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“Mrs. Fowler, could I be so bold as to ask that Miss Bexli be permitted to take a walk with Winston and me? We were about to visit the barns.”
“Mum, please?” I begged.
“She’s not to be a bother. She can work with me.”
Winston’s father shook his head. “Nonsense,” he said with a grin.
My mum frowned and folded her arms.
“How about this? Rather than help in the kitchen, Bexli can assist Winston in feeding the Andalusians.”
“Who are they?” I leaned into Winston and whispered.
“The horses,” he whispered back.
My mother glared in my direction, but she could hardly argue further with the man she worked for. “Very well.” She turned to me. “Do not be any trouble,” she warned.
“I won’t. I promise.”
We’d just gone out the door when Winston touched my elbow. “I’m sorry your mum was cross.”
“It isn’t for you to be sorry for.”
“Maybe so or maybe not, but I feel it was my fault. Is she that way a lot?”
I thought about lying, but there was something so earnest about him that I didn’t. “She’s that way all the time.”
“She struck you.”
I felt my cheeks flame. “I deserved it.”
Winston shook his head. “You did not, and I won’t allow it to happen again.”
I chuckled. “You won’tallowit?”
He squared his shoulders and folded his arms. “I will not let anyone hurt you ever again. I’ll protect you, Bexli. I won’t let you down. I promise.”
The feelingthat someone was watching me woke me from dreams of Cayman. I opened my eyes, sat up, and gasped when I looked into a man’s eyes.
9
CAYMAN
Irushed over to Poseidon in the hallway just as he kicked the door open.
“It’s empty,” he said when I followed him inside. “Butsomethinghappened in here.”
I surveyed the same scene he was. A table with wheels, similar to those used by room service in hotels, was overturned. Plates, bowls, utensils, and food were scattered on the floor, and something had splattered on the walls. Unlike the other carpeted rooms we’d entered, the floor in this one was concrete.
Of the two chairs, also overturned, one was partially broken. The only other thing in the room, a bed, had been ripped apart. The mattress was askew, and the bedclothes were in a ball in the corner.
Poseidon took a step closer to the spatters and knelt down. “It isn’t blood.”
“We need evidence bags in here,” I said through the comms.
I walked over to the open doorway of a lavatory. Near the jamb was a hole in the wall along with scuff marks, indicating it had been repeatedly kicked.
“None of the women we found had shoes,” said Poseidon, studying the same wall.
