The Devil's Daughter (Hidden Sins #1)(25)

“I’m not an idiot.” Though she gave him a look like he might be.

He actually saw the moment it dawned on her that if it wasn’t one of Zach’s people, it was someone else. She crossed her arms over her chest and immediately dropped them, looking everywhere but at him. Shit. He set the food down on the table. “What tipped you off that someone was here?”

“It might be my imagination.” She hesitated, her mouth pressing into a tight line. “No, I’m making excuses. Nothing was overtly moved, but things weren’t quite where I left them. I would know. I travel a lot, and I’m a creature of habit. Things were just a little off when I got back from the commune—and the room smells like hyacinths, though that could very well be the cleaning supplies.”

It wasn’t. Dolores was known for bragging that there wasn’t a mess that Pine-Sol or bleach couldn’t fix. If she’d been in here, the place would smell of lemons—not flowers. He frowned. “How the hell do you know what hyacinths smell like? Roses, I get. They’re distinctive. Hyacinths seem a random thing to be able to identify.”

Her lips quirked up at the corners, but not like anything was funny. “I was raised in Elysia. We had a significant number of greenhouses—and a whole lot of property—devoted solely to different kinds of flowers—and hyacinths are my mother’s favorite.”

So much of this came back to that damn cult. He set the food out and pointed to the chair across from him. “Sit. You look like you’re going to keel over.”

“It’s not polite to tell someone they look tired—especially a woman.”

“You’re not a woman. You’re an agent.” He just needed to remember that, because it was hard to keep present in his mind with her looking so . . . human. Without her tough-as-nails persona in place, she looked softer, more vulnerable. Like someone he would have considered asking out for coffee in another life.

Eden pulled her food closer and opened her plastic utensils. “Yep, that’s me. Agent. Not woman.”

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just insulted her, but he hadn’t meant to. Most women he’d come across in both his stint in the Marines and his various training exercises as a cop usually fell into one of two categories—erasing their femininity or playing it up as a piece of their arsenal. He respected both methods, though he wasn’t a fan of the coquettish requests for help that occasionally came his way. Eden, though, didn’t seem to fit into either category.

Or maybe she did, but being back in her old stomping grounds was throwing her far off her game, and that was the reason he couldn’t get a good read on her.

It was possible he was looking for an excuse—any excuse—to trust her.





CHAPTER TEN


It felt weird to share a meal with someone other than Vic. Eden had spent so many nights with her partner in almost this exact same position—sitting on opposite sides of tiny tables in interchangeable hotels across the States. To do it with someone else . . . to do it with Zach . . . was just downright strange. It was such a silly thing to worry about, especially considering everything else going on, but she would rather deal with the man sitting across from her than with the memories dealing with her mother had brought up today—or the fact that there had most definitely been someone in her room.

Her skin broke out in goose bumps that only seemed to get worse the more she thought about it. This might be a B&B, but it was her space. Her things. That someone had been here, touching her stuff, moving through a space that should have been safe . . . it gave her chills.

It was almost worse that there wasn’t anything she could quite put her finger on as being evidence of the breakin. She wasn’t anal enough to have her things just so in order to function, but she’d packed and unpacked so many times, she had a system. Things had a place.

And those things weren’t quite in the same place they had been this morning.

“What’s wrong?”

She blinked, belatedly realizing that she’d been holding a spoonful of stew long enough for her hand to start aching. She’d eaten Ethiopian food all over the country, and Hakeem’s still served some of the best. “I intensely dislike having my space violated . . . but it’s a minor crime in the face of our current circumstances.” And she had no proof. Sure, she could charge out to Elysia and make a fool of herself spouting paranoid bullshit, but that would give Martha the upper hand—and would tip off whoever had been in her room that she was aware of the trespassing.

“Yeah, maybe it is. But I get the feeling you’ve seen worse than Elouise Perkins.”

He always did that—said the girl’s full name. Like he was doing everything he could to hold on to the person she’d been instead of the body she’d become. Despite everything, it made Eden like him, just a little. “Did you know her?”

“No. Not really.” He took a bite and chewed, the expression on his face letting her know that he’d registered her dodge and noted it. “Town like this, you know everyone, but there’s a difference between being able to pick her out of a crowd and knowing her.”

She was all too aware of that. “So did you know her dad was abusing her?”

Zach flinched, having the grace to look uncomfortable. “For someone who’s been in town a grand total of three days, it’s worrying that you’ve already heard about that.”