Page 94 of Ace My Heart

‘The Herbert Murders’the media was calling it. I cringed at the name. Journalists conveniently forgot that these people had families who were grieving.

Deep down though, I wondered.Wasthere a connection between the two murders? It would be too much of a coincidence for there not to be – two brothers don’t just both get murdered randomly, do they?

Ben’s friend from Dubai had flown in for the funeral and he gave the eulogy. I paid little attention to his words. He was tall, slim, and Middle Eastern. He spoke perfect English with a rich accent. His skin was olive and flawless. He was dressed smartly in a charcoal suit, grey shirt and tie.

His smooth voice flowed over me and I listened without reallyhearing what he was saying. I glanced up at Joel. His teeth were slightly bared, his jaw clenched so tightly I was worried that it might shatter. He looked absolutely furious.

I very quickly tuned in to the eulogy.

“… he was generous with everyone he knew. Ben wasn’t the type of person to hoard his wealth. He shared it with friends and loved ones, with no expectations in return. He was never interested in flaunting his fortune …”

I reached out and took Joel’s hand, resting it on my thigh and placing my own hand on top of it. His head jerked and he turned to me. His face began to relax, although his lips were still pursed. The right corner of his mouth tweaked up, and he put his other hand on top of mine, leaning closer to me. I rested my head against his shoulder, listening to his breath hiss in and out. I felt the stiffness in his body ease.

The eulogy ended and the priest started speaking again. I wasn’t listening to that either, but for a different reason. Joel’s thumb was moving back and forwards very gently on my thigh. I sneaked a glance up at Joel’s face, but he was watching the service. Was he trying to get a reaction out of me? If he was … no, he couldn’t possibly be that bold, to do it in the middle of a funeral.

There was another option: that touching me in such a familiar way was becoming second nature to him … and I kept letting him.

Should I stop him? Or should I just let it happen? Before I could work out the answer, the priest announced a hymn and as we stood, Joel’s hand slipped from my leg. I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t deal with how his touch made me feel right now.

On the way home from the funeral, Joel’s phone bleeped with a notification.

“Can you check that for me?” Joel asked, navigating through the traffic from Bondi back to Rose Bay.

“Really? What if it’s one of your fuck buddies?” I asked , picking his phone up from the centre console.

“It won’t be,” he assured me in a low voice.

I looked down at the screen. “It’s a Tweet, from that guy,tennisfanboi, the one who leaked the …” Joel grabbed the phone, typing in his passcode and handing the phone back to me.

“What does it say?”

I skimmed the Tweet. “Holy fuck!”

Joel dragged the steering wheel to the side, pulling up to the kerb. “What is it?” he demanded, snatching the phone from me.

Police leak: the bar brawl was a red herring! Grant Johnson’s stabbing back in February happened INSIDE his apartment, ya’ll! Police treating as attempted murder … more to come …

“Where the fuck is this guy getting his info?” Joel exclaimed, putting his phone down and gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. “He must have access to police files.”

But something else was niggling at the back of my mind. Something about this information turned my stomach.

“Joel …” I whispered, turning to him, my face suddenly cold.

“Stink, what’s wrong?” he asked, voice thick with concern.

“What if … what if it’s all because of … me?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Nothing Good

“So, the cops have Tweeted a confirmation that Grant was stabbed inside his apartment,” Joel said, looking up from his phone as I finished my warm-up stretches to one side of the court.

It was two days since Ben’s funeral – since tennisfanboi’s Tweet about Grant that still had my stomach tied up in knots. And only a week until we flew out for Wimbledon. I was training extra hours at the moment to make sure I was ready. This morning I was doing drills and weights, then taking a swim. After lunch I would play a game with Joel, and he would push me to my limits.

“You seem very interested in this information, for someone who told me the other day that I was completely overreacting when I thought that maybe this thing with Grant was related to Ben and to … to your dad.”

“We’ve been over this, Mel. The world doesn’t revolve around you,” he reminded me with a little smile. They were the same words he had used in the car the first time I’d brought this worry up with him, after he got over the initial shock of my sudden suspicion.

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