Page 66 of The Pretender

Count on Damon to ruin a moment. Harris should not have been surprised. “What is wrong with you?”

“Just wondering.” Damon sat down and started fiddling with the cells.

Gabby watched him for a second before turning to Harris. “So, you have the phone information. How does that help you?”

“We track the calls but more importantly the phone information gets us into the email information.”

“Legally?” She winced as she asked the question.

Harris frowned at her. She had to know better by now. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t hear this.” She shook her head. “What’s the term? Plausible deniability.”

She likely wasn’t wrong, but Harris didn’t have any interest in shutting her out. She deserved answers and he worried those answers would upset her. She may as well be prepared. “We want to back our way in. See if either of them is talking to anyone about the island or Tabitha.”

“But you’ll end up seeing other stuff.”

Damon lifted his head. “You mean porn?”

“I mean privileged communications.” Gabby raised her voice as she talked. “Stephen with his lawyer. Stephen emailing everyone he knows to talk about how much he hates me.”

Damon threw her a blank look. “Do you care?”

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked.

“Not really.”

Yeah, that was enough of that, too. Harris tried to guide the conversation back to topic. “With Tabitha’s laptop gone and now most of the paperwork in the library destroyed in the fire, we need to be able to re-create any contacts she had.”

“Including Craig?”

Harris knew he had to tread carefully. He and Damon might question Craig, but she didn’t. That made tiptoeing through his life a bit harder. They had to be tactful and they had to be sure. “He’s one of the people who can come on and off this island without trouble. He has access. He has the means. He knew her. She wouldn’t have questioned him or fought him coming into the house.”

“The person who attacked her seemingly walked right in. She didn’t have defensive wounds,” Damon explained. “That likely means she knew her attacker, which makes the suspect pool very small.”

She shook her head. “You can’t be serious.”

He’d read the reports. The wound part was an issue. “Would you rather we lie to you?”

She leaned forward in her chair, at first talking to Damon, then she turned to Harris and put a hand against his outer thigh. “You’re talking about someone I know, someone I trust or at least am related to, being the one who killed my sister.”

He slid his hand down to cover hers. “Gabby, no matter what we find your life is probably not going to be the same.”

It was an obvious point, but Harris felt like he needed to say it. Maybe because it applied to him now. None of this, what happened back then and what was happening with Gabby now, would leave them unscathed.

“But my sister will still be dead.”

God, it ripped him apart to hear those words come out of her. “Yes, but we may know why.”

She nodded. “Do what you have to do.”

Chapter 18

It had been a long day and it wasn’t even dinnertime. The sun still rode high in the sky but approaching clouds were threatening rain. Gabby guessed tomorrow they’d wake up to overcast skies.

Stormy weather suited her. The main house had a tarp and temporary covering over the fire-stripped parts, but she didn’t worry about that. The house was a thing. Fixable, replaceable. Her mood reflected her latest round with her uncle. Her emotions kept bouncing. Dramatic highs with Harris. Paralyzing pain with her uncle.

He’d never been an easy man to like. He judged too quickly and had a rule for everything. Teen girls were pretty far out of his comfort zone. For some people having a niece might make them change, be better or more loving or softer. For Stephen she had always been a confusing puzzle who didn’t obey his orders and made his baby brother worry. That was long before the kidnapping and the plane accident and Tabitha’s murder. Those events had taken an already hard man and broken him. Wiped any and all emotion right out of him.

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