“Why thehell?—”
“He was outside the museum this morning.”
She stares at me.
I stare back.
She doesn’t crack, but after one of the longest games ofdon’t blinkI’ve ever played, she looks away and pulls my coat tighter around her while balancing the cat.
“Why?” she says quietly.
“Why was he there?” I clarify.
“Whyall of this?”
“Human nature to want to find a treasure. Even if it doesn’t exist.”
She slides another look at me. “Blow through all of your boy band money?”
I snort in amusement before I can stop myself. That also doesn’t usually happen with people I haven’t known my whole life either. “No.”
“So you just want to find a treasure for the fun of it.”
There’s no right answer to that question.
No, Sloane, I want to find the treasure to end the curiosity about it so no one else finds out the secret I know that could end Shipwreck as you know it.
“Yep,” I say.
“I don’t believe you.”
That makes two of us. “You have a place to stay tonight?”
She’s still staring at me, but a visible shiver makes her shoulders twitch. “I can find a place.”
“Mine’s away from all of this.”
“Are you offering me a place to stay, or are you bragging?”
“Offering.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Good picture opportunity for Nigel and your grandmother. We’re getting married Saturday. We should be living together.”
“And?”
“And I’ll be sitting outside wherever you go anyway to make sure your ex doesn’t try any more shit.”
“Why?”
“He hurt Ellie, and now he’s doing bad shit.”
She flinches.
I watch her, but she doesn’t look back at me this time.
“Wasn’t your fault he was a cheat,” I add on a hunch.
