Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“I don’t remember much about the night my father died. It was storming. I could hear thunder rumbling over and over again. I-I was scared, so I went looking for my dad. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Actually, I couldn’t find anyone, not at first.”
– Emerson Marlowe
For a honeymoon, there was a surprising amount of no sex.
Emerson crept behind Gray as they snuck around the sprawling resort property. They’d spent the last few hours reviewing the case files. Working silently. Not touching.
Okay, so fine. She’d expected sex on their pretend honeymoon. She got it was an undercover assignment. Understood. But after the previous night, after the way they’d burned up the bed together, she’d thought…
What did I think? That we would pick up where we left off?
Not happening. Clearly. Because Gray was…not interested? Because he’d only wanted one time with her? Because…
She’d disappointed him?
Emerson had a million questions swirling in her mind, but she kept her lips clamped shut as they maneuvered around the property. Gray had already given her schematics for the resort. They’d seen plenty of maps and layouts online. But he’d still insisted on walking the territory himself.
She wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.
Three couples were dead. Three, out of over forty thousand.
The first couple, Kris and Wendy Prichard, had honeymooned on the island just a little over a year ago.
They’d been high school sweethearts. Gone to college together.
Got married shortly after graduation. Seemingly, they’d had an idyllic honeymoon.
They’d gone home and, two days later, they’d died in a car accident.
Not some brutal murder. An accident. Or, so the police on scene had thought at the time.
But Gray had gotten access to a report that indicated the vehicle’s brakes had been useless on the night of Kris and Wendy’s deaths.
Despite that revelation, a revelation their own investigation had uncovered, the local cops had clung tightly to the accident theory.
Brakes went out. Tragic events happened.
There’d been only a minimal investigation. Until now.
Couple number two on Gray’s list—that would be Zac and River Turner.
It had been Zac’s second marriage. River’s first. He’d been a doctor.
She’d been an artist. They’d honeymooned at the island about four months prior.
River’s social media had been full of happy pictures from the resort.
Sunrise yoga. Stand-up paddleboarding. Spa relaxation.
Even a pic of River riding a horse on the beach as she grinned from ear to ear. Everything had seemed perfect.
Then they’d gone home. Two days later— two days— they’d been killed while they were on a morning jog together. Both attacked and brutally stabbed as they ran. Zac had died right there on the running trail. River had made it to the hospital. And only that far. She’d died in the ER.
The cops on that case had no leads. River and Zac had been running in a park right before six a.m. No witnesses. No leads.
Until now. Until Gray. Until he’d taken the case because of Cassius. And that led them to the third couple.
Anzo and Kim. Kim had been a cop. Anzo had been part of Cassius’s MC. Kim and Anzo had first met when she’d been investigating the motorcycle club. Only instead of arresting the guy for anything, Kim had married Anzo. From the photos that Emerson had seen, the two had looked wildly in love.
Anzo had gotten out of the MC after his marriage. He’d stayed out, stayed busy opening up a series of restaurants, for five years. Then he and Kim had returned to Sea Island for their anniversary. If you looked at their photos, you would think they’d been deliriously happy. The perfect couple.
Sure, expressions could be faked. It was so easy to look happy in the two seconds that it took to snap a pic. But…
I saw the videos, too. Videos from their small wedding ceremony five years ago. Videos that had been taken on their honeymoon. Kim’s father had paid for their honeymoon—their first trip to Sea Island.
For the anniversary trip, Anzo had proudly footed the bill.
Had splurged hard on his wife and ordered all the bells and whistles for the trip.
An adoring Anzo had followed his wife everywhere around the resort, always having his phone at the ready, and recorded videos had caught him telling her that he was “the luckiest bastard in the world.”
After the weeklong trip, Anzo and Kim had gone home. Two days later—because it was always two days as Emerson had discovered when she studied the files—they’d been dead. Anzo had been shot with his wife’s gun. One that she had then seemingly turned on herself.
Except…
There had been no gunshot residue on her fingers.
And, in fact, two of her fingers had been broken.
As if the person who’d shoved the gun into her hand had used far too much force.
He’d snapped her pinky and ring finger. Plus, he’d put the gun in the wrong hand. It had been found in Kim’s right hand.
