Uncovered: The Untangled Series, Book Three

by Layne, Ivy

  Too close.

  Lacey swung the lamp again. I slid to the right, slamming my shin into the edge of the heavy glass coffee table. Fuck, that hurt. The lamp struck the side of my arm, and the pain in my leg was knocked right out of my head.

  How the hell was a sixty-something-year-old alcoholic strong enough to swing that fucking lamp?

  My left arm went numb from the blow.

  I watched with horror as Lacey stepped forward and raised the lamp over her head, her thin arms shaking from the strain.

  Lacey advanced, the lamp beginning its slow arc down to split open my skull. My right arm flew up over my head. My left hung useless by my side.

  Fuck. Why did I have to be so goddamn short? My arm was no match for the iron length of the lamp.

  Defense wasn’t going to work.

  Offense was all I had.

  I dove straight at Lacey, ducking under the arc of the lamp, driving the top of my head into the center of her chest and taking her off her feet. We tumbled to the ground, rolling in a tangle of limbs, Lacey's hand still tightly gripping the lamp.

  I didn't have the weight to pin her down. She rolled, pushing me off. Instead of trying to pin her, I gripped the lamp with both hands, trying to wrench it from her fingers. I only ended up dragging her to her feet as I gained mine.

  My left arm screaming with pain now that the numbness had faded, we wrestled for control of the lamp, Lacey gaining ground with each step, driven by alcohol-fueled rage. I dug in my heels as my calves hit smooth, cool leather.

  This was it. I was out of time. We were only inches away from where Petra hid. I had to neutralize Lacey now.

  How long since I’d hit the panic button? It felt like an hour. It could have been less than a minute.

  Not enough time.

  Definitely not enough while Lacey still had that fucking lamp.

  Closing both hands over the length of metal, I twisted hard, managing to loosen her hold. With another sharp tug, I got it free.

  It was long and heavy, throwing me off balance as Lacey let go. Stumbling back, I tried to get a better hold on its length, to put space between us.

  The couch behind me, there was no room to move. Lacey came at me in a dive, leading with her long, sharp fingernails.

  Falling back into the couch, I swung out of desperate instinct. The lamp cracked her hard in the ribs, sending her flying to her left, her eyes wide with surprise, mouth open in a shocked O.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Alice

  Lacey landed smack in the middle of the coffee table, crashing through it in an explosion of glass shards. I froze for a split second, my heart thundering in my chest, lungs tight, gasping for breath.

  Lacey didn't move. Blood seeped through cuts on her arms, across her chest and face, striping her with jagged lines of red. Seconds passed, her blood flowing freely, faster with each heartbeat, dripping from her skin to stain the carpet in a pool of red.

  Still, she didn’t move.

  I bolted to the other side of the couch, away from Lacey and the trap of the seating area. Dropping the lamp, I knelt by the corner of the couch where it met the wall, peering into the narrow, dark tunnel for Petra. “Petra? Come on baby, we gotta run. We gotta run now.”

  Petra squirmed through the tight space and popped out on the other side, straight into my arms. My left arm was working again, but it sagged at her weight. I had to get to the front door. I had to get Petra out of here before Lacey got up.

  Just because she was down didn’t mean she was out. I’d seen way too many horror movies to believe we were safe.

  The door swung open as I reached for the handle. I screamed at the top of my lungs, all reason gone in a haze of terror.

  Griffen’s green eyes fell on Petra clutched in my arms, turning to hard, cold emerald when they focused on the floor behind me.

  A shiver of fresh horror ran through me as I imagined Lacey, back on her feet, wielding the iron lamp with fresh rage. I turned to see a path of bloody footprints leading from the couch to where I stood at the door. My footprints. I must have stepped in the glass from the coffee table.

  My feet didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. Not anymore. Not as long as Griffen was here and Petra was safe.

  “Status?” Griffen asked, the emotion in his voice tightly leashed.

