The Departed

touch her. “I’ll make some calls, though. We’ll have them come to your hotel.”
    “I’m not staying at the hotel anymore.” She brushed her hair back, a habitual gesture. Then she absently toyed with the silver chain around her neck and he found himself staring at her fingers, then the scar tissue—remembering that night, how close she’d come to dying. The days that followed.
    And the day he’d taken her home…the day he’d taken her .
    He couldn’t think about that now. Slipping a hand into his pocket, he rubbed his thumb over the smooth surface of the golden cross he carried. Focus, damn it . Had to focus. He tore his gaze from her neck.
    “That hotel, I swear, it’s highway robbery,” Dez said with a wry laugh. “How can it stay in business in this little place? Anyway, I was going to see if I could find a room to rent or something for a week or two. Either that or just a cheap hotel.”
    Don’t, he thought, staring at her. He could offer her a room out at the manor, but he wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t, knew he shouldn’t . This was the worst time in the world for him to be around her. And that was the worst place in the world for her to be. There was a possibility she’d find ghosts there, as well.
    Assuming there weren’t any ghosts there, even if he made the offer, she wouldn’t accept. But it was a bad idea anyway. Not that she wouldn’t figure it out, but he didn’t need her at the manor and he didn’t want her at the manor. His head was fucked up enough there as it was.
    Fortunately, he had the willpower to keep from blurting that much out. However…he could do something for her. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you a place to stay. Since you’ve signed the contract, we will pick it up.”
    Finding a place wouldn’t be an issue. His family had had its hands in everything—including real estate. He didn’t give a damn what happened to the money, but he did pay attention, simply because it was his responsibility. One of the rental houses had gone vacant a few weeks earlier—he’d gotten the e-mail from the lawyer who handled everything. As far as he knew, it was still sitting empty. She could stay there, once he’d made sure it was in decent shape.
    It was better than a hotel, at least.
    But in the meantime, they needed to find a place where she could give her statement. Shit.
    “Stop glaring at me,” Dez muttered.
    “I’m not glaring at you.” Shit. He probably was. Then he sighed and looked away. “How did you end up out here, Dez?” Here—now. Why the hell here and why the hell now ?
    “You’ve already figured out the answer to that. Why do you need me to spell it out?”
    “Maybe because it’s not adding up.” He looked back at her and lifted a brow. “And maybe because you’re not telling me everything.”
    She wrinkled her nose at him. Then she jammed her hands in her pockets and started to walk, ignoring the restaurant and walking down the sidewalk like she didn’t have a destination or a goal in mind. He fell in step beside her. “Aren’t you hungry?”
    “After your little display back there? Hell, no. I may not eat for a week.” She hunched her shoulders up and shuddered. “His name was Tristan. A nice kid. Strong. You know that saying, ‘Only the good die young’? I swear, it could have been written with him in mind. This kid…Taylor, he was good. I’m talking solid-gold good. He stayed for one reason: that girl. He needed to save her and he wasn’t going anywhere until he did it. He couldn’t move on.”
    “So he knew about her. All along.”
    “Yeah.” She lifted her head, staring off into the distance. “If you go back through the obits, or talk to people around here, they’ll tell you he killed himself. They’ll tell you, ‘What a shame, we don’t get it. He was such a bright, nice young man.’ And he was—he was a nice kid, would have been one hell of a man. And they are right…they don’t get it. They are clueless. That boy didn’t kill himself. They killed him. Those boys who put that girl in there. They killed him because he didn’t want to go along with their little prank…and he wasn’t going to allow it. They killed him to shut him up.”
    “Fuck.” He closed his eyes as he realized what she was saying. He’d already assumed one kid had been involved, but as a prank? A fucking prank? And they’d killed another to silence him. Taylor closed his eyes. “You’re certain.”
    “Yeah. Pretty