Page 131 of Rules to Love By

“Maybe even try to sell without the will,” Eli added.

“Probably.” Ozzy crossed his arms. “But this place is a whole hell of a lot more volatile than the B and B or the shelter. So who’s to say she didn’t scare off any potential buyers willing to overlook the lack of documentation by, say, shorting out a walk-in full of food. Or loosening a brick or two to make a shelf of heavy, expensive dishes fall over.”

“Are you trying to imply the house vandalized itself?”

Ozzy shrugged. “Not everything. The pipes and light fixtures are definitely gone. Someone took those, no question.”

“At least he turned the water off before he did that,” Marcus mused. “Or none of this would probably matter.”

They all stopped, startled, and Ozzy made a beeline for the door.

Tris frowned after him, but soon went back to fiddling with the items on Iris’s desk.

A few minutes later, Ozzy returned, looking murderous.

“The water was still on?” Marcus guessed.

“Still on,” Ozzy confirmed. “Soon as I touched the tap, it gushed out. Stopped when I had it off. Then sprayed again. Just for a second.”

“Just to be cheeky,” Tris said.

No one argued his point.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

Once Marcus felt the house was over her fit, he nodded to the locksmith. “Think you can open this thing?” He waved at the desk.

“If it has a lock, I can open it.”

“Ah-ha!” Tris grinned as he poked through a bowl of paperclips.

“What?” Marcus managed to not quite glare at him as his heart jumped and his nerves tingled from the shock of his outburst. The house had him on edge and Tris’s triumphant shout had nearly pushed him over the brink.

“I knew it was here somewhere.” He dug into the bowl and pulled out a small black key. “Don’t need to pick the locks.”

Marcus took it from him. “Is that the desk key? How did you know it was there?”

“Remember she used to send me upstairs to clean up before my shifts?”

Marcus flipped hair out of his eyes. “So?”

“So. Once, I was going back down after, and she was in here doing paperwork.”

“And you spied on her?”

“No. She’d closed and locked the desk, but Johnathan was in here with her. She called me in, and when he turned around to look at me, she shoved the key under the paperclips. I saw her do it. He didn’t. After he left, she fished the key out, dropped it into the pen holder, thanked me and told me to have a good shift. And reminded me to eat something on my break.”

“So it was okay for you to know where she hid it, but not him,” Ozzy said.

Tris made a moue with his lips, and a small shrug as he gazed at Marcus. “I guess?”

“She trusted you,” Marcus said.

“And if she hadn’t, maybe you would have given up on me, not pushed me to find my brother, and I wouldn’t have gone to Griffon’s Elbow, and maybe not fixed my life.” He leaned back, without looking, like he knew Ozzy would be there for him to prop himself on.

Which of course, Ozzy was.

“You’re sort of like her that way,” Tris pointed out. “So you can’t get mad at her for it.”

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