  “Lacey. We woke up and Lacey was trying to take Petra, going to give her to Tsepov. She— I— She tried to hit me with the lamp, and I swung and… And I hit her, and she fell on the coffee table.”

  “Okay, Alice. Take a deep breath for me, okay? Why are you bleeding?”

  I did as Griffen asked, trying to calm down. Why was I bleeding?

  Oh, the glass. The glass.

  My heart wouldn't slow, pounding so hard in my chest I couldn’t breathe. I clutched Petra tighter.

  “Glass. Coffee table. She broke the coffee table. I ran for Petra. Must have cut my feet.”

  “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  “No. Yes. My leg. My arm. I'm okay, but she's not moving, Griffen.”

  Griffen wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling Petra and me into his solid strength.

  “I need you to hold it together for a few more minutes, okay? Cooper is on his way. He’ll be here soon.”

  Cooper was on his way. That meant he wasn’t in the building. Okay. I could hang on. Griffen let go and crossed the room, walking to the other side of the couch to check on Lacey. A moment later, I heard him speaking into his phone. I couldn’t make out everything, but it was enough to figure out he was calling the paramedics.

  I thought I should go over there and see. I couldn’t make my feet move. I stood by the door, clutching a silent, shaking Petra, too terrified to do anything, afraid my next choice would make everything worse.

  Eventually, Griffen came back. “I need to get you off your feet. Hold tight to Petra, okay?”

  I couldn’t hold any tighter than I already was. Good thing, because Griffen picked us both up and carried us to the kitchen. Setting me on the counter, he turned me so my feet were over the empty sink.

  Smiling gently at Petra, he said, “Are you hungry, honey? Do you want to eat a cookie in your chair while I fix Alice’s feet?”

  Petra looked up at me, a question in her eyes. I curved my lips in what I hoped was a comforting smile. “A cookie would be nice, wouldn’t it? I’ll be right here. You’ll be right next to me.”

  Petra turned serious eyes to Griffen and gave him a solemn nod. He wheeled her high chair beside the sink and got her strapped in, placing two big, round chocolate chip cookies on the tray in front of her.

  Leaving us for a second, he unlocked the front door, snagging the first aid kit from the pantry on his way back. I didn’t want to think about why Griffen knew where Cooper kept his first aid kit. That thought was almost as scary as the first aid kit itself.

  An oversized tackle box, this was no collection of antiseptic spray and band-aids. I was pretty sure I saw needles, glass bottles, and a suture kit in there. Not going to ask.

  Turning on the water, Griffen said, “One of the guys will let the paramedics in. I want them to take a look at your feet, but I think you’re okay. Lift the right one up and let me see.”

  I did as he asked, only wincing a little as he shone a thin penlight at the bottom of my foot, pressing and probing. I was more worried about Lacey than my feet.

  I had to ask. “Did I kill her?”

  Griffen shook his head, his attention on my foot. A painfully long squeeze of the ball of my foot and he held up a sliver of glass, pink with blood. It clicked as he dropped it in the sink and went back for more.

  “Don’t worry about Lacey.”

  “Griffen. Tell me.” Don’t worry about Lacey? Was he nuts? What if I’d killed her?

  He shook his head again. “She’s bleeding more than sh
e should be—probably the alcohol. Paramedics will be here soon. Did she try to brain you with that lamp on the floor?”

  “Yeah. Got me in the arm but—” I didn’t want to replay how I’d swung the lamp at her, the way she’d flown off her feet and crashed through the glass. I’d be seeing that in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

  “It’ll be okay, Alice.” Griffen sounded distracted as he probed my other foot for more glass. “I don’t think you need any stitches. I’m going to wait to bandage these until the paramedics take a look, just in case.”

  He poked at my shin. “That looks like it hurts.”

  I looked down to see a long gash a few inches below my knee, my shin stained red with blood. Damn. I knew it hurt when I’d slammed into the coffee table, but I hadn’t realized— I winced as Griffen cleaned it, the antiseptic burn almost as bad as the injury itself.

