“But you didn’t.” Darius leaned forward, those dark eyes on a new target. “So let me be clear in what I’m asking now so you can be just as clear with your answer. Where were you, Eve, during the hours of twelve and two today?”
Eve could picture the house in front of her. She could feel the grass under her bare feet. She could smell smoke coming from somewhere in the neighborhood, probably someone grilling in their backyard. She remembered shivering at the cold but not as bad as she would later, since she hadn’t yet changed into her wedding dress yet.
Her childhood home.
That’s where she had been earlier that day, still undecided about what to do next to get out of the wedding. To stop from being legally tied to the Keyses. To instead use the change in their crumbling plan to her and Mitchell’s advantage.
She had just been staring and thinking about the present and future. Then, without realizing it, nostalgia from the past had swept her worries away for a while. Only a glance at her watch later had pulled her from her quiet recollection.
Whatever plan she would make would have to come after she donned her wedding dress.
So at 1:42 p.m., she had left the front lawn of her childhood home and hurried over to the bridal party’s dressing room at the old library to get ready. No thoughts of using Darius had crept inuntil she had taken off her engagement ring and caught sight of the scar on her hand.
Before that?
She hadn’t seen or talked to Mitchell at all during those two hours.
It was one thing to not correct Darius about Mitchell’s lie.
It was another to lie directly to his face.
But Eve wasn’t back in town to reminisce about the boy she had once promised to take care of for the rest of their lives. She was there to stop a man filled with greed, malice and power.
Eve took in a deep breath. She released it as she spoke clearly.
“I was with Mitchell Keys in his hotel room.”
And, just like that, Eve lied to become a murder suspect’s alibi.
However, the worst part?
She knew that Darius knew it too.
HE WASN’T ONEto pitch a fit but there he was—pitching it.
Darius threw his bag down against the couch. Like the rest of the furniture in his house, it wasn’t new, but it definitely wasn’t worn either. He rarely spent time lounging around, and that went double for lounging around in his home. If there was any one spot in all of Seven Roads that was worn because of him, it was his desk chair at the office or the strip of carpet that ran in front of his desk at home.
He was a man who was used to living in his work, pacing in his home, and only using his off time to do the necessities in life.
It was how he had been living between the walls of his childhood home since he had been the last one left.
Pitching a fit? Throwing a tantrum? Being annoyed enough to throw his bag and then start cussing?
That was the part of his work and life routine that was abnormal.
As was the fact of someone already inside of the house, answering back.
Theo Weaver hurried into the living room with a frying pan in one hand, a cell phone in the other and an expression that looked split between caution and fear. Add in the fact that he was wearing the joke apron his dad had bought Darius a few years back that readDon’t kiss the chef, I have trust issuesand the sight might have been comical enough to force Darius to see the humor in it.
Instead, he grumbled deep.
It was the first time since Theo had moved into his guest bedroom after his graduation that Darius had legitimately forgotten that he now had a temporary roommate.
One who was, unfortunately, very smart.
Trying to avoid the obvious wouldn’t work here.
Theo’s wide eyes lost their worry. He lowered his phone but kept the frying pan level.
