Page 75 of When I Accidentally Snagged a Serial Killer

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m emotionally shivering.”

“Very technical diagnosis.”

I step onto the bath mat and pull a thick towel from the heated rack. When she rises, I wrap it around her shoulders, and she sinks into it with a groan. “Heated towels may be the single greatest contribution rich people have made to civilization.”

“And indoor plumbing?”

“Second place.”

In my bedroom, the fire behind the glass has burned down to a low orange glow. Less than thirty seconds after Jubilee climbed onto the bed, towel still wrapped around her, Marzipan strolls directly across my side of the mattress without acknowledging my existence and curls against Jubilee’s thigh.

“Unbelievable,” I mutter.

Jubilee scratches beneath the purring Persian’s chin. “She senses emotional need.”

“She senses weakness.”

I grab two bottles of water from the mini fridge—naturally, I have one in my bedroom—and hand her one before sitting beside her. “Hydration is very important after physical exertion, Princess,” I remind her, kissing her neck.

She drinks, then stares at the label. “My grandparents were crazy-stupid rich.”

“Your mom’s parents?”

She nods. “And when I was seventeen, stormtroopers came into our house.” She shrugs, regarding me. “The IRS.”

“Ah.” I nod gravely, lowering my bottle. “The Empire, with calculators and inconsistent tax law.”

A laugh escapes her, short and real, then disappears. “Federal investigators too. Warrants. Boxes. People taking inventory. Accounts frozen. Other accounts already emptied.” Her thumb rubs the condensation on the bottle. “Dad vanished, most of my grandparents’ money was gone, and they died in a car accident.”

The combination scrapes at the back of my mind. Old money. Emptied accounts. Sudden tragic death. It vanishes, leaving only a splinter of déjà vu.

“I barely made it through senior year,” she goes on, her voice cracking. “The horses were seized. We were evicted. College became a pipe dream.”

She alternates between picking at the label and petting Marzipan. I don’t interrupt. Her hands need to move.

“I started searching for Dad because none of it made sense. I found something weirder. All our pictures were gone.”

My attention sharpens. “Every picture?”

“Family albums. Photo boxes. Even journals with pictures inside. And online was worse. Work profiles, old accounts, pages I remembered seeing before. Anything directly connected to him had been scrubbed.”

My fingers tighten around the bottle.

“Either he knew he was going to disappear,” she says, “or somebody made sure he stayed gone.”

“And you’ve been searching ever since. Do you think he⁠—”

“I don’t know what to think.” The answer comes too fast. “Maybe he found out who stole everything and confronted them, and they killed him. Maybe he disappeared to protect us. Maybe…”

She doesn’t finish. Sometimes, hope is just scaffolding around helplessness. Except Jubilee has never once been helpless.

I take the bottle before she peels the entire label off and pull her against me. She comes willingly, head settling on my shoulder while Marzipan adjusts herself with one offended chirp.

“You’ve been in survival mode for too fucking long,” I murmur and work my fingers through her hair, the strands already drying into soft waves. “But you make sense now.”

She lifts her head. “That sounds ominous.”