Page 75 of Smith

“I’m tired of this house,” Aria grumbled. “I would seriously consider dumping it if that didn’t mean admitting defeat and taking a loss. I’m not a quitter, but damn if this house isn’t the closest I’ve ever been to throwing in the towel.”

I understood where she was coming from, probably should’ve offered her some words of encouragement, but I was struck by her not being a quitter.

At least that made one of us.

“Thanks again for taking care of me.”

Good fuck.

She’d landed a punch to the gut she didn’t know she was delivering. Once I absorbed the pain, I gave her a squeeze.

An hour later, Aria was rethinking her previous declaration.

“I bought a sex house,” she bit out.

“Baby—”

“A. Sex. House,” she asserted. “Complete with a murder weapon.”

The gun we’d found in the corner of the attic, wrapped in an AC/DC shirt and tucked way back in the eves, was more problematic than the new box of pictures Jonas had found. These were of fully dressed girls. The issue was it looked like they didn’t know they were being photographed. And with this, a new issue arose, Aria had identified one of the girls as a young Brittney.

Further from that, Layla and Cash had met with George in Newport News, Virginia, meaning he couldn’t have been in Maryland trying to collect his teenage stash of self-made porn. George Senior was dead, so it wasn’t him breaking in collecting the evidence he was a sick fuck who took pictures of nude teenagers.

But with the latest break-in’s focus being on the attic—and a gun found in that attic—there was no doubt someone was coming back to collect everything.

“My money’s on Billy Rice,” Jonas shared.

So was mine.

The patrol officers had called in a detective who’d taken possession of the gun, but not before Zane had taken a picture of the serial number. Kira was already running the 9mm to see if it could be tied to Billy.

The final change in circumstance was now that the police were involved, Zane very reluctantly agreed to bring the images we had at the office to the station. It was Cooper’s fancy cop-talk that had gotten Z Corps out of hot water for withholding evidence. Of course the pictures, as well as all evidence we found, would’ve been turned over…when Zane was ready. The problem was, we were no longer free to build our case unencumbered. Cooper had promised to keep the detective up to speed—daily. He’d also promised without Aria’s consent that work would be halted.

That contributed to her justified ranting.

“You know whose money I care about? Mine. I’m gonna lose my mind if I lose my ass on this house.”

She looked like she was already losing her mind.

“You can hit a beach, baby,” I reminded her.

“Don’t tempt me,” she girly-growled.

It was cute as fuck.

“I’m being serious.”

“No way am I leaving you here to deal with all of this all by yourself. So unless you’re offering to accompany me and not make fun of me downing pink drinks with umbrellas, I’m staying here with you.”

I’m not a quitter.

I couldn’t deal with how that made me feel so I gave her shit.

“Pink umbrella drinks?”

“Don’t be cute, Smith.”

“Unless it has bourbon in it I can’t drink it.”

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