Page 39 of Haunted

“September twelfth was the day I discovered my father was a serial killer.”

He whistled. “That’s fucked.”

“Pretty much sums it up.”

My phone dinged with a text. Digging it out of my pocket, I winced when I saw who it was. I’d been expecting her questions, the problem was I didn’t know how to answer them without scaring her.

Henley: What’s going on, Keaton? Why the sudden need for bodyguards? Did something happen with Chase?

Me: It’s not Chase, baby. I’ll explain everything when I get there, I swear. Just stay with Lanie and Koen in the house.

Henley: Okay. I trust you.

I wasn’t so sure she’d still be able to say that once I told her the truth, but for now, I’d take it.

“Maybe we’ve been coming at this the wrong way.”

“Talk it out, Noah,” Duncan instructed.

“We’re working off the assumption this guy is a copycat, right?” We both nodded. “Yet he’s got intimate knowledge of the case which was kept under wraps. How?”

“Maybe he was in the courtroom?” I offered.

“No. I think it’s more than that. I think he had a direct connection with your dad somehow, either before his arrest, or after.”

The three of us strode toward the elevator in silence, contemplating Noah’s theory. Honestly, it made the most sense, even though the implication our killer could be someone I’d met before made my head spin and my stomach churn. Jasper might know if my father was particularlyclose to anyone during that time, so he was next on my list to call. We’d also need to contact the prison. Hopefully they’d kept the visitor logs from back then.

We rode the elevator to the ground level, then made our way to the parking lot, where Duncan offered to drop off the evidence bags containing the phone and card to our forensics team. He put one long leg, then the other, inside his vehicle before glancing over at me.

“Hold tight to your girl, Keaton. Don’t let her slip through your fingers or you’ll regret it for the rest of your miserable life.”

Without giving me a chance to respond, he shut the door and gunned the engine, leaving Noah and I standing there wondering what the hell had just happened.

“He needs to get laid,” Noah announced.

“You sound like Koen.”

“Speaking of, he sent me a text you’re gonna want to see.”

The smirk on his face should have alerted me, but when he handed over his cell, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. It wasn’t a message, rather a picture of Henley. She was in the middle of the living room in a fighting stance, squaring off against Lanie, wearing nothing but a tiny pair of hot pink biker shorts and a matching sports bra. My dick went rock-hard at the image.

“Let’s go,” I growled while my best friend—the bastard—laughed his ass off.

Henley

“Bend your knees a little more and spread your feet, shoulder width apart,” Lanie instructed.

It was one of the few days I had off from Over Easy and I wanted tospend it researching other online social work programs, however those plans were derailed quickly when I thought about having to explain my expulsion. Instead of dwelling on the past, I grabbed the latest Rebecca Yarros novel, a can of diet Dr. Pepper, and chose to fill my head with page after page of courageous women, sexy men, and their fire-breathing dragons.

I was lounging on the bean bag, gearing up for an especially exciting part of the book when Lanie and Koen burst through the door an hour ago. At first, I was terrified something had happened to Keaton. They tried to reassure me he was fine and they were only there as a precaution—whatever the hell that meant—but it took Keaton telling me via text he’d explain it all to me later before I was finally convinced.

“Like this?”

“Arch your back more. Ass out.”

I did as Koen said, immediately regretting it when a flash went off from his direction.

“Did you just take a picture of me?”

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