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“What?” Gabi asked. As far as she’d heard from Kingsley and Hunter, everything had been lovey-dovey between Stacia and Hunter. “They fought?”
“Yeah, I guess you would have missed it, and no one was really talking about it much after the arrest. But Hunter broke up with her earlier in the evening and she left.”
Gabi didn’t know what that meant other than either Kingsley had lied to her or Hunter had lied to him. “Who was she with when she came back?”
Dee looked at Marcy. “What was that guy’s name? The one who always hung around you in the library? The sports-medicine guy.”
“Garrett Keller,” Marcy said. “Kind of a step down for Stacia.”
“Definitely,” Dee agreed. “That’s when they had a second fight. Hunter took Stacia into the kitchen and all I heard was lots of yelling and then Kingsley went in there and dragged Hunter out. Stacia left a few minutes later.”
“With the sports-medicine guy?” She’d never asked about any of this when she’d returned from Spain. By then, the charges had been dropped and Kingsley had moved on to the East Coast. She’d been trying to put it all behind her.
“No,” Dee said. “He was talking with one of the players about an injury. I didn’t see whom she left with. I thought she was on her own.”
“That jives with what I remember,” Lena said. “What about you, Marcy?”
“Yes, except I went home before any of that drama started. I had an exam to study for.”
“Always hitting the books,” Dee said.
The conversation drifted away from the past and into the present and Gabi tried to just relax and enjoy the evening with her friends. But she was worried.
It sounded as if Hunter hadn’t been honest, and she really hoped he wasn’t the reason why Kingsley’s good name had been smeared.
* * *
When Gabi got back from drinks with her friends, Conner and Kingsley were playing games in the living room. It seemed like forever since she’d realized that he had come back to California to find closure to the past. She wanted to help him, especially after what she’d found out today, but it wasn’t easy. Kingsley wasn’t the kind of man who involved people in his business.
After putting Conner to bed and checking to make sure that Kingsley was in the media room watching the basketball game, she went into his office. The room was dark and not very welcoming as she entered it.
But that was probably just her imagination, since she knew she was sneaking where she shouldn’t be. She went to his desk and using the flashlight on her phone started to look for anything that would give her a clue as to what he was looking for in the past.
Before she’d come home from meeting her friends, she’d gone to her own office and accessed the public records from Hunter and Kingsley’s indictment.
It had been pretty cut-and-dried. She was surprised Hunter and Kingsley had been released, since there were at least a dozen witnesses who’d seen them with Stacia at the end of the evening. It hurt her a little to think Kingsley had gone back to the party after he left her, but that was in the past.
She was snooping around now trying to find something that would show her he had some evidence he wasn’t sharing with her. Something that would help her put the pieces together after what she’d learned today from her friends. Was he hiding evidence to protect Hunter? Could there even be something here that implicated him? What the girls had told her had renewed her suspicions, though she had a lot of trouble believing he would actually kill Stacia.
The door opened; a shaft of light spilled into the room and a dark shadow filled the doorway.
“Should I drop to the floor and hide?”
“Uh, no. I’d prefer you tell me what you are doing in here,” he said as he entered. He hit the light switch as he closed the door behind him and walked toward her.
He didn’t appear mad, which she thought was a good thing. She knew she’d be pissed if she caught him going through her desk.
“Looking for answers. You said you didn’t want to talk about it. I respect that, but I reread the indictment today and I figure you must have found something, that there must be some evidence of a smoking gun in here somewhere.”
She fiddled with her phone, turning off the flashlight as Kingsley reached her. He leaned against his desk, sitting on the file she’d been about to open when he’d entered.
“I’ve found evidence of an intruder in my office.” He pulled her between his legs and kept his hands on her hips.
