Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,69
fridge kick on, mixing with the sound of our breathing. In all that we’ve gone through, we’ll always come back together like this. Like there are magnets in our hearts.
“That’s my girl,” Dex whispers into my hair, words shaking. “That’s my girl.”
A single tear rolls down my cheek, and I quickly wipe it away with the heel of my palm. I don’t always get so emotional during sex, and for some reason it embarrasses me today. I’m a wreck.
He pulls out, and I hate that empty feeling I get afterward, even though I feel so much more whole now than before.
“You okay?” he whispers, placing a kiss on my shoulder before getting to his feet.
I nod, closing my eyes, turning my head to give him a small smile.
The exhaustion suddenly hits me, and it takes all my effort to actually face him, collapsing onto the couch.
He pulls on his briefs, smiling at me with that blissfully sated look in his eyes that tells me everything between us is back to normal just as his phone rings from his jacket on the floor.
“Might be Atlas,” he says, pulling it out of his pocket. He peers at the number and shrugs. “Hello?” he answers.
I gather my scattered clothes, about to take them to the laundry basket in the bedroom, but I pause when I notice that Dex is silent, looking absolutely dumbfounded.
“How?” he asks breathlessly into the phone. I watch as his expression gets more confused, more fearful. An icy river trails down my back.
“Okay, thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry.” That comes out in a whisper.
He hangs up the phone and looks at me, blinking for a few seconds.
“What is it?” I ask him.
His mouth opens and then closes again. “Harry is dead.”
Fourteen
I stare at Dex, trying to process what he just said.
“Harry is dead?” I repeat. “What do you mean he’s dead?”
He swallows and sits back down on the couch, elbows on his knees. “I mean, he’s dead. That was his accounting firm. I’d left a message with them when I couldn’t get a hold of him or Atlas. They told me he was found yesterday on the shore of Seward Park in Lake Washington. They’re doing an autopsy right now but they’re calling it an accidental drowning.”
My hand goes to my chest. “Oh my god.”
It’s then that I realize I’m still naked. I’m tired of being horrified and naked at the same time.
“Hold on,” I tell him, hurrying into the bedroom to throw my gym clothes in the laundry basket. I quickly get dressed into a long thermal shirt and leggings, pulling my wet hair back into a bun. I rush back out to see Dex zipping up his jeans, subtly shaking his head.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” he says in a grave voice.
“Maybe he…maybe he tried to kill himself.”
“Then he didn’t try. He succeeded.” He pulls on his shirt, messing up his hair. “Why would Atlas let us go to the house?”
“Maybe he didn’t know his stepfather was dead? They didn’t seem close from the way he talked about him. And Harry never even mentioned Atlas at all.”
“I knew there was something off about the both of them.”
“We both figured that. I mean, he paid us all that money for pretty much nothing…” I trail off, realizing something. “Oh my god. They’re going to think we’re suspects now!”
Dex frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“They’ll see Harry wrote us a giant check. They’ll wonder why he paid us that huge amount and then died like three weeks later.”
“From what his company told me, it didn’t seem suspicious.”
“Yeah right! Why do an autopsy then?”
“Covering their bases?” he says with an unsure raise of his brows.
“Well fuck. I don’t know. What if the police contact us?”
“So then they do. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“We’ve been in his house.”
“His abandoned house and with his permission.”
“We need to get a hold of Atlas.” The apartment seems cold suddenly, and I rub my hands up and down my arms. As if I wasn’t already anxious enough, this is just throwing more shit on the fan.
“I’ll try again,” he says, picking his phone up off the coffee table. “I’ve literally been calling and texting him all morning. Of course, I looked him up on Facebook, Instagram, all the usual suspects. There’s nothing. Nothing but a phone number. I’m starting to wonder if…”