Or maybe that was the alcohol.
“I have no idea, but I’m starting to think that whatever it is, I’m not going to like it.”
Cole stole a deep breath into his lungs and let it out slowly. “Mom is probably freaking out.”
Sean rubbed his face. Aunt Blaire had called them both at least a dozen times on the drive. Only when he turned off his phone did he find a modicum of relief.
“Probably,” Sean said at last, polishing off his second bottle of vodka. “I feel bad. But also…I don’t feel bad?”
“So what do you want to do?”
He sighed. “Give me one night to be a normal person, and we’ll go back tomorrow.”
Cole nodded. “Alright, then.” He tossed Sean a third bottle. “So be a normal person and drink your problems away.”
As Sean traversed the casino floor of the sixth resort they’d decided to explore, attempting to keep his drunken steps straight, he found himself staring into several pairs of eyes that peered back with that same horrified recognition as the desk clerk.
Sean had accepted long ago that he was prone to impulse decisions, but this…
He shouldn’t have done this. Even drunk, he knew it had been cruel to Blaire to disappear, to ignore her, to leave her worrying and alone. Given the way these people stared, he began to suspect the secrets she kept were truly dangerous. These peopleknewhim, and he had no idea how.
“People are staring at you,” Cole whispered, and Sean’s thoughts of Blaire faded away. Across the rows of jangling slot machines, he found surreptitious eyes gazing back, quick to turn away as soon as his attention found them. One particularly brazen starer locked onto him, unblinking, and he shot her his friendliest smile and a wink.
The color drained from her skin.
Weird.
Cole spun in a slow circle. “Should we be worried about this?”
Sean glanced his way, pausing at the visible anxiety in his cousin’s face. Cole was the most stoic person he’d ever met. The guy had no feathers to ruffle and a wit as dry as cotton. His worry lit a bright warning sign in Sean’s mind, one that promptly guttered out as a wave of alcohol crashed against it. “Nah. Let’s go this way.”
“Whoa.” Cole braced Sean’s elbow when he spun too far and overcorrected. “Maybe four of those bottles on an empty stomach wasn’t the right decision?”
“I always make the right decision,” he muttered. “Let me have one night to make the wrong one.”
Cole said nothing. Or maybe he replied and Sean was toodistracted to hear it since his full attention latched onto a glittering sign for a nightclub. He turned a grin on Cole. “Should we?”
Cole’s mouth opened as if he meant to reply, but all that emerged was a laugh. “Sure. Why not? Perfect way to top off this weird day.”
Chuckling, Sean beelined for the club entrance, forcefully ignoring the stares that followed him.
CHAPTER 4
DAVID
Within the prison his father called home, David possessed an entire suite of rooms on the third floor. His favorite of these rooms was the study. A fireplace was bracketed by two windows that looked out toward the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, and the room smelled of the books that covered every surface. There wasn’t much peace in David’s life, but this room was peaceful.
Or at least itwas.
After eavesdropping on his mother and Sean Archer’s aunt, David’s head whirled with the mystery of it all. He retreated to this sanctuary as he often did but drew up short when he entered to find a woman standing before the lit fireplace, gazing into its depths. The light from the flames licked her skin in a strange cadence as she turned to face him.
He remained frozen, but his stomach clenched with…something.
He didn’t know this woman.
But somehow, he did.
Her hair was black as midnight. Gold flickered within the strands like glitter. Her bronze skin shimmered with the same gleam. Theroom was too shadowed to determine the color of her eyes, but the bloodred of her dress existed in some sort of hi-def technicolor that made him wonder if someone had slipped something into his drink.
