BEFORE SHE KNEW

Hale Hastings Mystery Thriller

Book 3

ALEX SIGMORE

ASH MERCER

Dark Woods Press

BEFORE SHE KNEW: HALE HASTINGS MYSTERY THRILLER BOOK 3

Copyright © 2026 by Alex Sigmore & Ash Mercer

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imaginations and are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

1st Edition

Print ISBN 978-1-971270-36-4

Prologue

The bottle of wine was almost gone, and it wasn’t even eight p.m. She’d had a long day. A long week, even. With James at a conference across the country and their daughter staying the night at a friend’s house, she finally had a little time to herself, and she hadn’t been quite sure what to do with that.

Hence, the empty bottle of wine.

Even tipsy and trying to relax, she couldn’t turn off the part of her that needed to be doing something useful. The television murmured in the background, a soap opera she’d lost the thread of several episodes ago, and all around her were piles of folded laundry organized first by who they belonged to and then by type. The slacks that her husband wore every week were neatly pressed, wrinkle free. Her daughter’s favorite sweater no longer had the damned stain on the sleeve that had taken three attempts to remove.

Satisfaction filled her as she straightened the last hand towel and set it in its own pile. Then, she drained what was left in her glass, pushed herself up off the floor, and stacked everything neatly into the basket. She left the wine bottle and glass on the coffee table, wanting to see the laundry through to the end. It would be one less task on her to-do list for the weekend.

She took the stairs carefully, shifting the basket on her hip as she paused on the landing to straighten the family photo on the wall. Someone had knocked it crooked in the mad dash of their morning rush.

In the frame were the three of them, posing like the perfect version of a family. Father, mother, daughter, all dressed up in a way that was usually reserved for Christmas and Easter. They were far from a perfect family, but they loved each other, and as she stared at the faces of the two people she loved most in the world, she firmly reminded herself that she was doing the right thing.

She looked at their faces for a moment longer than necessary, matching the shape of her husband’s nose and the color of her own hair where they were reflected in their daughter’s image. Her sixteenth birthday was only a few weeks away. Her little girl was growing up so fast.

She felt the ache in her heart as she remembered another girl who had just turned sixteen, right before she was taken from her family.

It had been almost eight years ago now, but the memory of metal crunching against metal felt fresh in her mind, and as she glanced down the stairs towards the front door, she could almost hear the glass shattering as the car slammed into a light pole across the street. The memory of that wreck still haunted her to this day, and so did her decision to turn her back on it—only for a moment—to usher her then-seven-year-old daughter into the house even as she scrambled to dial 911.

Would Naomi Howell still be alive today if she had rushed to the car wreck instead?

She would never know for certain, but what she did know was that the wreck was at least partially her fault. The driver had swerved to avoid hitting her daughter, who’d run out into the rain—into the middle of the road—after an argument about television time.

That driver had saved her daughter’s life, but someone else’s daughter had died instead. No matter what that damned FBI agent said, she knew what she had witnessed. She couldn’t stay quiet about it.

Maybe she could have kept it buried. If not for that damn online article.

As soon as James came home from his conference, she would tell him about how it had just popped up on her feed. And the sinking realization that had followed: Naomi’s family thought their daughter had been behind the wheel that night, when she was certain that hadn’t been the case. She would tell him about her first attempt to make things right, the witness statement she had sent in to the police about what she saw. How she was certain that Naomi had been a passenger in that crash, not the driver.

Then, she would tell him about the threatening phone call she had received afterwards.

He’d be furious that she hadn’t told him eight years ago, but she knew that together they would find a way forward that protected their family while still making sure Naomi Howell’s parents got the truth and closure they deserved.

She couldn’t put away the ache in her chest when she thought about all that blood and mangled steel, her heart racing in the aftermath. But she could put away the laundry and that would have to be enough for tonight.

Turning away from the family photo, she carried the basket the rest of the way up the stairs to the first door on the right. She pushed it open with her hip, flicked on the light, and set the basket on her daughter’s bed.

The purple blankets were tangled at the foot of the mattress the way they always were and the desk in the corner was covered in the organized chaos of a teenager who had her own system and resented any suggestion that it could use improvement. A stack of textbooks sat on the floor beside the chair and the top of the dresser was decorated in a scatter of jewelry her fingers itched to sort. She clenched her fists to keep from fussing and firmly reminded herself that the last time she had tried to “help” it had ended in a massive argument.

The mess wasn’t hurting anyone, but betraying her daughter’s privacy certainly would. The mercurial moods of a teenager weren’t something she looked forward to navigating on a normal day. There was no doubt that she would have a hangover tomorrow and the last thing she needed was to get into a shouting match with a splitting headache.

Still, it was difficult after years of picking up after everyone to take a step back and allow the mess to pile up. But that was the only way her daughter would ever learn to take care of her things herself. No one had warned her that raising a teenager could be so complicated.

Determined not to snoop or pry, she lifted the various folded clothing out of the laundry basket and set them on the unmade bed and then left. In the master bedroom she put away the rest of their clothes, humming a tune of a song she couldn’t quite remember the words to, and tucked the basket against the wall near the door.

Then, she lifted the towels out of the basket, emptying it as she carried them into the hallway. As she turned toward the linen closet and reached for the handle, she found herself weighing the question of whether it would be entirely unreasonable to open the bottle of rosé chilling in their fridge.

She wouldn’t drink all of it. Just a glass. Maybe two.

As she prepared to head back down the stairs, a flicker of light coming from underneath her daughter’s bedroom door caught her eye. She must have forgotten to turn the light off when she left, she reasoned as she set the towels on the closet shelf and crossed back down the hall, already reaching for the handle.

That’s when she noticed the shadow.

Under the door, a long line of shadow crossed against the light, shifting a little. Was she home? Had her daughter snuck back upstairs in the few minutes she had been in the master bedroom?

“Honey,” she called, realizing she had been so deep in her own thoughts that she hadn’t even heard the front door open. “Did you and Juliette have a fight?”

She pushed the bedroom door open, hoping with her whole heart that she wouldn’t find her daughter looking upset after a massive fight with her best friend. The two of them had been anticipating this sleepover for weeks, so for it to end with⁠—

A man stood beside the bed, holding her daughter’s sweater up to his nose.

He turned when she entered, lowering the sweater slowly as she stood frozen in the doorway. They stared at each other, like a deer catching sight of a mountain lion, except she wasn’t quite sure which role she played in that scenario.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing in here?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, reaching into her back pocket to grab her phone. But it wasn’t there, because she had left it on the coffee table downstairs next to her empty wine glass.

“Where is she?” he asked, his voice low. Threatening. He lifted the sweater into view, clearly indicating that it was her daughter he was looking for.

He was too old to be one of her daughter’s classmates and too young to be her teacher. She felt a flicker of recognition as she stared him down, refusing to answer. Because she knew him, somehow, didn’t she? She had seen his face somewhere before.

“She isn’t here,” she replied, stepping back as she calculated just how quickly she could race down the stairs and if she would have time to call 911 before he caught up to her. “Leave her alone, or I swear to God I’ll⁠—”

“What will you do?” He leered at her, the sweater still in his hands. Before she could answer, the breeze from the window registered against her skin, causing goose-pimples to crop up all along her arms.

“Get out of my house,” she said. “Get out and leave my daughter alone or I’ll call the police.”

“Because that’s worked so well for you already,” he whispered, taking a step forward, fingers tightening in the fabric of the sweater. There was a knowing in his tone that caused a flicker of confusion to break through the fear. She had recently contacted the police, and it hadn’t worked out the way she expected. Was that why she recognized this man? Was he the FBI agent she had spoken to on the phone?

If that were true, then he wasn’t going to stop until she and her daughter were silenced.

“She doesn’t know anything,” she whispered, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would put a stop to this until she had the protection of law enforcement who weren’t corrupted and trying to protect their own—if that even existed. Still, she couldn’t simply stand there and allow this man to get away with what he had come here to do. And now that he had seen her, she knew there was only one way she made it out of this house alive.

Bracing herself for a heartbeat, she mentally mapped her route to the phone. To the only resource left that could protect her.

And then, Alyssa McHale ran.

Chapter One

There was nowhere left to run.

After two months of avoiding this moment, my time of reckoning had finally arrived in the form of Phoebe Richards and Noah Delgado standing at my door with an arrest warrant, decked out with their badges and guns.

Phoebe’s expression was laced with anticipation, and she held her body stiffly, as though ready to act the moment I tried to bolt. Noah wasn’t nearly as wound up, though I could see the edges of regret at the corners of his eyes. I could also see a set of four stitches that pulled the skin together along his left temple, a dark bruise on his cheek, and a split in his lip.

What had happened to him? He looked like the entire left side of his face had been put through the wringer. Were those injuries related to how he and Phoebe had appeared on our doorstep?

My attention snapped back to Phoebe as she shifted slightly, clearly waiting for something to happen after her dramatic announcement that I was under arrest.

I took a deep breath, preparing myself. I was done running.

“Tell Rogue I love him every day,” I said as Kenna turned around to look at me, her body still blocking most of the doorway. “And please don’t let him end up back in a shelter. If you don’t want to keep him here, you can take him to Trick.”

“What?” she asked, brow furrowed, but there wasn’t time to explain that Trick and I had already had a conversation about ensuring Rogue was cared for while I was gone. I would simply have to trust that between Trick and Kenna, Rogue would be all right without me.

I turned back to face the door, taking in the surprise that flickered across Phoebe’s face. I was just far enough behind Kenna that she couldn’t reach in and grab me, but I also knew that if I turned to run, she would have me down on the ground with cuffs around my wrists in thirty seconds flat.

“I don’t suppose you would consider—” I started to say, but Mason moved in front of me with a single deliberate step that ushered Kenna out of the way and placed his body between me and the two agents on the porch, blocking my view with his wide shoulders and extra four inches of height. He radiated the calm authority of someone who knew exactly what he was doing.

“Mrs. Scott,” he said loudly, speaking over my request that Phoebe take me in quietly rather than turning my surrender into a media circus. “Do you consent to either of these agents entering your property?”

“Absolutely not,” Kenna replied.

“And Agent Richards,” he said her name without needing an introduction, and I managed to peek around him just in time to watch as Phoebe realized he knew exactly who she was without needing to be told. “Do you have a warrant to search this property?”

“Yes, I have an arrest warrant for Avery McHale,” Phoebe replied, pulling the paperwork out of the inner pocket of her blazer but not passing it over to him quite yet. Her eyes moved past Mason to me, then back to him, narrowing slightly. “Who are you, exactly?”

“My name is Mason Campbell, I am the defense attorney for this woman,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I would bet that the arrest warrant you have does not authorize you to search this private residence to locate the subject of your search. Who you have no evidence is within the building. Under Steagald v. United States, law enforcement cannot cross the threshold of a third-party residence to execute a routine felony arrest without either an occupant’s consent or a search warrant specifically authorizing entry into that private residence. The occupant has declined to consent. So the question is, do you have a search warrant that authorizes you to enter this property?”

Phoebe’s jaw tightened as she gestured in my direction. “Steagald v. United States doesn’t apply here. I can see her standing right there.”

“You see a woman that you believe fits the description of your suspect,” Mason countered. “But do you have any way to verify that my client here is not simply a distant cousin or perhaps unfortunately close in appearance to your suspect? Because I will be filing for a writ of habeas corpus, and if you don’t want that to be granted you better make damned sure you follow all the rules, Agent Richards. You wouldn’t want your first big arrest to be invalidated by a technicality, after all.”

“Habeas corpus would never be granted,” Phoebe began to argue, but she hesitated, a hint of uncertainty keeping her from crossing the threshold. It was like the legal ambiguity that Mason had created was holding her at bay. I was suddenly reminded that while Phoebe was good at what she did, she was also new to being an FBI agent and was still stuck in the black-and-white, all-or-nothing style of investigation that had been the subject of so many debates between us during our time together at the Academy. She was running things by the book and Mason was throwing every page of that book right back in her face to keep me out of prison. “There are exigent circumstances.”

Mason tilted his head slightly, as if confused. “What exigent circumstances, Agent Richards?”

“She’s a flight risk,” Phoebe said, throwing a hand up to wave it in my direction again. “She has been a fugitive for two months and has failed to turn herself in.”

