Surviving Ice (Burying Water, #4)(108)

Either way, Dakota knows that something monumentally bad has happened over the last few days. She’s wiped away enough of my tears to figure that out.

“Not the important ones.”

I spear her with a glare while I munch on one of her baked squares, secretly hoping it’s loaded with hash so I can shed this melancholy for a few hours. I’ve become the girl I can’t stand, and I couldn’t be bothered to do anything to change that.

I’m brokenhearted over a guy and yet completely miserable without him.

“Hey, D! Where do you keep the sweetener?” Bobby hollers from the kitchen.

I groan, my head falling back. “Why him?”

She giggles. “Why not?” To him she says, “The cupboard next to the fridge.”

“You realize he’s a criminal, right?”

She winks. “I like to walk on the wild side sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Dakota is the wild side.

She reaches over and pats my knee. “Cheer up. I don’t like seeing you so despondent. It’s concerning.”

“I’m just very . . . confused and conflicted. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”

She purses her lips. “Forget about how you’re supposed to feel and focus on how you do feel.”

I feel . . . like I want to see Sebastian again, so badly. “But what if how I do feel is wrong? What if it’s a bad idea?”

“Does it hurt anybody?”

I frown. “Well, no. I don’t think so.” Except maybe me, and my heart.

She shrugs. “Then I don’t see how it’s wrong, or a bad idea. Besides, you’re not usually the type of girl to worry about those kinds of things. Why start now?”

Bobby saunters into the greenhouse in nothing but jeans.

I avert my gaze with a sigh. “This house is getting way too small, too fast.”

“You sure didn’t seem to mind when you had your guy here.”

I climb out of my seat, both to free it up for him and to get dressed for a day of painting at the house, so we can get it on the market. And then I have to decide what I want to do about Black Rabbit.

And here I thought I had decided already . . .

“Yeah, well.” I slap his protruding belly. “The view was slightly different.”

“D likes this view.”

“That’s right, I do,” she says with a playful voice.

“As much as the view of Sebastian in the shower, D?” I throw over my shoulder.

“What the hell were you doin’ in the shower with him!” Bobby says, his voice suddenly full of irritation.

“It was nothing,” Dakota says in a placating voice. “Ivy’s just trying to get under your skin. She’s good at that.”

The doorbell rings, and I’m distracted from listening to Bobby’s irate answer.

Detective Fields and two officers are standing on the doorstep. He heaves a visible sigh of relief. To the cops, he nods, and one of them radios in to dispatch, something about the witness being located. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

“I lost my phone.”

He hesitates. “I have an update on your uncle’s case. Can I come in?”

“No!” Bobby yells, his footfalls hard and fast as he storms up behind me to barricade the door. “It’s a nice day out. You should talk right here.” He gives me a knowing look, and I immediately get his meaning.

Dakota’s little grow-op.

“It is a nice day.” I grab Dakota’s sweater off a hook and pull it on to ward off the cold, and step onto the curb, shutting the door behind me. “What’s up?”

Fields frowns at me—I think he assumes I’m the one sleeping with Bobby—but he doesn’t push it. “The two men who we suspect of involvement in your uncle’s murder were found yesterday in Nevada. Dead.”

I take a deep, shaky breath. No, I guess they won’t be a problem for me anymore. “How?” That sounds like the right next question to ask. Plus, I want to know how Sebastian did it. Was it quick and clean? Cruel and morbid? Will it make any difference to me?

“The investigators over there are suggesting that it’s murder-suicide, cut-and-dried. We’ll know more after the autopsy reports, though.”

I close my eyes. Quick and clean, at least. Like I’d expect from Sebastian. Do I care? Do I feel bad for them?

I think back to that night, to the fear they inflicted on me, to the pain they inflicted on my uncle. To the fact that they shot two people—would have shot me, too, had they known I was there—all to cover their asses for other horrible, unspeakable crimes they committed. Sebastian didn’t give me too many details, but he gave me enough.

I don’t feel bad that they’re dead.

Does that make me evil?

“So . . . what does that mean for my uncle’s case?” I ask, pushing that worry aside.

“Well, that’s the thing. There was some evidence found along with the bodies. A phone with a video of your uncle and the other victim, Dylan Royce. It’s”—he frowns—“of interest to a lot of important people. There are likely answers to motive in it, but it’s going to take some time to figure that out.”

I’m guessing that’s the very video that Sebastian was here to recover. He did say he was going to make sure the truth came out. That none of this should ever have happened. That he wanted to make things right.