Page 20 of Duplicity

His brother-in-law, Lucas Westbrook, stomped off the step and came right up to him. Way too close. “Backpacking? Now I find out you’re here?”

Simon winced inwardly. He wasn’t going to back down, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t quaking in his shoes. “I can explain.”

“And you’re gonna. Just as soon as a scared-out-of-her-mind teenage girl has been returned to her scared-out-of-their-minds family and I have a second to think. Got it?”

Simon nodded, clenching his teeth so hard his jaw hurt.

“Everything okay?” Cat stood in the doorway.

“Just welcoming my brother back from his trip.” Lucas spun on his heels and stomped back into the house.

Simon blew out a long breath. He wouldn’t be surprised if Freya and Peter were in the hotel room when he got back tonight. Maybe he needed to get a new one. But all that would do was prolong the inevitable reckoning. Might as well get it over with, the way he’d just done with Lucas.

Cat said, “I know brothers. That wasn’t good.”

“Be grateful you only have one.” Simon wasn’t looking forward to any of it. “Freya will be worse, though.”

“That’s Lucas’s wife, right?”

“You know them?”

Cat shrugged a shoulder. “I need to speak with the mother. She’s pretty upset.”

He nodded. “I won’t keep you. I can do a lot just from my laptop, and anything I find will go to the police.”

The look she gave him spoke to her trust in him. Now more than before—a lot more, all because of his association to cops. But he would take it. Whatever endeared him to her, he would claim it.

“Thanks for coming with me.”

Simon nodded. “You’re welcome.”

Between her brother and his family, it felt like a tiny bubble of something good in the middle of everything swirling around him. Which reminded him of what the group leader had said. Maybe in order to find something good, he just had to look for it.

It had to be a sign he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Which meant taking the job at the school had been the right thing.

Now he just had to finish it.

NINE

Despite all the ways it wasn’t a good idea, Cat couldn’t let go of the realization that Simon’s family dynamic was pretty similar to hers. She stepped inside the house with Romeo right behind her, trying to figure out how she was going to keep her distance when the guy became more and more human every moment she spent in his presence.

“You okay?”

She glanced aside at Romeo. “Yeah, actually. I think I am.”

Her ex, Pastor Tyler Cunningham, had presented himself as superhuman. A hero. A star. She’d been swept along by it, suckered in. Effectively starstruck, even though he was a local guy with a local following. To be the center of his attention—or so she’d thought—had been hypnotic.

Until she discovered the giant fissure underneath where his character should’ve been. Honesty. Integrity. Sincerity. It had all been absent.

Romeo glanced back, probably at Simon.

Cat asked, “Are you going to tell me to stay away because he’s bad news?” Although his real name had come out, that wasn’t much information, so maybe there was something she should know. Some gaping issue or a red flag.

Romeo made a face. “Believe me, I would if I could.”

Inside, the entryway preceded a hall lined with older pine wood flooring. The single-story house had three bedrooms, and the kitchen was to the right past the living room. The bedrooms to the left.

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