“I make a fuck ton of money.” He said it like it should impress her. Suddenly, she envisioned him and his team tearing the guts out of a business, a pack of hyenas ripping at a carcass. Scavengers. “People come to us because they want to either sell the business that’s bleeding them dry, or they want to invest in something that’s gonna make a huge comeback and increase their investment tenfold.”

“You sell pipe dreams.”

If he took offense to her statement, he didn’t show it. “Someone’s got to. If you concern yourself with what others think about you, you’ll never get anywhere.” The bearded bartender walked past then, and Bennett flagged him over. “You got a towel?”

The bartender tugged at the terry cloth in his back pocket. He nodded.

“You know how to use it?”

When the man looked confused, Bennett pointed to the spill on the bar top, inches from where Morgan rested her hand. With one swipe, he cleaned it up. Morgan avoided eye contact with him and exhaled a sigh of relief. Things were even again. She could breathe. “So, you like what you do? Taming the zoo.”

He shrugged. “I get to live in a high-rise in the city and drive a fancy car. Not too many people who grew up in Black Harbor can say that.”

Morgan shrank a little, suddenly self-conscious about her rust-mobile parked outside. “You’ll go back to Chicago … after Christmas?” Today was the nineteenth. Anyone who was planning on leaving the city for the holidays would have dipped out earlier this week.

“After New Year’s, actually. It’s a whole … thing,” he started to explain when he noted her raised brows. “My family has a cabin up north. We used to go up there a lot, but, well, when my dad died, we stopped for a long time. Just locked the place up and didn’t return for years. In case you couldn’t tell, this two-week stretch of the holidays is my mom’s favorite time of the year. If coming home and shacking up in the guesthouse is all it takes to keep her happy, well.” He raised his glass to his lips, took a drink.

“She really goes all out,” observed Morgan. “The food, the decorations, the Santa…”

“Did you see the Clydesdales?”

“The Budweiser horses? Yeah,” she said, remembering the two chestnut-colored animals hitched to a white wagon with a horseshoe painted on the side. They were giving sleigh rides just as she and Bennett left the party.

“Christopher’s friend has a farm just on the other side of town. He parks his car there and drives the horses over every year.”

Morgan nodded, her brain stuck on what Bennett had said just a moment ago, about his family abandoning the cabin after his father … “You think he’s dead?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Sorry, I was just—” She hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but Clive Reynolds was Black Harbor’s most famous unsolved mystery. Curiosity mingled with the alcohol in her bloodstream, quelling her inhibitions. “Your dad. You said after he died…”