Page 100 of Little Deaths

“Yeah. Tomorrow.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I need a fucking shower.”

She slinked away, a defeated set to her shoulders. Rafe looked at the pictures again before stuffing them back into his suitcase with repressed violence. As he cleaned up the shattered porcelain and spilled food in the kitchen, he considered what he’d learned so far.

Christophe had asked to meet Donni despite his warnings, only to turn up dead. Which kind of made it look like someone was trying to frame him, or at least throw off blame. Donni still didn’t trust him, but she trusted him more than she did the police. And it looked like his father had potentially been involved in other scandals. That he had a connection to Johnathan Steel.

I wonder if Donni knows.

He went to the master bedroom, pausing briefly in the hall. He could hear the water running. The thought of her hot wet skin under his mouth made him grip the door bracingly.

(Fuck me. Do it like your books.)

He shoved those memories away and opened the door.

There was still a lingering reek of smoke and burnt paper. Sparing a glance at the ruined carpet, he got to his hands and knees and peered under the bed. His father’s laptop was wedged carefully into the space between the bed and the nightstand.

If the man who had broken in had been here to destroy evidence, he had been mere inches away from yet another potentially incriminating piece.

How fucking ironic.

His father’s passwords had all been listed out on that same sheet of paper where he’d gotten the combination to the safe. His father, not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, had used the same one for all his log-ins. When he typed in the phrase, the screen immediately unlocked.

He went right to his father’s email accounts, going to the one he shared with Donni.

The emails had been pulled from their joint account. Donni had used it more than his father did, which was why he had used it to contact her. He imagined Donni had deleted most of them, but even if she had missed a few, he didn’t his father would have the patience to dig that deep.

And even if he did, he wouldn’t terrorize her from afar. He preferred direct confrontations.

Everything seemed normal but that didn’t mean that someone else didn’t have access, or hadn’t at some point. He scrolled first to spam and then to trash, which was where he found an email from someone named Janus Staal.

I’m a reporter. I want to give you a chance to tell your own story.

Can we meet?

There was a link to some kind of file-sharing site. The email had been read and the highlighted link was purple. Someone—probably his father—had clicked it.

Because of course he had. His father had always needed to be the loudest man in the room. When the wine story leaked and spiraled out of control, his father would have been furious.

He would have relished the chance to seize the narrative.

“What are you doing?”

Donni was standing in the doorway, wearing her nightshirt. Her hair was wet. He glanced at her legs and then at her face, before looking back at the screen. But his heart beat faster.

“Your father was trading emails with someone named Janus Staal.”

“Staal?”

She was across the room instantly, practically pressing up against his side. The smell of her shampoo still clung to her hair. Something fruity—like cherries or peaches. All that scented water was dampening the front of her shirt, making it clear she had nothing on beneath.

“That’s what I said,” he rasped. “Janus Staal.”

“Staal was on a Post-It I took from Marco’s desk. They met for coffee.”

“He was claiming to be a reporter.”

“Denise Banner was working that day.” She leaned over to look at the screen, and her breasts shifted beneath her shirt. “She said they had a fight.”

Rafe didn’t dare move. The warmth of her bare legs seeped through his jeans and when she reached for the trackpad, fingers brushing his, she made the laptop shift against his sensitized thighs.Fuck, he thought, breathing in sharply.