pressed her nose against the skin of her upper arm—not sweaty, but not exactly fresh, either. She crept into the bathroom and nudged the light switch with the side of her hand, casting a warm glow over the gray tiles with their bright blue accents.
No droplets of water appeared on the floor of the walk-in shower. No damp towels littered the bathroom or hung on the racks. She edged up to the vanity and peered at her reflection in the mirror.
A pair of wide violet eyes stared back at her, and a smear of blood created a line from the corner of her eye to her ear. That was her own blood from the cuts on her right hand. She didn’t have a speck of Niles’s blood on her. She stuck two fingers in her mouth and then rubbed the red streak from her face.
If her clothes weren’t bloody and she hadn’t taken a shower, surely she’d be covered in his blood if...? But she’d blacked out.
She spun away from the mirror and scanned every corner of the bathroom. Nothing looked out of place—except her standing here in her underwear.
She whipped a hand towel from the rack and wiped the light switch, and the sink and shower faucets for good measure. Then she rushed back into the bedroom and erased her fingerprints from the light switch in there, too. She didn’t have to wipe down the entire house, as she’d been here recently. Hell, she used to live here.
She inspected the bed, squinting at the pillow and sheets, searching for strands of her dark hair and blood from her cuts. Those would be damning, but she couldn’t afford to spread even more of her DNA around by going into the laundry room and washing the bedding.
Then she crouched beside Niles’s dead body and studied the cuts on his back and the ripped, slightly freckled flesh. She shivered.
She looked at her hand, the thin red lines of the cuts creating a horizontal pattern on her palm. She reached up and buried her fingertips in her hair, tracing over a tender lump on the back of her head. Had she and Niles had some kind of fight? A physical altercation? Could his killing have been in self-defense?
She bunched up her hand into a fist and pressed it against her stomach. Self-defense when she stood to gain 100 percent control of Snap App? Self-defense when everyone knew they had been fighting over the company for months?
Nobody would believe her—not with her past. She couldn’t afford to be at another scene involving a dead body.
She picked up the towel and continued wiping down surfaces in the bedroom. With a brisk nod, she dropped the towel to the floor and picked up her slacks next to it.
She slipped into the black pants and gasped, patting the pockets. Her lashes fluttered as she huffed out a breath. She’d left her phone at home last night on the charger. Her battery had been dying lately and she couldn’t be happier about it now. She didn’t need her cell phone signal pinging in this house at this time.
She pulled her blouse over her head. As she reached for the top button, she grabbed threads instead. Her button had popped off—the oversize multicolored, highly unique button.
With her head pounding, she dropped to her knees and ran her hands across the wood floor and underneath the dresser. Her fingers stumbled across the button and she slid it across the floor and dropped it into the pocket of her slacks. Then she stepped into the high heels placed next to each in perfect alignment.
She scooped up the towel and gave the room a final look over her shoulder from the bedroom door. She froze. The knife.
What if the knife had her prints on it? Her head swiveled from side to side. What knife? She hadn’t seen a knife anywhere.
Her gaze slid to Niles’s body. He had stab wounds on his back, but what about his front? If she rolled him over, she could leave more evidence of her presence here. If she didn’t, she could be leaving a murder weapon with her prints on it.
She kicked off her heels and approached Niles. She feared him now more than she ever had alive. Still gripping the hand towel, she pushed at his inert form enough to tilt it on its side. Before he fell back to the floor, she’d determined there was no knife beneath him—nothing beneath him except more blood. This had been angry overkill.
It hadn’t been her anger that had killed him. But then she’d blacked out.
She grabbed her shoes in one hand and shuffled out of the room backward, as if she expected Niles to jump up and point an accusing finger at her, and then turned and jogged down the curved staircase, sweeping the towel along the banister for good measure. She and Niles had come back to the house for some file, and she still had every intention of leaving with that file.
She scurried into Niles’s home office and scanned the clean surface of the mahogany desk. She and Niles hadn’t even made it far enough to get the file. But she knew exactly where they were.
With the towel still clutched in her hand, she dropped her shoes and crouched before the desk drawers, pulling open the bottom one. She shoved the hanging files aside and then snatched a letter opener from a pencil holder on the desk. She jammed the point into a circular release at the bottom of the drawer and slid open the false bottom.
She released a sigh. The labels indicated the file folder she wanted was on top of some other folders and a few other items. Niles must’ve got it ready for her. She removed the folder, replaced the false bottom, closed the drawer and wiped down everything.
Gripping the folder in one hand, she turned away from the desk and tripped to a stop when she saw two crystal tumblers on the counter of the wet bar. She yanked the towel from where she had it draped over her shoulder, rinsed out both glasses, wiped them down and put them back on the shelf behind the bar.
The computer had to be her next stop, to check the footage from the security cameras. Covering the mouse with a tissue from Niles’s desk, she navigated through the security software.
She drew in a quick breath as her mouth dropped open when she realized the system had been disabled. Had Niles done that earlier? Had his killer? Had she?
Now she needed to sneak out of here...and find herself an alibi.
* * *
CONNOR DUG HIS feet into the sand and squinted at the surfers battling the heavy surf—and each other.
He pulled out his video camera, zoomed in and started filming the Cove Boys and their antics in the water. Summer might’ve ended but the rowdy group of surfers who ruled the cove with a belligerent localism never stopped when they thought outsiders were riding their waves.
Connor caught the Cove Boys dropping in on others’ waves, cutting them off, yelling and making rude gestures. This footage would help with the lawsuit.
The Cove Boys’ aggressive behavior had its desired effect as, one by one, the harassed surfers came to shore in defeat.
A couple approached him, their boards under their arms. The man reached back and yanked down the zipper of his wetsuit. “Are they always like that?”
“Yep.” Connor held up his video camera. “But we’re trying to stop it. Some local surfers who don’t like the reputation of the cove are bringing a class action lawsuit against these guys—and I just captured some solid evidence.”
“Good. It’s about time someone did something about these guys.”
Out
