Page 11 of Requiem

She studies my expression for a long moment and nods.

“I won’t make that mistake, Brett.”

I give her a halfhearted smile.

“I know you won’t. You’re much too savvy for that. It’s just easy to forget who he is. What he is.”

“The thing with people like that is they’re so good at making you see what they want you to see. Seriously, if your mother hadn’t confronted him with the video thing, would you have ever thought he was involved with your dad’s death?”

I think about this carefully before answering.

“It wasn’t my first thought, but the more I think about it now, the more I’m surprised that it wasn’t.”

“What do you mean by that, Mr. Cryptic?”

She’s half asking, half teasing … but I’m deadly serious.

“It was my mother’s first thought. She checked the video files, even though it was clear he’d had a heart attack. She made the coroner do an autopsy. She was too smart to take it at face value. It was her first thought. He was her first thought.”

Even as I say it, it makes me shudder. I can’t do this anymore. Not now. Not here. I pull her even tighter into me and give her a long, slow, deep kiss. Suddenly, my body is telling me that maybe there are things in which it’s interested, after all.