Page 55 of Over Her Dead Body

CHAPTER 21

EMMA

Ido my job.

I stay with the group, because Celeste has just reminded me whose name is on my paycheck and Reid is still standing in Philip Dane’s house pretending to be Martin Hale.

Owen appears beside me with a drink he does not seem to want.

“For the record,” he says, “I’m only mildly offended Celeste handed you the shiny new client.”

“Mildly?”

“Moderately. But I’m growing as a person.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

Owen glances at me. “That sounds ominous.”

“It should.”

He laughs. “Now I’m more offended.”

Near the terrace, Genevieve is standing closer to Reid than the room requires.

Owen follows my gaze. “I looked the guy up. There’s not much on him.”

“There are a lot of Martin Hales.”

“That’s what people with common names count on.”

He shrugs. “Probably nothing. Money likes privacy.”

“And you like clients.”

“I do. But I like your date standing under a seven-figure painting pretending he’s having fun even more.”

Todd catches me looking from beside the bar and grins.

“He is having fun,” I say.

Owen scoffs. “That’s what worries me.”

Genevieve calls Reid toward the smaller room with one lifted hand, and the rest of us follow because that is what happens in houses like this. Genevieve moves. The room obeys.

Todd falls in beside me. Owen stays close enough to pretend he isn’t interested.

The companion study hangs in a sitting room. Low sofas. One impossible orchid. A bar set into the wall. Three paintings lit as if they are suspects.

The Voss is smaller than the one at the preview. Rougher. Same yellow kitchen. Same table. No woman. No glass of water.

Only the window.

Outside it, the field is already burning.

I understand it before I want to.

“It changes the other painting,” I say.