finished, he leans back and surveys his work with a grin. 

“Excellent.”

He steps back and spins Steve to face Chloe. 

“What do you think, love?”

The words I am a twat are scrawled across Steve’s forehead in Lucifer’s handwriting. 

Chloe gapes. 

“You’re right,” Lucifer says. “It’s not enough. Come here, twat.” He yanks Steve back around, scribbles on his face some more, and then turns him back around to face Chloe again. “There. Better?”

Steve now has a Sharpie handlebar moustache and a unibrow. Chloe covers her mouth with her hand so she won’t laugh.

“Oh, now she approves,” Lucifer purrs in Steve’s ear with a wicked smile. “Splendid.” 

And then he grabs a fistful of Steve’s sweatshirt and hurls him toward the far end of the basement, where he lands on top of one of his friends with a groan. 

Lucifer dusts his hands off, humming in satisfaction, but then he sees Justin trying to crawl away from him and toward the stairs.

“Oh no you don’t,” he says. 

He bends forward, yanks Justin to his feet, and then spins him around so they’re eye-to-eye.

“You’re lucky my better half is more merciful than I,” he murmurs in a dangerously low voice, his eyes flashing red. And then he pulls his fist back and punches Justin square in the face, and the bartender is unconscious before he even hits the floor. 

Lucifer frowns down at him in distaste, tugs on his jacket to straighten it, and then turns toward Chloe. 

He notices her staring and frowns. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. She can’t help but look him up and down. “You’re just kind of sexy when you’re defending my honor.”

Lucifer grins. “Am I?” And then his eyes widen. “Detective!”

Someone grabs her from behind, their arms wrapping around her like a vise. Lucifer’s eyes flash and he starts toward her, but he doesn’t need to. Chloe lifts her boot and stomps it down on her assailant’s toes, and then pulls her arm forward and rockets her elbow backward into his ribs. Whoever is behind her grunts in her ear as all the air rushes out of his lungs. Chloe twists out of his grasp and punches him across the face. He staggers away from her, holding his face, and then trips over one of his friends and sprawls across the floor. 

“Well speaking of sexy,” Lucifer murmurs.

Chloe grins at him over her shoulder. “Liked that, huh?”

“Oh very much,” he purrs, looking her up and down. “What is it the youths say these days? Step on me?”

Chloe laughs until she sees what appears to be a snow shovel hovering in mid-air behind Lucifer’s head.

“Lucifer—” she starts, but the word is barely out of her mouth before Lucifer’s hand shoots into the air and catches the handle before the shovel comes crashing down on his skull. 

He turns around and glares at the man who is wielding it. “Do you mind? We were having a moment.”

He flicks his wrist forward, and the shovel smacks against the man’s forehead with a dull clang. The man crumples to the ground. Lucifer turns around and scans the rest of the basement, shovel still in hand, but everyone else is either unconscious or cowering. 

He tosses the shovel aside and turns to face Chloe with a grin. “Where were we? Ah, yes. You were going to step on me.”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “We need to get out of here before someone calls the cops.”

Lucifer gestures toward the stairs with a bow. “After you, darling.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “You want me to think you’re being chivalrous but we both know you just want to stare at my ass.”

He gives her a wicked smile. “Guilty.”

Chloe laughs, and they take off for the stairs.

Maze stands in the shadows, twirling one of her blades, watching Jack the Nerd type away on his computer. 

She’ll never understand humans and their fascination with the internet. The internet is only good for two things: watching porn and watching humans do dumb shit that ends with them getting hurt. 

Jack reaches for his bottle of Mountain Dew, glances briefly away from his screen, and finally realizes he’s not alone. 

“Holy shit,” he gasps, startling so badly that he bobbles the Mountain Dew bottle and liquid spills all over his pants. He looks down at his crotch in horror and then groans. 

Maze laughs. 

He whips his head up to look at her, but he knows better than to glare. He just stares at her, his eyes wide.

“What’s up, Jackie boy?” she says.

Jack purses his lips but doesn’t say anything. Maze knows he hates when she calls him that. She doesn’t care. 

She stalks across the room and around his desk to stand behind him. Jack tenses as soon as she’s close. Maze bends down behind him, breathing in his ear, and then trails her fingers over the Mountain Dew stain on the crotch of his pants. He sucks in a breath as his body goes rigid.

“Probably not the first time you got a wet crotch while sitting in front of a computer, huh?” she asks with a grin. 

Jack shifts in his chair. “I have something for you.”

“Oh do you,” she purrs, flattening her hand over him. 

He bats her hand away. “No, I meant...I mean, I’m not...I’m talking about the job you gave me.”

Maze snorts at his stuttering and straightens. She sits on the desk next to his monitor and crosses her legs so that one of her spiked heels is hovering over his dick. He stares at it, his eyes wide.

“Come on then,” she snaps at him. “Spit it out.”

He swallows and looks up at her. “I know where your friend is. Or at least where she was tonight.”

The grin drops off Maze’s face. She uncrosses her legs. “Explain.”

“Well you know I’ve got access to a shit ton of data thanks to my job.”

“Yeah, yeah, all that hacker shit,” Maze says, waving her hand. “Servers and sites and whatever. Get to the part about my friend.”

Jack exhales a breath through his nose like he’s trying to be patient. “When you asked me to find her, I set up search parameters. Basically, I run this program, and it goes through the data on thousands of sites and servers and flags keywords when they come up. Words like her name, her boyfriend’s name, that movie she was in. And tonight I got a hit.”

He reaches for his mouse and pulls up a picture of a stupid looking human. 

“This is Zack Lewis,” he says, gesturing at the screen. “He works for Akisa Manufacturing in Ottawa, Illinois. His company pays for his cell phone, which he probably thinks is a nice perk, but I doubt he read the fine print that says that if they pay the bill, the digital contents of the phone belong to them. Emails, photos, texts. They can access it all whenever they want. And thanks to my program, I can too.”

Maze shrugs. “So?”

“So about half an hour ago, Zack started texting his friend Justin—who works at some bar in this podunk town nearby—about how they just got their asses kicked by the chick from Hot Tub High School and her scary ass boyfriend.”

Maze perks up immediately. “Show me,” she demands.

Jack clicks his mouse a few times and then gestures at the computer. Maze shoves him and his stupid wheeled chair out of the way and bends forward to read what’s on the screen. When she’s done, she turns to look at Jack. 

“That’s all there is?”

He shrugs. “So far.”

“Did they call the cops?”

“Nope. I’m guessing they were too embarrassed about getting their asses kicked to report it.”

Maze straightens and twirls her blade, considering her options. “Can you track this phone and get me an exact location?”

“Yeah.”

“What about the other one? That bartender guy that knew who she was?”

“Yep.”

“Send the locations to me and keep looking. I’ll call you if I need something else.”

Maze strides away from him, pulling her phone out of her leather jacket as she goes. She dials and then lifts the phone to her ear as she closes the front door behind her. 

After two rings, a familiar voice answers on the other end of the line. 

Maze grins. “I found them.”