*
Evie dashed into her grandmother’s house to make sure she was fine and didn’t need anything before she ran up to her room to grab the information on both Anthony and Jeremy which Noah’s man, Bruno, had sent over last night. Lucky for her, she’d charmed Bruno when Lexi was recovering; he sent her everything without questioning it. He’d just made her promise she wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Since she didn’t plan on it, she should be keeping that promise.
On her way back out to Anthony’s, she grabbed a large thermos and filled it with coffee. Having spent most of the night awake going over all the paperwork, she was tired. She was going to need to be on the top of her game if Anthony was going to allow her to continue to help.
“Do you need a condom?”
Evie stopped in her tracks and spun around to face her grandmother. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you think I’ve gotten to this age and not know what happens between an attractive man and woman when they start to spend a lot of time together?
“Especially when one of them goes running out after the other one spent all morning looking for her and the other one comes back grinning like the Cheshire cat?” Evelyne crossed her arms over her chest.
“Grams, it’s not like that. We are going to work together to find Jeremy. The last thing I need is a man in my life right now.”
“That’s exactly when it happens. Now as much as I want to be a great-grandmother, I would appreciate it if you did it in the correct order.”
Rolling her eyes towards the ceiling she hoped for strength. “I’ll take that under advisement. Now, we’ve got a lot of papers to go through.” She started walking towards the door.
“So you don’t find him attractive at all?”
Sighing she turned back around to face her grandmother. “Yes, of course, I’d have to be dead to not think he was attractive. I’ve learned my appreciation for men from you. But that’s all it will be. Happy?”
“No, not at all, but you’ll do what you want. You’ve always done that. But here.” Evelyne tossed a strip of condoms to Evie. “You’ll want these.”
Catching them easily she shook her head and turned around and shoved them in the closest drawer. “Later, Grams.” She ran out the door before her grandmother could force them back on her.
*
They spent the first couple of hours reading the information the other had. Evie sighed and threw the papers down next to her on the couch.
Anthony looked up at her. He got up and went to the fridge where he pulled out a bottle of white wine and poured her a glass.
“How did you know I needed a drink?” She closed her eyes and enjoyed the first crisp taste of it.
“Just a lucky guess. Find anything interesting?”
“Not really. It seems like we have about the same information. I was hoping something would jump out at me, but so far nothing.”
“Same here. As far as we can tell, and from what Jeremy said, Tiffani was the first.” He walked over to a map he’d just hung on the wall. There were pins in about a half a dozen cities and pointed to Seattle. “He said that there were others between her and Lexi. There were some reports of women matching the description gone missing or being found dead around the same I time I was there.”
Evie got up from the couch and stood beside him tapping England. “Here, this was next. This was an ex-girlfriend of yours right?”
“Yes. Natalie. Natalie Sutton. We dated in school. Really nothing serious. We’d known each other for a long time; we ended up more like best friends than anything else. After Tiffani, she was there for me. We’d just spend time together. It was good, familiar, a friend that was there for me.”
She laid her head on his shoulder, feeling the pain he’d gone through, admiring his strength at fighting to find the answers no matter what.
“Her parents had a country house; we spent a lot of time out there. We’d sit under this one tree and talk for hours or read. She was like family to me. They found her up in that tree. Well, parts of her. He cut her up into pieces and placed them on different branches. I will never forget the sight or what the bark on the tree looked like with the blood seeping into it.”
Shivering at the thought of it, she rubbed his back. “I’m so sorry, Anthony.” She could feel him turn his head to look down at her.
“It’s not your fault.”
Lifting her head off of his shoulder, she looked at him. “I know, but still, no one should go through that.”
She could feel a change in the air, as if everything pulled away and it was just the two of them. No other sounds came through but their breathing.