Page 22 of Art of Love

Chapter Seven

That was stupid! Dylan told herself as she stopped just beyond the tree line to take a couple of deep breaths. Her heart pounded against her ribs like a warning drum, and her legs ached from sprinting across the field. She knew she’d taken too long searching his room.

Way too long.

The moment she’d heard the truck pull up the gravel drive, she’d frozen, hands deep in the drawer of a nightstand in Max’s guest room, the one Abe had been staying in. Of course it had taken her a while to find out which of the rooms he had moved into at first. More time wasted.

Then, he had returned and she hadn’t even had time to fully process the sound before instinct kicked in, telling her to run.

And she had.

She’d bolted through the glass doors she’d easily opened earlier and rushed down the back slope like some sort of criminal.

Because she was one. When the occasion called for it.

Trespassing. Breaking and entering. Snooping through someone’s private things in hopes of finding answers to a case no one even wanted reopened. She’d even made sure to use the jammer for the security system she’d spied when she’d cased the place a few nights ago.

Now, back in her car, which she’d parked at the public beach access a mile away, she peeled off her gloves and stocking hat and tossed them onto the passenger seat as she gripped the steering wheel tight. The world around her remained dark and still. Such was life in a small town.

She shifted into gear and slowly drove away, keeping her headlights off until she was well out of sight from the house.

The back roads twisted through the hills as she made her way towards her father’s cabin. Her cabin now. Her thoughts spun faster than the tires on the wet pavement.

Had he seen her?

She didn’t think so. She’d been careful. But the way the porch light had shone on her had her second-guessing everything.

You were too curious, she scolded herself. You asked him about the journal. You should’ve waited to see what he shared willingly. Now he’ll know something’s off.

But what was she supposed to do? Sit around and wait for him to hand her a clue?

Earlier that night, she’d slipped the question in casually enough. “Do you write your lyrics down? Or do you just remember them?” and watched his face carefully.

“I have a journal I keep lyrics in,” he had answered.

“Do you take it everywhere you go?”

He’d opened his mouth to answer. She could see it, the shift in his eyes. Something about that question had struck a nerve.

But before he could respond, a wedding guest interrupted them, and the moment had vanished.

And now? She had nothing to show for her search. No journal. No ties to Kara Sinclair.

Just a room far neater than any musician’s space had a right to be. Organized. Bare. Like he’d purposefully left out anything worth finding. Maybe she should take a trip to his ranch in California?

No. His security was far too tight there. She’d read an article where a few fans had tried to break in and hadn’t even made it past the gate before his full-time security team had stopped them.

She turned off onto the long gravel drive leading to her cabin and parked in the shadowed curve of the garage. She sat in the stillness for a long minute, fingers resting on the keys, her thoughts looping back to the single photograph she had found tucked in the pages of a novel on the nightstand.

It had been old. Faded.

Abe, a few years younger. Smiling. Standing beside Kara.

They looked so in love with one another it hurt.

If he was what everyone thought he was, then why in the hell would he still have that?

He claimed in one of his first interviews not to have known Kara well. He claimed it was just a college fling.