Unwanted Blood (Harper) novel Chapter 28

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Chapter 28

Harper’s POV

“If the lock was forced from the inside, it means he already had a key to the building,” I muttered to the empty kitchen.

Lily was still asleep, sleeping past noon for the first time. I spread everything out on the kitchen table and stared at it. I dragged the thick manila folder Ryder had left on the counter into the light. I spread the contents across the table, smoothing the curled edges of the paper with the side of my palm.

Marcus’s photo. The news clipping about Everly. The storage unit record. The phone number registered under my name. I arranged them by date, oldest to newest, and sat back.

It didn’t help. The pieces were all there and they still didn’t connect into anything I could use. Someone had set up a phone account for me when I was thirteen. Someone had cleaned out a safe the same afternoon a lawyer died. Someone was walking around this city wearing my face. And Marcus, who should have been the clearest thread, had gone completely quiet for days.

I picked up my phone, my thumb hovering over the screen before I sent a brief text to Ryder.

“If the safe was emptied… is it possible it was already empty before my look alike got there?”

The three dots appeared instantly, disappearing and returning twice before the text came through.

“Possible. Whoever took it may have found nothing. Or Marcus already has what he wanted and we just don’t know it yet.”

That was the part I kept circling. If Marcus had the evidence, why go quiet? Why keep watching instead of moving?

“Don’t overthink it,” The phone buzzed again in my hand. “I’m tracking Westbrook’s financial flow. I’ll tell you if there’s any progress. Get some rest today.”

I flipped the device face down against the table. Get some rest. As if that was a thing I knew how to do. It was easier said than done.

At exactly one o’clock, the bedroom door groaned open. Lily stumbled out, her hair a wild knot against her neck, her fingers blindly tapping at her phone screen as she navigated past the sofa. She stopped in the middle of the rug, her eyes widening as the screen refreshed.

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Chapter 28

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A breathless shriek rattled the kitchen windowpanes. “Ethan asked if I wanted to go watch sunset tonight”

I poked my head out of the kitchen. “So?”

“I’m going to pick some clothes.” She threw her phone onto the cushions and vanished back into the bedroom, the sound of a suitcase zipper tearing through the quiet. “He said five o’clock. I don’t have anything that doesn’t smell like a duffel bag. Get your shoes on, Harper. We’re going downtown.”

“Lily-”

“Right now, Harper.”

Thirty minutes later, I was standing in a mall downtown holding her bag while she ran laps between the fitting room and the mirror. I had been promoted from human clothes hanger to official opinion-giver, which mostly meant saying yes to everything while she second-guessed herself immediately after.

“Which one do you think is better, this one or that one?”

“They are all nice.”

“You didn’t even look.”

“That’s just going through the motions!”

She disappeared back into the fitting room. I let out a low laugh. But as I turned my head to clear the hair from my face, a shape near the glass partition of the second-floor coffee shop stopped my jaw.

Ryder was standing by the chrome railing, a paper coffee cup held loosely in his right hand. His sleeves were rolled up past his forearms, his eyes fixed on the pile of hangers in my arms.

He didn’t move until he saw me freeze. Then, with an awkward stride, he walked down the stone steps into the lower plaza. “I was just passing by.”

I didn’t respond.

“I really was just passing by.”

“You said that already.”

Lily’s head poked out from behind the curtain, her eyes scanning his empty hands and then the bags weighing down my wrists. A slow, calculating look crossed her face. “You’re just in time,

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Chapter 28

Ryder. Help us carry our things.”

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She dumped a leather tote and two heavy bags directly into his chest. Ryder caught the handles, his eyes darting toward me as if waiting to see where I stood.

I let out a long sigh, my head dropping back. “Whatever. Just don’t slow us down.”

So that was how the Wilson family’s eldest son spent his Saturday afternoon trailing behind us through three floors of a shopping mall carrying a floral dress, a shoebox, and a paper bag of earrings while Lily deliberated over whether the shoes were too high to walk in.

They were. She bought them anyway.

“Do you think he will like the outfit?” she asked me quietly, smoothing the front of the floral dress in the mirror.

“He’ll be speechless,” I said.

Lily’s cheeks turned blush. Then she glanced behind us and whispered into my ear. “Why has your brother been staring at you all day?”

I turned around. The moment Ryder felt my eyes on him, his chin lifted, his gaze instantly shifting up toward the glass dome of the ceiling.

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