Lethal Wedding (Wedlocked Trilogy Book 2) - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,11

little bit on the edge."

I thank her again for coming in and speaking with me and show her to the door.

We have invited her to stay for dinner, a glamorous dinner of takeout from the Denny's across the street, but she declines.

She doesn't want to make friends with people who know her deepest and darkest pain and I understand that.

After she leaves, I ask Liam to wrap up the recording session before dinner.

We are both hungry, but I want to put this case behind us and really celebrate.

No, maybe celebrate is the wrong word.

I don't have anything to celebrate.

The reason that I'm back in Kentucky is that I'm running away from life as I know it.

But it's good to put a period at the end of the sentence and that's why I want to finish talking about this case before dinner.

"What a terrible story," Liam says into the microphone after I read from the script that I put together earlier today. "But of course it is so important that we share it so that others can learn from it."

"Yes, I totally agree with you," I say. "That's one of the reasons we do what we do here at Generation Crime with Henry Asher.”

At this point, I'm supposed to read a promo for the podcast's sponsor; an online mattress store, but I get lost in the paperwork and read the wrong script.

"Oh, shit," I say with the recording still running.

Liam shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, man.” I guess I'm hungrier than I thought.

"Let's just finish it when we get back, I'm starving," he insists.

I shake my head no, scrambling for the right ad.

At one point I had them all printed out, God knows why, but now I just scroll up through the Word document where I had organized the whole story and find it at the very beginning.

"Let me just do this part again," I insist.

We get to Denny's fifteen minutes later. A familiar waitress welcomes us in.

After a month of living here, she knows both of our names and we know all of the waitresses who work here.

This one is Maureen, she is eighteen-years-old with pimples to show for it and the casual quiet demeanor of someone who would prefer to spend her days thinking about dragons and swordplay rather than omelet grand slams and hash browns.

Maureen is a big fan of the Witcher, the latest Netflix sensation, and the three of us bond over this fact. She has never heard of a podcast until she met us and I showed her how to access the Podcast App on her iPhone.

"I never even knew what this button did," she said. "And they’re all free?"

"Yep," I confirmed. "And not all of them are about crime. A lot of them are about politics and there are lots of really good ones about various curiosities and unusual stories. If you like science-fiction and fantasy, there are a ton of podcasts about that."

"Awesome, I'll definitely check them out," she promised.

At the time, I thought that she was just being nice, but she surprised me.

I see her a few times a week and every time she introduces me to a new fantasy podcast that I've never heard of that she has already binged.

"You know, I'm going to miss seeing you every week," I tell her.

"Why is that?" she asks.

"Well, we just did our last interview and we're heading back home soon."

"Oh, no, that's too bad. Any chance that you'll be back?"

"Not likely," I say.

After she leaves to get our orders, Liam takes a sip of his soda and mentions how he wishes that Leslie was working tonight.

I laugh and shake my head.

Leslie is twenty-seven-years-old with two children and a husband who went out to get some milk one night and never came back.

She knew enough not to get her hopes up with Liam, but they've enjoyed each other's company for a few nights and from what I've heard, they have both had a good time.

"So, how are things with Aurora?" he asks when Maureen comes back with our food.

I shrug and dig my fork into the pancakes.

"Not that great," I say. "I went up to New York and I tried to talk to her but she wasn't interested."

Liam sighs heavily.

He isn't much of a ladies’ man and seems to be the kind of guy who is just looking to find that one special girl he can spend the rest of his life with.

I never wanted any of that before, but now I'm not so sure. The