Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

But then she spied the rickety computer cart. Biting her lower lip, Kit only paused a moment before dumping her things on the sofa. Seating herself before the desktop computer, Kit shook the mouse, bringing the machine humming to life from sleep mode. “The truth, Kit,” she told herself. “Not just the easy answers.”

She typed in “Centurions.” Nothing. “Everlast.” Nada. “You get points for creativity, Shaw,” she mumbled, then went back to her original search, back to the fifties.

Back to Grif’s stated reason for having entered her bedroom, her life-her heart -at all.

Kit’s stomach rolled at the image that popped onscreen. There she was, Evelyn Shaw. White-blond hair swirled just above her shoulders in a pinup pose that Marilyn herself would have coveted. The brows were penciled dark, and her eyes shone deeply as well-with color, with secrets, and with the knowledge that she absolutely stunned. Her body, slim yet still lush in a V-neck sheath, slimmed tightly at waist and neck, and her round, soft chin edged up into a full, red mouth. She was authentic, not retro.

Everything, Kit thought, that I’m not.

Kit frowned, and focused on the text. She’d missed this article on her initial search, either because it hadn’t been on the search engine’s home page or because she’d only been skimming. Of course, she’d believed she’d been looking for a long-dead grandmother. Not a wife. Not Grif’s… beloved.

But it wasn’t only that. She hadn’t really been taking Grif seriously. While happy to accept his help in solving Nic’s murder, and his protection in preventing her own, she’d put his request on the back burner, deeming its expiration date long overdue and therefore of little importance.

But it suddenly was important to Kit, and here was proof that the woman had lived-age twenty-four back in 1960, with a ring winking off her left hand, which Grif claimed was his. “I can’t believe I just got in a lover’s quarrel over a dead woman,” Kit muttered, but she kept scrolling, and reading.

And Evelyn Shaw was long dead, Kit saw, as the police report was quoted. She’d been found in a bungalow at the Marquis Hotel and Casino, with her beautiful throat slit ear to ear. Eyewitnesses said she and her husband had been downstairs gambling all night, and that her actions in the craps pit must have led to an armed confrontation in the lush, shadowed courtyard.

“Sure, blame the chick,” Kit said, scrolling until she found mention of said husband-just one line in this article, and only two words: Griffin Shaw.

Of course, it was a different Griffin, Kit reasoned, though her stomach knotted. The same man she’d already found mention of before, the grandfather that Ray DiMartino had cited at the club, and the man Tony thought he knew.

Grif and I go way back. Fifty years, give or take…

Tapping her fingers against the desk, refusing to accept that, Kit started a new search. This time she entered Ray DiMartino’s name, and a slew of articles came up, mostly commentary on the family’s dubious connections, and their infamous mobster past. Too broad, Kit thought, then added Mary Margaret DiMartino’s name to the mix. That limited the search a bit more, and leaning closer she began to scroll.

It didn’t take long. Mary Margaret’s disappearance back in a day when young girls didn’t disappear had been big news in this small, dusty desert town. That she was the niece of reputed kingpin Sal DiMartino made it even more remarkable. Both the Trib and Sun had covered the case extensively, though the reportage verged on gossip. What had happened to Mary Margaret? Who would be stupid enough to mess with the reputed don of Vegas’s underworld? And who would be brave enough to bring her back?

Kit followed that question to the end of the long article, written by a man named Al Zicaro, who’d apparently considered himself an expert on Las Vegas’s shady side. “Blah, blah, blah-associates, contracts, bada-boom, bada-bing…”

She scrolled to the last page of the article, and that’s when she saw it. Ginger hair, a hint of freckling, eyes lined with a perpetual, considering squint. The same gaze she’d stared into so deeply the night before, that’d loomed above her, giving and taking and making her forget everything but his name.

Griffin Shaw.

He stared back at her from an image taken fifty years earlier, making Kit feel like she’d been thrust through time, all reason and sense obliterated in a headlong rush into the past. When she caught her breath again, she leaned closer to the screen.

That was his suit jacket. That was his hat and tie. That was the five o’clock shadow she could still feel sliding against her slightly raw cheek. Barely breathing, Kit read the whole of the article again. Then, putting her hand to her mouth, she looked up and stared out the bulletproof-glass windows.

“Well,” she said, talking to herself again, no longer sure what was crazy. “How about that?”

Then she was grabbed from behind.

Grif was so unsteady, his breath so tight in his chest, that he could barely locate a direct thought, much less orient himself once outside Tony’s house. It didn’t matter. He was in Vegas. He just looked up, spotted the telltale neon spires, and headed in that direction. But his mind kept going in circles.

Already regretting the things he’d said to Kit, or-if not precisely that, then how he’d said them-he shoved his hands deep in his pockets, tucked his head low, and sighed. She’d treated him more gently than he had any right to be treated, then opened to him with earth-shattering trust. It wasn’t her fault she’d been marked for death. It also wasn’t her fault she was so damned beautiful and feminine and alive that he’d forgotten every damned reason he was here, and had gone to bed with her.

God, he’d gone to bed with her!

Grif couldn’t wait to hear what Frank had to say about that.

That thought alone kept him from turning around and going back. He’d sworn to Kit that he wouldn’t leave her side, but that might just be the best way to protect her. Literally, starting with the moment he’d laid eyes on her, outside the window of her best friend’s death chamber, he had been Kit Craig’s worst enemy. Besides, there wasn’t even a hint of the rotting, algal, postmortem plasma stalking her when she’d wrapped her arms around him this morning. Not an ounce of the death scent that’d hunted Paul at the Chambers estate.

Kit, Grif knew, was safe for now.

But she was wrong in thinking he could just choose to move on from Evie’s death. She was the reason he was here, after all. The reason he couldn’t move on in the Everlast. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d be, without that reason.

So Grif headed back into Vegas’s core, hoping the chaos there would help order his thoughts. Though it was not yet full dark, the city was already a visual scream, and as Grif turned onto the boulevard, he caught it mid-shout. Tourists traipsed across intersections like colorful soldiers, moving in platoons, the city itself in command. Instead of guns, yard-long plastic cups were strapped across shoulders. The uniforms were anything but that-the pedestrians sported both glitter and jeans, and everything in between. Grif observed it all with casual disinterest, and he’d traversed the full of the Strip before realizing he was wandering with even less purpose than the slot zombies around him.

Breathe, he reminded himself, coming to an abrupt halt. The yelp behind him skittered into a curse, and he caught a glare from a couple using each other to remain upright. Grif sucked in another lungful of air and ignored them. As long as he kept breathing, he could figure this mess out.