The police confirmed that the two other women in videos found on Grady’s computer are alive and well and oblivious to their admirer’s intrusions, only emphasizing that, while Grady’s proclivities may have been deplorable, a death sentence was far too harsh.
The police also had a lot of questions for me about my relationship with him, thanks to the video feed from the apartment building’s rooftop. Obviously I wasn’t too concerned about that motion-activated camera when we were up there together.
I’m sure that the media and the courts aren’t going to look too fondly at me once they secure details of my relationships with both men, but there’s nothing I can do about that now. I’m not going to try to hide it.
I’m just going to enjoy the peace of this village while I have it, knowing that Jace is going to be punished for his crimes.
I round the corner to find the VU employee huts where we’ll all be staying for the next two months while we get the solar panel power system up and running. And I smile. It’s good to be back, even if my time away marked a very sad period in my life.
Rosa’s passing.
She finally succumbed to her cancer in early June, and I think she was ready to go by the end of it. She tried to chase me off several times, but I refused, holding her hand as she slipped into unconsciousness that she never awoke from.
Kind of like her daughter.
Given the ongoing investigation, there was no way to keep Rosa from discovering the truth about Celine’s demise, and her past, though I made it seem like she was mostly a paid companion. She handled it quite well, and in the end, she was just happy that Celine didn’t make the choice to kill herself. If she didn’t take her own life, that meant Rosa would be with her daughter in the afterlife.
Rosa’s last dying wish was that I use my money and my connections to stop other young women from falling into the same trap that Celine did. I had planned on it anyway, but to have Rosa ask me to do that—when she had asked for so little—only made it that much more important. I have every intention of making sure that vase is returned to Celine’s estate after the trial against Jace is over, and the sale of it—through Hollingsworth rather than some back-alley Chinatown dealer—will get as many young women out of prostitution as possible.
I push the bittersweet thoughts aside as I wave at Graham from across the way. He’s my right-hand man and the guy I’ve relied on for the past nine months to keep VU’s mission going. He said he hired three new people for this project. I don’t know much about them, but I trust his judgment.
Still, when I see the male figure lounging in the hammock, in the shade of one of a few trees, avoiding the midday heat, my stomach lurches. Not until I’m five feet away does he roll his head lazily toward me, opening one eye to size me up.
“Hey. You must be Maggie. They said you’d be getting in today.” He reaches out to offer a hand. “I’m Sam.”
I take it, hyper-aware of the way my name sounds in his Australian accent, and of his thick, wavy brown hair, damp and curling at the nape of his neck, and his lean but muscular body, on display without a T-shirt.
“Hi, Sam. You are here to . . .”
He grins. “I’m your electrician. I run a small solar panel installation business back home, outside Perth.”
I fold my arms over my chest, drawing his golden eyes to my breasts for a second before they snap back to my face. “What made you leave your business and come out here, then?”
He shrugs. “Thought it’d be something different.”
“Right. I’m sure it will be. Well, it was good to meet you, Sam . . .”
“Jacobs. Sam Jacobs. A lot of people just call me Jacobs.”
“Of course they do,” I mumble, giving him a half wave as I continue on to where I’ll be staying. Feeling his eyes on me the entire way.
I slip my cell phone out of my pocket and dial.
A groggy Doug answers.
“Are you actually sleeping?”
“God forbid,” he mutters. “What’s up?”
I glance over my shoulder to watch the Australian electrician rest in his hammock. “I need a full background check done on someone.”