Free The Betrayed by Jana DeLeon

to it. I hoped that it was all over with her situation, but the facts show that something else is going on in the house.”
    “And you’re sure he’s capable?”
    “More than. He’s tolerable when he’s sober, but he’s never been what you’d call a nice man.”
    “If it’s him, what’s his goal?”
    Carter shook his head. “Maybe to scare them away, figuring if he can’t have it, no one else should. Maybe just to steal some things he thinks are valuable and try to sell them, and they’re in the way of his doing that.”
    “The house is crammed full of stuff. It would be impossible to know if something’s missing.”
    “Yeah, that’s the reason William has Danae going through Purcell’s records. He’s trying to put together an inventory of potential valuables so they can attempt to locate them in the mess.”
    Zach mulled over the information. All of it had been delivered in a very straightforward manner, but something was missing. Suddenly, it occurred to him.
    “So if the guy you killed didn’t break the window and you changed the locks, how did he get into the house later to attack Alaina? I didn’t see any damage to the exterior doors and they looked like the originals.”
    Carter’s expression darkened and he leaned over a bit toward Zach. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” he said, his voice low. “I couldn’t change the front-door lock. It’s some antique that requires a specially forged key. I doubt there are a lot hanging around, but there’s a slight possibility he could have acquired a front-door key, but we didn’t find one on him.”
    “So you don’t think that’s the most viable option?”
    “Honestly, I don’t know what to think. By the looks of things, Purcell was a secretive and paranoid man. I wouldn’t put it past him to have a secret entrance to the house. I think he’d feel safer knowing he had an escape hatch, so to speak. But I have yet to find such an alternate entrance and haven’t had much time to look.”
    “Was Alaina’s attacker from Calais?”
    “No. Baton Rouge.”
    “Then how...”
    “I don’t know. Maybe he paid someone in Calais for the information.”
    “And they would have just given it to him?”
    “He could have drummed up some legitimate story and thrown in a wad of cash. These are simple people who barely get by. It wouldn’t take much to fool many of them.”
    Zach nodded. “And nobody would dare come forward and admit something like that after what went down.”
    “Exactly.” Carter sighed and stabbed the chicken-fried steak with his fork before attacking it with his knife, taking his obvious frustration out on his dinner.
    Zach took a bite of the steak. It was likely the best chicken-fried steak he’d ever had, but his mind couldn’t latch onto that fact long enough for him to relax and enjoy it. It was too busy spinning with all the information Carter had given him.
    He’d hoped thoughts of an intruder in the house were only Danae’s stressed imagination at work, but maybe that wasn’t the case. Clearly, Carter was concerned, and the man struck Zach as observant and intelligent—not at all the type to be taken in by dramatics or supposition. The disgruntled cook only supported Carter’s suspicions, and if Zach had to guess, he probably wasn’t the only resident Purcell had made promises to.
    Then there was the fact he’d revealed about Danae when delivering the rest of the story—that she’d come to Calais pretending to be someone else. For what purpose did she come here? To see Purcell, the man who’d thrown the sisters away? If so, to what end? And why hide her true identity? Danae acted like a woman who’d seen trouble in her past—could it have followed her to town, as it did her sister?
    He sighed and took another bite of his steak. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one in Calais looking for answers.
    * * *
    D ANAE STEPPED OUT of the tub and dried herself off before pulling on a thick, fuzzy robe,