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“Just hold on.” Eloise chanted it like a prayer, her vision blurred with tears and images of Kim’s staring eyes playing across her mind. “I’m coming.”
* * *
Ethan didn’t come back until well after dark and she was waiting for him when he did, barefoot and drinking wine straight from the bottle while sitting on her living room rug.
“Are you okay?” He looked around quizzically, taking in the disheveled state of her hair and the dog nestled close at her side.
“No.” She took another drink and saluted him with the bottle. “Someone broke into Chloe’s apartment today.”
“Is she alright?” He hurried forward, brows scrunched with worry, until he towered over her. “Was she hurt?”
“She’s fine.” Eloise handed him the bottle and shook her head. “Terrified and she can’t go back right now because they destroyed her front door so she’s staying at her mom’s right now.”
“So, it wasn’t just you they were after.”
“Looks that way.” He sank down beside her on the rug, and she leaned against his shoulder. She was still shaking from the wild drive to Chloe’s and pissed off that she’d been summarily dismissed as soon as Sarah had arrived. She hadn’t answered Chloe’s calls but had come running as soon as she checked her messages. Once she’d arrived on the scene, Eloise might as well not have existed as the two of them stood around whispering and waiting for the cops.
She’d left as soon as the police arrived, feeling more like an intruder than a friend. There was nothing these cops could do, anyway. They were beat cops, there to take a report on a petty break-in and nothing more.
Eloise had called Detective Chen as soon as she got home, waiting impatiently for her to answer until she’d gotten her voicemail instead. She’d left a message, but it wasn’t likely she would hear back anytime soon, and even if she did, they still had almost nothing to go on. It was looking more and more probable that the murder was connected to something happening at Sun Valley, but the pool of potential suspects was large, and the motives were in painfully short supply.
“What were you doing at the bar today?”
He hesitated, fingers flexing on the bottle before handing it back to her. “Just needed to run some stuff by Dylan. He's planning to make some changes to the bar.”
“Yeah?” She nodded and thumped the bottle down on the coffee table in front of them. The wine hummed in her veins alongside the anger that had been simmering there. Maybe it wasn’t all his fault, but she was willing to pin it on him anyway. “That’s bullshit,” she said flatly, sniffing and running a frustrated hand over her face.
“Yeah.” He didn’t add anything else, no excuse to soften the blow. They both knew he was lying and he looked defeated, like he couldn’t find the energy to pretend anymore.
“You’re not even going to bother denying it?”
“Not much point.” He pushed a stand of hair back out of her face and didn’t flinch when she slapped his hand. “You’re a smart woman, Eloise. I know we’ll have to deal with Dylan and the rest, but for now …”
“What?” She lifted her arms, opening them wide to invite an answer. “What else do you think we should be doing? There’s nothing we can do about Chloe’s apartment or what happened to Kim.”
“We can stop waiting for this son of a bitch to come to one of us and make the whole situation his problem instead.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“We need to find out what it was that he’s trying to cover up.” He picked up the bottle and took another long drink. The look he gave her spoke volumes about how well he thought she’d receive what he was going to say next. “We need to get into her office.”
“You wouldn’t even make it into the building.” Never mind that he was demonstrating a woeful lack of respect for the law and her place of employment, what he was suggesting was impossible from a practical standpoint. She refused to sugarcoat that, even if she did wince internally at the condescension in her voice.
“Fair point.” He tipped his head, conceding that the likelihood of him getting upstairs and past security was small enough to be functionally nonexistent. “But I’m not really the one who needs to get in. I wouldn’t know where to even begin locating anything useful. You, on the other hand …”
“You think I’m going to do it?” She blamed the alcohol for the volume of the snort that followed her incredulous question. “You want me to break into someone else’s office at the place where I work? Are you trying to get me fired and ruin my life?”
He shook his head and bumped her lightly with his shoulder. “No, I’m trying to keep you safe and figure out who’s after you and your friends.”
She relaxed back into him, her annoyance of the last several days fading somewhat. He was full of bad ideas—and bad friends, bad habits, bad ex-girlfriends, etc.—but he was doing his best to keep anything from happening to her and she couldn’t stay angry with him for long. “Why can’t we just let Detective Chen do her job instead of committing a crime?”
He picked up one of her hands and pressed a kiss to the palm, eyes intense on hers. “Let’s just say, I’d rather not take that kind of chance with your life. The sooner we figure it out, the less chance there is of him coming after you again.”
“You make it hard for me to argue when you look at me like that.”
“That’s the idea.”
She laughed and some of the tension she’d been feeling all day was carried away by the sound. He was good at that, keeping her grounded and feeling lighter than she ever had. A remarkable feat, given the current circumstances.
