Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“I don’t suppose you know the names of any of his friends?”
“No, sorry. I kept my distance from him after I figured out about Shumi.” He frowned. “Though…back when we were younger, he used to hang around with this one big blond guy. Rugby team, I think.” His watch buzzed twice in a row.
Shoulders falling, he said, “I better go.”
We parted without further words, and when I looked back, I saw him pulling out his phone to return the message.
My own mother, meanwhile, didn’t care enough about my life to even know, much less give a damn, that my in-laws had been murdered and my wife was in a coma.
Which of us was the pathetic one in the end?
Turning away, I left Ajay to his call and made my way to the car. En route, I sent Aleki a message thanking him for the home-cooked boxed lunch that he’d dropped off for me with the ICU staff—they’d handed it to me when I came in. The other man, I’d realized, was a genuinely good guy, someone who could become a lifelong friend if I gave it a shot.
If I didn’t sabotage it before it got too deep.
You don’t trust love, Tavish. Susanne’s voice. I can’t blame you after your childhood, but really, darling, you must allow people in or you’ll not only end up sad and lonely, but you’ll spend life in the shallows. And that would be an utter and dull waste.
“I’m trying, Suzi W,” I whispered to the ghost that haunted me. “I’m trying so fucking hard.”
With Diya, there was no question: I was in fathoms deep.
Once safely in my car, I set about scanning and memorizing the list of non-extradition countries my father had sent me.
Squeezing the steering wheel afterward, I said, “I’m not leaving you, Diya.” But I had to be prepared…just in case.
I wasn’t about to end up in a cage.
Chapter 46
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Mar 2
Time: 10:08
Chief’s ordered me to shelve the Musgrave investigation, put it into the cold case files. He’s even got the powers that be to let up on the pressure—we can’t give Jason Musgrave what we don’t have.
And because the chief knows me, he’s also just assigned me a multiple murder involving three young dance graduates, making sure I won’t have time to work the Musgrave case on my own. He knows I’d never shortchange the dancer case—man, they were just kids.
He thinks I’m obsessed, that I need some distance at least. “Take a few months, Baxter, then maybe I’ll give you some time to work it again. But for right now, it’s cold.”
Maybe he’s right.
Or maybe Tavish Advani is charming another old lady right now.
Chapter 47
The caution tape still fluttered at the top of the driveway down to the Lake Tarawera house, but the scene looked a lot different from when I’d last been here. Flowers, masses of them, lay on the grass shoulder along the road on either side of the drive.
Thankfully, however, there were no looky-loos or media vans—I’d been planning to just drive on past if that was the case. This remained the biggest crime that had taken place in Rotorua in a decade or more. Even the national media was continuing to update the public—though right now, those updates just consisted of reporters finding new ways to say that “the two survivors of the tragic incident remain in the ICU.”
My history hadn’t yet leaked. Possibly because of the prevailing view that the deaths and fire must have resulted from a family issue—the few times where I had been mentioned, it had been as Diya’s “American fiancé,” a man who was newly in the country and thus an outsider to the family drama.
The fact that Bobby had been the CEO of a major company, while his parents were both senior doctors, had given the media more than enough meat to chew on—add on Diya and Shumi being two beautiful women in critical condition, and they had plenty to fill airtime and column inches.
It helped that pretty much no one had my contact details, so the reporters couldn’t get in touch with me unless they staked out the hospital. Which, so far, they hadn’t been crass enough to do—that, or I’d managed to avoid them due to the erratic nature of my visiting schedule.
Whatever the reason, I knew it wouldn’t last much longer. Some reporter no doubt already had the goods on me but was waiting until it would no longer be considered bad form to report what might otherwise be seen as tabloid gossip. I had to use what little time I had to clear my name. If Ackerson refused to listen, then I had no hesitation about leaking the information to the reporters.
I’d watched my father wield information like a scalpel, knew it could sway far more than juries.