Page 88 of The Silent Note

“Do you really want to do this?” Mom leans forward. “Because if I walk through those doors, you won’t see me again, Grace. You want to live life by your terms? Fine. But I won’tpick you up when you come back, bloodied, bruised and crying. I won’t feel sorry for you then.”

“Mom…”

She stares me dead in the eyes, her face set like flint. “Now… do you still want me to leave?”

Chapter Twenty-One

ZANE

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, walk me through that again?” Dutch is still gripping his guitar, but he hasn’t played a note since Finn and I got back from the prison and sent an alert to meet in the practice room.

“Someone offed Slavno, but before he croaked he slipped something important to a cleaning lady. Romeo here,” Sol points at me, “dug through a dumpster to get it…”

“It wasonetrash bag.”

“It counts,” Finn says, glancing up from his book. A book that I know he isn’t reading because he hasn’t turned the page in three minutes. Ever since he rejected that call from dad, he’s been in a weird mood.

Well, weirder than usual.

Finn is quiet, but I’m his brother. I know how to read his ‘quiets’. This silence is really freaking heavy.

Sol keeps summarizing. “Slavno’s ‘evidence’ is a key to a self-storage unit, but the storage unit they checked out here in the city isn’t the one this key belongs to. So now they’re back at square one. Slavno’s still dead and they still have no evidence.”

Dutch narrows his eyes. “No kidding. I got all that,” he says flatly. “What I don’t understand is who told you that key was evidence? What makes you so sure it was evenfromSlavno?”

“The cleaning lady said so.”

“Exactly. Who’s this cleaning lady? Where’d she come from?”

Irritated, I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Dutch arches a brow and I want to break his nose so bad, my wrist starts itching. I use a drumstick to scratch at it as I debate why punching my twin in the face would be a bad idea.

Because he’s got two working hands and you’ve got one.

Fair point.

“Don’t you see the cross carving?” I drag the drumstick out of my sling and point to the key in Sol’s hand.

My best friend peers at it. “Looks like a plus sign.”

“That’s what I said,” Finn mumbles, turning a page.

I glare at him.

“This could be a diversion.”

I scoff. Dutch’s doom and gloom personality must be rubbing off on Sol. Or maybe he’s inhaled too much smoke from all the fires because where the hell is the guy who’s down for anything?

“Shouldn’t we accept that Slavno is dead and the investigation’s over?” Sol tosses the key.

I snatch it out of the air with one hand.

“No, because then he’d have to tell Miss Jamieson she married him for nothing and he’d rather jump off a roof than do that,” Finn says.

“Shut your face. Iwilltell my wife that Slavno is dead. Just… not right now. Not until we have the evidence in hand.”

“Evidence that could be in Hawaii for all we know,” Dutch points out. He glances up from his phone and catches the giant question mark on my face. “I just looked it up. That company is nationwide. You’re looking at a year-long search minimum.”