I lie in bed for about half an hour, listening to Lincoln breathing evenly beside me. He’s lying on his stomach, body nestled against mine and one arm draped over me, and as much as I want to get a move on with this search, it takes a little convincing to get myself to slip out of the warm bed.
After throwing a sweater on over my tank top and pajama bottoms, I pad downstairs and make some coffee, grabbing five mugs from the cabinet and setting them out. It’s weird. I’ve felt more at home in this house in the last four days than I ever did in the weeks I lived here before that.
I’m staring at the coffee pot, zoning out a little as I wait for it to finish brewing, when I hear two sets of footsteps behind me. I don’t even have to look up to guess who it is. Dax and Chase are both early risers, as if sleep is just an inconvenience they have to deal with to get to the next day. They’re usually up before the rest of us, and I’ve never seen them start the day with anything less than one hundred percent energy—unlike River, who wakes up in stages, from deliriously grumpy to semi-conscious to alert.
“Hey, Low. You’re up early,” Chase notes, shooting me a look with brows raised. With just a slight shift in the tilt of his lips, his grin turns wicked. “Did River not wear you out enough last night?”
I blush, pressing my lips together hard, not sure if I want to smile or smack him.
“Oh, give her a break, she just woke up.”
Dax nudges Chase out of the way and grabs an empty mug, joining us in our vigil over the coffee maker. His gaze cuts to me out of the corner of his eye, and on my other side, I can feel Chase staring at me too.
I squirm uncomfortably before finally crossing my arms over my chest and bouncing my gaze between the two of them. “What?”
“Nothing,” Chase says with a grin, shooting Dax a look over my head that I’m pretty sure contains an entire seventeen-page essay. How the fuck do they do that?
“Um, bullshit.” I cross my arms over my chest.
Dax chuckles. His green-blue eyes have heat in them, but something else too. Something I like even more. “It’s just—you’re not what we expected, Harlow. You’re so much more than that. I don’t think any of us saw you coming.”
A small swarm of butterflies escapes and flaps wildly around my stomach, but I just give him my cockiest smirk. “Yeah. Most people don’t.”
He tips his head back and laughs, and the way the sound bounces around the quiet, empty kitchen makes me grin harder.
We grab our coffees and lean against the kitchen island, eating muffins left by Gwen and talking about stupid bullshit. Once he finishes off his second muffin, Chase dusts his hands together.
“So, what are we thinking for today?”
“I want to check out that room on the other side of the laundry room from mine. The one near the top of the west wing stairs,” I say immediately.
The two boys share a look and shrug, then nod.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
Good. If we get an early start like this, there’ll be plenty of time to go through that room inch by inch and still cover other spots in the house by the end of the day.
We drop our mugs in the sink and head upstairs, lowering our voices as we go. Lincoln and River are still sleeping, and I won’t bug them unless it gets super late and they’re still not up.
Dax pushes open the door to the large guest bedroom and strides in confidently.
Of course. He’s been in here before.
Pushing aside the twinge of jealousy that arises at the thought—I don’t even know who the girl they brought in here was, and that was months ago, but I still hate her a little bit—I stride inside after him, glancing around quickly. I’ve been in here to clean several times, but it usually doesn’t take very long. The room barely gets used, so it’s mostly just upkeep.
“I think I heard Mr. Black having sex with someone in here,” I murmur softly, my gaze still tracking around the space. “A few months ago. When I snuck out to play poker after my first week at Linwood.”
Dax pulls a disgusted face, but both boys look around the room with renewed interest.
“Okay, so what are we looking for?” Chase tilts his head, stepping closer to the large bed set against one wall. “Do we think Iris signed her name on the headboard or something?”
“I wish.” I
snort. “I’m not sure. Maybe she left a sock behind or something. Or jewelry. I don’t know.”
We spread out, poking through the dresser drawers and looking through the closet. It’s all mostly empty, although the closet seems to have turned into an overflow storage area for some of Mrs. Black’s clothes. There’s a small notebook stored in the bedside table, but it looks like several pages have been torn out of the spiral rings. There’s a scrap of one missing page still left in the front of the notebook, with looping, curved handwriting cut off by the ragged tear.
I can’t make out what it says, but it sort of looks like Audrey’s handwriting. Maybe she uses this room as a general storage area, dumping anything she doesn’t want in the master suite in here. Unfortunately, Iris left no damn socks behind—or if she did, it was long enough ago that Mom or the previous housekeeper snatched it up and washed it without realizing whose it was.