Page 99 of Whiskey Kisses

“We have a mole on the inside,” I explain. “One of Deschamps’ guys feeds info to a local cop who communicates with our cop in Boston. He called Lucky this morning, as soon as he found out.”

“That sounds … circuitous.”

“It’s a delicate situation. Better to keep some distance.” I eye her suspiciously. “You don’t seem too surprised, Evie. Do you know something that I don’t?”

“They killed my dad, and they were gonna kill you and I couldn’t let that happen.” Her voice shakes, but she seems eerily calm otherwise. “I was sick of feeling like prey, like they could attack at any second and take away everything that mattered to me.”

I yank her into my arms, forcing her to look at me. “What are you saying?”

“I—I poisoned them,” she says with a shudder, clutching my shirt.

“How the fuck did you do that?” I ask, bewildered but impressed.

“Water hemlock,” she says breathlessly. “It grows behind the house, along the stream. It doesn’t go fully dormant in the cold. Aunt Myrtle told me never to pick it, because it’s toxic. So toxic that even touching it can be dangerous. I wore gloves.”

She’s rambling now, almost manic. I’ve never seen her like this. My phone is still going off every couple of seconds with texts, so I put it face down, sit on the edge of the bed, and pull Evie down beside me. “Go on.”

“I found the whiskey from the silent distillery,” she confesses. “It’s in a cellar beneath the orangery—it’s been there forever.”

“Wait, what?” I stare at her in shock. “It’s real? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just found it.” She leaps up and rushes over to the stack of papers on her nightstand, plucking one from the top. “Remember the coordinates? I looked up every set and they were all locations related to the distillery except for one. Those coordinates werehere, Tristan. This house. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What could possibly be here that would be related to the distillery?”

She paces back and forth, sweeping her hair into a knot at the base of her neck. “And then I started thinking about the orangery and all the crates I saw in the cellar when I was a kid. Crates full of bottles. They were still there. After all this time.”

“And they’re special editions?” I ask.

“Yeah.” She nods, holding her hands to her cheeks like she’s trying to cool her face off. “I texted Cole and told him I had a proposal. I said I’d give them up to half of the collection if they promised to leave us alone.”

“And he agreed?”

“Not at first. He was pretty suspicious, obviously, so I agreed to meet him and give him a sample bottle to take to his dad.”

I stare at her, connecting the dots as she paces. “And you poisoned the bottle.”

“Yes,” she whispers, coming to a stop.

“Withhemlock?”

Another halting nod.

“That’s some medieval shit,” I say dryly. “Remind me never to mess with you.”

“Hemlock far predates the Middle Ages,” she says. “Are you angry with me? For going behind your back?”

“I’m angry you met with Cole by yourself, Evie, yeah. He could’ve …” I stop, closing my eyes and trying to shake off the awful possibilities. “Done something to you. He could’ve hurt you or taken you. But I’m not angry with you for trying to protect me. How could I be?” The hugeness of it wells up, blurring my eyes with tears. I stand up, wrapping my arms around her. “Fuck, Evie. See how the queen protects her king?”

“Yeah.” She lets out a small sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I didn’t do a very good job, though, if Cole’s still alive.”

“You did an incredible job, because there were two, and now there’s just one.” I chuff softly, resting my cheek on her head. “We were planning on taking ‘em out eventually. We just hadn’t gotten that far yet. I was going to meet with Danny today, accept his terms. Sign over the warehouse, set up a payment schedule. And then, later on, after we’d been paying for months and he’d lowered his guard, we’d strike. You just moved things along.”

“I can’t lose you,” she says quietly, drained. “I don’t think I’d recover. I’ve lost enough.”

“You won’t lose me.” I lean down, kissing her gently. “I really love you, you know that?”

“I love you, too.” Her arms tighten around me.

“Come on, let’s go downstairs. We need to discuss next steps,” I say, pulling her toward the door. “Needless to say, you’re a part of this now.”

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