Page 30 of The Getaway

“But the staff is still here,” Gemma mentioned absently.

“Just three of them. The ones that live here,” Marshall told her. Then, off her baffled look, he added, “There are two apartments over the garage. Magdelena has one. Candice and Trevor share the other.”

Gemma blinked. She knew that Lincoln was rich and that this place was vast, but she’d had no clue he had live-in staff. Imagine being trapped with your boss’s friends and family during a weather disaster and then your boss turning up dead. Gemma would be in her room hiding under the covers right now.

“He has a cut on his head. Maybe he slipped and knocked himself out, and that’s why he didn’t wake up in the water?” Juliet suggested, chewing on the side of her thumb.

“That cut is from Josh,” Marley said.

Juliet stared at Marley. “What?”

“They fought last night,” Sean told her. He touched his temple, and Gemma noticed that a yellow-and-purple bruise had bloomed there. Probably also thanks to Josh. These people were a dumpster fire. And she was stuck with them at least until the storm passed. Thank God they at least had their own house. The buffer of the yard and the pool and the patio. “Didn’t you hear?”

“Wait . . . you were also arguing with Lincoln,” Marley said to Juliet, speaking slowly as if a memory was just coming back to her. “Out by the tent. I saw you going at him. What was that all about?”

“I . . . we were talking. I wasn’t going at him. I just asked him about what was in my note. You’re saying they fought?”

Juliet’s bottom lip trembled. She looked confused and, suddenly, scared. She gripped her fingers in front of her, tugging on one after the other after the other. Gemma looked around. She knew where Grant was. She knew where Hazel was. Every other member of their little social group was here. But—

“Where is Josh?” Marley said.

14

Marley

“Will you guys come upstairs with me?” Juliet asked Marley and Suzy. She couldn’t seem to stop her hands from fidgeting. “Maybe he’s still asleep.”

Was she nervous because Josh wasn’t here, or was she nervous to see him? They had never gotten to the bottom of what had happened between Josh and Juliet the evening prior. Conversation about the notes had distracted them. Now there was a frisson of dread in the air that Marley couldn’t ignore. If Josh had hurt Juliet . . . Her own hands clenched into fists at the thought.

“Sure. Of course we’ll come,” Marley said. She paused next to Marshall and put her hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine. You go.”

Marley had about a million questions for Juliet, and she didn’t want to ask them in front of the group—certainly not in front of Gemma, who did not belong here, as far as Marley was concerned. Lincoln was dead, and that was bad enough. But to have an outsider here while they dealt with it . . . it just made an already very wrong situation feel even worse. At least Grant and their daughters were still over at the guesthouse. The last thing they needed was his goofy energy and their camera lenses. Hopefully he’d drunk enough of that Shizzy’s crap to sleep for a week.

“I have to change out of these clothes anyway,” Suzy said, shuddering.

Marley got up on shaky legs, and the three of them walked to the stairs. They passed by all the guest rooms on the second floor and took the stairs up to Juliet and Josh’s third-floor hideaway. There were only a few rooms on that floor, including a smaller guest room, a large bathroom, and the former theater room that Hazel had turned into the nursery and play area. As they walked, Marley recalled thinking yesterday about the privacy this room afforded Juliet and Josh and now wondered if there was another, less romantic reason the two of them craved privacy. The thought made her blood curdle.

“Have you not seen him this morning?” Marley asked, holding tight to the handrailing as they ascended to the top floor.

Lincoln is dead. Lincoln is dead. Every time the words crossed her mind, her knees jellified.

“I didn’t sleep in our room last night,” Juliet said, barely glancing over her shoulder at them. She seemed unusually tense, Marley thought. But then again, they all were. “I was up here for a while, but I couldn’t sleep, and I thought a change of scenery might help, so I crashed in one of the other guest rooms downstairs.”

Marley and Suzy exchanged a look. Was this true, or did Juliet maybe not want to deal with Josh, so she’d gone off somewhere to hide? Clearly this whole Lincoln-Beckham-paternity thing was not something that was going to go away any time soon. Marley could still hear the rage in Josh’s voice as he attacked Lincoln the night before.

I’m going to end you!

Her entire core filled with anxiety. He couldn’t have meant it, could he? He wouldn’t actually kill Lincoln. Suddenly she thought she might understand Juliet’s heightened tension. She was afraid of what they might find in the room she shared with her husband. Josh could be hurt somewhere. Or worse.

All the way down the carpeted hall, Marley held her breath. Juliet walked to her door and very quietly turned the knob. She pushed open the door, and they all peeked inside. The bed was perfectly made. Not a pillow was out of place. There was no sign of Josh.

Juliet pushed into the room and strode over to the bathroom. The lights were off, and all was quiet save for the rain battering the windows. Marley thought she could hear the waves crashing in the distance, but that wasn’t possible, was it? They were blocks from the ocean.

“He’s not here.” She opened the closet. “But all his stuff is.”

“Well, he’s got to be somewhere in the house, then,” Marley said. She thought about the many rooms and floors and nooks and crannies of this place and felt exhausted all over again. If he’d passed out somewhere else like Juliet had, it could take hours to find him.