Ruined (Family Untied Book 1) by S.A. McEwen

Author:S.A. McEwen [McEwen, S.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648201342
Publisher: Kaleido Text Media
Published: 2021-03-12T06:00:00+00:00

29

For the rest of her Melbourne tour, Natalie is on autopilot.

Part of her is conscious of the things that need to be done—hair, makeup, clean lingerie, changing sheets, being delightful—but if anyone had asked her for a single standout detail of her bookings, she would have been lost.

Finally, ten-thousand dollars richer and ten-thousand times more worried than when she left, she boards a flight home.

Eloise picks her up from Sydney Airport, and they drive in silence to Eloise’s flat, where Eloise regards Natalie carefully.

It’s nearly nine o’clock. For the first time since she fled Aaron’s apartment, and his painting of her, Natalie starts to let her guard down.

Nursing a Shiraz, she tries to calm her crazy heart. She doesn’t know how it hasn’t been lurching half out of her chest and scaring her clients for the entire tour.

Taking a deep breath, she tries to explain her jumbled thoughts to her friend.

“Griffin. He approached me on the street. Said he’d seen me staring at the Jack Charles portrait the night before. He said something virtually identical to what this client said to me in Melbourne. He’d painted a picture of me looking at Jack’s portrait. But they said the exact same things. About me looking like I wanted to morph into the picture. Like, that’s a weird thing for one person to say, right? Two people?”

Eloise nods, placing a hand over Natalie’s to still its worrying at the tablecloth.

“But the picture made me remember…Griffin met me all dressed up as Ivy. Whenever I see him I still wear one of my wigs, most of the time. But in the picture…I’m in casual clothes. With no wig. No makeup. I don’t really know that he would have recognised me from the gallery…would he? It’s bothering me. With all these dead escorts.”

Natalie breaks off, putting her head in her hands.

“God. None of them were killed in a booking. The last client they saw and the one they were going to visit all had alibis, CCTV, something that cleared them. The police haven’t put a lot of resources into any of them. They’re considering them last-minute bookings gone wrong. But just say. Oh, God. Is it Griffin? He was with me when they found Letitia, but not at her actual time of death. Am I being insane?”

“No. No. You trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. But what about this other guy? What if he’s the off one?”

Natalie shakes her head slowly.

“No. He took me to his brother’s apartment. He really thought I would be excited about the painting. I panicked and ran, but I think…the painting was so detailed. He really did see me standing in front of Jack’s portrait. He got the look on my face fucking perfect. It looked exactly how I felt. How I feel when I think of that portrait.”

“Maybe they work together?”

“But why? Why disorient me like this? It must have taken him days, maybe weeks to paint my portrait? Why would you bother? And that’s pretty crazy evidence of a connection to have in your studio.

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