She hesitates and glances down, murmuring, “I don’t want to get him into any trouble.”
“You aren’t. I just need to confirm he really is from that settlement.”
She frowns. “Where else would he be from?”
“Well, we run a town for people in hiding, where we promise privacy. In some cases, like yours, they’re in hiding because people are after them. People who want to hurt them.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widen. “No, he’s definitely from the other place. He has no idea what our town is. He asked. He was very curious but—” She stops short and swallows. “You don’t think… Oh God. What if…?” She squeezes her eyes shut. “What have I done?”
“Muriel,” I say, keeping my voice soft even as a bell clangs in my skull. “Did he ask you to find information on Haven’s Rock?”
Her head whips up. “Wh-what?” The terror on her face tells me everything I need to know.
“He asked you to get information, right? On the town?”
“N-not about the residents. I wouldn’t do that. He just… He was very curious about how our town runs, because he runs the other one, and they’re having trouble. He wanted to know how we get supplies and so on. It—it seemed harmless enough.”
“And how did you attempt to obtain that information?”
She glances away again. “I, uh, went to talk to Phil. I thought maybe I’d just, you know, express an interest in the town’s operation. I figured he’d be at the Roc, so I went inside. He wasn’t there.”
“Did you look for that information?” I catch her gaze. “Answer very carefully, remembering that I would not be pressing if I didn’t have proof. Also remember that you’re already onthin ice, having outright lied to me—yesterday and today—and implied today that my problem is hormonal.”
She has the grace to color at that. “I—I didn’t mean—”
“Where did you look for the information your friend asked you to get?”
“In Phil’s desk,” she blurts. “Quickly. I felt horrible afterward, and I didn’t touch anything. But I swear, my—uh—friend only asked about town operations. Nothing on residents.”
I won’t push her to confess that she also went into Phil and Isabel’s house. I have enough here. “Now are you going to describe your friend?”
She does… and it’s exactly who I expect.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Mr. Rogers is romancing Muriel?” Émilie says over the sat phone as Dalton settles in beside me with Rory and a bottle.
“Seems so,” I say.
“Romancing her to get information on Haven’s Rock.”
“Mmm, yeah. She’s very aware of the déjà vu there. She came here after she was screwed over by a boyfriend, and now she’s been screwed over by her new boyfriend. She’s humiliated, and I don’t know what we’re going to do with her, but she’s definitely going to need some therapy.”
“No doubt,” Émilie murmurs. “So Mr. Rogers seduced her to gather intel on the town.”
“I think he was trying to figure out what Haven’s Rock is. Muriel swears she never told him. She says he didn’t try too hard to figure it out. He only seemed interested in how we run, allegedly so he can apply it to his own settlement.”
“Bullshit,” Dalton mutters.
“Oh, I know,” I say. “He knew better than to just ask her what we’re doing here. He was trying to find out under theguise of asking for harmless operational data. Émilie? Does this give us leverage?”
I swear I hear the smile in her voice. “I believe it does.”
I thought having one of the mining camp guards romancing Muriel would be valuable, but having it be the boss man himself? Priceless.
Rogers not only trespassed. He actively tried to uncover our secrets.
Sure, we did the same, but it’s going to be a lot harder for him to cry foul when he was doing it, too, using much more invasive methods.
