“You’re the one making excuses?” Rock lifted his eyebrows. “Am I in the right universe today?”

Lacey swatted his arm as she took the seat next to him. “How’s Zee doing, Reid?”

I cleared my throat. Oh, she’s great. I gave her a good hard fucking. “She’s good. Ready to talk. I’ve told her I don’t believe she’ll be considered a suspect.”

“It’s unlikely,” Lacey said, “but I honestly don’t know. Somehow I’m a suspect and I have no motive at all.”

“We’re going to take care of that, babe,” Rock said soothingly.

Lacey was scared, though. She tried to hide it behind her lawyerly demeanor and a slight bit of humor, but I knew.

And so did Rock.

“I’m texting Roy,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what’s keeping him and Riley.”

“Riley’s still in her honeymoon phase,” Lacey said.

“I got married the same day she did,” Charlie countered.

“Yeah, but you and Roy were together longer.”

“About a week longer.” Charlie laughed.

I had to hand it to all of them. They were taking this better than I was. Rock and Riley both had more of a motive than I did, but they didn’t seem as concerned.

Rock had a decent alibi, of course.

But Riley?

No way would my little sister go down for this. No way would any of us go down for it.

Not on my watch.

“We need to take this seriously,” I said.

“We are,” Rock said. “But a little humor never hurt anyone.”

Lacey cleared her throat. “Actually, Reid is right. Things are coming to a head, so we have to be ready.”

“Turns out I was in the office the day that phone call was made to your landline, Rock,” I said. “I doubled checked everything against my calendar. I hope you believe me when I tell you I didn’t make that call.”

“I do believe you,” my brother affirmed. “But now we need to find out who did.”

“Dad was still alive,” I said. “My bet’s on him. All of our voices are similar enough that he could have made the call to you with enough confidence that you’d believe it was me.”

Rock nodded. “And then when Nieves intercepted the call, she just assumed it was you, never having heard your voice.”

“Right.” I inhaled deeply. “Which means we’ll never know why he made the call, since he’s not here to tell us.”

Rock sighed. “Which also means none of this helps at all.”

“We do know one thing, though,” Lacey said. “We know your father knew a hit was out on him. Or he wanted you to think there was a hit.”