Page 5

Jules

“ I can give you two grand, not a penny more,” the short, bearded man behind the counter tells me, his gruff voice agitated, thanks to my complete lack of negotiating skills. Seriously, I might as well be a bull in a china shop.

“I know for a fact that necklace is worth at least four times that.”

He glares at me. “Do I look like a high-end jewelry shop, lady?”

I glare right back, frustration and lack of sleep making me even less tolerant than normal.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I consider my options.

I need to see security footage from outside the motel so I might stand a chance at seeing which direction the killer ran off in.

And in order to do that, I need bribe money.

A lot of it.

Some for the coffee shop across the street, and some for the motel manager himself, since there are two cameras just outside the building.

“Can you not go any higher?” I ask. “Please?”

He glares at me. “I’m not interested in your flirting, lady. I’m a happily married man.”

A familiar knife twists in my gut. A decade ago, he wouldn’t have been too far off. But I know all too well what flirting can lead to, even when you don’t want it to. “I’m not flirting with you. It’s just—this meant a lot to me.”

“Two. Grand,” he says again.

Bile burns my throat. “Okay. I’ll take it.”

“Good doing business with you.” He fills out a white receipt then rips off the yellow carbon copy and tosses it to me. “I’ll get your cash.”

“Fantastic.” I glare down at the sheet. He and I both know he just took major advantage of me, but there’s not a thing I can do about it. Especially not now that I have Mr. Too-Handsome-for-His-Own-Good Riley Hunt on my heels.

I have absolutely zero confidence that he’ll do as I asked and go back to wherever he came from. In fact, I’m honestly betting he’s not too far behind me even now. I barely managed to shake him in the crowd as I left the motel.

My guess is he’ll find me again. I just hope it’s after I’ve gotten my answers. Then he can haul me back to Odie and get another stellar mark on his apparently impeccable record. Fresh anger saturates my mind at the thought of Riley “Arrogant Jerk” Hunt, but I shove it back down.

“Here you go.” The pawn shop manager counts out the money then sticks it in a yellow manila envelope and hands it to me. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

“Hardly,” I reply with a forced smile. Without thanking him for ripping me off, I turn and leave the shop.

The street is stifling today, Arizona heat pouring down on me.

I’m still not entirely sure why I came here of all places, but I knew if I wanted to avoid all of the investigators Odie would likely be sending my way, I needed distance.

Time to gather my thoughts and put together a plan for tracking my grandfather’s killer.

I’d needed to lay out all the pieces my grandfather told me over the days leading up to his death.

I’d honestly thought they were just ramblings.

An outline for the book he’d been writing now that he’d been coming up on a decade since leaving Hollywood.

Now, though, I’m wondering if they were clues. His way of warning me that things weren’t quite what they were supposed to be. He’d wanted so badly for me to get out of town for a while. Is it possible he was just trying to get me to safety because he knew someone was after him?

And if that’s the case, then why wouldn’t he get help?

“You need to leave this town, girl,” he’d told me. “ Put distance between you and it, and start over. You deserve to start over. Don’t you want to have grand adventures?”

A lump forms in my throat at the memory. I’ve had enough ‘adventures’ to last a lifetime, all of them taking place during the worst years of my life.

I take a deep breath and hoist my backpack higher on my shoulders. Obsessing over the past will do me no good now.

It is what it is, and I am who I am. Stained. Pieced together like shattered china.

Since I’ve spoken to the manager who is currently working the front desk of the motel, I decide to start there. I leave my hat on, though I remove my sunglasses before stepping inside.

“Hey!” I greet, putting on my best happy mask.

“What can I do for you?” she asks. I’d peg her as being in her mid-forties, though she’s definitely far from settled down. At least, that would be my guess, based on the fading stamp on the top of her hand.

“So, my ex got into my room and took something, and I want to have proof when I threaten to turn him in to the cops.”

She arches a brow, clearly intrigued. “Sounds like a real peach. How can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you might be willing to let me see the security cameras? Just for the last three hours. A very specific window, actually, since I caught him leaving.”

She narrows her dark gaze. “I’m not supposed to let anyone see those without a warrant. You got one of those?”

“No,” I admit. “But—” I reach into my pocket and withdraw a hundred-dollar bill still left over from the first pawn shop visit I made. “I can make it worth your while. Please, he’s real sour, and I don’t want to have to call the cops.”

