Page 83 of A Secret to Die For

“We need to make sure we cross all the i’s and dot all the t’s. I spoke with your father a few minutes ago—great guy—and he’s sendin’ a car for you.”

“I already have a car.”

“Just repeatin’ what he said. Do you know a young lady called Angela? She called 911 and told the dispatcher she was concerned for your welfare.”

For the love of fuck. “I’ll deal with it.”

“Women.” The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.”

“Do you really think that’s an appropriate joke to be making tonight?”

He held up his hands and backed out of the room. “Just sit tight, son.”

The door closed, and Burford snorted. “I’m sure this investigation is going to be handled in an entirely thorough and professional manner.”

“Call Angela,” I ordered, heading for the door myself. “Tell her to stop wasting police time.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find Saralisa.”

Except I didn’t get far. When I pulled the door open, Luca and Colt were on the other side of it.

“We need to talk,” Luca said.

“Don’t you have enough information already? What would you have done in that situation? Invited the asshole in for coffee?”

“It was a righteous kill, but that isn’t the issue. You’ll walk on the shooting. The first problem is that he was wearing a backpack, and in that backpack was a pair of handcuffs, zip ties, duct tape, a knife, condoms, and what we believe might be a type of sedative. The lab will need to confirm.”

He’d come to Saralisa’s home with a fucking rape kit? My hands balled at my sides, and I wanted to put a fist through something, preferably what was left of that motherfucker’s face.

“I wish I could go back and kill him again. Slower this time.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“What’s the second problem? You said ‘the first problem,’ which means there must be another.”

“The second problem is more of a question: why was he there?”

“I thought you just answered that.”

“That’s merely logistics. I’m asking—and so is Sara, incidentally—why a stranger to this town ended up at the pool house on the Baldwin estate in the middle of the night. It’s not the kind of place a rapist would head to by chance.”

I’d been so busy thinking of the “what” I hadn’t stopped to consider the “why.” But now that the adrenaline was dissipating and the threat of jail had receded, I saw that Luca was absolutely right. Saralisa had been deliberately targeted.

“They knew she was there.”

“The question is how? I can tell you that the fact she’s been staying in the pool house isn’t common knowledge in Baldwin’s Shore. She only told me and Brooke two weeks ago. Until then, we thought she was staying in the big house the same as always. And before you ask, Brooke didn’t tell anyone and neither did I.”

It got worse.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here tonight.” The words were like sandpaper in my throat. “A meeting got cancelled at the last minute, and I flew back early to see her.”

If Mandy Caukwell hadn’t tripped over her Maltese terrier and ended up in the hospital getting her ankle pinned, I’d still have been in Los Angeles. And Saralisa would have gone through hell. She’d be in the damn morgue, not freaking out somewhere in this fucking house.

“So who knew the details of your schedule? The perp clearly wasn’t expecting you, and he wasn’t aware of the motion sensors either, which means we can probably rule out the Baldwin family hiring someone. When Brie’s team was fitting the system, EJ complained that the drilling was too loud, and one of the twins had a hissy fit about privacy because she thought we were installing cameras and she likes to sunbathe topless by the pool.”

Thanks for the warning.

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