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She immediately loses the smile and sighs quietly, “Yeah, she says his security cameras inside the apartment didn’t pick up anything. They mostly focused on his safe and his office.”

I grit my teeth. The footage from the apartment was the final Hail Mary. Right now, she still has no alibi. She was in the apartment with Richard alone.

“Halle…”

She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t do it, Alex. I was asleep and then I woke up and found him at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t kill him. His family are just assholes.”

I nod. I know she’s innocent, but it’s getting harder and harder to prove as each minute ticks by. “I know, I know. I just … I’ll figure something out, okay?”

Her final lifeline is whoever is behind those emails. I just need to find a name before an arrest is made and this could all be over. Not for the first time, I say a quiet prayer to whoever is listening that they aren’t playing me, even though I have a sinking feeling they are.

Across from me, Halle scrunches her nose slightly. “I hope you’re not working yourself up over this. I don’t need you to take care of me,” she says. “It’s my job to take care of you. It has always been.”

“I know,” I say. “But let me try at least? Just this one time, and then you can go back to being the overbearing older sister.”

She gives me a careful once-over before smiling easily, as if we aren’t discussing her potential murder trial. “What are you up to for the rest of the day?”

“Might head to the gym and then read up on a case.” I don’t like lying, but I know she’ll want to know more about Rowan if I tell her I’m meeting up with him. I don’t think I’m ready to open that can of worms yet. “You?”

“I need to pick up a new plant, and Solena asked me out for a drink tonight. You remember her, right?”

Solena is one of the many girls Halle keeps in her harem of admirers. “The one you moved in with after a week? The one who also keyed your car?”

She grins. “The very one.”

I laugh, my first genuine one in days. “Why did she do that again?”

“Something about me being too friendly with a waiter.” She waves a dismissive hand. “But that’s in the past. Jesus says you have to forgive.”

“Oh, so you’re religious now?”

She rolls her eyes. “Obviously not, but He is right in that one regard.”

I grin. “I think that Death card was actually for you. Maybe you need to let go of old patterns and stop being stagnant.”

She barks out a laugh. “Oh, I’m so getting you a deck for your birthday. You might have a gift.”

It’s October now, and my birthday is in February. I swallow, a ripple of fear traveling through me. If I don’t move quickly, Halle won’t make it to my birthday, she won’t even make it to her own in December.

I look down at my watch. It’s nearly three in the afternoon.

Time to go meet Rowan.

***

The night I met Rowan, I was sitting at the bar in Summit, loud house music pumping from the speakers, a breathy voice mourning a lost love over the thumping base. Red and gold strobe lights flashed through the room as I watched him approach me, confidence seeping out of his pores like everything and everyone in the room belonged to him, which I suppose was true.

His voice was smoky and his scent a blend of vanilla, spiced amber, and wealth. I was supposed to charm him, but the way he looked at me, his eyes full of nothing but lust, left me completely undone. I’d studied his file, looked at as many pictures of him as I could, but nothing prepared me for the real thing. Rowan Vasilyev was made of hard glass, all beautiful lines that could cut if you got too close.

But I knew how to lie through my teeth by then, knew how to smile and preen to keep myself alive. So, I smiled back at him and let him have me. It’s how I’d learnt to survive for all those years being passed from home to home and finally shelter to shelter with Halle.

In a few minutes of speaking, I realised pretending with Rowan wouldn’t be difficult. I liked the way his hand felt against the small of my back, steady and sure. I liked the way he looked at me, like I was the most important thing, even if I knew he looked at everyone like that.

Rowan knew how to possess things, and I was more than ready to let him have me.

Now, I lean against my car, a standard issue sleek sedan that goes fast enough if you’re ever caught in a high-speed chase, not that I ever am.

The rain has stopped but the clouds refuse to let up, a miserable omen for the months to come. We’re in a quiet part of the city, Harrow, the old industrial part of the city that has been transformed into a low-cost housing area. Out here, old mill houses have been turned into tight apartment buildings with stained paint and rusty gutters.