Devious - Lisa Jackson [78]
She couldn’t begin to guess.
It didn’t matter.
She let her breath out and squared her shoulders.
Then she raised the whip again and snapped her wrist.
Its sharp hiss echoed through the room.
It was far too late to call in favors tonight, Val thought, but come the morning, at the crack of dawn, she would be on the phone. What she couldn’t find out for herself on the Internet she’d have her expartner look into through police channels. One of his roommates from college had worked for the FBI for years, so there would be ways to find out their true identity. Find out who Mary and Michael Brown really were.
Since her truce with Slade a few hours before, she’d been digging for information on the Internet, but every search produced no results. Then, because she couldn’t completely ignore her obligations as Freya’s partner and owner of the inn, she’d forced herself to attack the bills, paying the most pressing, then updating the calendar on Briarstone’s Web site.
Here, in the office of her little cottage, she took care of the business end of running the bed-and-breakfast. When she wasn’t helping Freya with the guests, she checked the reservations, maintained the Web site, paid the bills, kept up the calendar of local events and sites of interest, and corresponded with other bed-and-breakfasts in the area.
The wireless system in the cottage was accessible from the rooms in the main house, so guests could use their own laptops. However, the inn did not provide computers or a business center, and the only televisions were in Freya’s suite and here, in Val’s bedroom. Freya’s vision for the bed-and-breakfast included keeping Briarstone as authentic to the period in which it was built as possible without sacrificing a few modern conveniences, like individual bathrooms and electricity. In general, they tried to keep electronics to a minimum.
Fortunately, tonight, her computer had only lost its connection a couple of times, far better than usual. Val closed her laptop and stepped out to the porch, where the moist air smelled of river and night. Clouds blocked out the moon and stars again, a storm brewing. Leaning against the railing, she glanced over to the main house, where Slade had been helping Freya clear a backed-up drain in the kitchen that had required not only emptying the P-trap but also renting a snake and unclogging the pipes.
He’d also managed to replace some broken face plates on electrical outlets and fix a temperamental light in the foyer. In so doing, he’d ingratiated himself to Freya.
“Handy as well as handsome,” Freya, pushing a vacuum cleaner into a nearby closet, had remarked when Val had stopped in during a break from her research.
Wanting to avoid any further conversation about her soon-to-be ex, Val had ducked into the kitchen, which was filled with the odors of cinnamon, bacon, and apples for the next morning’s bread pudding.
But there’d been no escaping Freya. Wiping her hands on a towel, she’d returned to the kitchen to peer into the oven. “Yeah, I understand why you’re set on ditching him,” Freya had said.
“Don’t start with me.” Val hadn’t been in the mood.
“Ouch! Touchy, aren’t we?”
“Ouch! Nosy, aren’t we?”
Freya had laughed and held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Okay. I get it. Talking about Slade is off-limits. I remember the agreement.”
“Good.” Val had walked into the laundry room, taken the last of the towels from the dryer, and folded them before retreating to her cottage again.
Now Val walked to a corner of the porch that allowed her to look up at the uppermost floor of the house. Lights still burned bright in the room Slade was renting.
She’d told him to get out of town, and he hadn’t listened. In fact, he’d seemed all the more insistent upon staying. She should have been angry that he was still here.
Instead, stupid as it was, she felt safer, more secure.
But then, she decided as the first drops of rain plopped against the porch’s roof, she’d always been an idiot where men were concerned.
The news reports have it wrong.
All wrong.
Of course.
Then again,