The Cottages On Silver Beach

“Of course I want to know. But I would prefer an unbiased investigator, not someone who already has an ax to grind against my brother.”

“I am an unbiased investigator,” he said, sounding stung.

“You haven’t been unbiased in seven years! Admit it! Luke used to be a friend, but from the moment Elizabeth disappeared, you’ve been clear about what you think. You made up your mind he was guilty from the very beginning, didn’t you?”

“I’m only interested in the facts. There was blood found in their home. Elizabeth’s blood.”

“That could have been left there days or weeks before she went missing!”

“Or it could have been left by her that night when her husband killed her.”

“Except he didn’t! I know he didn’t and some part of you knows that as well.”

“I can’t be certain of anything.”

Though she knew where he stood from his actions and his attitude since Elizabeth’s disappearance, hearing his blunt words still cut through her. “How can you say that? He was your friend. You know him. You know he is not capable of hurting a woman, especially not someone he loved as much as he loved Elizabeth.”

“I have a police report here that would say otherwise.” He picked up one of the files from the bottom.

Megan knew what it was, what it had to be, and suddenly she wanted to cry. The tears welled up in her throat and she had a hard time swallowing past them.

This was why Luke was the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance. One moment—and one sad, troubled woman.

“Yes, you can see the police were called by the neighbors who reported a domestic disturbance. But as you read the report, you can see no charges were ever filed against my brother. The report was of shouting and crying coming from the house. Not of anyone actually witnessing abuse. Your father wrote on the file misunderstanding.”

She had seen the report. And more than that, she knew Elizabeth’s fragile emotional state leading up to it.

“Women are often afraid to file charges,” Elliot said. “The law requires that one of the parties should be removed from the home temporarily during the investigation. Clearly, that didn’t happen on the night in question. I’m not sure why, but that’s not the point. The disturbance was reported to police, which indicates something happened that night.”

“It indicates nothing, only that Elizabeth was mentally unstable before she disappeared. You’ve got that in your reports, too, don’t you? She was on medication for postpartum depression. She wasn’t acting like herself. Luke was afraid to leave her alone with the kids, for crying out loud. He paid a babysitter to care for them in the day, worked a full-time job, then came home to take care of them all night.”

He continued gazing at her in that stony, emotionless way that made her want to scream, as irrational as Elizabeth in those last months.

She sighed. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath. Your mind is made up. Nothing I say will convince you that Luke is a victim here, just like his children. He lost his wife, they lost their mother, but Luke hasn’t been allowed even a moment to grieve for Elizabeth. The people around Lake Haven are too busy whispering about him and throwing around baseless accusations.”

“Not completely baseless.”

“Fine. Then wholly circumstantial. If the Haven Point Police Department or the sheriff’s office had anything more concrete against him, they would have filed charges years ago. Instead, he’s been hung out to dry to face the whispers.”

Despite her best efforts to hold them in, a hot tear escaped and slipped down the side of her nose. She swiped at it angrily even as his gaze seemed to sharpen. She wasn’t upset that she cried, only that he saw her at it.

“I want to know the truth,” Elliot said quietly. “Yes, Luke was my friend. So was Elizabeth. If she’s out there somewhere, I want to find her.”

“While staying at my inn, eating my breakfast, walking my stretch of beach. And I’m just supposed to stand by and give you a place to sleep while you ruin my brother’s life? What kind of woman do you think I am?”

CHAPTER FIVE (#u238e85bb-32b3-5a93-83cf-5d2b9ae2dbc3)

THAT WAS A question with no easy answer. He had always been fascinated by Megan Hamilton. With each passing day he spent living next to her, he was finding her more irresistible.

There was something so enticing about her, something fresh and bright and genuine. In the mornings when he was running along the lakeshore, he would see her from a distance as she greeted some of the inn guests or walked her grumpy-looking dog and he had the weirdest feeling, warm and soft like he was being bathed with sunshine.

At night, he would look over while he was working and see her lights on next door and he would remember what Verla McCracken had said, that she was a fan of his work. The idea of her reading the words he had written somehow inspired him to work harder.

He had heard other writers talk about their primary reader, the person they pictured while they wrote and imagined reading their words. Now that person in his head was Megan.

This fascination with her had to stop. It was completely ridiculous. He had been telling himself that for years. She was not his type at all. He preferred professional, composed, intellectual women whose agendas closely matched his own. Not sweet-faced photographers who had once been in love with his brother.

It didn’t matter that he was drawn to her. The feeling was definitely not mutual. She made no secret of her dislike for him. She thought he was uptight, rigid, unfeeling. Mr. Roboto.

If she only knew.

Added to that, now she was furious with him for digging into Elizabeth’s disappearance. He supposed he couldn’t really blame her.

She was waiting for a response, he realized, and it took him a moment to remember the question.

“You asked me what kind of woman I think you are. I think you’re a caring, compassionate woman who loves her brother and is loyal to him. I respect that, Megan. Believe me.”

In his line of work, he often saw the opposite, people willing to stab their best friends in the back if it would protect themselves and their own interests.

“You would do the same, if one of your family members had to face what Lucas has over the last seven years.”

“That’s probably true,” he acknowledged. He would go to the wall for any one of his siblings. “I understand your anger and your urge to defend your brother. I’ll leave the cottage if you insist, but I would rather not. I like it here. I’m not sure why, but I’ve been able to get more done on my manuscript in the last week than I have in months.”

It was true. Even before the stupid choices he had made leading up to his injury, his life had felt on hold, somehow. He had been going through the motions at the FBI, doing his job without the passion he had once brought to the work and treating his side hobby of writing the same way.

In the week since he’d come to Haven Point, Elliot felt as if he had returned to center somehow. He had managed to regain a little equilibrium, to find the peace that had been missing in Denver, probably because he had been wearing himself so thin trying to do everything.

“Why should I let you stay?”

“Because you signed a rental agreement? And because I haven’t done anything that would provide you grounds to break that agreement?”

She shrugged. “Sue me if you want to. You think I care?”

Come at me, bro. She didn’t say the words, but she might as well have.

“If I let you stay, would you promise to leave Elizabeth’s case alone? Let Marshall’s department handle it?”

He thought of the last few fevered nights of writing and the stacks of finished pages that had come out of them. He needed more of those nights and that same productivity and wanted nothing more than to agree to her demand.

His innate sense of justice and the desire to find the truth wouldn’t allow it, however. The community deserved answers. For that matter, so did Elizabeth’s children.

“No,” he said, with blunt honesty. “I can’t promise you anything of the sort.”

She made a face. “You’re so predictable. That’s exactly what I knew you would say.”

“Why did you bother to ask the question, then?”

“Idle curiosity, to see if I was right.”