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Plus, she might not be able to handle Alex in the throes of an animal rescue. It was hard enough not to mount her as she watched her drive away in a pick-up truck, her fully tattooed arm hanging out the open window.

The inside of Alex’s place was even bigger than it looked from outside. She didn’t get the full tour but guessed there had to be at least a dozen rooms spread out over two floors.

It was hard to believe that Alex lived here all alone, but the home didn’t feel cold and empty like she might expect.

Dark wood floors and large wood beams everywhere the ceiling slanted made the house feel lived-in and warm.

Everything had a sort of rustic, Spanish charm, including the enormous brown leather sectional capable of seating every resident of Charlotte’s apartment complex with room to spare.

The centerpiece of the living room was a huge, white stucco fireplace topped with a live edge mantel that showed its age in the most beautiful way. Charlotte was drawn to the framed photos arranged over the unlit hearth.

As she perused the images of Alex at various happy times in her life surrounded by what she guessed were di erent friends and family, a knot started to form in Charlotte’s throat as nausea roiled in her belly.

Charlotte picked up a gilded silver frame. The weight of it in her hands matched the heaviness replicating quickly in

her chest.

Running her fingertips over the glass, Charlotte smiled involuntarily at the image. A much younger Alex, no more than twenty, was standing arm-in-arm with another young girl as they posed with broad smiles in front of an ancient looking building. It reminded Charlotte of a cathedral, but given the girls’ matching Universidad de Salamanca t-shirts, she guessed they were at the university. Judging by Alex’s middle part, crimped hair, and unfortunate chunky blonde highlights, she guessed the picture was taken in the early 90s.

Charlotte’s head throbbed as her motion sickness increased. Alex wasn’t some larger than life mythical being.

She was just a person, who as far as Charlotte could tell so far, wasn’t hurting anyone. Did she really deserve to go to jail for something involving consenting adults?

Replacing the picture on the mantle, Charlotte made herself think of Jayson. The cops weren’t going to stop going after Alex and the spa. If she didn’t give them what they wanted, someone else would. If that happened, Alex would still have to deal with the consequences of her actions and she and Jayson would have nothing to show for it. Who would that benefit?

Plus, Alex had an ungodly amount of money. She could a ord the kind of lawyers that got the filthy rich o on technicalities. If people got away with murder, she could certainly find her way out of this. It would all turn out okay, even if the immovable knot in her throat didn’t believe her.

“That took longer than expected,” Alex announced as she wandered in from the back patio door while drying her hands

with a towel. Apparently, the extravagant front entrance was just for show.

“You look like you’ve been through it,” Charlotte joked as she regarded the mud on Alex’s previously pristine white shirt and the dirt smudged on her sweaty brow.

“Rama’s goats are fast and surprisingly hard to catch,”

she explained with a laugh. “It was a team e ort, but we got them all before they escaped to the street.

Charlotte hated how her heart leapt at the thought of Alex coming to the rescue of tiny goats while running through dirt without regard for her appearance. She wasn’t supposed to be that kind of person.

“If that wasn’t my favorite memory with my cousin,”

Alex said as she wiped her face, gesturing toward the picture Charlotte had just been admiring, “I’d destroy all evidence of that unfortunate hairstyle.”

“Is that in Spain?”

Alex nodded as she inched closer, the scent of her usual perfume replaced with perspiration and sunshine, an even more irresistible fragrance.

“I went to college in Madrid.” Alex gazed longingly at the photo. “Some of the best times of my life were spent in a thirteenth century institution that wouldn’t have let me in when it opened.”

Alex’s soft smile was a blade in a Charlotte’s gut.

“Where’s this?” Charlotte pointed to a photo of four teenage girls lounging in a pool.

Taking the frame o the mantle, Alex pointed to herself on one end. “That’s me at seventeen,” she explained, her finger hovering over a girl in a neon green string bikini.

“Those are my cousins. We spent every summer together at my aunt’s house in Miami. It was supposed to be an immersive experience. Our parents wanted us to speak English with minimal accents. They did the same thing with Portuguese and our uncle’s condo in São Paulo, but that was just a few weeks over winter break.”

Charlotte refrained from leering, but with dark sunglasses and a toned, tanned body, Young Alex was almost too beautiful to look at.