Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
You know.
Because who my prime suspect was mattered.
I couldn’t just sit and do nothing. I wasn’t very good at that. I never had been very good at it. I needed to fix something, occupy my mind, and this was all I could do right now.
Despite what my mum said, it was pretty clear to me that Stephanie wasn’t interested in the business. She’d seemed exhausted, and while that was understandable given the situation she was in, she’d been married her entire adult life to someone who was nothing short of vile.
I’d want to escape and put that behind me, too.
Killing him did nothing but tie her to him even further.
Then again, she’d been groomed and abused by him for twelve years. Killing him was probably justified if it was her.
Ugh.
I just couldn’t picture her as the one who’d done it, but I wasn’t entirely sure about Alan, either.
None of this made sense.
I stopped at the same rocks I’d been pausing at every morning and looked out at the water. I was going to drive myself crazy by the time this was over. Rationally, I knew they couldn’t arrest me for killing Declan Tierney because I simply hadn’t, and the formal questioning had just been a matter of necessity.
I’d found his body. It was my property. I’d had a disagreement with him.
I’d have questioned me, too.
The problem was that I was invested. I still wasn’t entirely sure if Ash had been joking when she’d suggested this, but now I was all-in.
I had to know who’d killed him.
The sun was already warm, and the only clouds in the sky were mere wispy bits that would be burnt away within the hour. It was a beautiful day that was shaping up to be a scorcher, and I was annoyed I couldn’t spend it at the B&B.
It would be the perfect day to cut grass.
For my dad, though.
He was the resident grasscutter.
It was perfect for him to cut the grass while I watched from somewhere else.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
I turned at the sound of Noah’s voice and didn’t bother to try hiding my groan. “Not you again. Are you tracking me? Is this some police thing to keep an eye on your favourite murder suspect?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “If it were, you wouldn’t even be close to the top of the list.”
“I suppose I should take that as a compliment.” I sniffed, turning away from him again. “I was starting to think you keep sneaking up on me to arrest me.”
“Not today, Charlotte.”
I hated the way my name rolled off his tongue.
Ugh.
I hated everything about the way my tummy fluttered when he met my eyes.
“Don’t you have better things to do than harass me? Like find out who killed Declan Tierney?”
He perched on one of the rocks near me. “Believe it or not, I work on this thing called shifts.”
“You work? Weird.”
“Working is how you ended up in the back of my police car.”
“Worst day of my life,” I muttered, turning around and looking across the beach.
Noah followed my line of sight. “What are you looking for?”
“Your girlfriend. She usually pops up whenever you start talking to me. It’s like she’s got a little Charlotte radar.”
He swigged from his water bottle, and my words came in time to make him snort mid-drink. “Fuck. That went right up my nose.”
I laughed under my breath, looking back out at sea as the sun made the water twinkle. “You deserved that.”
“What for?”
“Throwing me in the back of your police car.”
“Fair enough.” He put his bottle in the sand and leant back.
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“You look like you’re getting comfy. Are you trying to ruin my morning? Because I’m telling you, if your girlfriend shows up, that’s what’s going to happen.”
Noah’s green eyes fixed on me as a smile toyed with his lips. “She won’t. She’s already at work.”
“Good. It’s already partially ruined by your presence. I don’t need her here, too.”
“You can’t blame her for being insecure about me talking to you.”
Um, yes.
Actually, as it happened, I very much could.
Our past was just that—the past. If his girlfriend couldn’t deal with that, then that said a lot more about their relationship than it did about my existence.
“Um, I think I can. It’s been ten years, Noah. It’s not like we’ve even stayed friends, we haven’t said a word to one another until I came back here.” I finally met his eyes, deliberately holding his gaze. “Ten years is a long time, and it’s not like I’ve skipped into town and sought you out. If anything, I’m actually trying to avoid you.”
His lips twitched into a half-smile.
“If she can’t see that, then that sounds like a her problem, not a me problem,” I said. “And I’d prefer it to stay that way. I have no intention of getting involved in your relationship, so tell her to leave me out of it.”