Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
“I guess you can’t read between the lines. You have to talk about it, too.”
“What do I need to do?” he asks. “I can help.”
Sometimes my dumbass brother gets motivated to flex his alpha muscles at the wrong time with the wrong people. I don’t need him pumping up his chest and inviting a killer to kill him. “You do nothing. I can kill my enemy. I’m not so sure about you. Better safe than sorry.”
“I’m a damn sheriff.”
“And?” I challenge.
“You’re such a bitch. Call me when you’re done there.”
“Oh, sibling love. It does my heart right.”
He hangs up, and my only regret is that I didn’t get to say that I might be a bitch but he’s a little bitch.
I walk into what appears to be the master bedroom and scan the room. The bed is pulled so tight you could bounce a quarter off it. How military of Murphy or whoever made this bed. I’m not convinced Murphy was actually living here. I do find toiletries in the bathroom, but they’re tucked in a travel bag, sitting on the counter. There are four suits in the closet and not a thing in his pockets. His drawers are empty but for boxers. I really didn’t want to know Murphy wore boxers, but then I doubt he wanted me to know either. My mother was another story.
I check another bedroom and enter an office where I sit down behind the desk, but there’s nothing to be found. Anything Murphy was working on is gone, but the questions become: did the killer take it all? And was Murphy sleeping elsewhere? A woman would be a good reason to be in the city and stay a while.
My phone buzzes with a message from DD: On my way up.
I hurry to the living room to find Jay standing over Murphy’s body again.
“What is your obsession with Murphy’s dead body?” I ask, stepping to his side.
He glances over at me. “Everyone fights when faced with death,” he argues.
“Assassins are a different breed. If you ever meet one, you’ll understand.”
“I know plenty of killers.”
“An assassin is after a big payday and that is all they care about. The victim is a number, not a human being.”
“How do you know you’re standing in front of an assassin?”
“A killer always knows a killer,” I reply, thinking of the photo of him watching my mother the day she died. “Murphy was a killer. And I know this because I’m a killer.”
I confess my sins to the room, and hope I’m being recorded. Even better, I hope the assassin who killed Murphy is watching me right now.
“Is he coming after us?” Jay asks.
“Depends on why he killed Murphy, which is one of the things I’d hoped to learn digging around today. But don’t fret, pretty boy Jay. They all make me kill them. I’ll kill this one too.”
“Good-looking was much better than pretty boy, and oh, yeah, I found this.” He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket, which is now completely screwed up from a forensics standpoint. I grab it to read: 1900. You know where.
I check my watch and it’s now well past 1900, not that it matters. We don’t know where.
“One more thing,” Jay says, reaching right back in the pocket where evidence goes to die and holds out a dangling diamond earring with a jewel that sparkles and shines, dripping money.
My spine stiffens for reasons he can’t begin to know at this point. “Where did you find these things?”
“Coat closet by the door. There’s a jacket. They were in the inner secret pocket. It was hard to find, but Kane has those pockets and he had me get something from one once. And why do you look like you saw a ghost?”
Because I sort of did, I think.
I know this earring all too well. I have the other one to the matching set. They belonged to my mother, and I’ve always thought that the one missing earring was strange. My mother was a bit OCD. She had to have equal numbers of all things. Even two napkins at dinner, not one. She would never have kept that one single earring.
Of course, the items could be planted to distract me, but they feel authentic to Murphy’s obsession with my mother. And while yes, she died in a plane crash, the missing earring always felt like the kind of trophy her killer might collect and keep. Some might argue it would be something a lover would keep as well, but unless she died when they were together, it’s creepy. And they were not together the day she died. That photo Kane found says it all.
My mother was with my uncle, who was supposedly testifying against my father. At least, per Murphy’s rendition of events. Maybe Murphy set him up to hand over the information before that flight, which would explain why he was at the airport. I just don’t know that I will ever figure it all out now that Murphy is dead.