She eyes me then the money. “Okay. Fine. Only because I have a jerk ex, too, and I hope you can get whatever you need without having to deal with the cops.”

“Thanks. You are an absolute doll.” I flash a smile and move around the counter as she ushers me into a back room that smells of pungent cigarette smoke and stale coffee. I have to practically hold my nose.

Please do not trigger a migraine. Literally, the last thing I need.

“What time was it?” she asks, taking a seat at the computer and unlocking the screen.

“About four in the afternoon,” I tell her. “He jumped out my window.”

“Okay. Let’s see what we can do here.” She opens up a screen showing a recording of the sidewalk just outside the hotel. It’s aiming back toward the front but catches enough traffic that I can make out grainy versions of the men and women traveling by.

After hitting a few buttons, she rewinds it and pulls up footage timestamped 3:57 p.m. I lean in a bit closer, narrowing my gaze as I study everyone moving past. Men, women—they all look the same.

Focused on where they’re going and uninterested in the hotel.

Until— “Right there. That’s him,” I say as I note a bulky man with a hood pulled low over his head.

He keeps his face turned from the camera as he makes his way up toward the motel.

Since the rooms all have exterior entrances and exits, I doubt he went to the lobby first.

Minutes tick by, and she fast-forwards it until she sees me walking across the street. I keep my face tilted down just the same as he did, though I do glance back once before disappearing from view.

“It was right after this that he left.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t fast-forward. “Oh man, look at that guy. Great looking dog, too!”

I don’t have to ask to know who she’s talking about because none other than Riley Hunt is seen crossing the street on the security footage, leash in hand as his dog trots happily beside him.

Women passing by turn to look at him, and it only irritates me more. No man should look that good. Especially one as arrogant as he is.

“There’s your ex again,” she says as the hooded man bolts down the sidewalk. He rushes around to the driver’s side of a black sedan with no plates then peels off onto the road. “I don’t know how much help that will be. Couldn’t see his face.”

“It is so much help.” I snap a picture of it with the pay-by-the-minute phone I grabbed a week ago. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t—uh—don’t tell anyone I did this, okay?”

“I won’t. You have my word.”

Two hours later, and I still have next to nothing.

Well, not entirely. Thanks to the security cameras outside of the motel, I got to see him jump down from the window and use the fire escape to sneak off into the alley. It wasn’t much, but I was able to watch him climb into that car.

So that’s something, at least. Be on the lookout for dark sedans. That’s a rule I’ve added to my brand-new survival handbook.

I finish making notes in my notebook then lean back against the pillows on the bed and groan in frustration. I’ve thought about calling Odie at least a dozen times since that night.

One of those times, I even picked up my phone and dialed his number.

But doing so won’t help me get answers, and all it will do is put him in more danger. I have to do this. Not just for me but for him and my grandfather. I’m no idiot—I know Odie has always considered me a liability to the family.

And I definitely can’t blame him. When I finally made my way back home from the hell I’d gotten myself trapped in, I spent years partying. Doing anything I could to wipe the memories from my brain.

Nothing worked, and it had only led me deeper into hatred for myself and the world around me. My grandfather put me in a program, and I relapsed six months later. Then, two months after that, I got sober again and have been ever since.

Nearly ten years.

But Odie never fully trusted me again.

Grandfather did though. Tears sting my eyes. He always told me how proud he was of me. How blessed he was that God gave him a granddaughter like me. I’d told him that I wasn’t sure I’d be thanking God for a screwup like me, and he just shook his head and told me I was being foolish.

That, even if I was perfectly flawed, just as we all are, I was still his perfect little girl.

My throat constricts, emotion I’ve tried so hard to keep buried resurfacing. Riley Hunt had accused me of being a murderer. Of killing my grandfather. Does that mean Odie suspects that I did?

Does he really think me capable of such things?

Or was that merely a manipulation tool used to try and get me to come home?

My grandfather’s face swims into view again. Green eyes he passed down to my father, who then passed them down to me. Wrinkled cheeks and a smile that never faded. Not until that killer stole it from him.

From all of us.

I clench my hands into fists at my sides as anger burns through the grief in my chest. How anyone could steal a life, I’ll never know. Even as angry as I am, as desperate as I am to catch this guy, killing is just not something I can do.

No matter how badly I want to see him suffer just as my grandfather did.