“I’m going to make dinner. Are ye vegetarian?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
He held up a tray of meat. “Beef stir-fry okay?”
“I won’t accept food from a man who’s going to sell me to the highest bidder.”
Tyler heaved another sigh. He set down the packet and reached for a knife block, pulling out a blade. He brought it to the open doorway, handle out, offered to me.
His gaze was deadly serious. “If I ever do that, ye have my permission to use this on me. Bury it in my back. I won’t stop ye.”
It was a trap. Of course it was.
I didn’t take it.
“I’d prefer you didn’t,” he added mildly. “But you’d be justified.”
Tyler stabbed the blade into the back of the sofa, leaving it embedded there. He retreated to the kitchen and got busy prepping the food.
A few minutes on, he continued chatting. “There’s a killer loose in Deadwater. Did ye know?”
Despite myself, I moved closer, lured by gossip and the scent of the meat as it hit the sizzling pan. I was starving. Couldn’t remember the last thing I’d eaten. Nothing today anyways. Well, yesterday. It was long past midnight. “No. Who died?”
“A lass named Esther Eavis and another named Karla. I’m naw sure of her surname.”
A warning played out in my mind. “I knew a Karla. I worked with her briefly at a club I went to.”
“Same woman. She came to Deadwater in search of a job. Was she a friend?”
God.We’d never spoken about my previous place of work, so she couldn’t have followed me, but poor woman. “I barely knew her.”
“Sorry all the same.”
“How… How did they die?”
“One strangled, one hanged, at least it looked that way.”
Involuntarily, I touched my neck. My scar. “No cuts?”
“No.”
Then it wasn’t the same as what happened to me. Besides, my attacker had been caught. Tension still infected my body.
I curled my fingers around the knife handle and tugged it free. Though he’d joked about finding me here with a baseball bat, I truly hadn’t considered hurting him. Only to talk about why I was here. Or…use the only leverage I’d ever been taught worked.
At the hob, pitch-black patio doors behind him, Tyler glanced over and noticed how I’d armed myself. The bastard smiled. “Convict called me on the drive back to talk shop. Mila was with him.”
“Tell me about her,” I ordered.
“Have ye really never met her?”
I managed a slow shake of my head. “We were kept apart. I knew she existed, though.”
“How?”
I hovered in the doorway. Not entering the room, but close enough to see him better. I pointed the blade. “You’ll answer my questions. What’s she like?”
He found a bottle of sauce from the fridge. Ignored my threat. “Determined. Single-minded, maybe. Reasonable.”
