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“I don’t remember much,” she agrees. “I used to think I mentally blocked her out. But when I was talking to Troy, I remembered bits and pieces of that last week she was alive...”
Why did he put his goddamned mouth where it doesn’t belong?
“He stayed with us for about a week before it happened, but I don’t think Troy was around enough to know all of that.” I made a point to be home with my family when I wasn’t working. I never knew Aster left Destiny alone with Kalani.
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, the cops told you their theories. The investigator told you it was suicide, right? Case closed. Can we just cry it out one more time and move on?”
Something she just said catches my attention.
My body tenses like an arrow.
I’m almost afraid I know the answer to the next question before I ask, “Who told you that?”
“What?”
“That my PI said it was a suicide.”
She stares at me. “I told you. Uncle Troy said—”
“There. Right there.” The words come out like bullets. “I never told Troy what the investigator found. He couldn’t have known that.”
Not without some serious underhanded fuckery, anyway.
Not unless he contacted my own PI.
“Wait. What?” She holds my gaze. “You’re serious?”
“Yep.” And even if I’d told him, Troy has no business whatsoever talking to my daughter about her mom’s death, especially without my knowledge.
What the fuck game does he think he’s playing—and why?
I’m not waiting around to find out. I find the jackass in my contacts and hit Call.
His line rings until it goes to voicemail.
“Dad?” Destiny squeaks.
I’m already dialing him again as I glance at my daughter. “Yes?”
“What did the investigator find? Talk to me!”
Gut punch.
I can’t tell her it was a definite suicide in the man’s opinion. I don’t think he had all the facts, and now I wonder if he was actually working for me at all.
With Troy creeping around behind my back, I don’t know what the fuck to think.
“I haven’t had a chance to assess his full report,” I say. Close enough to the truth.
She nods.
I call Troy again as my blood boils.
And again.
Again.
No matter how many times I try, I keep getting his damn voicemail.
Finally, I pound out a text without giving a single shit how it sounds, Coward, pick up your phone. Did you think I wouldn’t find out about these little therapy sessions you’ve been having with my daughter?
I try calling again. This time, a loud ping interrupts, announcing an incoming text.
Snarling, I jerk the phone away from my ear and glance at it.
Eliza. She just texted me with the world’s worst timing.
I open it anyway and it’s just—a picture of this hellish rainfall and a mile marker heading out of town?
I can feel my face darkening as I glare at the screen.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” Dess asks nervously.
“I don’t know.” I put the privacy screen down again and lean forward. “Change of plans, Tom. I need to get to mile marker 237. Can you take me there?” I hold out my phone for him to see.
He deftly looks at my phone and then back at the road.
“I can take you, boss, but in this soup, it might take a solid hour.”
Not what I want to hear.
“Just get us there as soon as you can.”
“Where are we going?” Destiny asks, exasperated. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
“Nowhere,” I growl.
“C’mon. You just gave Tom new directions. We’re going somewhere and you don’t want to tell me. Are you ever not going to treat me like a kid?”
She’ll always be my kid. I just don’t tell her because I don’t have the patience for another longwinded argument right now.
“We’re going to a mile marker.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere south toward Olympia, hugging the coast. I don’t think Eliza’s heading for SeaTac International like she planned. She’s going the wrong way and I have to help.”
“What did she say?” Destiny clenches my arm, her eyes wide.
“She just sent a picture of the mile marker in the rain. Nothing else.”
“That’s it?”
I level a look on her that says yes, and question time is over.
“I don’t get it. Why some random sign?” Her little brows knit together.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
I don’t care to spin theories when none of them are good. You don’t just butt dial a photo of a random sign in the rain to a man you loathe.
Then you have Troy, calling up my kid and playing with her memories. He’s not answering his phone and Eliza is sending cryptic texts.
It doesn’t make sense.
It’s probably all random acts of bullshit, but my gut screams there’s a connection I’m not seeing.
Not yet.
I’m just terrified that when the pieces snap together—when it all finally makes sense—I’ll wish like hell it didn’t.
Worse, my options are so fucking limited.
I have Tom gunning it as fast as he can in this torrential rain. All with my daughter in the car and this gut-churning inkling that something is hideously wrong.
