Fatal Beauty Read Free Page B

pleasant task of hiding it from her father and her brother.
    It was the first time she had to lie to the man who lied for a
living, and she loved it.
    “I’m going home, Daddy.”
    His gaze hardens, and she tightens her grip on the bag. This
wasn’t her father, the one who spoiled and indulged her. This was the pitbull who cowed judges and secured freedom for his
clients even when they had blood on their hands. She forces her shiver down and
lifts her chin.
    “I don’t need to stay here. The police cleared the house. There was
no evidence of violence. I want to be there if— when— Tre comes home.”
    “I’ll go with her, Dad,” Hayes says. “She won’t be alone.”
    Charlie gives her brother a scornful glare but he ignores her as
Travis twists to look at his son. His gaze sweeps back to Charlie and she lets
her expression melt into the pouting, hopeful smile she perfected in high
school, and he sighs. “Fine. But I want you with her all night.”
    He turns to Charlie and his eagle-eye sharp glare melts into
concern. He hugs her briefly. “We’ll do coffee on Friday, ok, Pumpkin?”
    She wrinkles her nose at the endearment, but nods against his
chest.
    Continue living like
nothing has changed.
    Jacobs had promised to fix everything. Tre would vanish and
nothing would blowback on her or EJ.
    How fucking stupid had she been, to call EJ?
    The phone in her back pocket buzzes to life and she steps away
from Travis. “I’m going to go to the ladies room, before we go,” she says and
Hayes steps forward to gather her bags.
    In the bathroom, with the phone silenced and the door locked, she
glances at the waiting message.
    EJ: Eleven. He said dress warm. Did you get to the house yet?

 
    Her fingers shake a little
as she types back quickly, and then tucks the phone away. Washes her hands and slip
out of the restroom.
    Hayes and her father have
retreated. She gives the bedroom—twilight blue and cream lace with black
accents—a quick look. Then she goes downstairs and joins her brother in his
BMW.
    It takes less than she
anticipated to drug Hayes. He was attentive and smothering for the first hour,
but ignored her while she crawled into a big bath. When she emerged, he was on
the phone with someone—probably the pretty paralegal she saw him fucking in the
conference room last week.
    It was too easy to slip a
sleeping pill into his wine, and wait for him to come to her, looking a little
too flushed and distracted while he swallowed the wine and ate the penne with a
garlic sauce, sautéed peppers and blackened chicken.
    And from there, she simply
had to wait.
    While he lay snoring on the
couch, she painted her toenails and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
    EJ is right on time, and
her eyes are wide and searching as she stands on the porch. “Ready?”
    Charlie glances at Hayes,
asleep on the couch, the wine forgotten. Her bags, still sitting in the foyer.
She grabs one, and drops the note with her cellphone on the side table. EJ
motions and a slender black man appears from the darkness. Charlie tenses at
the sight of him, and EJ makes a quieting noise in her throat. “Jacobs sent
him. He works at the Ivy.”
    Charlie is skittish but she
doesn’t stop him as he grabs the two suitcases, and puts them in the waiting
car. She glances once at EJ. “This is smart? Trusting him?”
    EJ shrugs. “We don’t have a
choice, sugar.”
    They had one. The best
defense attorney in the state.
    But no way in hell would
she ever allow her father to know she had been a victim. That killing Tre had
been desperate self-defense.
    And with that—she grits her
teeth and quietly pulls the door closed.
    “Let’s go.”

 
    Chapter 5

 
    The house he tucks them
away in is a gorgeous gothic thing. Curling black metal and dark lacquered
wood, and the feel of something very old.
    EJ lifts an eyebrow behind
her aviators, but her expression doesn’t change. The opulent beauty of the
southern mansion might impress her if she