“Even if you disregard the lack of evidence that my client is your suspect,” Mason replied, shaking his head as if disappointed in Phoebe’s lack of reasoning skills. “She is currently standing in the hallway behind me and was preparing to come with you voluntarily before her council stepped in to stop her. I would argue that is not the behavior of a flight risk. Do you agree, Agent Delgado?”

Noah looked at Mason with a flash of surprise, as neither Phoebe nor Noah had introduced themselves. He recovered quickly and nodded, sending Phoebe a ‘what can we do?’ look, as if they were helpless and his hands were tied. Noah couldn’t do anything to keep me out of jail now, but he seemed more than happy to back Mason’s strategy here.

I watched Phoebe struggle with the legal logic, looking for the workaround that ended with her slipping those silver bracelets around my wrists.

“If I take the time to get a search warrant,” Phoebe began, crossing her arms and scowling at Mason. “That isn’t going to give her a chance to escape again. I can get this warrant sent over in fifteen minutes without ever leaving the driveway. I’m not going anywhere, and neither is she. This little technicality changes nothing for you or your client.”

“My client isn’t interested in running away from this,” Mason told her.

“Sure she isn’t,” Phoebe scoffed and Mason reached into his inner jacket pocket and produced a business card, extending it toward her.

“We’re happy to work with the FBI to clear up this misunderstanding, so long as you’re willing to do everything the right way,” he said, his voice going cold as he continued. “I’d suggest you start making your calls, Agent Richards.”

I raised an eyebrow at those words, searching my old roommate’s face for any sign of what she was thinking. She had put in the work to find me, somehow, and here I was standing right in front of her. She had a warrant for my arrest in her possession, yet she was still being outmaneuvered on a technicality.

This strategy of pedantry probably wouldn’t have worked on any other set of agents, but between Noah’s desire to help me and Phoebe’s inexperience and unwillingness to ignore the letter of the law, an invisible barrier had been created between us.

“Delgado,” Phoebe snapped without looking away from Mason, her mouth set in distaste at the sight of him. “Cover the rear of the property. Standard surveillance procedures, and if she steps a single toe outside this house, you arrest her on sight, understood?”

“Understood,” Noah said, eyes going wide as he tried to communicate something to me. We weren’t close enough to read each other’s expressions like that, though, and I couldn’t quite understand what he was trying to convey. There was a lot of his mouth being pressed into a tight line and his eyebrows being raised. He quickly cleared any attempts at communication from his face as Phoebe turned to look at him, waiting until he was headed around the back of the cottage before she reached for her phone, her eyes flicking back up every few seconds as though afraid that I might disappear in the time it took her to dial a number and pressed the phone to her ear.

Unfortunately for her, Mason stepped back from the threshold and closed the door, creating a small but vital barrier between us and the rest of the world. I could hear a sound of protest from the other side, but other than knocking and asking us to keep the door open, there was nothing she could do until she had obtained her search warrant.

For one brief moment, I was able to let myself breathe.

Soon enough, Phoebe would be back with everything she needed to barge in and arrest me. Then I would be led away in the back of her SUV with my wrists behind my back, about to face down the fate that I’d spent two months putting off. But for now, Mason had bought us a few precious minutes, and I planned to use every one of them to prepare myself for what I knew would come next.

Chapter Two

“What the hell was that?” Kenna asked, turning on Mason once the door was closed, but keeping her voice low enough that the agent on the other side couldn’t hear her. “Didn’t we just agree that she would have to be taken in eventually?”

“Yes, but I also said we would send her in on our terms,” Mason replied. “Those agents don’t get to come to the door and demand her surrender without expecting me to fight back. That’s what she hired me to do, after all.”

“She hired you to keep her from going to prison,” Kenna said. “How does handing the FBI your entire defense strategy accomplish that?”

I frowned as I looked back at him, waiting for an answer as well. Because Kenna was right, if he had allowed Phoebe to arrest me, he could then use her entering the cottage without a search warrant as a way to negate that arrest, couldn’t he? Once they were forced to release me they would scramble for a new arrest warrant to get me back under their control, but that could have given me a little more time to solve this case and clear my name.

Instead, he had pointed out the flaws in Phoebe’s arrest in advance. It was like he was helping her to ensure she had an airtight case against me. My stomach dropped at that realization, but I held my tongue. Mason had no reason to intentionally make things worse for me as far as I knew.

Besides, maybe there was something I’d missed. I wasn’t a lawyer, after all.

“I assure you, I did not just hand them my entire defense strategy,” Mason replied, his calm tone a direct contrast to the stress in Kenna’s voice. His confidence eased my mind, but his next words had my blood pressure skyrocketing once more. “This isn’t the ideal scenario, but this buys you time to dispose of anything in the house that you don’t want falling into the hands of the FBI.”

“Remind me what the ideal scenario is,” I said, mentally going over everything in the house that could be used against me during a trial. How was I supposed to get rid of it all?

“Ideally, we would have you turn yourself in on our terms to the local police,” Mason replied. “Had we done it that way, I would already have your bail hearing lined up before you were ever arrested, your compliance would go a long way to negotiating for minimal media coverage and a private transport to D.C., and you would have had more time to say your goodbyes.”

At his words I turned to look at Rogue who was sitting at the back door with his chin up and his floppy ears tilted forward, watching Noah through the wall of windows. The kitchen light caught the kink in his tail, that permanent record of the day when he had tried to protect Lexi as only a puppy but hadn’t been able to.

Noah stood in the back yard just beyond the glass with his back to the house and his shoulders squared. I knew just by looking at him that if I walked out the back door he would find every reason not to see me. He would risk his job again just to let me go.

Which was exactly why I couldn’t do that, not after everything he’d done for me.

“If she disappeared from the house while it was under surveillance, before the warrant arrives, would that harm her position?” Kenna asked, and I turned back to find that calculating look in her eye. The same one she got when she first began to suspect I wasn’t who I said I was, and that had led us to staking out my apartment only to discover my landlord, Simon Crawford, making himself at home.

“Disappearing now wouldn’t make her legal standing any worse, I suppose,” Mason said, and there was a thoughtfulness underneath his tone, silently cataloging what was and was not being said and trying to make sense of it all. “In fact, it might benefit us to keep her on the run for a few more days, though I’m not sure how to make that happen. It would give us more time to build her defense and control the narrative for when she does turn herself in. But again⁠—”

“Then go,” Kenna said, turning back to me and pushing on my shoulders, trying to guide me towards the library and servant’s stairs. There was an urgency in her voice. stepping closer to me and completely ignoring that Mason was in the room as she offered me a way out. “You don’t have to run, or let them take you in. All you have to do is go to the office.”

“What office?” Mason asked, and she cut her eyes towards him before looking back at me, her stare intense.

“The one I keep upstairs,” Kenna replied.

I went still, focusing on the sounds of the cottage settling around me. The hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock in the kitchen, the faint sound of Phoebe’s voice drifting in from beyond the front door. What Kenna was offering to give up right now was massive. Mason was legally required to keep my secrets, but he had no such obligation to her. Telling him about the secret office was a door that only opened in one direction and stayed open once she walked through it.

“Don’t,” I said, raising a hand to stop her from taking this any further. “You don’t have to do this. Not for me.”

“They’ll never find you,” Kenna protested, clearly unconcerned with the breach of privacy she was creating for herself. She looked directly at Mason then, clearly willing to blurt out her secret if it meant giving me a chance to get out of this.

“Kenna,” I said, a note of warning in my voice, and I glanced between her and Mason, but even this conversation had already told him more than I wanted him to know. He understood now that there was an office somewhere on the second floor that I could hide in and, warrant or not, Phoebe still might not find me there.

“The other option is that you let them take you in on their terms, giving whoever framed you exactly what they want, including all the media buzz and press releases claiming they caught Monica’s killer, which will negatively sway a future jury,” Kenna said. “Go, Hale. Stop worrying about my secrets and let me help you protect yourself. Mason and I will handle the agents at the door.”

It was the way she said my name that pushed me over the edge. It was my chosen name, filled with all the care and trust we had built up over the past few weeks, contrasting harshly against the way Phoebe said Avery McHale, you are under arrest.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, but not because I was being stubborn or trying to keep Kenna from making this decision. If we were going to use the secret office to give ourselves an advantage, then we only had one shot to do it, and I wasn’t going to waste it on hiding like a frightened child. “I have a better idea.”

Chapter Three

“Do you really think this is going to work?” Kenna asked a few minutes later, looking doubtfully between me and her phone. “It’s a huge risk.”

“Make the call,” I told her, glancing towards the front door. I could feel the pressure of an invisible countdown to the moment that search warrant came through. We didn’t have time for doubt.

Kenna gave me one last look before she nodded and dialed. Across the room, Mason was already working on his part of the plan, phone pressed to his ear.

Which left the rest of the plan up to me.

I snapped my fingers to get Rogue’s attention, and he immediately turned to look at me, head whipping around from where he had been watching Noah in the back yard. I snapped again and pointed at the space beside me, and he obediently pulled himself away from his post. I quietly led him down the hall and through to the library.

Without any lights on except the one coming from the hallway, the shelves cast dark shadows across the room. Through the window at the back of the cottage, I could see the backyard beyond the glass, where Noah stood at the property line with his hands loose at his sides, his back to the cottage. If he were doing the job right, he would be facing the back door and moving around, checking the angles to make sure I didn’t slip past him.

His weight shifted a little, and perhaps it was caused by feeling the weight of my gaze at his back or perhaps it was simple curiosity, but he turned then and our eyes met. It was so strange to see him on the other side of the glass when he had stood in this very room on the Fourth of July with a drink in his hand as he told me about his plan to get into contact with Vienna Quinn while the party went on around us.

I held his gaze for a long moment, the light of the hallway illuminating me from behind and Rogue’s body pressed warm and solid against my hip, and I thought about code phrases and burned covers and everything it must be costing him to keep trying to help me out of this mess.

I hadn’t asked him to, but he had freed me from that interrogation room the night Monica was killed, handed me the duffle bag that contained what little I owned from before that night, and sent me running. He’d taken every one of my calls, kept me abreast of the ongoing manhunt that I was the central focus of, and even now he appeared to be on my side despite the risks.

If I was a more ruthless woman, I could simply offer him up as a rogue agent in order to cut a better deal. But he had made the decision to trust me that night, all those weeks ago, and now we both had to live with the consequences.

I decided then and there that I needed to return the favor, to show him just how much I trusted him in return. With his eyes still on me I reached for the book that would trigger the latch on the bookcase panel. I felt it tilt and then lock into place as the mechanism that I had come to associate with safety clicked into place, the sound of a door that was not supposed to be there unlatching as it swung outward on its hinges.

The darkness of the servant’s staircase opened before me, and I looked back outside once again to find that Noah had already turned his back on the clear-as-day secret doorway that had been revealed. Whether that was to give me privacy or feign deniability, I couldn’t say.

With no eyes on me and very little time left to make this work, I turned and led Rogue upstairs. The secret door to the staircase swung shut behind us with a soft, definitive click.

Even as I led Rogue up the narrow staircase and into my bedroom, I felt a bubble of panic as what I had just done sunk in. Noah didn’t need to know about the staircase to the second floor, it didn’t give him anything except another secret he would have to hold on to while living under the microscope of Phoebe’s distrust in him.

But what was done was done and all I could do was live with the consequences.

“Come on, buddy,” I said softly, opening my bedroom door and guiding the dog inside. I didn’t know how much time I had before Phoebe barged into the cottage, but I absolutely had to be in the office before that happened if I wanted this plan to have any chance of success. But Mason’s words rang in my ears, reminding me just how much evidence I had laying around. Evidence that the FBI would use against me when it came time for my trial.

With the search warrant that Mason had insisted Phoebe get, it wasn’t just items in plain sight that she could confiscate either. Anything she found in her search of the cottage could be used against me in a court of law.

And the last thing I wanted to do after handing dangerous information off to Noah was to make it his responsibility to redirect Phoebe away from potentially incriminating evidence.

Rogue’s nails were quiet against the soft carpet as he waltzed into the bedroom, trusting that we were simply going to bed like it was any other night. I felt a sting at the corners of my eyes, knowing that wasn’t true.

