Page 178 of Our Little Secret

She watched as they changed clothes.

All business, no lovey-dovey stuff. When he stripped off his shirt, then scratched the back of his neck, she saw it. The bit of ink, a tattoo covered by his longer hair. She zoomed in and the image was fuzzier, but it definitely could be the curled end of a tentacle from the octopus inked at the base of his skull. And as she zoomed in closer, she saw a scar she’d never noticed on Gideon, a small mar in the flesh of his back, where a bullet may have grazed him or gone through. Sure enough, he turned to say something to Leah and there it was. A small scar. Through and through, the bullet probably on the floor of Elliott Bay, the reason there’d been so much blood roiling in the water that horrid night.

“Gotcha.” She should have felt satisfied. There was part of her proof. Instead, she was on edge, thinking of her family with him.

The rest of the footage was nonconsequential, but obviously an argument had been simmering between Eli and Leah, trouble in paradise.

Maybe she was getting wise to him.

“No way,” she whispered to the empty house. Once Leah had decided on a mate she ignored every last warning sign that came her way.

The last images were of Leah and Neal in the hallway, after Marilee and Eli had gone downstairs. Again, the footage was silent, but their conversation appeared hushed, and whatever Leah said, Neal shook his head and wrapped his arms around her.

Brooke stared in stunned silence.

Neal kissed the top of Leah’s head. Tenderly. His eyes closed, and when she turned and tilted her head up he kissed her on the lips.

“You damned . . .” Brooke let the sentence fade. She’d suspected Neal of cheating of course. There had been the Jennifer Adkins situation, and then he and Leah had always seemed to have some connection. She’d wondered about an affair when Marilee was very young, and although she’d thought there might be something going on, it wasn’t until Gina Duquette had mentioned seeing them together that her mistrust had solidified. Still, she hadn’t been really faced with proof until this tender scene.

Her stomach turned over and she told herself to let it pass for now.

“Bigger fish to fry,” she said aloud, echoing her grandmother’s words.

She checked the time. An hour had passed already, so she opened up her laptop, where she perused social media, first checking Leah’s pages, then searching for Eli Stone and Gideon Ross, or Gideon John Ross or Eli John Stone or Gideon Eli Stone and on and on. She even added Jake to the mix; Eli had mentioned him as a brother.

Not that he couldn’t have lied.

Not that none of those names, despite the information on his driver’s license, might be his true identity. Fake ID’s could be purchased if one had the right connections. However, in this case there were so many incarnations of the various common names that it was impossible to locate any person on the Internet that looked to be the man she knew as Gideon Ross.

A ghost.

If he’d ever existed.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked to the empty room.

The lights flickered again and she cursed her luck. She couldn’t lose power now. She found her overnight bag and searched through it. No battery charger. Then she remembered Neal asking about it earlier, so he must’ve put it somewhere. She started to text him when the lights blinked again.

“No,” she said. “No, no, no.” Worse yet, her phone was about out of battery life. And where the hell was her charger? In her purse? Not by the bed. Downstairs in the kitchen?

She checked her email again, noting the time. The midnight service should be over, so they should be returning, back within a half hour or so. No new email had come in.

But when she looked into her spam folder she found a new message. The sender was a garbled mess of letters, numbers, and symbols, the letters that she nonetheless recognized as being sent from Caleb Reynolds.

Yes!

Quickly, she opened the email from Caleb Reynolds.

The message was direct:

GO TO THE POLICE!

You were right.

He’s a scam artist with a complex background.

POSSIBLE MURDERER.

Call me.

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