“Where was he found?” she asked. “Here in the living room?”
“No,” said Royce. “In the kitchen. It looked like he’d been making breakfast and collapsed. At least, that’s what the EMT said.”
“Alright.”
They kept moving. The dining room was a mess, the table covered with papers, old mail, and woodworking tools Briar recognized that her father must have brought inside from his workshop.
The kitchen was bad too. Briar could see where the EMTs had come in through the back door and tried to revive Tor but ultimately were unable to. She noticed the back door was banged up, deep scratches striating the inside, but there was no way to know if they were new or if they’d been there for years.
“The whole house is just… nothing has changed, really. Even the piles aren’t surprising,” Briar said, “but it’s all… aged. I don’t know why I find that very disturbing.”
“Are you okay?” Royce asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “I’m fine but—”
The wind gusted and there was a thump from above that had them both glancing upward, making Briar forget what she’d had been about to say. Most likely, the noise was a branch bumping against the house. And considering how overgrown the yard and surrounding trees were, Briar expected there was damage to the house that needed to be taken care of before the winter rains really began. That would explain the musty mildew odor that wasn’t the same as the old man smell.
She made a mental note to have the roof checked out. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to stay here after all.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to stay here,” Royce said, echoing her thoughts. “Not that I don’t think you can’t take care of yourself.”
Briar may have been thinking the same thing, but it annoyed her that Royce vocalized her feelings. Briar kept finding herself surprised by Royce King. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a self-absorbed, world-hating, motorcycle-riding nineteen-year-old man-boy who was also the subject of her teen crush. Not a man who was surprisingly attuned to a stranger’s emotions.
Maybe the years had changed him as much as they had changed her.
“I should check out the upstairs.”
Briar took the lead again, flicking up the switch at the bottom of the stairs. That’s how she ran scenes; she’d learned a long time ago that if she gave a male agent an inch, they took a mile, and she wasn’t going to let Royce lead the way, even if he was Rexville’s sheriff and not a fellow agent. Even if he was damn sexy in those jeans.
Royce King hadn’t been sheriff for more than two days. Had he even been sworn in? Did he have to be?
The house Briar had spent most of her early life in was more ramshackle than she remembered. There was a lot of cleaning up ahead of her, no matter what she decided to do with the property. And if Tor Nilson had left a will, Briar didn’t know about it, so she made a mental note that she needed to check on that.
The stairs creaked and groaned under their combined weight as if they weren’t used to people walking up them, and when she reached the landing, she said over her shoulder, “Has anyone looked for a will?”
“Nothing in the notes I unearthed last night indicated that he searched for a will.”
He must’ve gone back to the office after they’d eaten and he’d dropped her at the motel.
Briar glanced at Royce as he pulled up next to her in the second-floor hallway. “You weren’t the one who left the front door unlocked.” It was a statement, not a question, but it earned her a sigh.
He shot her a scowl. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, she would have laughed. If Royce King thought scowling would intimidate her, he had another thing coming. She also chose to ignore the wayward thought that his scowl was sexy.
An odd breeze gusted across the landing again, bringing something unpleasant along with it. Now Briar smelled something else. Something she thought she recognized. That odor wasn’t rotting food or damp mildew; it was a smell Briar was unfortunately familiar with, that of death.
“I want to check and make sure there aren’t any windows open or something. I swear there’s something open somewhere.”
“I thought you said they found Tor in the kitchen.” A stupid comment, really. Royce had told her what he knew. And Tor’s body was at the funeral home. Whoever’s corpse was responsible for this funk, it wasn’t her father’s.
“They did.” Royce’s expression was grim, and Briar knew he was familiar with the smell of death as well.
There was an odd sense of experiencing the present and past at the same time as she paused on the landing. It was almost like watching a poorly made home movie, one that was only playing inside her head.
Now is not the time.She shoved the memories to the back of her mind as she looked down the second-floor hallway.
There were five doors. One led to the bathroom, another led to the attic stairs, and three were the doors to the house’s bedrooms, although one of them had only ever been used for storage during Briar’s childhood. Tor obviously hadn’t been upstairs in some time because it was grimier than downstairs, the air of neglect more pronounced.
Royce broke the silence. “Please, I know you’re used to this, but can I take the lead? Something has the back of my neck tingling.”