“Only you can answer that,” Gabe said. “Have you been in contact with anyone suspicious lately?”
No. No lately. Not in Harland.
“You find anything, Carter?” Dante asked his buddy who was frowning at his laptop.
“Yeah, but it’s just a sideways catch. I isolated it and cleaned it up as best I could.” He flipped the screen around. “Does he look familiar?”
Amanda sucked in a breath and sank onto the nearby stool, while her heart was pounding where it had leapt into her throat. “That’s Lyle Woodard.”
Emily blinked. “Your ex from England?”
“He’s not an ex. He’s a friend,” she corrected. Then added, “Who went missing.”
Dante stiffened next to her. “What?”
Carter’s brows lifted while Holden, Gabe, and Lyndsey’s narrowed.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at Dante, although she could practically feel him glaring down at her.
Emily grabbed her arm and tugged until she turned and met her gaze. “Lyle went missing and you didn’t tell me?”
Amanda frowned. “Why would I? It wasn’t like you could do something from the States, plus I hadn’t even seen him since our picnic in May.”
“When did he go missing?” her sister asked.
She ran a hand through her hair. “July.”
“And you didn’t tell me,” Emily repeated.
“No, because it had nothing to do with me,” she said. “If it had, then there’s no way DI Bristol would’ve cleared me.”
Several inhales and a few muttered curses sounded around her.
Gabe sat down on a stool next to her and pulled out his notepad. “Think you’d better start from the beginning.”
Amanda glanced around the room. Everyone wore a similar concerned and aggravated expression. Dante’s was like carved bronze.
She blew out a breath and nodded. “Here’s what I know.”
Chapter Twelve
Dante couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t. Never in a million years would he
have thought Amanda would’ve been keeping her involvement in a police matter a secret.
Especially from him.
He listened quietly while she spoke. Half of him wanted to pull her close and comfort her while the other half wanted to shake her. Instead, his hands remained jammed in his pockets as he stood by the sink and observed.
“I still can’t believe you never told me Lyle was missing or that your apartment got ransacked,” Emily said after Gabe folded his notepad and shoved it in his pocket.
Dante’s stomach was still clenched tightly over that detail. No way was this ransacking a coincidence. Everything revolved around this Lyle guy.
Amanda sighed. “It’s like I said before, it all happened over there. Many months ago. And the DI told me it had nothing to do with me and that I was cleared to leave. I just had to give him an address.”
He scratched his temple. “How did you give him your address if you didn’t know it?”
She blinked at him, her gaze dark and exhausted. “I didn’t. I gave them Emily and Holden’s.” She stiffened, her eyes going wide as her skin paled. “Oh my God. They have your address, Emily. If whoever is doing this got my address from that police file, then they already have yours. What if they try to harm the animals?”
