My search ended fruitlessly, but I wasn’t that disheartened. I’d seen Reeve pocket his keys when he’d first gotten them from the security room, and I guessed he likely kept them on him at all times. Which just meant I had to wait until he got home to try to confiscate his office key. All I had to do was get his jeans off of him and wait for him to sleep, right?
Lucky for me, getting Reeve out of his pants hadn’t ever been a problem.
CHAPTER 24
When I arrived at dinner that night, Charlie and Parker beckoned me to join them at their corner table. Brent was with them as well, and though I felt a pinch of guilt about eating with him, I figured it would be strange if I ignored their invitation, seeing how they were really the only three people I knew at the ranch.
Besides, this was my chance to see if they’d say anything useful now that Reeve wasn’t here to give warning looks any time the conversation got interesting.
Unfortunately, they were just as tight-lipped, just as evading. Every leading question I asked got ignored. Every prompt turned into a story about something else.
And then Parker slipped.
All three of them had consumed a number of beers during the meal, and by the end, Parker, at least, was closer to drunk than not.
Without any elicitation from me, he put his elbow on the table, leaned on his hand, and, looking up at me with glazed eyes, said, “You know, Emily’s the first woman our man’s brought here who doesn’t have a drug problem. That’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”
“Parker,” Brent warned.
“I’m just saying it’s nice to have a decent woman for a change.” Parker gave me a sloppy smile. “You’re a nice change, Emily.”
Charlie had been quiet for most of the meal, but now he said, “You never liked the last one, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t decent.”
Parker sat up and thumped his fist on the table. “No, she wasn’t. And you’re right – I didn’t like her. Because she was a high-maintenance pain in the ass. I’m glad she’s off our hands, even ending the way it d—”
“Parker!” Brent thwacked the younger man across the head. “You’ve got a loose tongue. Shut it.”
I hadn’t realized how much I’d begun to believe that Reeve really didn’t have anything to do with Amber’s death until that moment. “What does he mean, ‘ending the way it did’?”
“Forget it. He shouldn’t have said anything,” Brent said.
“But he did say it, and now I want to know.” I needed to know. “What did you mean, Parker?”
Parker looked from Brent to Charlie and then at me. “I don’t really know. I’m drunk.”
Charlie stepped in. “He just meant it was a bad breakup. For lots of reasons that are too personal for an employee to get into about his boss. If you want to know more, you’re going to have to ask Reeve.”
At that moment, I thought I just might. I was frustrated from all the dead ends. Sick of feeling like a yo-yo, up and down with theories that changed with every new bit of information I gathered. It had been a while since the last time I’d asked Reeve about his past, anyway. Maybe it was time to try again.
And since he wasn’t coming home until the next night, I had a day to think of what I’d say.
Or chicken out. Either was possible at this point.
The men left sometime around nine and the house suddenly grew quiet and still. It put me on edge, especially after Parker’s remark. I was already wary of Reeve, knowing he might have participated in getting Amber killed. But if his staff was aware of it as well, then I was in much more danger than I’d thought. Anyone could be after me at any time. What the hell had I been thinking going on a trip with him?
Oh, shit. That reminded me I hadn’t gotten a new burner phone from Joe before I’d left. I’d long ago deleted his real number from my cell. So not only did I have no way to contact him if I needed him, but also, no one knew where I was.
I tried to go to sleep, but all I could do was toss and turn and waffle between feeling panicked and feeling lonely. Either Reeve hadn’t done anything horrible, I was reading things wrong and I missed him, or he had and I was reading things right and I still missed him. After an hour of it, I pulled my robe on over my night slip and headed down to the den to watch some TV and get my mind on something – anything – else.
I flipped through the channels for twenty minutes, finding nothing. Just as I was ready to give up and pick up my Kindle, a familiar face filled the screen – Chris Blakely’s.
“It’s not a theory. It’s not a guess. It’s a fact,” Chris was saying. It was one of those late-night interview shows where the host sat behind a desk and the guest lounged in a modern deco chair. Not a popular show – he wouldn’t be asked to one of those with his current career status – but one on some cable channel. I didn’t even recognize the interviewer, a redheaded woman with big lips.
It was something to watch, at least. I tossed the remote aside and settled back into the couch.
“But you still haven’t said why,” Big Lips said next.
“I’m not going to get into all the reasons I have that I know he did it – let me say, though, that by reasons, I mean proof. Missy was completely robbed of her life. She knew things she shouldn’t and Reeve Sallis took care of that.”
My stomach dropped. No. No, no, no. He did not just —
“If this proof is as irrefutable as you say it is, how did Reeve Sallis get away with it?” Big Lips looked skeptical, which was admirable considering how quickly Hollywood liked to buy into scandals.