  The front door swung open with no warning and chaos streamed in. Two men holding a gurney. A few of our guys who’d been working downstairs. Cooper, followed by Evers, Knox, and Axel.

  Cooper met my eyes in a brief, flat glance I couldn’t read. Didn’t want to read.

  He was angry with me.

  Of course, he was. Why wouldn’t he be?

  His mother was bleeding all over the floor, unconscious, because I’d almost killed her. Might still have killed her. Griffen said not to worry about her, but he hadn’t said she’d be okay. Maybe she’d bled out. Maybe—

  I wanted to lift my chin and pretend I didn’t care. I couldn’t pull it off. I couldn’t pull anything off. Everything hurt. Lacey had tried to kill us. I might have killed her. There’d been so much blood. Everywhere.

  I couldn’t pretend it was okay. I couldn’t pretend anything.

  To my utter shame, a tear rolled down my cheek as I watched Cooper and his brothers cross the room to where Lacey lay splayed in the middle of the shattered glass table.

  Another tear streaked down my cheek. Then another. Hot and salty, they were a tangible sign of my guilt, of how badly I’d messed up. What if I’d killed Cooper’s mother?

  I’d hated Lacey at times over the years, pitied her at others, but never in a million years would I have guessed that I might kill her.

  An arm wrapped around my shoulder. Griffen, drawing my tear-streaked face into his chest. I sobbed, shame and sorrow pulling me under. I couldn’t look at anyone. I couldn’t look at Cooper. The one time I managed to lift my head he was staring at us, his face so completely blank I might have been a stranger.

  It was over. Everything between us was over. He’d never be able to forget this. He’d never be able to love the woman who’d murdered his mother.

  Griffen raised a hand to get the attention of a paramedic. The next thing I knew, someone was moving my left arm, poking at my feet, studying them using the pen light, then pronouncing me ready for bandages.

  I sat there like a doll, still and silent, while Griffen applied antibiotic goo and wrapped them up. I watched the scene in the apartment with hollow detachment as if it were a television show, blank-faced as the paramedics loaded Lacey on a stretcher and rolled her out, followed by Evers and Axel. My breath shallow, my head felt like a balloon floating on a long string, high above everything happening around me.

  Knox and Cooper came into the kitchen, silent as ghosts. Someone said something that ended in “…dilated. Lay down …back soon.” I didn’t catch most of the words. The world was whirring by me, my ears buzzing with static. I was freezing cold, heart pounding, sounds coming from a distance as if I sat alone at the end of a long tunnel.

  Cooper was saying something, but I couldn’t hear. His hand came up, reaching for my face. That was all I saw as my vision went grey at the edges. Everything wavered as if I was watching through heat waves coming off pavement.

  I was falling, pitching forward into nothing as the world went black.

  I opened my eyes to see the ceiling of Cooper’s bedroom, his tall, navy-blue headboard rising above me.

  How did I get in here?

  “You fainted,” said a familiar, amused voice.

  Had I said that out loud? I never fainted. Ever.

  “Yep, you said it out loud. And you definitely fainted. The paramedic said it was an Acute Stress Response.”

  “No.” I struggled to sit up only to find myself pinned to the bed by Petra and bunny. She was curled into my side, her head on my stomach, eyes closed, a smear of chocolate on her chin.

  Giving up, I lay back, rolling my head to meet Griffen’s laughing green gaze. “I did not faint.”

  “You totally did. I took a picture and everything.”

  I swatted his arm with my free hand. “Asshole.”

  “I'm kidding about the picture. I wouldn't do that to you. The paramedic said you'd be fine, just the stress and the adrenaline crash catching up to you. Don't worry about it. If anyone had a right to faint, it’s you.”

  “Lacey?”

  “Cooper and the guys are still with her. She’s alive. Probably already berating the hospital staff.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I hadn’t killed Cooper’s mother. That was good. I’d killed once protecting a child. I didn’t want to make it twice.

  How could I explain what had happened to Cooper? What if he didn’t believe me?

