Page 12 of Honey Cut
I don’t catch what Melody says next, but Mark laughs again. “But when would I have made my way over to Thailand? I was at a very long dinner my first night and a well-known club on my second. I’d imagine there is plenty of security footage showing my comings and goings. Showing, for example, that I didn’t leave the hotel after I got back on either of those nights.”
“We both know there are ways to get around footage like that, Mark. Just like there are ways to charter unlogged flights to Thailand. And the third night of your stay?—”
“Has a rather memorable alibi,” Mark cuts in.
“Oh yes. All of Langley knows. Some poor hotel staff member walked in on a tryst with you and your bodyguard.”
“So there you have it. Even if there are ways to sneak out of a hotel unseen or to get to Thailand without anyone noticing, I wouldn’t have had the time to go there, come back, fuck my bodyguard, and then make my early flight.Orfuck my bodyguard, go to Thailand, murder a man, and then come back to Singapore in time for my flight. And how would I even know where Lackland was staying? He was notoriously paranoid about sharing that kind of thing, you know.”
“I do know. Just like I know that hotel employee only recalls that you were in the shower. Not that he saw you in the room.”
“You’d need more.” Mark’s voice is calm, teasing even. Like this is a game to him. “You’d need more than just opportunity, which is still looking pretty shaky to me, Melody. Where are my means? Where’s my motive?”
“Means are looking difficult to establish,” Melody admits. “Extended downtime in a subtropical climate will do that to a corpse.”
“How terrible. I hope it doesn’t slow the investigation down.”
“But motive,” Melody says softly, and I have to strain to hear her now, “you and I both know you have that in spades.”
“Very hard to prove. After all, Eliot’s death was a clear case of friendly fire. Tragic but understandable under the circumstances. No reason for someone to kill Eliot’s boss several years later.”
Eliot. I’ve never heard that name before. I log it away, along with his death as a potential motive for killing John Lackland.
“Mark.” It’s the first time I’ve heard Melody sound like a sister. Like she cares. “He was your husband. Don’t pretend like it doesn’t matter how he died.”
Husband.
But—but Mark has never been married. I’m sure of it. It was part of planning our wedding, and my uncle and his informants have given me everything they know about him. Which admittedly is little—Mark spent several years of his life as barely more than a ghost in a suit.
But still.
A husband we would have known about.
There’s a strange prick in my chest as I focus again on Mark and his twin, and I pretend I don’t feel it. It’s an anomaly. I’m not invested in whether Mark has been in love before or if he’s still grieving someone he lost.
If he doesn’t mind having a sham marriage with me because he’s already had a real one with someone else.
“I’ve never pretended that it doesn’t matter,” Mark says, and his voice is sharp enough to score glass.
“Then what is your game here?”
“Ys started the game. I’m only finishing it.”
Ys.My breath stills in my chest.
“And how will you know you’ve won? How many corpses will there be by the end?”
There’s a long silence and then the rattle of ice in Mark’s glass. “As many as it takes.”
five
ISOLDE
Ys.I’ve heard that name before.
As I slip silently away from the corner and step back into the chattering, glimmering world of the party, I search my memories.
Ys.
