Chapter 24
Braden ushered Evelyn and Cressida away from the window.
“It’s just the wind,” Evelyn said. “Takes the power out at times.”
“I’d agree, except for the thump upstairs. Is anyone else in the house?” Braden had watched her assistant drive away.
She slowly shook her head.
“I need to check that out.” The manor was too far from the tree line for the wind to have blown a tree over onto the house.
“Cressida?” Braden shifted toward her as he grabbed his 9mm gun and headed toward the door. “Close the door and lock it.”
“We’ll be okay here,” she said.
He’d radio for backup, though it normally took entirely too long for official law enforcement backup to come out, and both Hawk and Cole weren’t readily available. Braden stepped out into the shadowed hallway and listened.
Watched and waited.
The slightest creak sounded from above.
Upstairs.
Cressida moved to close the door to the room.
On second thought . . . “Come on. Let’s get you outside and into my vehicle. Someone’s upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Evelyn gasped. “But—”
“Let’s go.” He cleared the front area, then rushed them outside. He urged Cressida into the driver’s seat.
She didn’t question his thinking. He started to close the door, but she grabbed his hand—a spark of energy coursed up his arm. “Braden, be careful.”
“I will.” He shut the door. Raced back to the house, then crept inside. How could someone think it would be a good idea to “illegally” enter a room upstairs while a Timberbrook County detective, Cressida, and Evelyn were inside the house.
The only reason someone would risk it was if they were afraid that time was running out.
He crept up the grand circular staircase, portraits of the ocean, Boston, the Washington coastline, and Evelyn’s family lining the walls.
She hadn’t fully given up her legacy, bringing at least those memories—along with finances—with her to Washington.
One portrait of an older man—her father or grandfather?
—stared back at him, eyes seeming to follow him as he started toward the room where someone made entirely too much noise.
Tightening his grip on his handgun, he crept forward, mentally preparing to face off with a bold criminal—someone willing to risk much for what they wanted.
Braden remained guarded in case others were present and tried to approach him from behind.
He crept toward the room next to where Collins had been shot and gently pushed the door open.
He entered the ransacked room but found it empty.
Curtains flapped in the breeze of an open window.
Had the intruder escaped? Or was this a ruse?
Was someone still inside? He cleared the room.
At the window, he leaned out. No rope or ladder to assist with the almost twenty-foot drop.
Braden painstakingly cleared the rest of Driftwood Manor and contacted Trent to make sure he brought an evidence kit.
Cressida and Evelyn had dutifully waited in his car the entire time.
Clouds moved back in, and the sky decided to unleash a torrent on them to add to the drama of the day.
He ushered them both back into the house and explained what he’d found to Evelyn.
Evelyn had never given him any details about the argument between Madeline and Collins.
“A deputy is coming out to dust for prints that could tell us who was in your house today. Are you sure you didn’t hear what your assistant and Collins were arguing about?”
Evelyn’s face paled. “I didn’t hear the words, only the tone.”
He suspected she knew what this was about. “Today someone was in the room next to where Collins was shot, searching, while a county detective and investigative journalist were in the house with you. That’s a big risk, if you ask me. What was so important? What were they looking for?”
This woman was held in high regard by everyone. She went out of her way to assist those in need—a very particular need, that is. So why was she hiding something?
“No!” Evelyn hurried toward the stairs, abandoning her usual grace as she bounded up each step with a speed that took him by surprise.
“It’s a crime scene now. Again.” Whatever. “Please don’t go in there,” he called after her.
But he wouldn’t physically stop her. He followed as she entered the room—without him even having to show her which one. She stood in the center of the room, taking in the destruction, a look of horror on her face, then she sank down on the edge of the bed and held her chest.
Cressida’s face was panic-stricken as she shared a brief glance with him, then sat next to Evelyn on the bed. “Evelyn, are you okay?”
Braden moved to stare out the still-open window and shut it so the rain wouldn’t blow into the room.
He hated touching the window, but the rain would wipe away the evidence just the same.
He would preserve what he could. When Trent got here, Braden would take to those woods and search, though whoever had been inside this room was long gone.
Evelyn knew something. She hadn’t struck him as the type of person to hold on to a secret that could prove dangerous to others, if that’s what was happening here.
Then again there was the matter of her shushing him when he brought up another boat.
The intruder’s actions here today made it clear that someone was desperate to uncover—or bury—a secret.
The dangerous truth that Evelyn referred to, even leading them to believe the possibility her hired investigators had been killed.
Like Cressida’s father?
While Cressida comforted Evelyn, he watched out the window, thinking through all he’d learned today. Evelyn hadn’t actually told them anything. She raised questions that he sensed she wanted answers to herself but was afraid to send anyone into that danger.
What in the world?
Indeed. Whatever this was about was big. After all, Octavia Dane had sent him here in the first place.
International.
An abandoned salvage ship.
Murders.
Cressida’s father and his research.
And now, Evelyn Monroe—the heir to the Harborstone Shipping Company fortune—in danger in her own home. Harborstone. Where had he heard that name before?
Braden would give anything to get Cressida out of this, but his hands were tied. If he told the truth, he wouldn’t be able to protect her. She would ghost him like she’d done her mother, who’d had to resort to sending a covert spy-protector.
He tasted acid.
He hated himself.
But he would use the time he had to get to the bottom of this.
A shadowy figure stepped out from the edge of the woods near the cliff’s edge and looked at the window where Braden stood—through a rifle scope.