She laughed. “No offense, honey? Our last shopping trip together here ended with us driving off the side of a mountain. I know it was an unavoidable and last-resort option, but I’m good staying behind.”
“Ah. No offense taken, as long as you take over making the biscuits.” He smiled. “Mine never come out as good as yours, no matter how hard I try.”
She smiled back. “Deal.”
They worked in companionable silence, looking up when Gillian entered the kitchen with the baby in her arms.
“I hoped I smelled coffee,” she said, looking bedraggled and barely awake.
“How you feelin’, hon?” Nami asked.
“Okay, I guess. Exhausted. Asia warned me the first couple of weeks are the worst while I recover and develop a new routine.” She started fixing her coffee one-handed, cradling the baby with the other arm.
“Shouldn’t you still be in bed?” Nami asked.
“I’m going stir-crazy. I’m not used to taking this much time off, and I need to move around.”
“Where’s daddy?” Nami asked.
“After he was up late last night talking with the others, he received an early morning phone call.” Gillian scowled. “I think it was Trevor. Sounded serious, too, but he headed to his office and I went back to sleep.”
Ken shivered, catching him by surprise. Nami apparently noticed and gently nudged him. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I hope. I’m paranoid, that’s all.” His gaze skittered across Gillian’s, who met it for a moment before glancing away.
I feel like a co-conspirator. On multiple levels.
But Ken also knew that even if he wasn’t sworn to secrecy, much of what he knew shouldn’t be revealed to Nami. Not right now, anyway. It would do her no good to know and would unnecessarily stress her.
There were valid reasons for keeping the secrets he held, but it didn’t mean Ken liked keeping them.
Much as with dinner the night before, people drifted into and out of the kitchen for breakfast. Including Peyton, who was still on his cell phone, his body language tense when he emerged from his home office. Keeping the cell phone wedged between his ear and shoulder, he grabbed a plate of food and a mug of coffee, kissed Gillian and the baby, and retreated to his office, where he closed the door behind him with his foot.
Ken stared after him. That can’t be good.
Peyton looked like a man on a dark mission, and it unexpectedly triggered a bunch of related thoughts in Ken’s mind.
Tamsin scowled, her head cocked as she studied him. “Are you all right, Ken?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Just thinking about my to-do list.”
He was also thinking—or rather, trying not to think—about images that had suddenly burst into his mind.
Pictures Endquist had taken when he attacked and murdered Dewi’s parents.
The pictures Ken had briefly glimpsed on Endquist’s laptop after hacking into it for Beck and Badger, and then searching for the last file opened.
Scans of old Polaroids the psychopath had taken during and just after the attack on their parents before escaping.
Boy, how Ken wished he hadn’t seen them. The gruesome images were seared into his memory, an attack that happened in this very house. From where Ken currently stood, he had a partial view into the large living room, where he knew the attack had occurred because of where the fireplace was located.
According to Dewi, the house sat vacant for several years before Peyton remodeled it and moved in after meeting and mating with Gillian. But Ken couldn’t help replaying that night just a few weeks ago, standing in the backyard at Carl and Mateo’s house, where Beck’s emotional meltdown over Dewi’s scooter chase in Miami shook Ken to his core.
Beck’s visible anguish as he talked about how he’d cried while cleaning up the couple’s blood that night.
That where Ken stood right now came to happen only because Charles and Chelsea Bleacke were brutally murdered, and Dewi savagely injured.
Tamsin laid a hand on his arm. When he looked down, she stared into his eyes with concern painted across her features.
