AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sit back. Relax.”
“I can’t.”
“Scared?”
“Yes.”
“My God, Steve. You have nothing to fear from little old me. I wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He stood. “Just sit back. I have a few things to say, and then I’ll go. Promise. I want you to report back to Connor. Let him know that everything he found out about me was due to a huge misunderstanding. Clerical errors. Wrong person. Shit like that.”
Trey moved behind the couch and placed his hands on Steve’s shoulders. He pushed him back, more firmly into the cushions.
Steve waited for what he would say next, looking forward to a time when he’d have his apartment back, when he could be blessedly alone once more. He didn’t know, though, if he could ever call this place home.
Not now.
Trey was very quiet behind him. Steve was just moving to turn and look when a hand gripped his shoulder again, pushing him more forcefully against the couch.
The hunting knife came out of nowhere.
It was such a surprise for Steve that he barely reacted.
When he felt its cold metal swipe across his throat, he didn’t even scream. Maybe he couldn’t.
When the blood spurted out of his throat, he closed his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
EVERY SO OFTEN, Miranda would check out her father’s books on Goodreads, the popular book site for readers to leave reviews, keep track of books they’d read, and maybe engage with other readers and/or authors.
Connor, she knew, maintained a valiant effort to not look at the site (most of the time, he failed). He had an established place in popular fiction and knew it. He didn’t need the aggravation and, yes hurt, of reading one-star reviews from disgruntled readers. “They mostly just want to bitch that I didn’t write the book they wanted me to write. I love my readers, but I write for me.”
Most of his reviews were good, even though the literary community and reviewers likePublisher’s Weekly,Kirkus, or theNew York Timessaw him as little more than a hack who got lucky with a formula that worked. Their consensus was pretty much the same—her father’s work was formulaic, his characters, even his main detective, were stick figures, and his plots were laughably easy to unravel.
Sadly, Miranda thought, what those people saw as his drawbacks his fans saw as his strengths. They wanted simple, escapist stories. An Alfred Knox mystery was like comfort food—you knew what you were getting going in. There were no surprises. And, for many readers, not having to think much and knowing exactly what to expect was a big benefit to her father’s work and the main reason for his popularity.
“You’re not on that damn Goodreads again, are you?” Miranda jumped as her father passed her on his way to his office. Miranda sat at the dining room table on a gray Monday morning, the remains of her breakfast beside her—tepid coffee and a plate with a few yellow pops of scrambled egg curds and toast crumbs.
“Daddy! You know I just like to see what folks are saying. Especially now that you have a new book out.” His latest had come out in July and was already aUSA Todaybestseller. The critics, as usual, had been unkind (and unfair and maybe a little jealous, Miranda added mentally). But it had held steady in Amazon’s top ten list of cozy mysteries since it was available for preorder.
His fans adored his latest story, and that was what Miranda liked to see. She wanted to be able to bring her dad some good news. These days, he needed good news.
He’d been in a funk ever since Trey had left him in the spring. Connor realized, or she hoped he did, that the loss was dodging a bullet. Although Trey had stolen the file folder the private detective had given her, Miranda had backups of everything on paper and a thumb drive. There was little to no doubt about Trey’s duplicity. Still, it was hard for her father to admit his lack of guile or responsibility when it came to what he’d done with Trey and their hasty marriage.
Miranda knew he was embarrassed at how he’d behaved like a lovesick teenager. Clueless. She made excuses for him though. We were all clueless at one time or another in life, even when, and especially when, we should know better. The excitement of new love could do that to a person.
The loss was made worse by the fact that Steve refused to have anything to do with him, even though he, too, was the victim of a recent breakup. She’d spent long hours, well into a several whiskey-soaked nights, confiding over the phone about how her dad thought that Steve might come back to him. He still missed him. When they’d briefly connected again back in the spring, it was as though there was a chance, a hope for reconciliation.
And then that hope was shattered.
Daddy was hurt.
When everything came down about Trey, he was even more interested in reuniting with the man whom he referred to as his soul mate, his one true love. He felt that way even now, after Steve had roundly rejected him and told him he didn’t want to travel down that path again. He’d told her dad that he thought they were both better off on their own, getting a fresh start. He’d said, “We’re different people now than when we first met back in the day.” He’d never let on that the real reason for him avoiding her dad boiled down to one word: fear.
In private, Steve had told Miranda about an odd encounter he’d had one night—a break-in where someone had come into his bedroom and stood by the bed in the dark. “I was terrified. It was the one time in my life when I literally feared my heart would stop.”
Miranda had been haunted by Steve’s description of the encounter. It sounded surreal, eerie, and like something out of a horror novel. She was sure the intruder had been Trey. But it didn’t really matter who the culprit was, at least not in Steve’s mind. The point was the message that was conveyed—stay away from Connor. Steve had been so spooked he’d complied, even though he’d confessed to Miranda that he, too, had been hopeful at one point about reconnecting.
“You shouldn’t let that stop you,” Miranda recalled telling him. “You’re letting fear win. You’re letting it steal your happiness.”
