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Trent rolled his eyes. “I can hardly get them to clean a stall, let alone kill someone.”
“Besides, neither of us would have hurt Nat,” Brooke hastily added. “We loved her.”
Niko’s expression remained hard. He clearly wasn’t satisfied with the Orwells’ pleas of innocence. “You thought she was going to destroy your life.”
Brooke jutted out her chin, meeting Niko’s glare with one of her own. “A part of me wanted her to. I didn’t have the backbone to stand up to my parents. I wanted her to take away my choice. If she forced the issue, I would have to stay with her.”
“Someone killed her,” Niko grimly insisted.
“It had to have been Henri,” Brooke said, her voice edged with impatience. “He told us himself that he’d been a criminal before coming to St. Cecilia’s.”
“It couldn’t have been him. He’d left the country before Nat died.” Niko shifted his gaze from Brooke to Trent. “It had to have been one of you.”
“Bullshit,” Trent rasped. “We were with our parents the entire day.”
Rayne couldn’t see anything but genuine outrage on Trent’s face. She turned her attention to Brooke.
“You never saw Nat?”
She paused, as if considering lying. Then she heaved a resigned sigh. “Yes, I saw Nat. I went to meet her that morning.”
“Where?” Rayne asked.
“The stables.”
Rayne nodded. That explained why Nat had gone there. “What did she say?”
“She told me not to worry.” Brooke’s voice broke, as if she was once again fighting back tears. “She said she’d taken care of everything.”
“Taken care of what?” Rayne asked.
“She refused to tell me. To be honest, she was acting strange. If it hadn’t been Nat, I would have thought she was drinking. Then the head groom ran us out. He said the stables were closed until the next term.” Brooke grimaced. “I told Nat I would see her later and returned to my parents. That was the last time we spoke.”
“What about you?” Niko demanded, his gaze locked on Trent.
“I was with my parents,” Trent ground out. “Besides, there was no way I was going to face the wrath of the nuns by trying to sneak into the dorms. They terrified me.”
Rayne grimaced. It was true. The nuns were a daunting force. But a few of the girls had figured out ways to smuggle boys from Salzburg in and out of their rooms. Where there was a will there was a way, one of her friends had assured her.
Still, if the Orwells hadn’t been the ones to take a shot at them, there had to be someone else out there trying to stop them from probing into the past.
But who?
Rayne glanced toward Niko, sensing his frustration vibrating around his tense body. He knew as well as she did that they’d hit a brick wall. It was time to regroup and consider their next move.
“Niko, I think it’s time to leave.”
His jaw tightened, but with a surprising expertise, he turned to the side, pointing the weapon toward the ground as he pressed a button near the trigger. There was a soft snap as the gun hinged open, allowing Niko to pull out the cartridge shells. Pushing them into his pocket, he held out the gun to Trent.
“You’d better put this up. If I find out you lied to me, I’m coming back, but I won’t be alone. I’ll be bringing the cops with me.”
* * *
Niko sat next to Rayne as they headed back to Chicago. It was frigid with the window busted out, even when Rayne blasted the heater on high, but neither of them really noticed the cold. They were both struggling to accept that they were leaving without the answers to Nat’s murder, plus the unnerving realization that they still didn’t know who had shot at them.
Or when they might try again.
They had to discover the truth. And they had to do it quickly. But how?
