Page 49 of My Temptation

She nodded and looked at Ethan, who hadn’t spoken one word yet. “Coffee.”

She smiled. “Sure. I’ll grab those.”

He opened his menu and started looking, but something seemed off. Ethan was quiet, but this morning he seemed pissed, which wasn’t a side of him I’d seen often. “You okay?”

“Didn’t sleep well,” he grumbled.

“Really?” I asked, surprised because I thought the bed was comfortable. Maybe I was just that tired. “I slept really well.”

“Good for you.”

Sitting up straight, I kicked his shin under the table, and his head snapped up. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Because you’re being an ass,” I replied. “I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well, but that’s not my fault.”

He snorted just as the server brought our drinks and took our orders. I wasn’t even sure what I ordered because I was annoyed.

“Why did you make that sound?” I asked when she walked away.

“What sound?” He blew on his coffee before taking a sip.

“When I said it wasn’t my fault you didn’t sleep well, you made a noise.”

He studied me for a minute before finally answering. “Forget it. You’re right, I’m being an ass. Sorry about that.” He put his cup down. “Let’s figure out what we need to do today. It doesn’t seem like we’re gonna find a new place to stay, and with any luck, we won’t be here long, so why waste time looking for one.”

Not convinced everything was fine, I wondered if I should ask more questions, but then I decided not to. Maybe he was just hungry or tired like he said. Either way, I was overanalyzing it, which I did a lot.

Shrugging it off, I offered a suggestion. “Why don’t we head to the bookstore where Striker first tracked him? I may be able to bring up the search history on the computers and see if we find anything.”

“Didn’t Striker already do that?”

I shook my head. “A little, but not much. Kyle probably did some searching, but it can’t hurt to check again. See if he was back in and which computer he used most often. My gut tells me he’s habitual.”

We stopped talking when the server set our plates in front of us. Ethan thanked her before I could and waited for her to walk away before speaking. “Why do you think that?”

“He’s organized,” I admitted. “He’s managed to stay one step ahead of us this whole time, which tells me he’s methodical in how he does things. He doesn’t make mistakes. What bothers me is that if he wanted Beth dead, he could’ve killed her with the arsenic, but he didn’t.”

Ethan took a bite of his scrambled eggs and swallowed before answering. “Are we sure he didn’t want her dead? I mean, if she had eaten more of the pizza, could it have killed her?”

I took a bite of my bagel and considered that. “I guess so, but she would’ve had to eat a lot of it to ingest enough arsenic.”

“So you think he wants her alive,” he surmised. “For what reason?”

“The safety deposit box,” I guessed. “We don’t know what’s in it, but it must be worth something, considering everything Max Skinner went through to try to get his hands on it. The fact that Samson is somehow involved in all of this tells me he knows about it too but doesn’t have a clue where it is.”

“Neither does Beth,” he pointed out.

“Yeah.” I pointed my fork at him. “But Samson doesn’t know that.”

We ate the remainder of breakfast in silence, paid the bill, and were headed back to the car when my phone rang. Pulling it from my back pocket, I showed Ethan the screen and laughed before answering the FaceTime call.

When his face popped up, I shook my head. “Hey, Kyle.”

He smiled. “Well, well, well, look at you two up and out. Where are you?”

“Just finished breakfast.” I slid into the passenger seat of the car and closed the door.

“How’d you sleep?”? he asked, but I heard the teasing in his tone.

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