Page 27 of Mine to Protect

She turned on the water and splashed some on her face. Leaning against the counter, she stared at herself in the mirror. All she had to do was hold onto the lies for a few more hours. If this wasn’t all cleared up by seven, she could tell Rhett everything.

He might be mad for a little while, but he’d eventually understand.

Or maybe he wouldn’t.

She was only doing what she had to for her brother. For family.

No one could fault her for that.

She squared her shoulders and headed back out to the kitchen where she found Rhett sitting at the counter, reading the paper as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Is everything okay at work?” he asked, barely glancing over the top as he turned the page.

“Yeah. They just couldn’t find my last report.” Wow. She was becoming quite the little liar. “So, I was thinking about those messages from my brother, and I don’t see any reason why you can’t look at them.” She placed her cell on the counter. “My passcode is 88521.”

“Why the change of heart?” He folded the paper and set it aside.

“I think you’re right. My opinion of my brother is skewed. I’ve been thinking about him and feeling a certain way for his entire life. It’s not fair to him, or to me. Maybe you’ll see something I couldn’t.”

Rhett arched a brow as if shocked. “What made you come to that conclusion?”

“Nothing and everything.” She couldn’t afford to continue blatantly lying to Rhett. It would eat her alive if she did. However, telling him the entire truth would only put her between a rock and a hard place with her brother, which would also destroy her. “I don’t think he’s using, but I think he’s in trouble.”

“Why?”

“Because none of this makes sense,” she said. “He left his stuff behind. He has counterfeit money. He’s not communicating with me. It doesn’t add up.”

“That’s what happens when drug addicts pick up again.”

“I know. That’s what I thought because he was being so secretive. But the more I examine things, the more I believe he’s not using. But something elseishappening.”

“All right. What exactly do you think the issue is?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

Rhett lifted her phone and tapped at the screen. “What can you tell me about Jackie?”

“She’s a sweet girl,” Shelby said. “Chris loves her. I don’t know her as well as I’d like, but what I do know is that she’s good for him.”

“What about her family?” Rhett focused on her cell, scrolling with his index finger. He kept his gaze lowered, not lifting it at all. “What can you tell me about them? Her parents. Her siblings. Anything at all. It doesn’t matter if you think the detail is immaterial; it might be the one thing that sends us down the right path.”

“She doesn’t have siblings. Her parents died when she was young. Murdered, actually.”

“By whom?”

“All I know is it was unsolved. The police had no leads, though they suspected it was mob related. A family in New Jersey.”

Rhett lifted his gaze. “That’s a big statement. What can you tell me about that? Like, do you have a mob family name?”

“I think it was Gorga, but I’m not sure. Jackie blew it off as crazy-talk. Said that neither her uncle nor her father had any ties to either that mob family in New Jersey or the Florida one, and if the mob was involved, it wasn’t…intentional,” Shelby said for lack of a better word. “But it is why she and her uncle moved to Florida, to get away from all of that. To start fresh in a new town since the police had no suspects, and it became a cold case.”

“Has she kept in touch with the police up north?”

“Not that I know of,” Shelby said. “Her uncle raised her, and he’s the one who owns the limo company.” That’s about all she knew about Jackie. In the last few weeks, she’d wanted to take Jackie out to lunch to get to know her better, but so many different things had gotten in the way.

Namely, the way her brother had been avoiding her and not returning her calls. It had been a difficult pill to swallow. While she didn’t understand right now, she had a better feeling about why.

Sort of.

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