Hollis: No offense, but I’ll go with the less. I want a livable cabin.
Me: It’ll be livable.
Hollis: If you say so. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.
I put my phone on the table and stared at my girl for a while. If I got into bed, I knew the movement would wake her, so I decided to let her sleep for a little bit first. She needed the rest. Neither of us had slept well the last couple of nights.
I stripped down to my boxers and went to the couch with my laptop. I wanted to research Montgomery—the lawyer—Chazz, Raquel, Irene, and anyone else connected to Lloyd. At the end of the day, Lloyd was the key to everything.
I just hoped he hadn’t been involved in whatever had caused all this.
Chapter Eighteen
Alexa
I woke up and stretched in bed. Expecting to find Drake’s warm body, I was greeted with cold sheets. That’s odd. I sat up and saw that the stove light was still on. Whenever he had to work late, I always left it on. When he came to bed, he always turned it off. Did Drake not come to bed?
I threw the heavy gray comforter aside and tiptoed into the living room. When I found him, I stopped and took in the man I loved with all my heart. He lay with his head tilted back on the couch, his computer in his lap. While Drake slept, he had a vulnerability to him that was less apparent when he was awake. A side only I knew. It was when his guard came down, baring his soul. His beard was more than a five-o’clock shadow, and his dark hair was slightly askew.
Checking the clock, I saw that it was a little past six, which was about the time I normally woke up. Curling up in a chair, I watched Drake sleep. After my bath, I’d fallen asleep reading a magazine. I hadn’t realized how exhausting yesterday’s events had been. Inside, I was still a mixture of emotions—relieved Dad hadn’t written the note, mad someone had sabotaged my relationship with Drake, and scared they weren’t done. Today, things felt a little less daunting. But I still had no idea where to begin.
I needed to find out who and why.
Drake shifted and woke up, turned his head toward the clock on the wall opposite me. When he saw the time, he whispered, “Oh man.”
If I’d had to guess, I’d say he’d wanted to join me in bed last night but fell asleep on the couch. I loved how he wanted me close to him. He sat up, and his eyes met mine. His devilish grin was my greeting. “Morning.”
“Morning. How’d you sleep?”
“Like shit. I meant to join you last night.” Irritation flashed across his face. We’d been apart for so long, and I’d hoped to wake up cuddled next to him. I knew he felt the same. Maybe things would progress further than yesterday. I wanted to feel him inside me, have him claim me in a way no one else ever had. Drake had been my first, my only, and hopefully, he would be my last.
For a few seconds, Drake watched me. He always was clued in to how I was feeling.
“I want to know who it was. I want to understand why.”
He put his laptop to one side and scratched his chin. “I was up late, looking into anyone I could think of.”
My heart stopped. “Did you find anything?”
“A year ago, Montgomery had a heart attack and died.”
“What? He was only thirty, maybe a year or two older.”
“Yeah, his housekeeper found him at home in his office.”
Dad had used a lawyer from Juneau, which was a ferry ride away. There weren’t any lawyers in Skagway. The total population was over thirty thousand in Juneau, but here, we had fewer than nine hundred people.
This news put me more on edge. “Did they say anything else?”
“The autopsy revealed nothing, but his parents were suspicious. Said he’d been a healthy, active man with zero heart issues.”
The entire situation didn’t sit well with me. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “What do you think?”
“I have no idea. I want to find something so much and figure out who it is that I’m not sure if I’m grasping at straws.”
“Did you find anything else?”
Drake yawned and propped his elbows on his knees. “I dug into the Municipality Record of Deeds and found who Raquel sold the land to.”