Page 63 of The Deputy's Secret Double

“Let’s go see if there’s a safe or something similar in the bedroom,” she suggested.

Price put his head back and chuckled.

“Wow,” he breathed out. “How did I not notice it was you? And here I thought I was observant.”

“To be fair, I don’t think most people would have thought it was me behind the mask. I also put on heels.”

He followed her into the bedroom.

“Heels?”

She nodded.

“When I realized who you were when you came to my house, I put on heels so I was taller than when we fought. I was worried too many similarities might really push my luck.”

Price remembered her sandals and their wedged height when he’d first officially met her that day. They had looked nice with her dress.

Turns out they were specifically to keep his suspicions at bay.

Price shook his head.

“You sure are something, Miss Shaw.”

She was already at the side of the bed, opening the nightstand.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, Deputy Collins.”

They spent the next few minutes searching in silence. Anthony Boyd didn’t have a safe or any kind of area that had a collection of seemingly important things. He was a spartan guy, all things considered. The pictures he had displayed were no exception.

“He put up all of the typical events,” JJ observed. “Graduation, birthdays and a few candids of who looked like friends. Have you seen any pictures of his dad, though?”

Price tapped one on the dresser next to the bed.

“Here. It’s the only one though.”

JJ sidled up to him. She peered down at the picture.

“He might just not be good at pictures,” Price noted. “Just because he doesn’t have a lot with his parents, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything there.”

JJ sighed.

Price thought back to her home from earlier that morning.

Maybehomewasn’t the right word. It was a house. A place where she slept and ate but living? It had reaffirmed the description that he’d come up with for the woman already.

Ghost.

She was going through the motions of living while trying to stay detached from the very same people.

What if she did find her brother? What if she did take down Lawson and his group?

Would she really not tell her brother who she was?

Would she just disappear from his life?

From Seven Roads?

From Price?