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She wanted the opportunity to try.Maybe she would fail—maybe they both would. But letting him go now, even the thought of it hurt. She wasn’t ready to let him go.
She didn’t think she everwouldbe.
Zoey stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around her head. Everything between them was going fast.No denying that.
Change. It grabbed her again.
She half feared they were both just along for the ride at this point. Where the car would stop—well, she didn’t have a clue.
Forever with a man was terrifying.
Murdoch was the only man she would trust with that kind of forever. That didn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying.
She had just slipped her clothes on and ran a brush through her hair when her cell rang. In the other room.
She'd grab the last of everything, including the blankets and sheets still on the bed where she and Murdoch had loved each other the night before and load them into her Jeep. Then she just had the two beds to dismantle and get someone to haul to the new house for her.
She suspected Murdoch would volunteer.
He’d mentioned needing a ride to get his personal vehicle from his brother’s house. In Value. She’d drop him off, check on Nikkie Jean, Caine, and the devil children, and then take Murdoch to Mamaw’s Place, for an actual date—not at the Garrity diner.
She’d lure him into her new house, put a note on the door for Pen to stay with Sydney for a night or two, and she and Murdoch would just…figure this thing between them out somehow.
A smile touched her lips as she remembered being held in the night. His hold had felt perfect. Safe. She had loved sleeping curled up in his arms.
She had always felt so nervous, when sleeping next to a man. Edgy and unsafe. But having Murdoch's arms around her had felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Her phone rang again. She'd left it in the living room on the charger, next to the far more complex charger for her brother's tracker. The bracelet needed half as much charging as a regular cell phone, but like every electronic in existence, it needed charging on a regular basis.
She slipped into the small hallway between what had been hers and Pen's bedrooms. Her sister's twin bed was still set up in Pen's old room. She was going to dismantle it after she grabbed lunch.
She'd finish in the house, and then be ready when Murdoch got out of court. It would probably go right up until five. Judge Collins tended to stick to a very strict, almost obsessively strict, schedule. That woman had issues, for sure. Murdoch would probably be stuck there from two until close to five, if not later.
Then—they were going to talk, she decided. Do the whole relationship expectations thing. There really was no real knowingwhat to expect with Murdoch Michael Lake. She had known that from the beginning.
Zoey was smiling when she looked up, toward the kitchen of her little home in Garrity. She had loved this house, but now Finley Creek waited. First, she needed to answer her phone. She turned down the hall, toward the living room and kitchen.
A dark shape was her only warning.
Something hot and sharp slammed into her shoulder.
Lightning.
Pain.
Zoey fell to the floor. The last thing she saw before a prick stabbed her in the neck was a pair of men's work boots, less than a foot from where she'd landed.
She tried to scream, but nothing came out. A man’s hand wrapped around her neck, something stabbed her just below her collarbone, and darkness came fast.
82
Heather was trying notto panic.
Young women like Crispin disappeared on college campuses far too often for Heather not to be worried. This wasn’t like her niece at all. Not Crispin. After they’d lost Nick, Crispin had retreated even more from the world than she already was. She’d only been fifteen at the time. She had hero worshiped Nick, too. Loved having a “big brother.”
He'd been Heather’s best friend. And her twin had loved him so much. He had been Joy’sworld.
Losing that man had hurt them all. Crispin would never forget that, or how afraid they had all been. She definitely wouldn’t just disappear. She would never scare her mother like this.