Even if this plan worked, I was only postponing the inevitable. Soon enough, I would be in prison. Rogue and I were going to be separated, and there was no way of knowing how long it would take before I could get back to him. Whether it would be weeks or months or something so much longer and more terrible, I couldn’t say.

Unaware of the emotional turmoil going on inside me, Rogue hopped up onto the bed and turned in a circle, settling down and looking up at me with his chin on his paws and his eyes soft, fully expecting me to lie down beside him the way I always did at the end of the day when the world had been too much.

I collapsed on the edge of the bed and wrapped both of my arms around him, pressing my face into the soft, warm solidity of his neck. He allowed it with the dignified patience of a dog who knew his duty and loved to fulfill it. I let myself have thirty seconds, taking in the smell of him, the weight of his head against my shoulder, the slow rhythm of his breathing, before I forced myself to pull back and wipe the stray tears off my face with the back of my hand.

Then I stood up, moving to the drawer in the bedside table and opening it long enough to pull three biscuits from the stash of dog treats I kept locked away in there. I fed them to him, refusing to disappear from his life without giving him a proper reward for being the best damned dog a girl could have asked for.

I knew that the longer I stayed in plain sight the higher the chance Phoebe would return with her warrant and find me here, but if I brought him into the office with me there was an equally high chance the sound of people out in the hall would cause him to bark and give away my location. Which meant I had to leave him in this room and go next door now, or this would be the last time I saw him for a very long time.

Determined for that not to be the case, I turned around and got to work.

I scanned the bedroom with the eye of an investigator and all the training I’d been given at the Academy. I had a go-bag under the bed, where I kept everything I’d brought with me from my life before. Even the bag itself was the same one Noah had handed to me at the back door of the Stafford Police Department when he had told me to run.

I dug it out from under the bed, feeling the handles worn soft at the edges, filled with the gym clothes I kept in the back of my car. I opened it, shoving the wallet that contained my real ID and the receipts from my cross-country road trip from Virginia to Oregon inside. I knew that I should have gotten rid of everything in that wallet, but my ID was the last remaining thread tying me to my old life and those receipts weren’t just evidence of my travel through state lines. They were my alibi in case any other murder victims turned up with my prints on them in the days after Avery McHale vanished.

I unzipped the bag, snagging my old wallet and swapping it out for the one with my Hale Hastings ID inside. Now that the FBI knew where I lived I was back to being Avery McHale and there was no point pretending otherwise.

I skimmed the rest of the contents of the bag, taking stock of the ten file folders worth of case information that I had accumulated . Seven of them were from my time at the Academy, one contained everything I knew about my mother’s murder, one was a compilation of everything I knew about the local FBI—including Coal Shepherd—and one was for Monica’s case.

Beneath them were my running shorts and FBI sweatshirt, a tank top, and the pair of scissors I had used to cut my hair after dying it while living on the run.

I zipped the duffle bag back up and scanned the room again, my eyes falling on the trench coat folded over the back of the yellow accent chair in the corner, exactly where I had left it the day I moved from the guest room into permanent residence at Cavanaugh Cottage. It was Monica’s trench coat. The one she had loaned to me only a handful of hours before she died.

It had been in the back seat of my car when I arrived at her door, alongside the duffle bag, and Noah had grabbed it without knowing the weight it would come to represent. Because it was the last thing I had of her, and a stark reminder of everything she was trying to help me become.

I lifted it from the chair and draped it over my arm, refusing to let it fall into evidence against me.

While my phone screen was fractured from Mark Kinsman’s attempt to murder me, the device was still working well enough. I pulled it off the charger, tucking it into my back pocket before scanning the room for anything else I might have left behind. I hadn’t owned a computer or any other technology since that fateful day, and all the clothing in my closet had been purchased secondhand or given to me by Kenna. There was nothing else in the room that could be identified as mine, except for Rogue.

I looked back at him one last time and he stared up at me from the middle of the bed with his chin resting on his paws and the curve of his kinked tail slowly moving as he realized my attention was on him again.

I stepped up to the edge of the bed and inspected the collar around his neck, my fingers gently holding the tag engraved with his name and my number. Evidence of our connection. I couldn’t bring myself to take it off him even as my imagination wandered to scenarios where Phoebe found that phone number, called it, and my ring tone led her right to me.

I pulled my phone back out, the cracked screen still full of notifications from the night before. Frantic texts and voicemails from Kenna, several missed calls from Mason, and one amongst the many notifications from Noah. He’d tried to call me, probably to warn me, but I had left my phone at home when I attended Lexi’s funeral, and I had completely missed his warning.

I dismissed all the notifications and set the phone to vibrate. Now, there was no reason to remove the collar, a reminder of our connection. Rogue had been mine, and no matter what happened next nothing would change that.

“I’ll be back soon,” I told him, because I needed it to be true. I gave him one last scratch behind the ears. “Be a good boy, okay?”

He thumped his tail once against the duvet in response, and I slipped out of the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind me before he could follow.

The hallway was dim, the overhead lights off, the only illumination coming from the ambient glow from the lights embedded in the vaulted ceiling above the living room. From the foyer, Phoebe’s voice drifted up—the words indistinct, but the tone of them unmistakable. There was a bright satisfaction in her voice that told me she’d gotten exactly what she wanted.

The warrant had arrived.

Chapter Four

I sat on the leather couch in Kenna’s private office with the duffle bag full of evidence and Monica’s coat across my lap, watching the line of shadow at the base of the door for any change in the light. Anything that would give me a warning that someone was on the other side.

The venetian blinds covering the window behind me were closed. The desk lamp was off. The case board was a dark shape on the wall to my left, and in the thin ambient light bleeding under the door I could just make out the edges of it—Kenna’s careful handwriting, the photographs pinned in neat little rows, the red string running between the points of my life she had observed from afar.

More evidence of who I was and how I didn’t belong. How I would inevitably end up back in my old life, facing charges for the death of my own mentor. This whole room was a buffet of evidence, and if Phoebe happened to find it that would only make my situation that much worse.

My knee started to bounce, and I looked away from the cork board, back to scanning the light along the bottom edge of the door for signs of movement. Simply sitting in the silent office, waiting and praying that the door didn’t open, was driving me crazy.

Which was why I nearly jumped a mile in the air when my phone vibrated in my pocket. My hand was in my pocket and pulling out the device before I even realized what I was doing. There was a text on the screen from Noah.

You’re on mute.

I furrowed my brows, shaking my head as I tried to understand what that was supposed to mean, but before I could even begin to theorize, my phone vibrated again. This time, he was calling.

I hit the answer button, keeping my mouth shut as I pressed the phone against my ear and listened. The sound came through muffled, but the voices were distinct enough to understand despite what I assumed was fabric brushing up against the microphone.

I imagined Noah with his phone in his pocket, the call running in the background and giving me just enough information to make out what was happening in the living room below.

I felt a swell of gratitude towards him for it. He knew I was still in the house, that I was upstairs, and he was still trying to give me the advantage. Little did he know that the hidden staircase was only the first layer between us and that the two agents eventually getting up to the second floor was part of the plan.

“—not in the bathroom,” Phoebe was saying.

“Laundry room and study are also empty,” Noah replied, clearly putting on an act for Phoebe’s benefit. “Where did she go?”

“She’s upstairs,” Kenna replied, and I could hear the smug smile in her voice, could imagine the way the two agents would look around, the complete lack of visible stairs apparent once they thought about it for longer than a second.

“And where are the stairs?” Phoebe’s voice carried a note of frustration underneath all her professionalism, and the professionalism was quickly losing ground. Silence followed her question and she huffed in frustration. “By refusing to tell me how to get up there, Mrs. Scott, you are actively obstructing a federal investigation, and I will have you arrested for it.”

“I assure you, Agent Richards, I do not care.” Kenna’s voice was haughty and dismissive, like she really didn’t care that Phoebe could arrest her, and she would keep her mouth shut no matter what. “Perhaps you can come back with a ladder if you can’t figure it out yourself.”

There was a pause that stretched on long enough that I began to imagine Phoebe’s expression without needing to see it, her face turning apoplectic. But when she next spoke, I was surprised to hear her voice had become soft and low, a dangerous combo for someone I knew had to be beyond furious.

“Or,” Phoebe said, “perhaps I’ll shove every book off your shelves until I figure out which one reveals the way upstairs. Because there has to be a staircase somewhere in this house and I’m going to find it.”

“You’re welcome to try,” Kenna replied, dry and unhurried, entirely unbothered by the prospect. Then the sound of a book hitting the floor came through the phone. And then another.

I closed my eyes and pressed the phone harder against my ear as I listened to Phoebe work her way along the living room bookshelves with the methodical fury of someone who was determined to create as much of a mess as possible to prove her point. The thing was, she was right about the secret staircase but wrong about the location, which meant she could continue to do this for a considerable amount of time before she got anywhere near the latch.

I desperately wished that I could see Kenna’s face right now. I imagined she was staying as composed and snooty as her upbringing had raised her to be, standing in the middle of her own living room while a federal agent dismantled her book collection one volume at a time.

Noah was also in that room, I remembered, and he not only knew where the staircase was, but how to access it. And yet he was also just standing there watching Phoebe pull books off the wrong shelves and saying absolutely nothing about it. While I appreciated his loyalty—and the extra time it gave me—a part of me wished he would take a more active role in the search for his own sake. Phoebe was bound to notice his lack of assistance sooner rather than later.

“You know,” Mason said, conversationally, over the sound of another book hitting the floor, “this level of property damage during a search of questionable scope is going to be relevant when we discuss the terms of Ms. McHale’s eventual surrender. Just as a point of information.”

“Nobody asked you,” Phoebe said, either not clocking that Mason was yet again trying to bring up negotiating the appropriate terms of my surrender or simply not caring to engage with him.

Another book hit the floor.

“There is genuinely no trigger in that section of shelving,” Kenna offered, her voice turning saccharine sweet, a false warmth that would have caused chills down my spine if I didn’t know she was on my side. “But please do continue. I’ve been meaning to reorganize these shelves anyway.”

“Phoebe,” Noah’s voice was quiet and careful as he spoke to his partner. “This isn’t⁠—”

“Agent Delgado, unless you have something constructive to contribute,” Phoebe cut him off without breaking her rhythm of dropping books to the ground, “I would appreciate your silence.”

“The ladder idea wasn’t bad,” Noah replied after a moment of quiet, and I pressed my free hand over my mouth because the alternative was to let out a sound that might not have been audible through the muted phone, but certainly would have given away my position regardless. He was going to get himself in so much trouble for me. He had been getting himself in trouble for me for over a year and he kept doing it anyway.

“Noah,” Phoebe said, a warning in her voice.

“Just saying,” Noah replied, not taking the warning to heart. More books clattered to the ground. “Her lawyer has been very reasonable, I’m sure if we called Briggs we could negotiate her surrender without all of this...chaos.”

“No one is calling Briggs, and Avery’s not getting any special treatment,” Phoebe snapped. “You can forget about trying to make any kind of deal because I’m going to find her and I’m going to force her to face the consequences of her actions, lawyers be damned.”

The sound of books hitting the floor continued, but no one else spoke after that.

The way Phoebe had said my name twisted my stomach in knots. There was so much disgust in her voice, reminding me that she really did believe I’d killed Monica and there wasn’t any changing her mind.

There was no doubt in my mind that all the news headlines tomorrow would claim that Monica Park’s killer had been caught, and with that kind of bias in the media there was no chance I’d see the outside of a cell again for anything other than my court date. The trial would be filled with a jury who already had an opinion on who I was and what I’d done. And that was if I managed to survive in prison long enough to face a trial in the first place.

The living room went quiet, books no longer hitting the floor in a staccato rhythm.

Footsteps moved away from the wrong wall in the living room, down toward the hallway. There was silence for one brief moment before Phoebe’s voice came through the phone in equal parts rage and disbelief.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said, and I had to press my hand over my mouth again, because I knew that Phoebe had found the library and was looking at a room entirely made up of shelves, and any one of those books could be the trigger to revealing the secret passage.

Silence filled the room and though I knew Noah had to be with her at the very least, no one else spoke. Phoebe had come too far to give up now, so I knew she had to be thinking things through. Looking for clues as to which book was the right one. And Kenna was clever, but she was also eccentric and dramatic. The temptation to make the latch trigger thematic had been too much to resist.

The Secret Garden was a little on-the-nose for a book about secret passages, after all.

