“—that little glance, like time was chasing her. Like she had to get back to … whatever this was.”
The rain smeared the light outside into gray streaks. My mouth went dry.
“You followed her,” I said.
It wasn’t a question. It fell out of me, heavy with disbelief.
His expression flashed—annoyance, then satisfaction, as if he’d been waiting for someone to put the word on it.
“I had her watched,” he corrected, like that was somehow more respectable. “I didn’t follow her. I’m not a caveman. I hired professionals.”
Professionals.
The word made bile rise.
I thought of Rose’s notebook. Her warnings. Her careful separation. Her fear threaded into lines she’d written like she was trying to talk to me from the grave.
Had she known?
Had she been running from him and not saying it out loud because saying it would make it real?
My mind snagged on a memory I’d refused to touch until now: the call from Paris. The suddenness. The confusion. The way the details never made sense no matter how many times I replayed them.
An accident.
A wet road. A wrong turn. A car that “lost control.”
I had accepted it because I had to.
But standing here, staring at Randy’s bloodshot eyes while he calmly admitted he’d had my sister watched?—
My lungs felt too small.
I didn’t confirm anything. I couldn’t. My mind didn’t have enough proof to form a solid truth.
But the shape of suspicion slid into place like a key in a lock.
Not fully turned.
Not yet.
Just … there.
“You had her watched,” I repeated, voice thin.
Randy shrugged, like he was discussing taxes. “I had reason.”
Kane’s voice was quiet beside me. “Step away from the child.”
Randy ignored him.
His attention kept yanking back to me, like Kane was background noise and I was the real threat. The real witness.
“You’re her sister,” he said, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t know.”
“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t.”
His lips curled.
