Madly Yours novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Bait

Leland looked at the photo for two seconds.

Then he picked up my sweater off the wet floor and put it over my head himself, gently.

"Stay here," he said. "Lock the door."

He walked out of the bathroom barefoot.

I heard him go down the back stairs fast.

No cane.

I heard the garden door.

I locked the bathroom door and sat on the floor with my back against it and the shower still roaring.

It was nine minutes by my phone before he knocked.

"It's me. He's gone. There's a gap in the hedge by the east wall. Fresh footprints."

I opened the door.

He was soaked to the knees, and his face was a face I hadn't seen before.

Not the madman.

Not the man who'd made me laugh over doughnuts.

Something older and very tired.

"I'm going to show you everything," he said. "Then you decide if you stay."

His study was at the top of the house.

He unlocked a closet I'd thought was a closet.

Inside was a whole wall of boxes, labeled in his square handwriting, and a corkboard covered in photos and string.

I stood in the doorway in my damp sweater and stared.

"Two years," he said.

He pointed, and talked, and didn't once look at me while he did it.

"My father ran Halstead Marine. My uncle was his little brother. Head of nothing. Hated it."

"The night of the crash, my uncle was at a dinner in town with sixty witnesses. Very convenient."

"The truck was stolen in Daly City at nine and found burned in a quarry at two."

"After the funeral, my uncle became acting CEO. I was in the hospital and then I was in a wheelchair."

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