God, morally, she had twelve kinds of problems not saying something or doing something about the death. But she wasn’t going to put her own life at risk for the guy who had been sent to kill Isaac and maybe herself.

Except . . . well, apparently, he’d come to commit suicide with witnesses.

“What are we going to do,” she said, talking out loud and not expecting an answer.

And the we in that was her and her father. The we did not include Isaac.

He’d lied. To her face. He had in fact had contact with those evil people—and meanwhile, she’d been thinking that they’d had a plan. Sure, he hadn’t betrayed her father, but that was only a measure of comfort because obviously, he’d decided to turn himself in—or at least appear to. A man like him, who fought like he did and was as comfortable as he was with weapons? It was far more likely that he’d decided to kill whoever took him into custody and bolt out of the country free and clear.

Fine. She was letting him go.

He was nothing but sexual attraction packaged in a ticking box—and that sound was the timer running out on the bomb underneath all the hard-bodied bows and ribbons. As for the I-love-you stuff? The thing with liars was that you believed anything they said to you at your own risk—not just the stuff you knew to be false. She wasn’t sure where that “admission” got him, but she knew better than to view it as anything other than more hot air.

Her mind made up, she was too tired to be anything but numb. Well, numb and feeling stupid. But come on, like that “rare combination” of raw and gentle really existed?

“Wait here,” her father said.

As he got up, she realized two large men had come into her kitchen. The pair of them were cut from the same mold as Isaac and the very-definitely-not-dead Jim Heron—and the sight of them was yet another reminder of what was going on in the front hall.

Like she needed the help, though?

“We’re friends of Jim’s,” the one with the braid said.

“In here,” Heron called out from down the corridor.

As the pair headed for the body along with her father, she got annoyed with herself and pulled up her mental big-girl pants. When she stood up, her head spun, but that whirling-dervish stuff receded as she went over to the coffee machine and went through the motions of making a fresh pot.

Filter. Check.

Water. Check.

Coffee grinds. Check.

Button to on. Check.

Normalcy helped stitch her back together a little more tightly, and by the time she had a steaming mug in her palms, she was ready to deal.