Page 74 of Diary from an Inked Throne

Lynx made a noise around his mouthful of food, and we all looked over at him expectantly.

He held up one finger while he frantically chewed his food and pulled his phone out of his back pocket with his other hand. Once he’d swallowed, he glanced apologetically at Stewart. “Forgive me for having my phone out at the dinner table. But if Virginia only ever took the bus into the city, maybe that’s where she was actually going?” He stabbed his phone a few times and then grinned, twisting it around to show the rest of us, even though the writing was too small to be seen across the table. “That bus ended at the Saint View bus depot. Then changed routes to head into the city. She wouldn’t have even had to get up off her seat.”

“That was late in the afternoon though,” I mused. “Pretty late to be heading into the city unless you were planning to stay the night. That could be why she left her car at the Guerras’ place instead of driving herself to the bus depot. We all know if you leave a car at the depot overnight in Saint View, it probably won’t be there when you get back.”

The depot was in the worst part of town, well known for the undesirables who lurked around there after dark. Virginia’s car wasn’t Guerra-level fancy, but it was nice enough for the scumbags to want to steal or strip for parts, or at the very least, vandalize for fun.

A little kernel of excitement lit up inside me at the feeling we’d just had a mini breakthrough in tracking down her killer. And now that I had a taste of how that felt, I wanted more. I leaned forward eagerly. “Okay, so if she was going to the city that night, why?”

“Aunt Carole lives there,” King offered. “She always took the bus in to see her and she definitely would have planned to stay the night if that was the case because the two of them together always equaled several empty bottles of wine.”

Stewart squinted at that and rubbed his forehead. “She would have told me if she was going to see her sister. Why wouldn’t she?”

He had a point.

“She didn’t tell you where she was going at all?” I questioned.

“No. I didn’t even know she’d been at the Guerras’ until just now either, though I guess I should have assumed, since they brought the car back. I was just so thick in the grief I never really thought about it.” There was hurt in his expression. “She never said much about working there. We all know why. That’s how she kept us safe. By making sure we never knew anything about the things she saw in that house.”

Dax drummed his tattooed fingers over the table absentmindedly. “But normally she would have at least told you she was going to work, wouldn’t she? I remember her kissing my head every morning before school and her saying she was off to work.”

Stewart nodded. “Of course.”

“But she didn’t that morning?” I asked.

“No, she didn’t.”

“Maybe because I’d asked her not to go,” Dax said. “And maybe that’s why she didn’t tell anyone she was going into the city either. Because she knew she was doing something dangerous and that we’d try to stop her.”

Silence settled on all of us.

Dax’s expression grew pained as he tried to work it all out in his head. “Aunt Carole’s place isn’t dangerous. She wasn’t going there. What the hell is in the city that could have been dangerous to her?”

The guys threw around some very halfhearted suggestions, none of it making any sense.

But a sick feeling started in the pit of my stomach and only grew with every second that passed.

Because suddenly, I was sure I knew exactly where she’d been going. “My parents’ place.” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “I’d bet a million dollars she was going to talk to my parents.”

23

LUCA

Dear Diary,

Remind me never to solve crimes over casserole again.

Istared at Nyah. “Why the hell would she want to talk to your parents?”

A tear dripped down her face. “Dax had called her and told her how everything had blown up in Scotland. About you claiming the baby as yours. About the war between you and your dad and how Dax was involved. He’d warned her to stay away from your father because it wasn’t safe.”

“But she went anyway.” Dax stared down at his half-eaten food.

Nyah nodded. “Yes. And there’s only one reason I can think of why she would have willingly walked back into that mess after you’d told her how dangerous it was.”

Dax looked up at Nyah with heartbroken eyes. “For us. And for the baby. She would have always put us ahead of herself.”

I swallowed thickly. “She’d worked for my father for decades. If anyone had a shot at convincing him of something, it would have been her.”