I heard Phoebe breathe out, a hint of satisfaction in the sound, and I knew she had caught on. Her footsteps moved across the room as she went directly to the center of the left wall.

There was the sound of a single book being pulled free, and then the soft mechanical click that I had heard from the other side so many times in the past few weeks that it was etched into my memory. The Murphy door swung open with a low creak.

“All of that,” Phoebe said, her voice coming through both the phone and carrying up the stairway as they ascended. “And I’m still going to arrest her. I don’t know what they’re thinking, fighting this hard to keep it from happening.”

“Maybe they believe her when she says she didn’t do it,” Noah suggested.

“Maybe they’re imbeciles,” Phoebe replied, without missing a beat. “Even if she is innocent—and that is a considerable if, given that she ran—continuing to hide from these charges isn’t doing her any favors. It never does. Every day she doesn’t face this makes the next day harder.”

“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” Noah asked.

“That’s for people who are actually going through the justice system,” Phoebe said. “When she ran, she opted out. Every action she has taken since Orders Night has been a silent confession. Leaving an active interrogation. Crossing state lines. Assuming a false identity. Obtaining a defense counsel for a crime she claims she didn’t commit while continuing to evade arrest. Those are not the actions of an innocent woman.”

“Those are the actions of a woman who doesn’t trust that the justice system will treat her fairly,” Noah said, and I could tell they had reached the top of the stairs because his voice was slightly echoed from where I could hear him through the walls. I rushed to silence the call volume so their own voices coming from behind the hidden door didn’t lead Phoebe right to me even as Noah continued to defend my actions. “She wasn’t even under arrest when she left that interrogation room, you know.”

“Wha—aaaah!” Phoebe’s question dissolved into a startled scream that thankfully could only be heard through the walls.

Noah said something that was muffled, and I pressed my lips together in frustration, digging through my bag until I found my headphones. Putting one in, I waited for it to connect to my phone and then suddenly I could hear the conversation on the other side of the wall much better without risking the increased volume giving me away.

“Jesus, that dog is enormous,” Phoebe was saying. “They couldn’t have warned me he was up here?”

“Hey, buddy,” Noah said, ignoring Phoebe’s comment entirely as the soft sound of a hand making contact with a substantial amount of fur told me he was giving Rogue a few pets.

I sat in the dark office with the headphone tucked into my ear as I listened to Phoebe Richards search my bedroom like it was a drug den. She found nothing, of course, because anything worth finding was on this side of the wall.

Every space that might have concealed a person or the evidence of one, she made sure to search. Under the bed, in the closet, behind the door. I even heard the sound of my bedroom window sliding open despite the window screen remaining firmly in place.

“Avery McHale, this is the FBI,” Phoebe called, stepping into the hallway again. “If you can hear me, come out with your hands up!”

I, of course, did not do as she asked.

“Phoebe—” Noah began, but she cut him off.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice lowering in warning, turning dangerous as her plans to arrest me unraveled around her. “Don’t act like you’re trying to help when you’re obviously not. I told Briggs you’re too close to this. We’ll take the door on the right first. Cover me, and Delgado if she’s up here and you let her get away, I’ll make sure everyone in the Bureau knows you’re a traitor.”

Noah didn’t reply. Their footsteps quickly moved down the hall, not even pausing at my door long enough for me to worry that Phoebe might have any clue about the additional space where I was hidden.

Phoebe was as deep into the house as she could get and this was my chance. Leaving every bit of incriminating evidence in the hidden office, including my old broken phone, I unhooked the inner latch on the door and swung the wall open.

I peeked around the edge, watching Kenna’s half-open door. There was movement, shadows shifting across the light coming from inside, but from the impressed whistle I heard over the earbud I could tell that Noah and Phoebe had just discovered Kenna’s closet.

“How many handbags does one person need?” Noah asked.

“Does it matter?” Phoebe grumbled. “She’s clearly not in here.”

“Clearly,” Noah said, and I felt a flicker of panic as I realized that meant the two of them would move on to checking the bathroom next. Which meant Phoebe was going to see me and our entire plan would go down the gutter. “But we should probably check each of these bags in case there’s any evidence hidden inside.”

I didn’t wait to find out if Phoebe would agree with him. Instead, I closed the section of wall behind me and moved as quickly as I could past my own bedroom doorway towards the stairs.

The two agents had left my bedroom door open and as I passed, Rogue hurried to follow me, jumping up on me in his excitement. I braced myself but felt the headphone in my ear fall to the ground from the force of him knocking into me. I pushed him down, not even bothering to pause and pick up the earbud as I made my way to the stairs. I had to get myself out of view, now.

With one last backward glance at Kenna’s bedroom door, I caught a flash of it opening, Noah standing in the doorway blocking any view Phoebe could have had of me. It was the extra two seconds I needed to get completely out of sight.

Chapter Five

Kenna and Mason were waiting for me in the living room. I took in Kenna’s pleased expression, Mason standing behind her with his phone still up to his ear, talking to someone on the other end. There were books scattered across the floor at our feet, some lying open where they had fallen, others stacked in the careless accumulation of Phoebe’s search.

The shelves themselves looked stripped bare and wrong, the gaps between the remaining volumes giving the room the unsettled quality of a smile with missing teeth.

A first edition Kenna had pointed out to me once with quiet pride was lying face-down on the carpet with its pages bent. The disarray left behind by Phoebe’s search bothered me. It was a physical representation of Phoebe’s complete disregard for another person’s property.

Was this who I might have become, if I’d spent the past two months working as an agent rather than working against them? The kind of agent who dismantled someone’s home and then walked out the front door afterward without a backwards glance, just because the warrant said she could?

“We did it,” Kenna whispered, a layer of satisfaction in her voice that was a jarring juxtaposition to my own thoughts.

“It’s not over yet,” I reminded her as I glanced up at the second floor balcony and then stepped back far enough to ensure no one could see me if they happened to look down at the living room. “We still have to pull off the second part of this plan.”

“Can’t you let yourself enjoy the win for a second?” Kenna asked as she followed me towards the foyer and front door. “Because, Hale? This was a win.”

“Sure,” I replied, wondering if she was right. I’d gone along with everything the people who cared about me had told me to do. And yet, I only seemed to be making things worse for myself, and we weren’t any closer to clearing my name. I wrapped my arms around myself as what little high I’d earned from pulling one over on Phoebe quickly vanished into the mire of my situation. “Big win.”

“Come on, he should be here soon,” Kenna said, opening the front door for me. Rogue trotted out behind us as Kenna quietly closed the front door, the three of us standing in the dark as we waited for the rest of the plan to kick into motion.

“Good boy, scaring that mean FBI lady,” Kenna whispered to Rogue as she bent over, giving him a solid series of pats on his back. He looked up at her with his mouth slightly open, the approximation of a grin on his face as he enjoyed the attention she was giving him. “I heard her shriek like a little girl all the way downstairs.”

Mason slipped out the front door, his phone still pressed to his ear as he listened intently to whoever was on the other side. I couldn’t imagine they were happy with him, considering just how late it was. I wondered how Kenna’s call had gone, then, but if there was a problem she would have told me by now.

“Could you take Rogue back inside?” I asked her, everything in me wanting to crouch down and bury my face in his fur again. But I’d already said my goodbyes and I didn’t know if I could manage it again. “I don’t want him to see this.”

That was also true. The way Rogue reacted to people towering over each other meant there was no telling what he would do if this went wrong, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get worked up trying to protect me only to end up in his own cell, or worse.

“Sure,” Kenna said, leading Rogue by the collar back towards the house. I could hear voices inside when she opened the door, though I couldn’t see Phoebe or Noah from where I was standing, which meant they couldn’t see me either.

I bounced on the balls of my feet, glancing at Mason. There was an irritated expression on his face now.

“This isn’t over,” he said before hanging up. He didn’t say it, but I could tell that his part of the plan wasn’t going smoothly.

Maybe we shouldn’t have done this, I thought, eyeing my car parked in the driveway. I could go, right now. All I had to do was open the front door long enough to grab my keys and my dog. I could load Rogue up in the back seat and drive off, disappear again, keep working on the case, figure it out myself.

The headlights at the end of the driveway eliminated the option before I could make a decision. It was a one-lane drive, and with the truck making its way towards us there was no way I could maneuver past it without risking a massive wreck.

My path had been set and there was nowhere left to run.

“Remember, don’t say anything, don’t admit to anything,” Mason said as the shiny black pick-up truck pulled down the long driveway and parked in front of us. I snorted and Mason gave me a stern look. “Yes, I know you’re not going to confess to a crime you didn’t commit, but don’t even reference the ones you do feel guilty for. I can see it in your eyes, Avery. Don’t let that sanctimonious agent’s words get to you.”

“It’s not her words that are getting to me,” I told him. “It’s the prospect of spending the rest of my very short life in prison.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Mason told me, a fierce look in his eyes that felt out of place for someone looking at their client. He looked like he wanted to tuck me under his arm and protect me from all the dangers in the world. Like he did the night he pulled me out of that grave. Like he wanted to⁠—

The pick-up truck stopped in front of us, headlights illuminating something I wasn’t comfortable with anyone else seeing. The engine cut and I stepped away from Mason, the spell broken. He pulled back as well, straightening the lapels of his suit as the driver pulled open the door and stepped out, boots crunching on the gravel.

“Detective Shepherd,” I said as Lachlan walked up to the house, glancing around like he might find the explanation for his summons tucked away amongst the bushes planted along the front or hidden between the trees that lined the driveway.

“Ms. Hastings,” he said, glancing between Mason and myself with a dawning understanding. “How can I help you?”

“The real question is how I can help you,” I told him. “I’m about to hand you the biggest arrest of your career.”

“Oh?” he said, brow furrowing.

“Yes.” I stepped a little closer, glancing at Mason one last time before deciding to get this over with once and for all. “I’m certain you noticed the lovely black SUV parked in our driveway. That belongs to the federal agents who are currently searching the cottage for me. Now, I would give myself over to them, but they want to make it a whole spectacle and the last thing I want is news coverage about my arrest and the heroics of the FBI as they took me down.”

“What my client is trying to say,” Mason said, drawing Lachlan’s attention to him. “Is that we would like you to be the one to arrest her, and to stall the agents from getting custody of her for as long as possible to give us time to negotiate private transportation and protective custody.”

“Hold on,” Lachlan said, taking a step back as he tried to wrap his mind around the situation he had just walked into. “What exactly would I be arresting you for?”

“Murder,” I told him. “Because my name isn’t Hale Hastings. It’s Avery McHale.”

He stared at me and I stared back, waiting for the moment when recognition would hit him. I watched it happen, like a cloud had been lifted and suddenly he was seeing me with new eyes. Suddenly, I wasn’t the quiet and private woman who had managed to save his daughter from a kidnapper, but the disguised killer whose face had been splashed across the news for months.

“I can’t,” he started, shaking his head and not even close to reaching for his cuffs. “Hale, I can’t. It can’t be me. Do you know how furious Gracie would be if she found out? You saved our daughter, and now you want me to arrest you?”

“Please,” I whispered. “It’s either you, or them, and I know how they’re going to treat me once they have their hands on me.”

“You think they’ll hurt you?” Lachlan asked, glancing at the closed front door that sat between us and them. “Is that why you’re asking for protective custody?”

“No, not them. At least, not in any way that will leave a mark,” I said, “But they’ll show me off to the news reporters. They’ll put me in an orange jumpsuit and escort me to the Capitol for all the world to see. And once I’m inside, there’s no telling what might happen to me. I’m not asking you to help me avoid arrest, Lachlan, I just need enough leverage to keep the whole world from watching as it happens.”

“Okay,” Lachlan said, but he was frowning. I knew he didn’t like the situation any more than Mason or Kenna had, but it was what it was and I’d made my decision. This was the way things had to be.

“Don’t forget to read me my rights,” I told him, hoping that would jolt him out of the distant look that had glazed over his eyes. He blinked, looking back down at me, distress written all over his features.

“Does Kenna know?” he asked, and I didn’t reply, simply holding up my wrists for him to cuff. “Right, of course.”

He reached down to his waist to grab the cuffs he kept there, gently looping them around my wrists, around the sleeves of the hoodie. The cold metal didn’t even touch my skin, but the sound of the cuffs clicking into place echoed in my mind as I remembered the first time this had happened, back when Officer Hammond had first arrested me after finding me at Monica’s side.