She’d been a lefty.
All points that Emerson had learned Cassius had made to Gray in order to plead his case. Cassius had actually done the digging to find the previous two couples, as well. He’d put it all together because the deaths had occurred in different cities, with different cops investigating.
That was why it had been so easy to overlook the crimes. Different places, different types of kills. Especially the first, staged to look like an accident.
“Emerson, are you paying attention to anything I am saying?”
Her gaze had been on the stand-up paddleboard rental booths that waited down on the beach. She’d gotten lost for a moment, imagining Kim smiling at Anzo as she balanced perfectly on the board. He’d filmed her doing that. And… “ I’m the luckiest bastard in the world.’”
He had been lucky. Until the end.
“I was thinking about the vics,” she said, replying a bit too quickly. But she had been thinking about the victims and feeling so very sad for them all. Lives cut short just when they should have been at their happiest.
Gray grunted. “For the moment, how about you stay focused on us?”
She frowned at him. They’d already crept past two of the pool areas, then edged around the tennis court and the pickleball areas.
Nothing out of the ordinary had jumped out at them.
“What is it, exactly, that we’re looking for in the middle of the night?
” Everything was dead quiet. She hadn’t even seen security guards patrolling the grounds.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” he muttered. He turned and stalked forward.
“Oh, that’s clear.” She advanced and plowed right into him when he spun around. His hands rose up and clamped around her shoulders.
She wasn’t wearing her heels. Heels hardly went well with sand, so she’d traded them for flat sandals that strapped around her feet. A billowy skirt. A soft blouse. Meanwhile, Gray was clad all in black. He blended perfectly with the night.
“I don’t know what we’re looking for,” he added, voice carrying just to her. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t search.”
Okay. Again, not clear. “Is this going to be a gut-instinct type of situation?”
His hold tightened on her. “I had to fight for this case at the Bureau. The kills are too scattered. Victims in different states. Different methods of death. If Cass hadn’t come to me, so very certain of his friend’s murder, so certain that Kim hadn’t killed her husband, the perp would still be flying under the radar.
I don’t even know if there are more vics.
No judge is gonna give me warrants to search here—the ties are too flimsy to order a full search of the resort.
And the resort owner will lawyer up way too fast when he finds out what is happening.
So you and I have to investigate as best we can.
We have to look for something that doesn’t belong.
Something that might point us in the right direction. ”
Footsteps. Emerson heard them shuffling closer even as Gray swore. He pushed her back with his grip on her, turned quickly so that she would be the one spotted—easier to do in her brighter clothes—and he put his mouth on hers. Kissed her beneath a softly swaying palm tree.
The footsteps drew closer. She heard whistling.
Though it was pretty hard to concentrate on the footsteps and whistling when Gray was close and his mouth pressed to hers, tempting her to part her lips, to taste him, to?—
“Oh, sorry, folks.” A cheerful voice. “Almost didn’t see you there.”
Gray let her go. Her head turned toward the voice. She saw a flashlight hitting the ground nearby. She was glad the light hadn’t been directed right at their eyes.
“Kinda late for a stroll, isn’t it?” The voice belonged to a security guard. She could see the hotel’s uniform. The star-shaped badge she’d noticed other security guards sporting at check-in.
“I wanted to take a walk under the stars with my new bride.” Gray lifted her hand to his lips.
A shiver skated over Emerson when she swore she felt the lick of his tongue against her skin.
“Oh, the view out here is killer,” the guard readily agreed.
Emerson stiffened at that particular word. Killer.
“A million lights shine in the sky. But to really see the stars best, you should head away from the resort. The darker it gets around you, the more incredible the view above is.” He waved at them. “You stay safe out here.” He strolled away, still whistling.
Gray kept right on holding Emerson’s hand.
She watched the guard vanish. When he was gone, she slowly exhaled. Should she ask for her hand back? “So, that’s our plan? Fake kiss if we’re spotted?” Emerson nodded. “Got it.”
He growled and let her go. “Just stay close.”
“Right. Because you might need to grab me and kiss me to fool a guard. Check.” Her heart was racing. Not from fright. From the kiss. Dammit, how could he be so unaffected? Did the previous night’s activities truly mean nothing to him?