Page 50 of On Edge

“I wasn’t there.”

“Are you certain?” He stares at me as if trying to see through me, clearly disappointed I’m not giving him anything useful.

“Not me.” I would remember that.

His eyes shutter, and his mouth makes a flat line. He’s not happy that I’m being evasive. “Right, then it was nice bumping into you, Miss Lovett. I should get back to ourillustrioushost.”

“Wait!”

He stops. “Yes?”

“In your article about the Swanleys…” I take a breath, seeing my chance to twist the conversation back. “…did you ever find out what really happened to the surviving children?”

Tobias tilts his head, clearly intrigued by my line of questioning. Well…as the article said, their daughter, Joanna, disappeared at the time and is still missing.”

My mouth is suddenly dry. “I meant the son.”

“Edward Swanley went to prison after he was convicted of manslaughter.”

A name. I have a name!

“I mean, what happened to him…after he got out? There wasn’t anything in the article about it.” The article was ripped in half, so I wouldn’t even know if it did. Tobias’s expression doesn’t change, so apparently not.

“The records were sealed. Juvenile case, you understand. The boy was sentenced to seven years in a Young Offender’s Institution, but I always had a hunch—” He stops, abruptly, studying my face. “Why are you so interested in a decade-old tragedy, Miss Lovett? Do you know something?”

“No, nothing. It’s just this place has always intrigued me, and well, now I’m here.” I shrug my shoulders. “I’m curious.”

“Is that right?” He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a crisp white business card. “Here.” He offers it to me. “Since you won’t talk to me now. Maybe you will when not entombed by such…oppressive surroundings.”

I stare at the card like it might bite.

“There would be substantial compensation for your inconvenience, of course.” He touches my arm.

I jerk my gaze up at him. “I’m not interested in money. I prefer the truth.”

Tobias cocks his head. “Then we have that in common, Miss Lovett.”

Before I can reply to that, footsteps resound, coming into the hallway.

“What the hell is going on here?” Severin’s voice cuts through the conversation like ice.

He’s standing in the doorway, his expression thunderous as he takes in Tobias and me talking. My nerves are set alight by the way he looks right at me.

I stare at him wide-eyed, drenched in fright, like a naughty schoolgirl with my hand in the cookie jar. Without knowing why, I step back, away from Tobias, shoving the card he gave me in my pocket.

“Just introducing myself,” Tobias says easily, hands in pockets too now, but I can see him taking note of Severin’s reaction.

“Sage.” Severin’s voice is deceptively calm, but his eyes are blazing. “Ithoughtyou were resting.”

I open my mouth to say…to say what?

When Tobias replies for me.

“Miss Lovett was just telling me that she’s staying here,” Tobias cuts in, clearly picking up on the tension. “And I was just wondering why. It was her grandfather’s bank that oversaw the auction for the sale of Grayfleet, wasn’t it? From her father’s company to yours?”

Severin glares at him. “Stick to what you were invited for, Ragg. Business profiles. Not gossip.”

“I never agreed to that, although your man tried to blackmail me into signing some ridiculous NDA on the way over. You can ask him yourself. I haven’t signed a thing yet.”