“You have the right to remain silent…”

I exercised that right as Lachlan continued the well-worn phrases that I had practiced so many times they’d been my first instinct when I had tackled Ezra Kane a few weeks before. He then loaded me into the back of his truck, slamming the door behind me. It felt awful to be on this side of the equation.

But even as Lachlan pulled himself into the driver’s seat and started turning his truck around, I saw the front door of the cottage open. Phoebe came storming out, her eyes locked on me.

I raised my arms into view, showing off the cuffs that were locked around my wrists. If looks could kill I wouldn’t be the only one wanted for murder, because I’d never seen anyone look as furious as Phoebe did in that moment.

Lachlan turned the wheel, the truck headed back down the driveway, and I lost sight of her. I was still headed to jail, still facing a whole host of charges, and there was still someone out there who had attempted to frame me. But for one brief, glorious moment I followed Kenna’s advice and reveled in the moment. Because this was a win.

Chapter Six

The Bend Police Department was quiet, only a few officers already clocked in this late at night. Or early in the morning, depending on how you looked at it. As Lachlan guided me into the holding area two other officers looked towards us, but the look that Lachlan sent them had them minding their own business soon enough.

“I’m going to need to bring a female officer in to pat you down,” Lachlan said quietly and I nodded, sitting down on the low bench as he walked over to a desk and began talking to the man sitting behind it. He came back a few moments later with an apologetic look on his face.

“Take your time,” I told him. “The longer it takes you to process me the longer you can keep them from taking me into custody.”

“You realize I can’t keep them from doing that forever, right?” Lachlan said, sitting down beside me while we waited for the female officer to come on duty.

“Of course not,” I told him. “Honestly, I should be apologizing to you. I’m essentially using your arrest of me as a bargaining chip to keep my transfer into FBI custody out of the news. I want this done quietly, and with dignity.”

“And you don’t think that would have happened if you simply turned yourself in to the federal agents?” he asked.

“I know it wouldn’t,” I replied, a grim expression on my face. “You know what they’re accusing me of, right? Killing another FBI agent, one as respected as Monica was, isn’t something they want to keep quiet about. They’ll want the whole world to know that no one messes with the FBI and gets away with it. They’ve already created prejudicial pretrial publicity. I’m just trying to minimize the damage to what’s left of my reputation.”

“Well, I can’t make any promises,” Lachlan said as the door to the holding room unlocked, signaling the arrival of the female officer we had been waiting for. “But I’ll make it as difficult as possible for them to get what they want if it means giving you a little leverage. We both know I owe you more than I can even say.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I assured him, “But I appreciate any help you’re willing to give.”

“Detective Shepherd,” Phoebe called out from the door to the booking room, storming in like she owned the place. “Thank you for taking our suspect into custody. We’ll take it from here.”

Behind her I could just make out Noah’s face, incredulous as he stared me down. With Phoebe looking right at me I knew I couldn’t respond to the clear question in his eyes, but I felt a pang of regret. Trick wasn’t the only one I had forgotten to give a heads up to, and after everything Noah had done for me, I knew he deserved better than to be blindsided by my decision to initiate my own arrest.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Lachlan asked, passing the paperwork we had just finished over to the booking clerk to continue the process while we handled the jurisdictional pissing match I knew was about to begin.

“Agent Phoebe Richards, FBI,” Phoebe said, flashing her federal badge at him before motioning to Noah behind her. “This is Agent Noah Delgado.”

“Office of Professional Responsibility,” Noah offered, lifting his own credentials into view and completely acting like he’d never seen Lachlan in his life, despite the two of them having a clear connection in both Trick and in Lachlan’s father also being an FBI agent. There was a good chance that Lachlan had seen Noah at the Fourth of July BBQ, but if he recognized the man he didn’t give anything away.

“Ah, I see,” Lachlan said, a grim expression on his face. “I assume you’re here to take Ms. McHale into custody, but unfortunately I’m going to need you to wait.”

“Wait?” Phoebe asked before scoffing, “I don’t think so.”

She stepped forward and produced a set of papers from the inner pocket of her suit jacket. The warrant for my arrest.

Lachlan took the pages, barely glancing at them before shaking his head. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“Are you blind?” Phoebe asked. “This is a federal warrant for the arrest of Avery McHale, which supersedes all local jurisdictional rights.”

“I’m sorry Agent Richards,” Lachlan said. “Ms. McHale is a material witness in two separate local cases. I’m happy to transfer her into your custody once I’ve ensured her statements on both cases are sufficient, but until then you will just have to wait.”

“You really expect me to believe you aren’t just holding her here to slow down a federal investigation?” Phoebe asked. “She called you directly and had you come arrest her. That’s collusion.”

“Call it what you want,” Lachlan said. “I’m just doing my job.”

“I want to speak to your captain.” Phoebe’s breathing was labored as she made her demand, clearly worked up past the point of being reasoned with. My throat tightened and my stomach sank as I realized just how much trouble I might have gotten Lachlan into by asking him to do this.

“By all means,” Lachlan replied, gesturing towards the clearly empty captain’s office with a grin. “I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to come in on his day off just to talk to you.”

“Hale, this is Officer Juarez,” Lachlan said an hour later, approaching me with a pretty Mexican woman dressed in an officer’s uniform at his side. “She will be conducting your pat down.”

“Okay,” I agreed. I nodded towards the captain’s office where the lights were now on, though the blinds were closed. “How’s it going in there?”

“Oh, Captain Falk is not happy,” Lachlan told me cheerfully.

“Spread your legs and hold out your arms,” Juarez said, her tone firm but professional. I followed her orders and allowed her to pat me down, confirming there was nothing on me except for my cell phone and wallet. “She’s clear.”

“Thank you, Officer Juarez,” Lachlan said, sending her off with a grateful wave. “If you’ll follow me for booking, I’ll take your ID, fingerprints, and mugshot.”

“Crap,” I said under my breath, but still loud enough that Lachlan heard me and raised an eyebrow. “I just...I let Trick know I might be out for a few days, but I forgot to tell him I was about to turn myself in. I won’t be in for my shift at Mug+Shots tonight. Or any night, I guess.”

“I can give him a heads up,” Lachlan replied. “Unless you want that to be your one call?”

“No,” I said. “I would appreciate it if you could let him know.”

“Of course,” Lachlan agreed as he sat me in front of a black and white striped background as he took my photo from all three angles. Then, we moved over to the fingerprinting area, and I allowed him to press the pads of my fingers into the ink before pushing them onto the fingerprint card.

I stared at the dark swirls, thinking about the knife they had found with my prints and Monica’s blood. The damning evidence that had led to everything else that followed.

Somehow, Vienna Quinn had gotten ahold of my fingerprints in order to put them on that knife. The kind of patience and precision that would have taken, considering how few times I went out after starting at Quantico, had always left me feeling anxious. Just like Simon Crawford had spent weeks watching me without my knowledge, Vienna Quinn must have done the same in order to frame me.

Which meant there was nearly a year of my life where I’d been observed without my knowledge, surveilled by two separate people.

It didn’t make sense. If Vienna was hired to frame me, spending months plotting it out, then whoever had hired her must have wanted me to go down for Monica’s murder long before it ever happened.

And what were the chances that the moment I became Hale Hastings, someone else became obsessed with watching me?

The puzzle in my mind was a mess I couldn’t piece together. I was starting to suspect I had the edge pieces in place though, the shape of the frame job beginning to look like a whole lot more than one convenient New Agent Trainee taking the fall. “Hey, Lachlan?”

“Yeah?” Lachlan said, handing me a wet wipe to clean off the ink on my fingers.

“Can you look into Simon Crawford some more?” I started to say, frowning. “I think he might be more involved in⁠—”

“What did I say about talking without me present?” Mason interrupted as he arrived with his briefcase in hand. “Did everything go alright getting here?”

I nodded, half my mind on the uphill battle ahead of me and the other half still on the questions that seeing my own fingerprints black against the white paper had sparked in me.

Because if Simon Crawford was somehow involved in framing me...no. That didn’t make any sense. As far as I knew he didn’t have any connection to Monica and had no idea who I was before I arrived in Bend.

Then again, as of two months ago, I hadn’t thought any of this would happen. Maybe I was too close to all of this to see the full picture, like looking at each puzzle piece individually rather than taking it all in at once.

“If my client has been booked, then she has a right to counsel,” Mason was saying as I tuned back into the conversation. “Please provide us a private room to discuss her legal strategy.”

“Right this way,” Lachlan said, a slight smile at the edges of his lips with an accommodating nod to Mason, leading the two of us out of the booking area and down a hallway. He guided me into an interrogation room and set me down at the table, sending me an apologetic look. “I’m afraid you are still wanted for murder, so I can’t just leave you two alone in any old conference room.”

“Completely understandable,” I told him and raised my cuffed wrists into the air along with an eyebrow. “Do you need to cuff me to the table?”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Lachlan replied, turning to Mason with a questioning look. “I assume having me arrest her to get negotiation leverage was your brilliant tactic?”

“Don’t underestimate her,” Mason replied, tipping his head towards me. “This idea was all hers. That said, anything you can do to slow down the transfer of custody and give us a chance to negotiate a little privacy and security for my client would be much appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Lachlan said, heading for the door. He stopped and turned back to look at the two of us seated across the interrogation table from each other. “And, Avery? Good luck.”

Chapter Seven

“Where are we at?” I asked Mason once we were alone. He grimaced, shaking his head.

“I’m still working on it,” he told me. “As much as everyone loves to complain about the red tape of bureaucracy, they equally love using it if it means less work on their end.”

“Meaning we don’t have anyone willing to approve an emergency bail hearing,” I said, but didn’t pause for Mason to answer. I didn’t need him to tell me what I already knew. “That’s fine. I was always going to end up behind bars at some point in this process. I just...I’m not looking forward to being targeted for my law enforcement background.”

“You were never officially an agent,” Mason pointed out with something that sounded suspiciously like hope and reeked of a naivety I didn’t expect from him.

“I might have only been a trainee, but I can’t imagine the other inmates will differentiate that from someone like Arthur Grant who spent years working for the FBI,” I replied, and then froze as something occurred to me, my heart starting to race as a panic attack I had been avoiding this entire time finally took over. “Mason, I put Arthur Grant behind bars. If I end up in the D.C. correctional facility, they have co-ed spaces. He’ll be there, and he’s not going to be happy to see me.”

“Hale?” Mason asked, drawing my attention to him. I looked up, finding his blue eyes filled with concern, wrinkling his forehead. “Hey, I’m going to get you through this, okay? I promised you I would.”

“Yeah,” I said distantly. “I know.”

“Once this is all over—” Mason continued, but I cut him off. 

“I want to talk to my dad,” I told him, the weight of the situation finally catching up to me. Soon, I would be going to prison. Regardless of how these negotiations went, I would still be locked away with dozens of people who had no reason to like me and a few who had every reason to hate me. There was no telling what would happen.

“Your dad?” he repeated, like he couldn’t quite grasp the concept of needing to talk to a parent. But he recovered quickly. “Since you don’t need to use your one call to call me, I don’t see how it could hurt. I’ll go get Detective Shepherd to bring you to a phone and see if I can’t get Agent Richards to agree to our demands in the meantime.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, slumping down in my chair as the exhaustion of the past two days hit me. First Kenna had realized who I really was, then Mark Kinsman had nearly murdered me before Mason rescued me from that grave. Then I’d gone to the Lexi Tate funeral only to return home in high spirits, with Kenna willing to hear my whole story and Mason ready to plan my defense strategy, only for Phoebe to arrive, fail to arrest me, and then push me to call Lachlan at three in the morning to accomplish the arrest instead.

Mason sent me a reassuring smile, unaware of the thoughts spinning through my head as he gathered his briefcase before heading out the door.

The interrogation room was silent after that. I took in the two-way mirror that was dark on my side, the camera in the corner that didn’t have any lights on. It was so similar to the interrogation room I’d been locked away in in Stafford and yet so different.

I wondered if the door was locked here, if there were officers stationed outside. I decided I didn’t want to know the answer and remained at my spot at the table, waiting.

A few minutes later Detective Shepherd came in, looking grim.

