Scorch (Virtues & Lies 2)
Page 122
“But you think I’m crazy.” He steeples his hands in front of his face. “Here’s the thing. Do you see Charles here? He’s never around us when shit goes down. We’re being fucking hammered, and he’s nowhere to be found. He shows up at the end to make sure the mess is cleaned.”
“That’s his job. He keeps the peace. Besides, after Grace…”
“Grace? Come on, Christopher, how long did it take him to replace her with a newer model? Quite literally.”
I sigh at his insinuation. “You’re beginning to sound like Fleur.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether I moved her in with Cassie.” The laugh that follows his statement is light and caring. He has a soft spot for her. It’s obvious in the way he smiles when he talks about her, like he does when we talk about Arabella. “Anyway, it seems strange that he would carry on the way he has.”
“It’s been almost five years since she died.”
“And how long have he and this girl been together? Come on, if something happened to Arabella—”
I shut him up quickly with a knock to the wooden side table. Superstition or not, I’m not risking anything.
“My point is that if they were happily married, surely it would’ve taken him longer than it did to replace her.”
“That still doesn’t mean anything.”
He sobers very, very quickly. “It wouldn’t do.”
“But?”
“I’ve been going through Kit’s things. He had this fucking weird habit of making copies of things and storing them in the most random places. Anyway, I was going through the stuff from his office, and there was this one pile of papers that were too neat. You know, like they’d been printed and stashed in a rush. The pages were unspoiled, almost like they hadn’t been looked at, at all.”
“Right…?”
“Call it serendipity, or whatever. I mean, it’s not exactly a happy thing, but it’s beneficial nonetheless.”
“Leo, what the fuck are you trying to say?”
“Sorry,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “That photo Freddie found on Arabella’s phone?”
“Yeah?”
“There was a copy of the page in his things. With more pages.”
“And you didn’t tell me because?”
“Because you had other things to focus on.” Smiling, he shrugs. “Besides, I told you I have shit covered. You know what that means?”
“You have shit covered?”
“Precisely. Anyway, the moment I handed Freddie the papers he went crazy. He was all over them like a rash. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take something so seriously.”
Before he continues, I know what’s coming. My insides tighten uncomfortably.
“There were some names, but we’re not sure what they mean yet. There’s a couple of pages that have numbers, so I tried to make sense of them, like with the transactions your dad had me looking into. But it didn’t make sense. My theory didn’t work, and I got so frustrated I couldn’t look at them anymore. But Freddie worked it out like he’d been looking at them for as long as I had.”
There’s too much nervous energy vibrating inside me for me to stay sitting.
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“And?”
“They’re dates.”
“Dates?”