Page 34 of Blind Luck

I deleted the vacay spam and scanned the contents of Alexa’s message.

“Okay, good news.” Kind of. I tried to stay upbeat. “The guy with Kelsey is called Chris Clemente, and he definitely isn’t having an affair with her.”

“You’re certain?”

“The short answer is a colleague found his Grindr profile.” Alexa wasn’t exactly a colleague, but I didn’t know how else to describe her. “The longer answer is that Kelsey works in the New York office of Miller, Sigmund, and Pace, and Clemente works in the Las Vegas office along with Amber Cassidy. She’s the brunette who was also in the helicopter. They’re all architects.”

“So this is a work trip?”

“I think they’re just showing Kelsey the sights while she’s in town.”

“So we wasted an entire day?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘wasted,’ exactly. I mean, the Grand Canyon was awesome. Like, bucket list awesome. I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did, visiting the Grand Canyon would definitely be on it.” Hey, if I started one, I could tick off the first item already. “Do you have a bucket list?”

Rusty shrugged. “There’s not much left on it.”

“Hey, Sin. Do you have a bucket list?”

“You don’t want to know what’s on my bucket list.”

Huh. That was probably true.

Until I reunited with my brother, I’d never been on vacation, and even when we did travel, we only went places he could surf. Which was rad and everything, but perhaps I should expand my horizons? I’d always wanted to visit Alaska. Snow, glaciers, the northern lights. I’d seen pictures on TV, but I’d never been anywhere colder than California in my life.

I opened the update from Ari, and hey, that threw us right back into the mystery.

“There’s more news,” I told Rusty. “Clemente wasn’t the man Kelsey ate dinner with in the Library last night.”

His head snapped around. “How do you know that?”

“Okay, so it’s better if I don’t tell you, but here’s a picture of the guy. Do you recognise him?”

Rusty took my phone and zoomed in on the picture of Kelsey eating opposite a clean-shaven dude with light brown hair and a pinkie ring. It wasn’t just the hair colour that didn’t match Clemente. He was thinner with a runner’s physique, and Clemente had the beginnings of a paunch.

Rusty replied in the negative. “I don’t know this guy. Never seen him before in my life.”

“Then I guess it’s still possible that Kelsey is havingdirty sex on the side, but she’s not having it with Clemente.”

Ugh. Dirty sex. The thought of any sex turned my stomach, but I pushed memories of my husband out of my head. Ex-husband? We’d never gotten divorced, but after I left the Promised Land, I found out polygamy was unlawful in the United States, so I figured my marriage was a sham, right? I was wife number five. But the Prophet said I was the blessed one, the one who would finally bear Elvis a child, and I remembered having to talk with a judge before we got marriage papers. Then Ari found out there was a marriage licence filed with my old name on it. Joy Kealoha. There was nothing joyous about life in that place, nothing at all, and the worst part? She couldn’t find licences for my sister wives—I’d given her their names—and it turned out religious marriage and legal marriage were different things.

Don’t think about it, Erin.

At least I’d only had to share his bed once or sometimes twice a week, although that was still one or two times too many. Now I had a single bed in my own room at my brother’s house, and he’d put a lock on the door when I asked.

No more sharing.

“So we need to find this guy,” Rusty said, tapping the phone screen and bringing me back to the present.

“Yup, to start off with.”

“What do you mean, ‘to start off with’?”

“We can’t rule out a third guy.”

Never get fixated on one lead, Ari always told me. The unexpected could—and did—happen.

“You mean as well? Kelsey is hooking up with Silas, the guy from the Library, and someone else?”

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