“Those agents out there are really putting me through my paces,” he said. “But I’ve convinced my captain that keeping you here and doing everything exactly by the book is the right way to go. I believe Captain Falk even said, and I quote, ‘you’ve been hunting her down for two months, another two days of waiting isn’t going to kill you.’”

“Your captain sounds like a reasonable man,” I replied and Lachlan grinned.

“Mason mentioned you wanted to make a phone call?” he asked, changing the subject. I nodded and he pulled out his own cell phone, passing it over to me. “I can give you two minutes, but I can’t give you any privacy.”

“Thank you,” I said, dialing my father’s phone number and praying he would pick up. The phone rang once, twice, and my hope began to fade until finally I heard the deep, familiar breaths of my father on the other side.

“Hello?” he said, and I smiled to myself at how he seemed to be so willing to answer unknown numbers despite how many times they had to have been spam callers and telemarketers over the years.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, my voice small as I realized I didn’t know how he would respond to hearing it. That his opinion of me and my situation might have changed in the past few months. But his fierce expression when he looked at the camera and spoke over the interviewer to warn me not to come home because the FBI were watching our house made it impossible to believe he wouldn’t be happy to hear from me.

“Avery.” He breathed my name out with all the relief of a parent who hadn’t expected to hear from his daughter again anytime soon. “Are you safe? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” I assured him. “I’m in a police department in Bend, Oregon.”

“Don’t say anything else,” he interrupted. “They could be recording this call. Sweetheart, if you’ve been caught you should be calling for a defense attorney.”

“Hey, Dad, listen,” I said, speaking over him. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I have a really good lawyer, and the FBI knows I’m here. I’m not hiding anything. Not anymore. I just wanted you to know, in case it gets out in the media. I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“They found you?” he asked, a note of disappointment lacing his voice.

“Not exactly,” I replied. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I needed to tell you I love you, and that I didn’t do it.”

“I know you didn’t, sweetheart,” he said. “I love you too. I’ll be on a plane as soon as I can get the time off, and we’ll get this figured out, okay?”

“No, Dad,” I said, shaking my head and squeezing my eyes shut as tears pricked the corners of my eyes. “I don’t want you to get involved. Don’t let anyone from the media try to get a sound bite from you, either.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’m going to be there to support you. You can’t stop me.”

“Fine,” I said, brushing the tears off my cheeks and getting my unsteady breathing under control so he wouldn’t hear how affected I was. “Just, don’t take any time off yet. There are a lot of steps before the trial. I’ll be transferred to D.C., and then I have a release hearing, and then there are other pre-trial steps to get through. But if you really want to be there, I can’t stop you. I’ll have my lawyer contact you and let you know what to expect.”

“You aren’t alone in this, Avery,” he said, and I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. Lachlan made a motion with his finger letting me know I needed to wrap it up.

“I know, Dad,” I said. “I have to go now. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

The interrogation room was cold and quiet after Lachlan left. I stared down at my hands, at the line of ink that had bled its way into the groove of my thumbprint and hadn’t come away with the wet wipe.

I wished I had some pen and paper, anything to help me pass the time. The longer I patiently sat there the better my chances were that Mason would be able to leverage the kind of custody transfer we were hoping for. Still, I hadn’t prepared myself for how bored I would be in the meantime.

I spent the time thinking about the case from every angle, trying to wrap my mind around it. There had to be an obvious answer I wasn’t seeing after weeks of searching.

Someone had decided that Monica Park needed to die and that I needed to take the fall. That meant either the killer’s true intent was either to kill Monica, or to frame me.

Considering how low I was on the totem pole it made more sense that Monica’s killer had simply chosen me as a convenient patsy. But using my prints, using Vienna Quinn to plant them and coordinate the entire thing to make it look like I did it, was so much more effort than choosing someone who wasn’t training to become an FBI agent. One of Monica’s neighbors or an ex-boyfriend would have made a much easier person to frame.

Which meant that somehow, me being the one to go down for the murder was the end goal. And if that were true, then—then what? That’s where I always came up short. Because if I was the target all along, that meant Monica was the easy victim to frame me for killing.

It meant Monica was dead because someone wanted me to suffer.

Possibly the same person who had left evidence on my doorstep; photos of my own life mixed in with gifts that only someone who knew me would know to pick out.

And Simon Crawford didn’t know me, couldn’t have known what my favorite scent of candle was or my preferred brand of whiskey. The items in that gift basket hadn’t been expensive, but they had been curated to exactly my tastes and that wasn’t something a man invading my privacy and stealing food out of my fridge for a little less than a month could know or care about.

Which meant whoever had done that, whoever had taken those photos, was still out there. And there was a high chance they were the same person who had framed me for killing Monica.

I didn’t have any evidence connecting the two situations, but the odds that I was being framed for murder and being stalked at the same time were just too damned high.

“Hey!” I called, standing up from the table and moving to the door, knocking on it. I didn’t dare try to open it myself in case Phoebe claimed I was attempting to flee again, but I couldn’t just sit with this realization. Maybe it was a long shot, maybe I was way off base, but I needed someone to know.

I needed to believe there was a chance that everything awful in my life was connected and that if I could just figure out who was behind everything then maybe I could put a stop to it once and for all.

“Hey! I need to talk to someone!” I called again, banging on the door. It opened almost instantly, and I stepped back as Lachlan, Mason, Phoebe, and Noah all filed into the room.

“Avery, what’s going on?” Mason asked, and I could see that both Noah and Lachlan had looks of concern as well.

“I need—” I started, then paused, glancing at Phoebe. The one person in the room who didn’t believe in my innocence. It was difficult to trust her with any theory that might lead the investigation to a different suspect. “I need to use the restroom.”

“Right,” Phoebe said, her voice laced with doubt, drawing out the i.

“Please,” I said, looking at Lachlan now. “I’ve been in here for hours.”

“She has a right to use the restroom,” Lachlan said, waving me towards the door.

“Not on her own,” Phoebe interjected, and I looked back at her with a scowl that caused her to freeze halfway through attempting to reach for me. I took one deliberate step back from her, making it clear I didn’t want her anywhere near me.

Lachlan frowned as he glanced between Phoebe and me before nodding. “I’d prefer not to have her escort me, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Let’s go find Officer Juarez then,” Lachlan agreed. I could hear the noise of frustration that Phoebe let out like the steam of a tea kettle even as the door closed between us, and I tried not to feel guilty about it. I was treating her like the enemy, like she wasn’t to be trusted, but from her point of view I imagined everything I’d done must look awfully suspicious.

It probably seemed to her like I had some grand plan to escape custody and this was just one more step towards her having to face her boss as she explained how I had slipped through her fingers once again.

“Can you do something for me?” I asked, pausing in the hallway before we reached the bullpen. Lachlan turned to me, an eyebrow raised. “The basket that we thought Simon Crawford left at my doorstep, is he still claiming he had nothing to do with that?”

“Yes,” Lachlan said. “But we have him on so many other charges, he’s not getting away with any of it.”

“That’s just it,” I raised my cuffed hands, brushing my bangs out of my eyes as I looked up at Lachlan, trepidation filling me. “I don’t think the gift basket was from him anymore. I think—well, I don’t know what to think, but I was hoping you might take a trip back to the cottage and have Kenna get the basket out of my closet, the cellophane wrapping and all. Now that I’m not hiding from the law, I think it’s time we consider it as evidence that I was being stalked. If you could just dust it for fingerprints, anything that might give us a clue who sent it to me, you might literally save me from life in prison.”

Chapter Eight

“What you’re asking for is outside my purview.” Phoebe’s voice echoed down the hallway as Officer Juarez led me back towards the interrogation room. I slowed down just a little, hoping to hear more of what Phoebe had to say when I wasn’t in the room.

“You and I both know that isn’t true,” Mason’s voice was even tempered, but I could hear an edge to it that told me he was reaching his limit of patience with the FBI Agent’s refusal to acquiesce to even one of our requests surrounding my secure transfer. I paused just before we reached the door, gesturing down to my shoe before bending over and slowly re-tying the laces. Mason continued with a tone that could have been patience if it wasn’t steeped in so much condescension. “All you have to do is call your boss and make the request. I assure you that Supervisory Special Agent Briggs will not think any less of you for suggesting you take your suspect in on a more secure transport than the next available direct flight from PDX to DCA and keep the arrest quiet.”

“We simply do not need to waste those resources,” Phoebe argued. To her benefit she didn’t sound nearly as frustrated as I expected her to be, but I could recognize the stubbornness that I always thought would make her a good agent. Once she sunk her teeth into something she didn’t like to let go. “And we don’t control the media.”

“If she won’t ask, I can,” Lachlan chimed in, and my eyes widened. I hadn’t realized he’d returned to the room. I stood upright, nodding to Officer Juarez as she guided me back inside to find Mason sitting next to my empty chair, Phoebe positioned across from him, with both Noah and Lachlan leaning against the back wall side by side as they watched the negotiations. “I can just give my father, ASAC Coal Shepherd, a call and see what he thinks about all of this.”

“Do not do that,” Phoebe interjected. She was standing near the table, arms crossed as she faced down both Mason and Lachlan, but she turned to Noah as she continued. “Would you back me up here?”

“No,” Noah replied, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Excuse me?” Phoebe’s voice went high and she looked floored at his outright refusal to help. “Why is everyone treating her like she’s the victim?”

“Richards, do you even hear yourself?” Noah asked, crossing his arms to mirror her stubborn body language. “They’re not asking for anything crazy. Guarantee that the press will be handled with care, provide private transport to D.C., and protective custody until her bail hearing. Those are reasonable requests for someone with as much notoriety as she has. Especially considering everyone in that prison will treat her like she was a full-blown FBI agent. You know how dangerous it is for law enforcement in prison. Which begs the question; are you more interested in taking Ms. McHale into custody or proving to our higher ups that you single-handedly found her and brought her in? Because if I were you, I would suck it up and call Briggs. Let him know we have a chance to get Avery McHale into custody without any further embarrassment and all it will cost us is a routine private transport out of the Redmond Municipal Airport and a few assurances that we’ve given to plenty of suspects in the past.”

Phoebe stared at Noah for a long moment, a complex calculation in her eyes. She glanced between the three men in the room who were all doing their best to protect me and I could tell when she made the decision to do as Noah suggested and simply call her boss.

“Better to keep her under extra guard anyway,” Phoebe said, like it had been her idea all along. Like she would rather do anything other than admit she had been coerced by Lachlan’s stalling and Noah’s admonishment. “Who knows what she’ll do if we try to bring her on a commercial flight.”

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Phoebe walked out of the room, and I was left to pray that Briggs was willing to accommodate the requests Phoebe had fought so hard against.

While I waited to hear whether I would be quietly transported to D.C. or if I would be made a spectacle of, I sat down at the interrogation table and wrote out my statements for the cases Lachlan was working on.

In neat handwriting I detailed everything I could remember about my interactions with Simon Crawford, including the gift basket I had accused him of sending me. I wasn’t so sure that was true anymore, but the last thing I wanted to do was leave it out of the statement and then find out later that it had been him all along.

Once I had signed and passed that statement off to Detective Shepherd, I moved on to writing out what I could about my interactions with Mark Kinsman. That statement was even more sparse, pointing out the two interactions I’d had with him in the public records office during my investigation into the disappearance of Camille Nash. I wrote three paragraphs about how Ian Nash’s murder of Rebecca led me to pulling the files for Laura, which in turn led Kinsman to panic and abduct me.

I hesitated, then, not sure what to say about my time in the coffin.

“Is everything okay?” Lachlan asked, noticing the hesitation right away.

“I just don’t know how to put this,” I told him, and he gave me a sympathetic look.

“Take your time,” he said. “The more detail you can include, the better, but I know it was traumatic.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, and stared down at the empty space where my words were meant to go. Mark Kinsman had knocked me out with a sedative. He then placed me in the trunk of his car and drove me to his home. I hadn’t known about this until much later, unconscious the entire time, but Mark had taken the time to return to his house and move me into the coffin in the bed of his truck, and he had kept me hidden there until dusk.

Then, he’d driven to the cemetery and buried me in Rebecca Nash’s empty grave.

Mark had made certain my phone was dead, the screen shattered, and had left my wallet and ID on me, placing that little radio in the coffin beside me before sealing it and lowering it into the earth.

