“Thank you.” I nibbled at the crust.
He grinned. “Eat, the food will help soak up the alcohol.”
I took a few more bites, sat my plate on the side table, and slumped back on the couch. “Your smirk is not helping.”
“I’m going out to drink . . . a lot!” He mimicked my words to him yesterday, pretending to be huffy.
I ignored his comment and thought back to the reason I’d drunk so much in the first place. “Did you find Jefferson or Cole?”
“No, not yet. Matt has watches on the remaining families, though, which you would have found out if you bothered to stay a little longer.” He threw me a condescending look.
“Matt thinks they’re in danger then, and it is something to do with the development?”
“Is there anyone who wants you dead?”Why ask the question if he thought it was Cole?
Ethan shrugged. “Matt is sufficiently concerned, but it’s just a precaution until we can talk to Cole or Jefferson.”
He mentioned getting more answers from them with such confidence, as if it was a given, as if they’d just spill the beans. The same confidence Karson had last night.
I stared at him, my friend, and that’s what we’d become—friends.
“Of all the places he could build, why choose that estate? Why go to all that trouble killing people for it? It makes no sense. Is there gold or something buried up there we don’t know about?”
“We don’t know if he has killed anyone yet, not for certain.” He sat his plate on the coffee table. He’d taken all of a half a dozen bites. “But if I find out they had anything to do with Katrina’s or those children’s deaths, I will kill them.”
People said things like that all the time in moments of anger, but they didn’t mean it. When it came to crunch time, most people wouldn’t harm anyone. Yet there was something in his tone and a look on his face, something hard, something lethal. Something that made me think he meant it.
Thump, thump, thump.
The image played back in my head of the night at the bar and Ethan’s eyes staring back at me, black, bottomless pits of rage.
A chilled washed over my skin. I folded my arms and rubbed them.
As if he read my thoughts, his expression softened, and he sighed. “It was probably just an accident.”
“Do you really believe that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what I believe,” he replied, his gaze dropping to the floor.
“The fire is a big coincidence, too big. But murdering children . . .” my voice trailed off. It was a cruelty I couldn’t comprehend. No human with a shred of decency would do something so horrific. “But it makes no sense to put a development in an area that is dangerous, where people die, and locals say ghosts and vampires dwell.” I cringed as I mentionedthe last part, there was no such thing as vampires or ghosts.I saw my mother,my brain argued.
Ethan snorted. “Superstitious fools with nothing better to do than make up stories to entertain themselves.”
“Something isn’t right—there’s more to this story. There’s something we’re missing.”
“The only thing missing is you in my bedroom.” He changed the subject without skipping a beat.
I rolled my eyes. “Be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious.”
Helookedserious. Dark blue eyes locked with mine, tinged with desire, and I felt a tingle in places I definitely shouldn’t feel them. Why did he have to be so fucking stunning?
“Ethan!” I berated him. “We should be more worried about finding out why he wants to come to Church Heights.”
“Forget about it, Amy,” he said flatly, breaking eye contact as he collected both plates, heading to the kitchen. “Leave the investigations to Matt.”
“You’re not fooling me,” I said, noting how quickly he tried to divert the topic again. “You know something!”
