He was pale, nearly translucent so Izzy could see the thin veins that ran beneath his eyes. There were dark spots near his temple, a discoloration that was unpleasant only because of the way his skin bunched around his neck, pulling taut over the ridges of his face.

The shirt he wore revealed the way his body was nothing but a wasted frame of bones, his muscles having deteriorated to leave behind a sunken hollow where they used to be.

Powerless. Fragile. Sickly.

It was hard to believe this was the same man from the journal, the one who had all the Bell girls scared.

But looks rarely had any role to play in abuse. Humiliation, rage, grief. They all made weak men feel strong.

Izzy was at a loss for what to do, though, other than wait. There was an IV by his bed, a slow drip of something slithering through the clear tubes. If it was morphine, it could explain his vegetative state. Maybe cutting off the supply would lift him out of his stupor. It would probably also cause him intense pain.

She reached for the bag.

As her fingers touched the tough plastic, Charles’s eyes snapped open.

Izzy flinched, but his hand lashed out to clamp around her wrist. His palm was fire against her skin, his pupils eating up most of the color of his irises, his breathing swift and frantic. His gaze bounced everywhere from her face, to her weapon, to the side table, and back again.

There would be bruises in the shapes of his fingerprints tomorrow.

“Charles Bell?” she asked.

“You found it.” His voice was painful, a rasp dragged out over shards of broken glass. “Of course you did. She wanted you to.”

“Found what?”

His eyes slid back to the side table.

“The journal,” she said, answering her own question. Why had he kept it? “Who wanted me to find it?”

Charles’s fingers tightened against the pulse point that pounded at the inner side of her wrist. His lips worked and twisted, as if trying to form words, but no sound came out.

Izzy leaned forward as Charles took another rattling breath, the crackle of his lungs loud in the quiet room.

He tried again, and this time he got it out.

“Bix didn’t write it.”

The words hung there, and Izzy imagined them in the same delicate handwriting that filled the journal’s pages.

“What, what do you mean? It wasn’t hers?”

Tears gathered in the man’s pale eyes, spilling over papery cheeks. His mouth was moving again, but fruitlessly, his fingers loosening from around her wrist.

“No,” Izzy said, keeping her tone authoritative to try to keep him with her. “No. Who was it then? Who?”

He turned his head toward the window, away from Izzy.

“Her. It’s always been her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MIA