Essentially, my inquiry into Laura had sent him off the deep end, causing him to make decisions based on panic rather than practiced methods. It had been a close call, and there was no telling if anyone would have figured out what happened to me if Mason and Kenna hadn’t pulled me from that grave.

I wrote as much as I could think of, glossing over the way it felt to be trapped in a small space, not certain how much air was left, the darkness closing in.

Instead, I focused on the procedural elements. The facts. Mark Kinsman had kidnapped me. He had confessed his crimes through that little radio and clarified that he liked to listen to the ‘dolls’ as they died. He had confirmed that the bodies he displaced were held in his basement, still ‘in their original packaging’.

Finally, all that was left to do was sign the statement and then Lachlan would be forced to hand me over to Noah and Phoebe, regardless of what the results of Phoebe’s call with Briggs were.

Chapter Nine

The next time I found myself alone, I was sitting in a cell in the Correctional Treatment Facility in D.C. The flight had been long, eerily silent, and tense. The Cessna that picked us up at the Redmond Municipal Airport had needed to make a ground stop in Denver to refuel, but no one had disembarked the plane or bothered making small talk in the meantime.

The negotiations between Mason, Phoebe, and Briggs had taken the better part of the day and, like most negotiations, no one really got what they wanted. The FBI had agreed to keep my arrest quiet but claimed there was nothing they could do to control what reporters printed once the news got out. We’d won the private transport argument, but lost ground the moment Mason attempted to suggest protective custody.

A compromise had been found in providing me a private cell. I didn’t have a cellmate, for now, but I would still be forced to mingle with the other inmates in the yard and dining facility.

And there was still no word on when my bail hearing would be set.

Now, after hours of flying and even more processing, my fingers were covered in another layer of ink that wouldn’t wash off and I was dressed in the same prison garb that everyone else locked away in CTF wore while awaiting their trial.

Not the orange jumpsuits you always saw on TV, but this horrible bright yellow two piece set with the words “Detainee Remand” printed in circles all across the fabric like ringworm.

I had all but blocked out the experience of being transferred into the facility and hadn’t bothered to make small talk with any of the other detainees. It probably wouldn’t earn me any points if I ended up sentenced to prison for life, but I just didn’t have the energy to handle getting to know anyone here.

Most of them were actual criminals, and in a place like this the refrain of ‘I’m innocent, I was framed’ felt like a joke. It would be a few days before I saw Mason again, if I was lucky. But as I lay on my bunk, the prison bars between me and the rest of the world, I felt exhaustion wash over me.

Never in my entire life had I thought I would end up falling asleep with ease while locked away behind bars. With the cell door locked and no one else in the room, I felt the weight of my eyelids grow heavier.

As I drifted off, the thin blanket barely doing anything to comfort me or keep me warm, I had one last thought that I hoped Kenna was keeping Rogue happy and distracted for now.

“Your honor, the prosecution will argue that my client is a flight risk. That her history of leaving the interrogation room the night of SSA Monica Park’s death is evidence that she shows a pattern of refusing to take responsibility,” Mason said as he stood up from his chair and stepped closer to the bench. He paused then, to adjust his cuff links as if this entire statement wasn’t nearly as important as fixing a minor flaw in his attire. “However, there are facts that they will minimize, and I want to make sure you are aware of them. First, when my client found SSA Park bleeding out in her own home, Avery McHale did not run. She stayed and did her best to keep SSA Park alive. The statement from the first officers on scene confirmed this. She did not flee in the minutes after SSA Park was placed in an ambulance and, in fact, she was the one who initially requested that the FBI be made aware of the attack on SSA Park.”

I stayed quiet, picking at the sleeves of my sweater as I watched Mason defend my case. My options had been limited, but I’d chosen well. Somehow, against all odds, Mason had managed to get to D.C. and arrange for a bail hearing less than twenty-four hours after I’d been taken into federal custody.

I had been forced to eat the prison food, but all I had managed was half a roll before one of the guards had come for me, guiding me to a room where Mason was waiting to tell me the good news.

Now, I was sitting in a comfortable chair in the personal office of the judge who had agreed to rule on my arraignment. Mason stood to my left. To my right there was a woman in a smart gray suit, her coarse black hair graying at the front. She had introduced herself to Mason as ADA Blackwell but hadn’t given me a second glance. Phoebe was also in the room, standing in front of a bookshelf near the door to the office.

I had half a mind to warn the judge that he might not want her near his books, but I bit my tongue. The last thing I needed to do was rile Phoebe up any further or attempt to make a joke with the person about to decide my future only for it to land flat.

“Ms. McHale also fled custody during an interrogation,” ADA Blackwell interjected.

“You’ll get your turn,” Judge Carmendy said, sending her a sharp warning look. Blackwell settled back into her seat, not looking the least bit admonished for her interruption. In fact, she looked pleased with herself. But when I glanced at Mason, he showed no signs of worry that her comment would throw off his argument.

“You make an excellent point, Samantha,” he started up again, turning to address ADA Blackwell as if they were old friends bantering across a table at a bar, and there was something in his voice that told me he had prepared for her attempt to derail the conversation. I wasn’t certain of it, but there seemed to be some kind of history between these two that left me feeling off-balance. “Or, it would be if there had ever been an arrest, a detainment, or any semblance of due process on my client’s behalf during that so-called interrogation.”

“A charge was filed against her,” Phoebe chimed in from the back of the room, clearly unable to help herself when the record needed setting straight. “She was charged for Monica’s murder and then she fled.”

“Correction,” Mason said, turning to her before the judge could put Phoebe in her place. “There was a charge filed against Ms. McHale two hours and thirty-seven minutes after she left the Stafford Police Department. At the time of her departure there was no charge, no arrest, and no⁠—”

“She was being held for questioning!” Phoebe’s voice rose as she pushed herself off the bookshelf like she might try to storm across the small office and get into Mason’s face. “She was a suspect in a murder and she knew it, so she fled.”

“Agent Richards,” Judge Carmendy said in an even tone, clearly unimpressed with her outburst. “I will have order in this office. Either step back and allow Mr. Campbell to do his job or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Phoebe’s brow lowered, clearly still agitated, but even she knew better than to upset a judge, so she settled back against the edge of the bookshelf once again, crossing her arms and staring daggers at me.

I turned my back on her, facing the judge with the most innocent and unassuming expression I could.

“My client is pleading not guilty to the murder charge, and to the additional charges that followed. Not only did she show dedication to the FBI in her training, but also in the way she conducted herself during the initial emergency and the hours following. It was only after she was refused freedom of movement during what was meant to be a witness statement, was not informed of her rights, was not provided legal counsel, and was directly told that she was not under arrest that my client left the Stafford Police Department. There were no cuffs, officers, or instructions keeping her there. Now, after discovering that she was wanted for murder and sensibly negotiating that her arrest be a respectable affair, my client turned herself in to the authorities. Judge Carmendy, this woman is not a flight risk and the only thing she wants is to clear her name and find the person who killed her mentor.”

“She is the one who—” Phoebe started to say under her breath, but a look from ADA Blackwell quickly silenced her.

“I see your point,” Judge Carmendy said before turning to look at Blackwell. “Does the prosecution have anything to add?”

“Only that Ms. McHale’s representation is misconstruing all the evidence. The charges against her may not have been processed until after she left the building, but they were written up beforehand and Ms. McHale was informed that leaving the precinct would not only result in obstruction of justice charges, but it would force the investigating agents to officially arrest her. SSA Briggs and SA Windrow were attempting to give Ms. McHale the courtesy we would extend to any fellow agent with the understanding that the lack of an arrest record was contingent on staying in the building.”

“And yet the point remains that she was not under arrest when she left,” Mason pointed out, getting his own jabs in now that it was ADA Blackwell’s turn.

“But she still ran,” Phoebe muttered, her words feeling like knives in my back. Even with all the evidence in front of her, the knowledge that I hadn’t been under arrest or technically even detained wasn’t enough to convince her that the story the FBI had fed her might be wrong.

“Agent Richards, I understand why the other three are here but why are you?” Judge Carmendy asked, and I turned to look at her again, catching the surprised and slightly uncomfortable expression on her face before she masked it behind professionalism.

“I’m the arresting agent,” she told him. “I’m here to make sure the arrest sticks this time.”

“My understanding was that the officer who arrested Ms. McHale was a Lachlan Shepherd, was it not?” The judge glanced at the paperwork in front of him and I pressed my hand to my mouth to keep from snorting at the way Phoebe’s frown only deepened at his words.

“Ms. McHale only turned herself in to Detective Shepherd because she knew I was closing in on her,” Phoebe told him, clenching her fists like she was trying to physically hold on to her temper. “Another attempt to wriggle her way out of facing what she’s done.”

“You believe Ms. McHale has turned herself in...in order to escape the charges she’s facing?” the judge asked, doubt lacing his words. Phoebe’s lips pressed together as she glanced around the room like any of us were going to back her up.

“Agent Richards is a talented investigator and the only one who came close to tracking Ms. McHale down before she turned herself in,” ADA Blackwell said, the only voice in the room willing to be on Phoebe’s side despite her clear vendetta against me. “She and Ms. McHale were roommates during their time at the Academy, and she knew our suspect better than anyone else on the team. It was through her tireless efforts that she and Agent Delgado were able to arrive at the Bend Police Department within the hour once Ms. McHale was arrested and in fact the warrant that Agent Richards requested for a house in Bend did turn out to be where Ms. McHale was residing. It’s my professional opinion that the only reason Ms. McHale turned herself in was because she knew the FBI was closing in on her.”

I frowned, realizing I still didn’t know exactly how Phoebe had tracked me down in the first place. One minute I was getting on with my new life as a cold case investigator and attempting to solve Monica’s murder, and the next I had the FBI at my door.

“I see.” Judge Carmendy nodded, still shuffling through the paperwork on his desk. “This case is complicated, but I’ve come to a decision. I will grant the defense’s request for bail to be set, but I will be setting that bail at two million dollars.”

“What?” I said, and my words were echoed from Phoebe behind me, clearly also dismayed but for different reasons. “I can’t pay that.”

“There are bail bonds who may be willing to work with you,” Judge Carmendy told me, his voice soothing despite the fact I knew it wasn’t true. My last legal work history had been training to become FBI, and the money I’d saved up working under the table at Mug+Shots wasn’t anywhere near the downpayment a bail bondsman would require.

“You cannot allow her to get out on bail,” Phoebe protested. “We’ll never see her again.”

“Don’t waste your breath,” I told her as I stood up to leave, pulling my sweater tighter around me as I relished what I knew would be the last time I enjoyed normal clothing again. “There’s no chance I’m getting out with bail that high. Congratulations, Phoebe. You finally got me.”

Chapter Ten

I stared down at the food on the tray in front of me. Where I was ravenous enough to leave my cell to come get something to eat only minutes ago, I suddenly felt nauseous at the idea.

Instead, I continued to stare at the lack-luster meal, pretending I couldn’t feel dozens of eyes trained on me. Everyone here either knew who I was or had heard rumors about what I’d supposedly done.

A part of me had been terrified that entering the prison system after training to become an FBI agent would put a target on my back. Law enforcement never did well when they were thrown to the wolves they had taken part in locking up. But it seemed that being accused of murdering an FBI agent tipped the scales in my favor just enough that the other inmates didn’t know what to do with me.

Prison was both better and worse than I had anticipated, but as I sat there wishing I had Rogue to watch my back and wondering how he was doing now that I was gone, I vowed that if I ever got out of this place and cleared my name I was never going to wind up back on this side of the bars.

But two million in bail was an insurmountable number, and I couldn’t even imagine a way to pay it. It was cruel, dangling my freedom in front of me like that when the judge had to know most people couldn’t afford to pay that kind of money.

“Well, isn’t this my lucky day?” a man’s voice startled me out of my thoughts as he sat down across from me, the table shaking as he all but threw himself onto the bench. Eyes flicking up, I felt all the blood leave my face as I stared at the former FBI Academy Director dressed in prison garb.

Arthur Grant grinned at me, the hint of a sneer twisting his expression into something cruel and sadistic. My heart raced, because although there were guards in the room, I doubted they would get here in time to stop this man if he attacked me. There was nothing between us except for a table. Nothing stopping Grant from taking his revenge.

