Once I was showeredand changed, I dropped by Jeb’s room, Lucas in tow. It took a lot of convincing on my part, but I managed to get him to stay outside while I visited with my uncle. My intentions for stopping by weren’t only selfless, though. I’d printed all the forms for my permit, for which I needed my guardian’ssignature.
Isobel must’ve drawn the curtains open, because the muted light splashed hisbedroom.
“Hi, Jeb. It’s Ness,” I said as I approached him. I didn’t want to spookhim.
“Is it done?” His voice was jaded, just like hisexpression.
“I don’t know.” I pulled a chair up to the bed. “Have you eaten?” The laden tray on his nightstand told me he hadn’t, but I was hoping my question might stir his interest infood.
“AndLucy?”
“Lucy?”
He fastened his pale-blue gaze flecked by burst blood vessels to my face. “I thought you might have somenews.”
I shook my head. “But I can call Eric. Do you want me to phone him?” I didn’t have Eric’s number, but Lucas probably did. I could get it fromhim.
“No,” Jeb said quietly. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Then my uncle’s insubstantial voice gusted through the quiet bedroom. “What do I have to live for now,Ness?”
I could’ve lied to him and said the inn, but he didn’t even have that anymore. Who was going to take himin?
“You heard Everest sold the inn to AidanMichaels?”
His pupils contracted with surprise, and his pale lips fell open. He hadn’tknown.
“He sold it in exchange for his help in”—I toyed with my mother’s ring, weaving my fingers in and out of it—“tampering with the pack’s security monitors and getting out ofBoulder.”
My uncle gaped at me, confirming he hadn’t known any of this. Talk about being the harbinger of crap news. I released the ring and set both my palms on myknees.
“I should never have put it in his name. Lucy, she said—” His voice broke. “Doesn’t matter anymore what she said.” He sealed his lips, as though to prevent himself from badmouthing the mother of his child. After another long stretch of silence, he said, “I own a few apartments in downtownBoulder.”
Ifrowned.
“I’ll have one readied forus.”
I squeezed my knees. “Us?”
“You andme.”
So he wasn’t planning on ending his life. “You don’t have to worry about me, Jeb. Frank said he could take mein—”
“You’re my ward, not his,” he snapped. That was the most energy I’d heard permeate his tone since the day of the last trial when he’d found his wife holding Evelynhostage.
I wanted to live with Evelyn, but I couldn’t abandon my uncle. “Okay.”
Suddenly, he sat up in bed. “Can you hand me mycell?”
I got up to retrieve his phone from where I’d put it to charge days ago and then I stood watch as he dialed a number and barked at the unfortunate soul on the otherend.
After disconnecting, he said, “Have one of the housekeepers stop by this address. The place probably needs a good cleaning.” He filched a pad of paper embossed with the inn’s logo and a pen from the drawer of his nightstand table, scribbled an address, then tore off thepaper.
I took it reluctantly, but then pushed away my reluctance. Although my uncle had been the one to drag me back to Boulder the second he found out I was living in LA motherless, he wasn’t to blame for the fiasco that had ensued. If anything, I should have been relieved that he cared enough for me that he wasn’t skirting his responsibilities. I folded the note with the address, deciding I would take care of the cleaningmyself.
He got out of bed so suddenly I stepped back so he wouldn’t bump into me and send me flying backward. Anger flushed his features and sparked in hiseyes.
“I can’t believe he struck a deal with your father’s killer,” he muttered under his breath, grabbing the frame of a watercolor painting and tugging on ithard.
I braced for chaos by hunching a little, but Jeb didn’t toss the canvas across the room. Instead, the frame folded like a book page. Behind it was a safe. He entered a six-digit number, and the safe beeped. He rifled inside, rustling papers, knocking over jewelry boxes until he found what he was looking for: an envelope. He peered inside, extracted two keys hooked to the same ring. He slid one off and tossed me the keyring. It landed at myfeet.
