Read a Touch of Revenge (Romantic Mystery - book 6): The Everly Gray Adventures for Free Online Page B

had traveled through my fingers and soaked into my bones. He’d been betrayed by one of his own. By someone he trusted. Or maybe I was just sensing his guilt. Sometimes it was difficult to interpret those emotions from the images my fingers picked up.
    It took a few minutes to get my ragged breathing under control before I dared attempt to touch the book again. I inched it off the desk with my palm until there was enough of the spine free for me to hold without using my fingertips, then hugged it to my chest. Mitch had hidden secrets within secrets, and now it was up to me to chase them down. To avenge his death.
    I dropped into the desk chair, and practiced breathing. The last time I’d sat in this chair it had been on Mitch’s lap…before I knew the truth. A long, shaky, filled-with-regret sigh for what might have been worked its way free from my chest, and then I honed in on the book, running my fingers over cover and binding.
    No images were attached to the outside, other than a faint picture of Jayne pulling it from the shelf.
    I removed the dust jacket and ran my fingers over the seams. Smooth. Nothing had been tampered with since it left the printer. Despair leaked into my hope. There had to be more than the single image of Mitch. Simply had to be. He hadn’t read fiction, had preferred biographies and technical nonfiction.
    I set the book aside and climbed back on top of the desk, stretched, but couldn’t see the back of the shelf. Scanning the room, I spotted a step stool tucked under the bed where Mitch used to nap, and where we… I shook the memories off, hopped off the desk, snagged the stool, arranged it on top of the desk, and climbed up—slowly, balance not being my forte.
    The extra inches gave me just enough height to see over the edge of the shelf. There in the back. A piece of paper. I reached for it, but came up shy. Maybe if I nudged closer to the shelves, ducked out of the way, and stretched from my armpit…yes! I crumpled it in my fist, and the stool slid out from under me.
    For the second time in a few hours pain shot through my elbow and hip, but thank the gods and goddesses, I landed on the desk instead of the floor, and I hadn’t dropped the folded square of paper. Un-crumpling myself took a bit of maneuvering, and the aches and bruises would be with me for a while, but it was worth it.
    Black dots danced in front of my eyes, obscuring the image of Mitch’s hands when he’d folded the paper. Breathe, Everly. Passing out now isn’t acceptable. I sucked in a breath, then unfolded the tidy square in the exact reverse sequence that Mitch had folded it.
    And there it was. In neatly printed uppercase letters.
    FION CONNOR
    TORQUAY, DEVON, ENGLAND
    The first burst of triumph that shot through me was quickly followed by a solemn dose of common sense. Connor could be anyone. Still, it was my first tangible clue about Mitch’s possible boss, and therefore worth following. And since North Carolina was more than halfway to England, now was the perfect time for me to finish the trip.
    I gathered my things, locked up, and went downstairs to the main part of the house. There was absolutely no reason for me to prolong the agony of hanging around North Carolina, not with a fresh trail to follow. And even if it didn’t lead to Grady, it would keep me busy while I waited for Pierce. There was possibly some kind of connection between Fion Connor and my parents, but maybe…
    Holy crap! Was it possible this Connor guy was friends with my mother and had hired Mitch to spy on me to…protect me? Being the protective sort, it would be just like my mother to set something like that up. And it was an interesting coincidence that I’d found two links to Torquay in Mitch’s office. Maybe Mitch had figured out that his spying was a positive thing, intrusive and underhanded, but still… There was no question it was information he’d follow up on, and since I didn’t believe in coincidences, it was definitely a