Lucas watched as the color drained from Alaina’s face.

His first instinct was concern. “Are you okay?”

“Where did you get this?” she whispered.

“The trash can in Noah’s room.” He grimaced. “I know I said I wouldn’t touch anything, but—”

Alaina cut him off. “You said there were more. Where are they?”

“I have them,” he said quietly. He pulled out the other two sheets of paper.

She snatched them out of his hands and quickly smoothed them out.

Her eyes were wide when she looked back at him, her mouth tight. “What does this all mean?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Me?”

“He was your brother,” he reminded her, purposely keeping his tone gentle. “I was hoping this might trigger some memory. Something he told you or something you might’ve known about.”

Alaina cast her eyes downward, swallowing a few times. He knew she was doing her best to keep her composure, and he felt a small tug of sympathy. Part of him wanted to reach out and touch her. Hug her. Offer her some small measure of comfort. But as much as he felt the tug to do so, he knew it wasn’t his place. And he had no idea how she might react.

It couldn’t be easy for her to discuss details that might’ve contributed to her brother’s death. But he reminded himself that she had been the one to contact him. She’d come to him for help, and that was what he was trying to do. Help.

“I don’t,” she finally said.

“How close were you and your brother?” Lucas asked. He remembered their initial conversation, the fact that she hadn’t been able to answer the questions he’d had about her brother.

She didn’t respond right away.

“Not very,” she murmured.

“Was it the age difference?” Lucas asked. “You’re what, eight years apart?” He had done the mental math when she talked about buying the house, which would put her in her mid-twenties. He’d initially thought she was younger, closer to twenty, and he didn’t want to think about the rush of relief he’d felt when he realized she was older.

She nodded. “Roughly. I’ll be twenty-seven this summer. Noah was eighteen.”

Twenty-seven. Lucas was thirty-three.

“And you moved out when you graduated? He was ten or so?”

She nodded again.

“What was your contact like with him after you left?”

Alaina was quiet for a minute. “At first? We were still fairly close,” she said. “Mom and Dad were pissed at me but Noah didn’t know. Or if he did, he didn’t care. He was always asking me to come to his soccer games, and he was forever calling and then texting when he got his own cell.”

“He played soccer?”

“Yeah, for a couple of years. He stopped well before high school. Seventh grade, I think.”

“Any reason why?”

Alaina shrugged. “He played because Mom and Dad signed him up for it. And I guess he finally realized he could say no to them.”

Lucas bit back a smile. It wasn’t so much the words as the delivery that caused his reaction. It was that window into Alaina’s mind that he’d had fleeting glances into, the haughtiness, the sass that made her who she was. Despite the somberness of their conversation, he’d be the first to admit that he noticed it…and liked it.

He liked it a lot.

“You said that at first you were still close. After you moved out, I mean,” Lucas said. “And recently? What was your relationship like?”

Alaina swallowed hard and looked at him. With her wide blue eyes and the color mostly gone from her face, she looked like a fragile porcelain doll. He clasped his hands tight, trying to resist the urge to reach out and touch her. He was a seasoned former police officer, for Pete’s sake, a hardened private eye who pretty much didn’t give a shit about people’s feelings. This conversation should have been a piece of cake.

“We’d drifted apart,” she admitted. She sucked in a breath, then expelled it. “He tried to stay in touch but I…” Her voice cracked and she drew in another shaky breath. “I wasn’t great about communicating.”

“No?”

She gave a slight head shake.

“Did you guys have a falling out or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” she said quickly. “We just…”

He waited.

She was as still and as silent as a statue.

“I can’t help if you don’t tell me,” Lucas said, his voice almost a whisper.

To hell with it, he thought when she still didn’t respond.

Tentatively, he reached out a hand and touched her elbow. The sweater she was wearing, a black fuzzy thing, was soft and warm under his fingers. He pressed down lightly on her arm, just to make sure she knew he was there, a soft, reassuring touch. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what her skin would feel like under his fingertips. Soft. Warm. Smooth.

“I wasn’t a good sister.” Her voice was clear and firm, which took Lucas by surprise. “I spent more time on my job than I did talking to my brother. He texted and called. A lot. And I was always too busy.”

He could hear it in her voice. The guilt. The belief that she was responsible for her brother’s death. That if she’d just been more available, had reached out and connected, she could’ve somehow prevented this.

Except the reason she’d hired him was because she thought it wasn’t a suicide but murder.

Lucas tried not to sigh. Maybe her hiring him had as much to do with exonerating herself as it did finding the true assailant. Because then she could rid herself of the guilt she felt. Or at least try to.

The problem was, Lucas still wasn’t on board that there was anything amiss. Sure, he’d found a couple of crumpled notes, but those didn’t prove foul play. If anything, it was a sign that Noah had been struggling with something…something that had weighed heavily on him. And maybe that something was enough to cause him to act irrationally, to see death as his only option, his only out.

Alaina reached for her coffee, breaking their physical connection. Lucas felt a stab of disappointment. Her hand stilled and he watched as her gaze drifted to her brother’s note still spread out next to her. She left her coffee mug where it was.

“This could be proof,” she said. “Proof that someone killed him. That this wasn’t a suicide.”

“It could be,” Lucas acknowledged.

“So what’s next? Do we take this to the police?”

“No,” he said. When her expression darkened, he added, “Not yet, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“This is a single piece,” he told her. “Think of this as a hundred-piece puzzle we’re putting together. We have one piece, Alaina. The rest are still out there. We literally don’t even have them on the table to start putting anything together.”

Her shoulders slumped and she sagged against the couch.

Her response surprised him. She was a fighter; he’d come to that conclusion within five minutes of their initial conversation, and everything she’d said or done since that time had just confirmed this. But right now, her head thrown back against the cushions, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth pinched tight?

She looked defeated.

And he had this insane urge to fix things for her.

To make everything better.

“We need more,” he said, watching her as her eyes slowly opened. “More pieces.”

“Did you find anything else?” she asked. “In his room?”

He shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

She straightened a little. “What do you mean?”

“I need you to go home,” he told her.

She cringed but then nodded. “Okay. And do what?”

“You need to find his yearbooks,” he said. “Comb through them. See what people wrote. We’re looking for friends, for enemies, for everything in between, over the last four years.”

“I can do that.”

“I want a class schedule, too,” Lucas said. “Can you get that?”

She nodded.

“Good.” He stood up.

Alaina looked up at him. Her eyes were still moist, but the color had returned to her face. She looked fierce, determined. And so damn beautiful.

His heart caught in his throat.

He had to stop thinking about her like that.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

He fished his car keys out of his pocket. “To talk to someone who might have some answers.”