Page 8 of Tempting Devil

Instead, I ensured Imogene’s safety by keeping a close eye on her at all times.

“She was only there for a few minutes, though,” Henry added. “And she never spoke to Liam.”

This caught my attention. “She didn’t? Did he turn her away?”

This seemed extremely out of character. Liam always made time for Imogene, regardless of what he was doing. Not because he cared about her, but because it was another opportunity to sink his claws even deeper into her.

“No.” He hit a few keys on his keyboard, and the monitor in front of me switched to display six different camera feeds from Liam’s security system that Henry had hacked into.

While he already had cameras in many of the public areas of the house, there weren’t any in his office, an issue we remedied when his security system was supposedly malfunctioning during the golf tournament last weekend.

After a few seconds, Imogene’s SUV pulled in front of the entrance and the housekeeper welcomed her. I watched her move from one camera to the next as she made her way down the hallway and toward the office.

But she didn’t knock. Instead, she hesitated outside, leaning closer to the door. After several drawn-out seconds, her body stiffened and she backed away, her spine hitting the wall behind her. She placed her hand over her chest as she drew in deep breath after deep breath, her wide eyes making it seem like whatever she just heard was suffocating her.

Then she spun on her heels, practically bolting out of the house.

“What did she hear?” I asked timidly, although I was already fairly certain what it was.

“This.”

My stomach twisted into knots as he clicked the spacebar and a new feed appeared, this one displaying Imogene walking down the hallway on one side and James and Liam talking in his office on the other.

“Maybe it’s an old glass,” Liam said, tugging at his tie. By the sheen on his normally polished face, he looked like he’d been sweating. “One that hasn’t been washed lately.”

“One that was conveniently left on the coffee table next to Alton’s?” James retorted, his voice heavy with disbelief as he stood by the window, looking out over Liam’s property.

“What other possible explanation is there?” Liam threw his hands up as he paced the length of the room. Stopping in front of his desk, he grabbed his rocks glass and guzzled the liquid before slamming it back down. “Somebody must have made a mistake. Have them run the prints again.”

“They already have,” James snipped back, moving toward Liam. “Twice. Along with a few other items found in close proximity to Alton’s body. Initially, it was to confirm the cause of death, but the second glass on the coffee table stumped them, so they ran it to see if someone else was in the room with Alton.” He lowered his voice. “To see if maybe you were in the room with him, considering…recent events.”

“I told you!” Liam roared, his voice echoing off the walls. “I have no idea how that damn body ended up on my boat. I haven’t been to that marina in months. There’s no record of me using my access card at the gate.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of it all. These two men conspired to kill me and let someone else take the blame for it. Now they were experiencing the same fate. At least Liam was.

“I believe you,” James replied calmly. Or as calm as he could in this situation. “But that doesn’t change the evidence they uncovered in Alton’s cabin.”

Silence hung heavy between them, broken only by the ominous ticking of the grandfather clock standing watch in the corner of the room.

“What does this mean?” Liam asked finally, collapsing onto the couch. He ran a trembling hand over his weary face, resigned to the reality that his carefully built house of cards was starting to crumble around him.

“Either someone planted his fingerprints there to fuck with us,” James began.

“Or…” Liam prodded, lifting his eyes.

“Or Samuel Tate’s back from the dead.”

I looked from the feed of the office to the one of the hallway, watching Imogene back up until she hit the wall behind her.

I knew there was a strong possibility James would use his influence to uncover every detail about Alton’s death, despite the police not releasing any of this information to the public yet.

Nothing could have prepared me for the pure agony consuming Imogene when she learned that my — Samuel’s — fingerprints were found on a glass at Alton’s cabin.

“Now what?” Henry asked, cutting through the silence.

“What do you mean?”

“What’s your plan now?”

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