Chapter 5
My parents were dead.
My sister lived in Oregon.
I had friends, but Ethan knew every address.
I looked at Roman.
He had been standing near the fireplace for almost four hours without sitting.
“There’s a guesthouse on my property,” he said. “Separate building. Security. She can leave whenever she wants.”
Detective Greene studied him.
“Mr. Moretti, I know exactly who you are.”
“I assumed so.”
“I’m asking Mrs. Whitmore.”
Roman stepped back.
He did not answer for me.
That mattered.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’ll go.”
His home was not a home.
It was an estate hidden behind stone walls thirty minutes outside Asheville.
The main house seemed to rise out of the mountain itself, all pale limestone, glass, and warm amber windows.
I had seen hotels smaller than Roman’s garage.
He took me to the guesthouse.
Someone had already turned on the fireplace.
There were clean clothes folded on the bed.
Toothbrushes.
Slippers.
Soup beneath a silver cover.
Fresh bandages.
I stared at everything.
“Who did this?”
“My housekeeper.”
“You called ahead?”
“Harry did.”
One of the men from earlier lifted a hand from the doorway.
“Hi.”
I almost laughed.
The sound came out like a sob.
Roman dismissed him.
When we were alone, I looked around.
“I can’t pay for this.”
Roman frowned.
“I didn’t ask.”
“I don’t want charity.”
“Good. I’m terrible at charity.”
“What is this, then?”
He took a long moment before answering.
“A debt.”
“To me?”
“To Owen.”
I stared at him.
“You knew my son?”
“Not well.”
“How?”
Roman sat in the chair across from me.
Two years earlier, his younger sister Anna had been in a highway accident with her daughter Sophie.
Sophie had survived with severe injuries and spent four months in pediatric rehabilitation.
I remembered her.
A stubborn eight-year-old with red hair who refused to do exercises unless Owen did them beside her.
At the time, Owen had spent afternoons at the clinic because childcare had fallen through.
He and Sophie became friends.
I remembered a quiet man arriving twice.
Expensive coat.
Scar over his eyebrow.
Always standing near the door.
Roman.
“Sophie stopped speaking after the crash,” he said. “Doctors kept telling us she needed time.”
I remembered.
“Owen brought her dinosaur cards.”
“Yes.”
“He told her dinosaurs survived worse things than car crashes.”
Roman looked down.
“She laughed for the first time in six weeks.”
My throat tightened.
“That sounds like him.”
“Sophie gave him my private emergency number. I didn’t know until yesterday.”
My skin went cold.
“The watch.”
Roman nodded.
“At 8:17 the night he died, Owen called me.”
I could not breathe.
“Why?”
“He was scared.”
The room blurred.
Roman leaned forward.
May you like
“I didn’t answer.”
Those four words seemed to hurt him physically.
