Page 91 of Shark’s Edge

Then another, not so quiet—because the chaos in my head had turned into a rushing din of disbelief.

Then a third, filled with Sebastian’s growing growl.

He exploded with the sound as he shoved to his feet. At the same time, Joel rose from where he’d been crouching against the town car’s back bumper. Neither of them looked at each other. They were too focused on the owner of that voice.

My brain refused to recognize it, but my gut knew—and was twisting back on itself because of it.

“Terryn?”

Joel actually got it out before Sebastian. He finished his question—his accusation?—with a whomp of a hand atop the car’s trunk.

After a long, labored inhale and exhale, Sebastian got out intelligible words between his teeth. “What. The. Fuck?”

“I—I couldn’t believe it when I saw that you were in this part of town,” Terryn said. “I panicked. I knew I had to make sure you were okay. This is an awful neighborhood. With all of the weirdness going on lately, I thought you’d maybe been taken by bad people or ended up somewhere you didn’t mean to be. And if you needed help, I wanted to be here to . . . umm . . . well . . . help.”

“To help,” Joel deadpanned, as if she’d shown up in a plastic Halloween costume with a toy gun and a spy decoder ring. “To help . . . how?”

But in my gawking and humble opinion, he was missing the more important point here.

“With a situation you even knew about . . . how?”

That point. One that Shark didn’t sound even one molecule happy about.

“I have to admit, I’m a little curious about that one myself.” Voicing the sentiment lent my knees the strength to support me again. Though I felt fairly stable, I was still quietly tickled that Sebastian kept our hands entwined after he helped me rise.

Terryn, on the other hand, was not tickled about it. Or about seeing me at all. “You,” she practically seethed, though she recovered with agitated speed. “I—I mean it’s n-nice to see you, Miss Gibson. Especially at such an odd place and time.”

“A fact we could point out about your drop-in, Miss Ramsey,” Joel said.

She whipped a burning glare his way. “I already told you. I came because I wanted to help!”

As wrath began coursing off Sebastian like heat waves, he let me go and stepped away. His tight stare told me he didn’t want to, but I sensed things were about to get really ugly.

“You wanted to help.” Every syllable he gritted was clipped, terse, terrible.

“Yes!” Terryn exclaimed like an exonerated murder suspect.

“And you just knew where to come and help . . . how?”

As swiftly as the woman’s celebration had begun, it fizzled. She gulped, clearly panicking now. “Well . . . I . . . uumm . . . ”

“Terryn.”

“Y-Y-Yes, Mr. Shark?”

“Have you been tracking my phone?”

She frantically licked her lips. “Well . . . ”

“Answer me!” His voice echoed off the stucco walls of every shop in the adjacent strip mall, ringing back to us with exceptional clarity in the early evening air.

Her eyes were huge buckets of unshed tears. “Y-Y-Yes, Mr. Shark.”

“Give me your fucking phone.”

Chapter Fourteen

Sebastian