Page 96 of Sunburned

“No one knows, except my family at home. I am moving back to Paris next month, after the De-Sal center breaks ground.”

So that explained the shipment of his car. I was so relieved I could have cried. Or maybe that was the mixture of adrenaline, fear, and whisky coursing through my veins.

He cut his eyes to me, and despite the glue holding my scalp together, I felt the urge to forget our circumstances and pick up where we’d left off in the security room earlier. But my rational mind intervened, reminding me this wasn’t the time for that. “I’d been following Allison when I got knocked over the railing,” I said quietly.

He raised his brows, giving me his full attention as I caught him up with everything that had happened before I’d ended up in the sea.

“And you think this money was Tyson’s?” he asked when I’d finished, zooming in on the picture of the stacks of euros I’d found in Gisèle’s suitcase.

“It has to be the half a million he intended to pay his blackmailer,” I confirmed.

Laurent raised his brows. “His blackmailer?”

Right. I hadn’t yet disclosed that bit of information either. I paused, looking up at the shimmering pinpricks of lights flung across the dark sky. He’d told me his secret, but mine wasn’t nearly so glamorous—or so forgivable.

“Just before I came down here, a foot washed up on the banks of a canal in the Everglades,” I began.

He listened intently as I outlined everything that had happened the summer I turned twenty-one, admitting to my hacking crimes but omitting any details about Ian’s disappearance, save the fact that his foot had turned up last week, opening up the can of worms that brought me down here. In the dark, it was hard to read his expression, but when I’d brought the story full circle, he threaded his fingers through mine, his face solemn. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

“You don’t think I’m a horrible person?”

He shook his head, alleviating my fears. “If my mom was ever in that position, I would do whatever I could to save her. It would not be with computers, but…I understand.”

“There is a lot more to the story, which I will tell you another time,” I said. “Suffice it to say, Tyson wouldn’t have wanted it getting out that the guy who went missing had been extorting him.”

“Who else knows this?” Laurent asked.

“Cody,” I answered.

He ran his fingers through his hair, thinking. “So the question is, how did this blackmail money end up in Gisèle’s suitcase?”

“Right,” I said, grateful he’d connected the dots without digging further into my sordid past. I paused. “Do you think Samira’s grief is an act?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “They did fight a lot. But also they made up a lot.”

“Did they?” I took another sip of his whisky.

“I think maybe she is a little…masochiste? That word I do not know in English.”

“Masochistic,” I supplied.

He pointed at me. “Yes, that. The maids tell me the things they find.”

Interesting. Perhaps Tyson and Samira were better suited than I’d realized. “Samira said she won’t get anything in the will. A few hundred thousand would be better than nothing, now that he’s gone.”

“So she finds the money and has Gisèle hide it in her suitcase—”

“Because she knew the police would be searching Tyson’s room,” I finished, watching the headlights of a car wind down the mountain on the island. “Which means Samira’s telling the truth about believing she’s cut out of the will. Which essentially eliminates her and Gisèle as suspects.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“It’s a start,” I said. Leaving four other suspects, other than Laurent and me. Three, if I could cross out Cody for having saved me.

“There you are,” a female voice behind us called.

Laurent and I whipped around to see Marielle moving toward us across the deck. “They are looking for you,” she went on, slipping past us to collect the ashtray as we rose. “Cody wants to talk to everyone in the salon. He says it’s important.”

Chapter 36