Page 93 of These White Lies

26

BRADY

The silence in the SUV is tense. An hour into our drive to her parents, and she still hasn’t said a word. Elizabeth waited up for me last night. She hadn’t asked for specifics about what Rhodes and I had done. Her only question was if it was over. And when I told her not yet, she’d only nodded and rolled onto her side, not saying a word when I curled around her back, holding her tight until she fell into a fitful sleep.

I know she’ll ask when she is ready.

It’s late morning, and there are still no news reports of Carrow’s death. Finn is monitoring the police feeds, and so far, there is no chatter about what happened. If nothing else, his housekeeper and the next shift of guards should have arrived. Whoever is handling the cover-up knows what they are doing.

I hear her let out a long, shaky breath. “Okay, tell me what happened.”

Leaving out the interrogation portion, I tell her what we learned.

“Carrow was another one of their loose ends.” Her voice is flat. “Like me.”

She’s angled toward the passenger door, hands clasped white-knuckled in her lap, eyes fixed on the blur of trees. Herhair is fixed in a loose knot, strands sliding free to catch the light, and every now and then her thumb presses against the edge of a fingernail—a small, restless tell that she’s fighting to keep it together.

“We have a lead. A name.”

“Anna.” She still doesn’t look at me. “Pretty common name.”

I adjust my grip on the wheel, at her defeated tone, and study her from the corner of my eye.

“It’s more than we had before. The way Carrow spoke about her, she might be in charge.”

“No.” She turns her intense blue eyes on me, and I briefly meet her gaze before returning my attention to the road. “Carrowwas an actual lead. Anna could be anyone.”

“Finn is already cross-referencing what we know about other Lapidarists and the name Anna. He’ll find something.”

In my periphery, I see her close her eyes and breathe deeply for a minute before opening them again. “Hopefully, we'll find something today.”

I offer her a smile, but the larger the Blue Ridge Mountains grow in the windshield, the more rigid she becomes. When we pass the sign for Fannin County, her body coils even tighter, and she falls silent again.

“You hungry?” I ask mostly to break the quiet.

She doesn’t move. “No.”

“You want to stop?”

“No.”

I wait a beat. “You sure?”

Her sharp reply slices through the air. “I’mfine. Stop worrying about me.”

“Yeah, no,” I say, my voice dangerously low. “We’re not doing this. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

She opens her mouth like she’s going to tell me, then shuts it, chin lifting in stubborn defiance.

“Why are you so nervous about seeing your family? You are tenser about this than when I told you about Carrow getting shot. And don’t tell me it’s just because you’ve grown apart.”

“He deserved it.” Her head snaps toward me, eyes narrowed. “Besides, don’t you already know?”

I blink. “Know what?”

“My dossier?” The words are flat, but there is a scathing undertone to them.

Ah, that. I sarcastically file a mental thank-you note to my little sister for stirring the pot.