Page 41 of After The Storm

And this house had it in spades.

Roman didn’t seem fazed in the least by the impressiveness of the home in front of them. Instead of gawking at the stairs that led up to a gorgeous wrap around porch, he instead acted workmanlike, walking around the house like he was searching for something. Kate looked around to see if anyone else was watching him act so strangely.

Thankfully, no one else seemed to be around to see him. Walking up behind him, she asked, “Uh, are you checking for the water meter, or is this just the way you act when you arrive at someone’s house?”

He glanced back and gave her a scowl. “I’m looking for the key. Maybe you don’t announce it to the whole world?”

Jeez. What changed to make him so cranky all of a sudden?

“Can I help?” Kate asked, trying to be helpful.

“No,” he answered tersely. “Just stay out of sight and wait for me.”

The shortness of his answer stung. She thought they’d developed into a team who did things together, but since they left the city, he’d changed somehow. Kate couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was different, but it was unmistakable.

She did as he said and stood behind the air conditioning unit. As she hid from neighbors’ eyes, she wondered if her life would ever go back to the way it had been before all this madness. She’d never been anyone important—certainly no one people would notice—and even though more than once she’d wished for a more exciting life, this hadn’t been what she meant at all.

A new boyfriend and some more interesting ways to spend her nights were all she’d hoped for. Being on the run for her life hadn’t been any part of her fantasies.

Roman poked his head into her hiding space and waved her out. “Found it. Let’s head in.”

Kate hurried past him and practically ran up to the front door, not hating those stairs as much as the thousand or so others she’d been forced to deal with in the past couple days. He took his own sweet time making his way to where she stood, and she saw by the smirk on his face that he’d noticed how she didn’t complain this time.

He turned the key and opened the front door. As she walked past him, she said, “Not one word about my running up those stairs. Got it?”

Chuckling, he didn’t respond and simply walked into the house behind her. Kate stopped just a few feet in and stared at the all-white décor. She’d expected something different. Something far more masculine. Maybe something with more exposed wood. This friend of Roman’s must have had a woman in his life who had a say in the design of his house because all Kate saw around her was beautiful.

“I think I’m in love,” she murmured before walking straight ahead through the open floor plan toward the all-white kitchen.

She’d never seen a more gorgeous kitchen in her life. At least not in real life. This place was the kind of home you saw in magazines.

Swiveling her head left and right to take in all the incredible details in the chef’s kitchen, she eyed up the six by six foot white marble topped island with a six burner gas stovetop and enormous hood above, stainless steel double ovens and refrigerator, and beige and brown stone backsplash. She could live in this room for the rest of her life and be more content than she’d ever been before.

Roman walked away, seemingly unimpressed by his friend’s home so far, and she wandered around falling more in love with every step. When she walked into the master bath, she stopped and held her breath at what she saw.

As with the other rooms, the bathroom had been decorated in white, and similar to the kitchen, brown accents warmed up the space. A deep marble tub sat against a beige and brown marble tiled wall that hid the glass shower enclosure.

Oh, how she yearned for the moment when she’d slide into that tub and wash off the remnants of the past few days.

She didn’t feel right calling dibs on the master bedroom, so she found another of the four bedrooms and fell onto the bed as exhaustion overcame her. Between running down two flights of stairs not ten minutes after being awakened from a sound sleep and then having to crouch down on the floor of the car they stole to get out of the city, it had been one hell of a day already.

Hopefully, life would settle down for a few days so she could catch her breath.

Kate opened hereyes and for a moment didn’t know where she was. It took a minute or so to remember she and Roman had come out to his friend’s house on the lake and she’d fallen asleep in one of the bedrooms.

Now all she had to figure out was what time it was. Rolling over, she looked out the window and saw darkness. Had she slept all day again?

She listened for a moment for any sign of her partner in crime, but she heard nothing but silence. Maybe Roman had fallen asleep also. Not that she could blame him. He’d gone through almost as much as she had, by her side from almost the very beginning of this nightmare.

Or adventure. She didn’t know which better described what they were stuck in.

Beside her lay Jonas’s laptop, so once she fully woke up, she set to figuring out how to follow the leads he’d left for her in his files. What made Samuel Darnell so interesting that the cops bothered him over and over? Were the state police really involved like Roman believed, and if so, how? Time and time again, she searched for information and found a dead end. No wonder Jonas hadn’t gotten any further.

Frustrated, Kate didn’t know where to find the answers. She angrily pushed away the laptop as she wished she had the ability to figure out what her boss couldn’t before he died. He deserved her to at least do that for him, but so far, she’d failed miserably.

Maybe she just needed to get some fresh air. Maybe that would give her some perspective that would help her solve this mystery.

She rolled off the bed and padded across the hardwood floor out to the kitchen. Everything looked the same as it had when she walked through earlier. Clearly, Roman hadn’t decided to make something to eat.

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