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As we’re getting ready to leave a short while later, Ford tips his head sideways. Good. He’s got news for me, hopefully about the tap on Sasha’s brother. The two of us step a few feet away from the rest of them while everyone says their goodbyes.

“Well?” I ask. “Is it somehow good news?” I know it can’t be that bad or he wouldn’t have waited to tell me.

“What do you think?”

I fix him with acut the shitlook.

“I can’t tell yet. Macklin sent his parents an email, said to be prepared for some more bad news to hit the press.”

“Hardly new.”

“Yeah, but by the sounds of it, he’s never given them that kind of warning before. Could be big.”

I grunt slightly, running through possibilities in my mind.

“There’s something else, though.”

My stomach jumps. “Creelman?”

“No, he’s fucking AWOL. You might be good on that front. Too soon to tell. He hasn’t made an appearance yet.”

That hits me strangely. I should be glad about this news. I am. But I don’t trust he’d give up on her that easily. Sasha’s not exactly easy to forget.

But that’s not what Ford was going to say.

He runs a thumb over his chin. “Now, it might be nothing, but have you heard from Lionel?”

This I wasn’t expecting.

“Yeah. We texted a few days ago.”

“Have you heard from him since, though? Any emails?”

My stomach shifts. “No.” Fuck. I’ve been far from observant these past few weeks. “I’ve been working, but not on anything that I needed to reach out to him about.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

I don’t say anything.

“Still, let’s let each other know if we hear anything.”

On the way home, Sasha slides her arms around my waist on the back of the bike. Between the talk about Eleanor and the gnawing feeling in my gut that something’s brewing, all I want to do is get her straight home and lock up my doors.

But as I’m putting my helmet on, she says, “I don’t want to go home yet.”

My stomach clenches. I consider just telling her no and heading home with her pissed, but I let that shit go. I can’t protect her from assholes by turning into one. “Where do you want to go, Angel?”

Her voice is soft through the speaker. “Take me to where she died.”

My chest squeezes painfully tight.

I kick the starter and turn us around, heading over the bridge to the other side of the Quince River, up the hill to my family’s hotel.

Despite it being in the same town as me, I haven’t been here in a couple of months. I haven’t been able to make the last few board meetings, and other than that, I don’t have occasion to go. But it’s funny how much it feels like home.

Both wings of the resort are now fully up and running after the east wing, where Eleanor was murdered, sat unused for decades. Cassandra and her husband Blake turned our family business around after it fell into serious risk of failing after Mom passed.

The resort, nestled high on the hill overlooking Quince Valley, is a favorite among heavy players from all over the east coast and beyond.