“Can you follow me back to my house?” she asked. “Actually, you already know—” She caught sight of the muscles tightening in Josh’s jaw and stopped herself with a strangled cough. “Never mind. Can you follow me?”
“Ah… no,” Liam admitted. “I don’t have a car.”
“Where’s your BMW?” Josh asked, but Ellie shushed him with a look.
“That’s okay, you can come with us… ah, me.” She started walking, but Josh didn’t move.
“Ask him where his car is. Please.” It took everything she had not to roll her eyes, but then Josh continued, “He loved that car.”
“Where’s your car, Liam?” Ellie asked, unlocking hers and pulling the seat forward so he could climb in the back.
“I sold it. Last week.”
She raised an eyebrow. “After you broke into my house?”
“Yeah.” Liam looked at his feet. “It was awful. I didn’t want to do it, and then you caught me and… Hell.” He swallowed. “Thetruth is, I knew it was wrong. Even before I got there. The next day, I sold my car, and I used the money to pay my mother back.”
“Oh. Well. That’s….” She didn’t really know what that was. But he was trying. And Josh’s eyes had gone from arctic to somewhere more like the Irish Sea: cold and dangerous, but slightly less deadly.
And then something Liam had said earlier caught up with her. “You had a key to my kitchen door. How? Where did you get the key?”
Liam looked away, suddenly even more interested in the stones at his feet. “Warren got it from his girlfriend.”
“Victoria gave him my key?” Her voice broke on the question. She’d been so sure, and now?—
“No, he made a copy when he borrowed her car,” Liam explained.
Josh took hold of her hand and squeezed it gently. “Given everything we’ve learned about him, it sounds true.”
She squeezed back. It made sense. And Vic wouldn’t have done that to her. She had to believe that. No matter what else had happened.
“I’m really sorry,” Liam said again. And for the first time, she started to believe him. Even Josh looked like he might not kill him in the next few minutes.
“Okay,” she sighed. “Let’s get Warren out of our lives, and then we’ll take it from there.” She nodded to the back seat. “Jump in.”
“But that’s tiny!” Liam protested. “Can’t I sit in the front?”
“No!” Ellie and Josh both growled at the same time, and she couldn’t help but look at him and laugh. Josh’s lips turned up and he almost smiled, and it just made her want to laugh harder.
“Tell him ‘nix,’” Josh said. She rolled her eyes at him, and he shrugged.
“Fine.” She looked at Liam. “Nix.”
Liam stared at her. “What did you say?”
“Nix,” she repeated, while Josh muttered, “Follow the fucking rules,” under his breath.
She chuckled, grinning across at Josh. “He can’t hear you.”
“Obviously,” Liam grumbled, “since he’s unconscious.” He stared at Ellie, his expression full of confused suspicion. And she couldn’t blame him. From his perspective, her behavior must have been weird at best. Especially when she walked around to open the door for Josh—Liam would definitely not have been happy with the door opening by itself—and made a show of putting her bag in the footwell.
In the end, he climbed into the back seat without complaining, and Ellie took the reprieve.
The drive home was weird. Josh was silent, occasionally glaring at Liam as if plotting something dire. While Liam spent the time looking out his window as if he was imagining climbing out and making a run for it. It was a relief to turn down the single track to her cottage and pull onto her own driveway.
Until she saw the familiar car already parked there, and her adrenaline spiked all the way back up.
Victoria lifted her head from where she’d rested it on her steering wheel, watched Ellie park, and then slowly climbed out. She was wearing a tight black sheath dress that showed off her unusually prominent collarbones, and stilettos that must have made the drive a nightmare.
