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And look what good it had brought me.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew I was the number one suspect for the police right now. Ash had been right last night—I had the means, the motive, and the opportunity, and I had absolutely zero alibi. Even the stuff that would back up my story, like the CCTV cameras that covered the promenade, could only prove that I was where I said I was.
And potentially, when Declan Tierney was murdered, I was at The Ivy.
It didn’t look good.
And I was scared.
I was an emotional mess, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was numb. I couldn’t cry or scream, and I couldn’t even sleep. According to my watch, I’d barely gotten three hours last night, and the sleep Ihadbeen lucky enough to get had been light and disturbed.
I mean, yeah. Obviously.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his body lying in a pool of blood. It was burnt into my memory now. I would never, ever be able to forget the sight of him lying there, bled out, with his glassy stare focused on the ceiling.
How was I even supposed to go into the sunroom ever again?
How could I live at the bed and breakfast, open it, run it, and go in there, knowing he’d died there?
He had to have died there. There was too much blood and no sign of it anywhere else in the house that I could see, but it didn’t make any sense.
It only made my technological ignorance all the more frustrating. If I’d known about the cameras not working, I could have figured something out. Maybe I could have waited in my car for a bit or driven to the nearest twenty-four-hour supermarket to get one of those internet dongle things that worked off data that Stan had mentioned.
I knew the police had taken the camera, and Dad had given them the login information for the account, but I doubted they’d find anything. Not only did that kind of forensics take forever, but I was pretty sure he was right. The in-built memory on the cameras absolutely sucked, so likely the only footage would be of me arriving yesterday morning.
I just didn’t understand.
Why had Declan been there? And so late at night?
What reason did he have for showing up and trespassing on my property?
Who the hell had been with him?
And was I being framed for it?
Whocould frame me for it? I’d barely reconnected with anyone in Fox Point, and surely nobody had any kind of a grudge against me.
Detective Inspector Noah George not included.
He could piss off.
Maybe Ash had a point. Maybe trying to figure out who else could have wanted Declan Tierney dead wasn’t the worst idea in the world. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do, and all I had was questions rolling around my mind.
Every question bred another three, and those three in turn did the same.
It was like a mind map, but all the roads were blocked. The bridges were broken, the mountain passes inaccessible, and trees were overgrown on the country lanes.
I didn’t know where to start.
I didn’t knowhowto start.
I just knew that I needed to do something.
I was innocent. I hadn’t murdered Declan Tierney, even if I had wanted to throw my shoe at his head when he was bothering me.
But somebody had.
Someone had murdered him. Someone out there had hated him so much that they’d wanted him dead. More than that, they’d actually killed him—and violently, too.
