Page 6 of Never Lie
“Probably.” I nod. “There are a lot of crazy men out there.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me toward him so I can feel his hot breath on my cheek. “Aren’t you glad I saved you from all those jerks?”
I roll my eyes, but he’s not entirely wrong. I’ve dated some jerks in the past. Nobody who was homicidal like Dr. Adrienne Hale’s boyfriend, but I had a guy once cheat on me with my best friend. It was almost a cliché. Ethan, on the other hand, has been incredibly loyal during the time we’ve been together. He never even looks at other women, even though they look at him all the time.
“You think this is her house then?” I ask. “Dr. Adrienne Hale?”
“Probably.” He glances up at the portrait again. “That or somebody who was dangerously obsessed with her.”
Even though I’m wearing my coat, I’m still freezing. I rub my arms for warmth. If we’re here much longer, maybe we can figure out how to turn on the heat. Ethan is good at stuff like that. “Wouldn’t it bother you to live in the home of a dead woman?”
“Not really.” He shrugs. “Everyone dies eventually, right? So unless we buy a brand new house, you’re kind of guaranteed somebody has lived in it who’s now dead. So what?”
Fun new facts I’m learning about my husband of six months: he doesnothave a spiritual side.
I skim my eyes over at the bookcase, resting them on the book Ethan casually tossed on top of the shelf. Somehow, it feels like Adrienne Hale wouldn’t like him messing with her bookshelf—like he disturbed the energy in the house. I take the book and replace it on the shelf where it was before. Hopefully, that appeases her ghost temporarily, even if her killer is still out there somewhere.
My stomach lets out an embarrassing growl. “When do you think Judy will be here? I’m starving.”
“I have no idea.” He looks down at his Rolex. “Let me double check if her car is in the garage.”
While Ethan goes off in search of the door to the garage, my gaze drops to the floor beneath my feet. The wood is so filthy that I’d be reluctant to walk barefoot here—the soles of my feet would almost certainly turn black. But as I look down at the floor in the flickering overhead lights, I notice a change in the dust pattern near the bookcase. It almost looks like…
A footprint.
I creep over to get a closer look, squinting in the dim lighting. It definitely looks like a footprint. I put my own boot next to the print—whoever made the footprint had feet quite a lot larger than mine. Could it be Ethan’s footprint? It looks about the right size, but I didn’t see him standing over here.
“The garage is empty.” Ethan emerges from a door near the kitchen, brushing what looks like a cobweb off his shoulder. “Judy’s not here.”
I shiver, even with my coat still on. “Hey, come look at this.”
Ethan walks over to me, and I recognize that the two of us are creating new footprints everywhere we go. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Is this a footprint?”
He narrows his eyes at the dust pattern on the floor. “Maybe?”
“So who made it?”
“I don’t know. Judy?”
I raise my eyebrows. “You think Judy wears size ten men’s shoes?”
Ethan lets out a breath, and I swear I can see the puff of air in the frigid living room. “Then maybe it was someone else viewing the house.”
Except there’s no way Judy was showing anyone a house this dusty. My eyes scan the floor, but I don’t see any other footprints as noticeable as these. “When do you think Judy will get here?”
He frowns. “I don’t know if Judy is going to make it, Tricia.”
“She wouldn’t stand us up.”
“Yeah, but there’s a blizzard out there. We barely made it and the snow is just getting worse. Honestly, it was irresponsible of her to even schedule the viewing tonight.”
“So…” I chew on the tip of my thumbnail. “Do you think we could be stuck here? Like, for the night?”
Our heads swivel simultaneously to look over at one of the picture windows. The snow is coming down harder than it’s ever been before. It’s like a wall of white is being dumped from the sky. Our car is probably buried, and it’s not like it was doing so great in the snow before.
“I think we might be,” he says. “But don’t worry. I mean, look at this place—I bet the kitchen is stocked with food. And even if it isn’t, we’ve got that emergency supply kit you make me keep in the trunk. Doesn’t that have a bunch of power bars in it?”
