Page 34 of Sweet Revenge
“What?” Evie felt like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. “Why would she think that?” She gripped the edge of the lounger so hard her fingers ached.
“She wanted to make sure they were okay before she disappeared for a bit. When she got there, she found the house roped off by police tape. A neighbor told her the police thought it was a murder-suicide.”
“The wife was stabbed and the husband was shot?” She pushed to her feet to pace.
“How did you know that?” Will’s voice was full of surprise.
“Lucky guess,” Evie murmured. “How…” She cleared her throat. “Why does she think it was Peter and not what the cops think? Not a murder-suicide?”
“I asked her the same thing. She swears up and down her brother didn’t own a gun. Evelyn.”
“Yeah?”
“Be safe out there.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he hung up, and Evie tossed her phone on the lounger, raking her hands through her hair. Just because it was similar didn’t mean it was the same. She could probably pull up a dozen murders with the same MO on the internet in less than five minutes. Would they all have a connection to Peter, though? Doubtful.
Releasing a thief’s real name to their criminal circle could get ugly fast. Bounties, hitmen, kidnappers. As much as the rich liked to steal from each other for sport, they hated to be stolen from, and if they found out who had done the stealing, they didn’t hesitate to strike back.
That’s precisely why Kiah was on the run. If Evie had to put money on it, she’d bet Kiah had probably changed her appearance as well. She’d even heard stories of some people going so far as to have plastic surgery in a bid to start over.
So if Peter wanted to burn her identity, why hadn’t he done it yet? Suppose he was here in Philadelphia after murdering her parents. Why put her in a vulnerable position on a relatively isolated stretch of road and then do nothing? What was his end game?
Snatching her phone up off the chair, she let herself out of Cait’s house, re-arming the alarm with the code Cait had given her. She had to figure out exactly who Peter was. Whether he was responsible for her parents’ deaths or not, he was a threat. One she wanted to eliminate so when this was over, she actually had a life to go back to.
The best place she knew to start was Morocco. Maybe if she sat down and wrote out every detail she could remember about that trip, the job, the oddities, something would jump out at her. It had to.
She let herself into Declan’s house through the side door, stopping short when she noticed him standing in the living room, arms crossed over his broad chest. He wasn’t wearing his suit jacket, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing a tattoo that swirled over his forearm and disappeared under the fabric. That was new.
* * *
“You’re late.” And just like that, her face flashed from worried to annoyed. He really had to get her to stop looking at him like that.
“Late for what?”
He sighed and rolled his sleeves down, buttoning the cuffs before slipping his arms into his jacket and adjusting it. The woman had never been on time for anything in her life and had clearly not gotten better at it with age.
“We’re meeting Reagan at my office to go over what she found.”
“We?” Her brow furrowed. “You are meeting Reagan at your office to go over what she found. I have something else to do.”
“Something more important than avenging O’Brian and Mary Elizabeth?”
Now her eyes were angry, but she at least turned on her heel and slammed out the door. Seconds later, he heard the door on his Range Rover slam. Well, that was one way to get her into the car.
The drive was icy, and he let her stew in silence. Something was bothering her. He could tell by the way she was picking at the hole in the knee of her jeans. When she caught the direction of his glance, she clasped her hands in her lap to keep them still.
“You really think she’s going to find something after the cleaners were there?”
“If she does, I’ll need to hire new cleaners.”
She snorted as he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. “I thought we were going to your office.”
“We are. It’s on the third floor. What?” he asked when he saw the look on her face.
“Your office is above this restaurant?”
He glanced out the windshield at the faded red brick. “Yes. I own the restaurant. The whole building, actually.”