  I couldn’t forget his face, so flat and cold. She’d been about to kill me. Hadn’t she? Had I been wrong?

  Interrupting my thoughts, Griffen said, “We have another problem.”

  “I don’t want any more problems. I’m tapped out.”

  “Well, get back on your feet, champ, because I need you on full alert. While Lacey was up here trying to bash your head in and kidnap your girl, Maxwell disappeared.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Cooper

  I opened my front door to darkness, the only source of light a single bulb over the breakfast counter, illuminating Griffen. He sat there alone, drinking from one of my oversize mugs, scrolling through something on his phone.

  Without looking up he asked, “Everything okay?”

  “Not even close. Alice and Petra?”

  “Asleep. They’re fine.”

  I swung through the kitchen to get myself a beer from the fridge. “Want one?”

  “Nah. Doesn’t go with half a pot of coffee,” Griffen said, saluting me with his mug.

  “I appreciate you staying with Alice. And getting here so fast.”

  He waved off my thanks. “Did you figure out how Lacey got in? Were the cameras on?”

  I twisted open my beer, delaying the moment I had to admit the truth. They’d played me. Both of them. Leaning against the kitchen island, I drank from my beer before I answered.

  “Maxwell had a back door programmed into the system way back when. It’s a good thing he didn’t know about the cameras I put in up here or he might have turned them off. He let Lacey in—” After what she’d done to Alice, I couldn’t bring myself to refer to her as my mother. “—after she gave him a phone. While she headed up here, he deactivated the cameras on the back entrance and took off.”

  “Shit.” Griffen took a long sip of coffee. “Lucas pissed?”

  “I hope for Agent Holley’s sake he finds Maxwell first because Lucas is ready to strangle him. He does not like the idea that there are holes in his system.”

  “Internal security was in place long before he got here,” Griffen pointed out.

  “He doesn’t care. Thinks he should have caught it. He’s going through every line of code until he finds it.”

  Griffen nodded, unsurprised. “I made Alice take one of those pain pills from when she had that bump on the head. She wanted to wait up for you, but she was hurting and freaked out. Thinks you hate her for killing Lacey.”

  I froze with the beer bottle halfway to my mouth. Alice thinks I hate her?


  I’d reviewed the security footage, watching over and over as Lacey raised the lamp over her head ready to crack open Alice’s skull.

  She’d tried to kill Alice. How could I make up for that? There were no words I could say, no recompense big enough to fix this.

  Alice was supposed to be safe with me.

  Instead, I’d practically served her up to be murdered by my own family.

  Me hate Alice? I couldn’t imagine how Alice didn’t hate me. At the very least she had to be having serious second thoughts about staying with me. First, I’d put her in the middle of an explosion, then decided we should take on a toddler, and if that weren’t enough, I’d let Lacey try to kill her.

  All these years wanting Alice, and now it seemed like all I could do was fuck up the whole thing.

  I set the bottle of beer down on the counter. I had to talk to her, to tell her how wrong she was. I could never hate Alice. Not in this lifetime or any other.

  I started out of the kitchen when Griffen said something that halted me in my tracks.

  “You didn’t call.”

  I turned to see his eyes narrowed in something that looked like accusation.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t call. She sat here all afternoon and half the night brooding, afraid you were going to come back and end things, kick her out, and you never even called.”

  “I— We— We were with Lacey, and then trying to find Maxwell—”

  And I was hiding out because I couldn’t face Alice. Wasn’t ready for her to walk away.

  “I’ve never known you to hide from your problems, Cooper.” His eyes steady on mine, Griffen took a slow sip of coffee.

  I wanted to deck him. I picked up my beer instead. He was right. I was being a coward. I should have pushed Griffen out of the way when Alice had been crying on his shoulder, should have let my brothers follow Lacey to the hospital.

  I could have argued my case, told Griffen it was touch and go there for a while with Lacey, the high levels of alcohol in her blood causing problems with bleeding, the doctors worried about blood on her brain.