Page 18 of Murder Notes

“Are you at the beach house?” he presses.

“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s my—” I stop myself before I say home and amend to, “I’m here.”

“It’s your home,” he supplies. “Are you still having nightmares?”

“Stop trying to get into my head, Kane.”

“That’s a yes. Lilah—”

“Stop saying my name.”

“I don’t like you being there alone.”

“I was here and alone for months before I left.”

“You were rarely alone and we both know it. And I wanted you here. Come here now.”

I laugh. “Just like that? ‘Come here now,’ and you expect me to come. You are a piece of arrogant work, Kane Mendez.”

“With me is where you belong. Come here.”

“No.”

“I’ll come there.”

“You would make a pretty lawn ornament, but it’s dark, and you would be a wasted decoration. Whatever you think is going to happen, isn’t going to happen.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“If we meet again, and I do mean if, I will look into your eyes and ask questions about your dead employee.”

“Are you saying that you think I killed that woman?”

I do not miss the way he calls her “that woman” without a bleep of silence. It tells me he feels no sense of familiarity to her. Then again, he’s a damn good manipulator. “I didn’t say you killed her, but you are a person of interest.”

“A person of interest,” he repeats. “All right then. Let me be clear, Agent Love. I did not kill that woman, nor did I order anyone to kill her. Nor do I know anything about how or why she died. You’re simply avoiding me.”

“What part of ‘you’re a person of interest in a case I’m investigating’ do you not understand?”

“Let’s remove the barrier. How exactly do I get off the person-of-interest list?”

I’m reluctant to remove this barrier, and yet, I find myself answering him a bit too quickly. “I’ll need a firm alibi. Who were you with? Where were you?”

“An alibi. Of course. That’s logical.”

“Do you have one?”

“Yes. I do.” There are two seconds of hesitation that follow, indicating calculation before he announces, “I was with Samantha. She’ll corroborate my story.”

The woman he was fucking before he was fucking me. I swear if he were here, I’d punch him, and that pisses me off. This shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. “I’ll talk to her.”

“I’m a man, Lilah. You weren’t fucking me and she—”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“She’s a fuck. Nothing more.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I repeat tightly.