With Noah’s help I had wrecked this man’s life, revealed that he was using his position as the Academy Director to sell people, tricking them into thinking they were getting classified jobs only to hand them over to a labor trafficking ring.

“Nothing to say for yourself, Avery?” Grant asked, staring me down. “Taking out two FBI agents in one day is impressive, I’ll give you that.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said softly, unable to help myself as a flash of anger ran through me. Grant knew the kind of person I was. I’d all but graduated from the Academy and I’d managed to link him to all the local cold case disappearances I was working at the same time. He knew Monica was the reason I joined the FBI in the first place. Yet just like Phoebe, he seemed to think I was capable of turning around and killing her.

“That’s what we all say,” Grant replied. “Never admit to anything, even when they have you dead to rights.”

“I didn’t do it,” I repeated, glaring at him.

“Atta girl,” he said, that half-sneer turning into a full grin as he leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Doesn’t matter if you did it or not, you’re here now, and you’re going to pay for what you did to me.”

“What I did?” I snapped at him, incredulous. “You’re here because you deserve to be here. You’re the one who sold seven people off for a payday, and you got what was coming to you for it. I don’t owe you anything.”

“Six people,” he corrected, “allegedly.”

I blinked, taken aback by the minor correction. There had been seven cold cases, each victim attached to acting in some way, each one disappearing without a trace. Except, there had been a body for one of the files, hadn’t there? I assumed it was a trafficking attempt gone wrong, but Grant sounded so certain there were only six victims.

My finger tapped against my thigh as I felt the itch to go through those files again, figure out what I missed. If there was a case left open that I thought I had closed, it was going to haunt me. There had to be a way to get my hands on that case. Inmates were allowed reading material and that was all it was, technically. Maybe if I⁠—

“It doesn’t matter what you think I deserve,” Grant said, interrupting my thoughts as they spiraled away from the present moment. “Not in here. In here, all that matters is power, and you don’t have any.”

“What exactly do you want from me?” I asked, a weariness creeping into my voice. So much had happened so quickly, and now that I’d decided I wasn’t going to eat, all I really wanted was to go back to my cell and take a nap.

“I want you to suffer,” Grant replied, a grin splitting his face as his voice filled with self-satisfaction. “Like I’ve suffered. I want you to spend the rest of your life in prison, a pariah amongst the other prisoners. I want you to know that I can prove you didn’t kill Monica, but I’ll never say a word because the longer I keep quiet, the more you suffer.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told him, fighting the urge to ask him what he meant, what he thought he knew. Grant had already been arrested and locked up for hours before Monica was attacked.

Except, Noah had discovered that it had been Grant’s account that had scheduled the text that lured me to Monica’s house in the first place. The timing was all wrong, he couldn’t have been the one to schedule that text when he was already locked up, but maybe he knew who had accessed his credentials. Maybe he knew who had framed me.

“You will,” Grant said. “I know how your mind works, trainee, and you won’t be able to keep from thinking about it. About what I know. And the great thing about a place like this is that there’s nothing but time to think.”

Grant stood up and left then, not giving me a chance to reply. I let him go, the tension in my shoulders relaxing slightly. He claimed to know me, but I knew him as well and a man like him needed to feel like they were in charge. He wanted the last word, and I let him have it, finally picking up my fork and stabbing the casserole on the plate without enthusiasm. I was already here, already making enemies. I might as well eat.

The correctional treatment facility was freezing. I wanted nothing more than to pull my sweater back on over the uncomfortable jumpsuit, or to curl up next to Rogue on the couch in Cavanaugh Cottage.

Small comforts like those were in my past now, though. Murder trials were no small feat, and it would take months, if not years, before they came to a head. Then, if we lost, there were the appeals.

A part of me thought about reaching out to my dad to see if there was any way to pay that bail, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even a fraction of the full price still meant tying up all his retirement savings just so I could have a few sweaters and a cuddle with my dog.

And even if I was released on bail, that didn’t mean I could just go home. I would have to stay in the state, find a new place to live and a way to pay for it. I was essentially going to have to start my life over again even if I did find a bail bondsman who would work with me.

Still, I couldn’t help but to daydream. To hope and to wish. I wasn’t quite in the territory of strategizing because the hurdle of getting out was so enormous that I wasn’t under the illusion that it would happen. But if I could pay my bail and spend the time leading up to my trial a free woman then maybe I could access my old bank accounts. There had to be enough in the account for first and last month’s rent at the very least.

I could even get a job. I had work history as a barista, and as a bartender, though I didn’t have any legal proof for that one. I could go back to working full-time in customer service, continue to spend my free time trying to solve Monica’s murder, and maybe Kenna would be willing to come visit or at least find a way to bring Rogue to me.

But that was all just wishful thinking, really. My bank account balance wouldn’t cover a tenth of my bail. Still, the fantasies were enough to keep me entertained as I continued to sit in my prison cell, bored out of my mind after only a few hours.

I didn’t know what I was going to do for the next few months, but maybe the guards would allow someone to bring me cold case files? I didn’t see the harm in that; it was just stacks of paper. No different than a book, except that I might actually solve something while I was locked away here.

Grant had said that only six of the seven cases I was working on connected back to him, and he had no reason to lie about that. I closed my eyes, trying to remember that seventh case.

All those cases had come from local county public records. I’d asked for the thinnest cold case files from each records office, hoping to make a break in one of them in my spare time while honing my investigative skills. All seven files were currently sitting in Kenna’s private office along with everything else I had hidden in there the night of my arrest.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to remember. The case that didn’t fit the pattern, the one with the body, had been found in a field of some kind near a historical site. There were an overwhelming number of historical sites in the D.C. area and my memory wasn’t good enough to recall more than that, but I hated leaving a job unfinished. If I was going to waste away in here for the next couple of months then I would do whatever I could to get my hands on the file and spend that time solving it.

The sound of footsteps reached me through the haze of my thoughts, but nothing could have prepared me to see Phoebe Richards staring back at me from the other side of the jail cell. 

I wanted to ask her if she was there to gloat, but I bit my tongue. The last thing I needed was to make things worse by taunting her. 

One of the prison guards who was with her stepped forward and unlocked my cell, but no one came inside. I stood there, waiting for someone to explain why they were there and wondering if this was somehow part of the corruption plot. If they were here to finish the job.

But Phoebe couldn’t be in on it...could she?

“Come on, McHale,” Phoebe said, sounding irritated at my lack of a reaction to their presence. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” I asked cautiously, eyeing the two men who had accompanied her to my cell. Were they here for her protection? Would they do anything if I was being attacked or would they be my attackers?

“Outside,” Phoebe answered. “Your bail has been paid. You’re free to go.”

“What?” I said, wrinkling my nose. This had to be a mistake, because I certainly didn’t have two million dollars to spend or even the $200,000 to cover a bail bond. And neither did anyone in my life except⁠—

Of course.

“Kenna paid my bail?”

“Don’t think this means you get to go running off again,” Phoebe said, eyes narrowed at me as I stepped out of the cell. As if I was going to break out in a sprint at a moment’s notice. “You’ll be expected to check in with me once a day, to confirm your location, and we will be monitoring your electronic devices. I argued for an ankle monitor, but Judge Carmendy seems to be infatuated with that defense attorney of yours. He’s worth every damned penny you’re paying him.”

We reached the processing area, where a fatigue-eyed clerk with a chestnut beard and a badge reading “A. Leung” sat behind bulletproof glass. One of the guards who accompanied us pushed a form through the slot. The clerk scanned it before turning away. A moment later a basket of my belongings was shoved through the slot, and I stood there, inventorying my former life. All that sat inside was a bag of my clothes, an elastic hair tie, my wallet, and a cheap tube of chapstick.

The prison jumpsuit clung to me in odd, sweaty places as I signed for my things. I didn’t look at Phoebe, but I could feel her gaze on me. Watching for even the slightest hint that I was going to make a break for it, as if this were even the place to do so when she had just told me I was getting out on bail.

Then Phoebe steered me away from the clerk’s window and straight into a bathroom, following me in and snapping the lock behind us.

“You’ve got five minutes to change,” she said, only looking away once I unzipped the plastic evidence bag and pulled out my jeans, t-shirt, shoes, and hoodie. Phoebe didn’t look directly at me the entire time, giving me a modicum of privacy, but she didn’t turn her back either and her whole body was taut and thrumming with anticipation.

“Is this part of the mandated supervision?” I asked, only half joking. If this was the level of scrutiny I could expect going forward, prison might have been the better option.

I caught Phoebe’s glare through the mirror, along with the greasy tinge of my hair.

“You’re not funny, McHale,” she snapped. I frowned, surprised at the antagonistic tone in her voice. We were at odds, I knew, but I had only been joking. “Let’s go.”

She barely waited for me to gather up the prison jumpsuit, impatient as I returned it to the clerk before steering me down the hallway. She nodded at one of the guards to open the next door and then gestured for me to go ahead of her. The next hallway ended in a set of double doors painted a tired shade of institutional blue.

Phoebe pushed them open and sunlight cut across the concrete floor, the outside world too bright compared to the dim atmosphere inside.

I braced my forearm against my eyes as we stepped across the threshold and onto cracked concrete steps that led down to the street. The air tasted like freedom, or maybe just hot asphalt and exhaust, but that was preferable to anything I had smelt in the correctional facility behind me.

And there at the curb was Mason, waiting with one hand tucked into the pocket of his slacks and the other hanging at his side, relaxed.

“Avery,” he called, as if he needed to get my attention. I was so relieved to see him, to see any friendly face after the military march Phoebe had turned my release into.

Phoebe stopped at the bottom of the steps.

“She’s all yours for now, Campbell,” she said, like I was a piece of evidence she was reluctantly releasing from the property room.

“Thank you, Agent,” Mason said. “I’ve got it from here.”

Then he turned his back on her and motioned me towards the black sedan sitting at the curb. I ducked into the passenger seat without a second thought, more than ready to get away from the oppressive atmosphere. Both the one caused by the prison and the more personal one that had followed me out in the form of Agent Phoebe Richards.

“Your first check in at eight a.m. tomorrow. Be there on time or you’ll be right back in a prison cell where you belong,” Phoebe said before I could close the door between us. “And mark my words, Avery, if you run again, I will find you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured her, but I knew it was no good. The only way Phoebe would ever believe me—would ever believe in my innocence—was if I could prove without a shadow of a doubt that someone else had killed Monica Park.

Even then I wasn’t certain that our relationship would ever be repaired.

I closed the door then, watching as Phoebe and Mason exchanged some comment or other, before Phoebe stormed away and Mason made his way around the other side of the SUV. Silence fell between us as he buckled himself into the driver’s seat and I stared at the city sprawling around us.

Despite the hours of fantasizing about it before, I didn’t know what I was going to do now that I was free.

“Avery?” Mason asked, and I flinched at the sound of his voice. At the sound of my own name.

“Hale,” I whispered. “Please.”

“Hale,” he replied, his voice gentle. He still hadn’t turned on the engine. I wanted to beg him to drive away, to take me as far from the correctional facility and holding cells as he legally could. But I didn’t have anywhere to go. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t. “I would kill for a good cup of coffee right about now, but I’m fine.”

He snorted and I felt a little laugh bubble out of me, quickly becoming hysterical as whatever knot of tension lived in my chest finally broke open. I pressed my hand over my mouth as a mixture of laughter and sobs wracked my body. What had just happened?

I’d turned myself in, been transported across the country, faced the inside of a prison, and come out on the other side unscathed. I didn’t know how to process any of it or what I was supposed to do next.

“Hey,” he said, fully turning towards me. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see the concern in his expression. I felt a hand on my arm, the warmth and comfort of another human being. I remembered the way his hands had felt as he pulled me from a grave, and now he’d done it again, pulling me out of this prison. “Hey, Hale, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. Look at me.”

I did, my eyes fluttering open to look up into his, soaking in the reassurance that lingered there. He was so confident, so certain that we would win this and I would walk free. He’d proved his skill already by convincing the judge to let me out on bail, and now he was going above and beyond to comfort me.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said again, “I’ve got you.”

He did, I realized. He had my back and he was here with me now. I leaned forward, just wanting the comfort of another human being near me, but it must have looked like I was attempting something else because he pulled away quickly and his expression... he looked like he was trying to restrain himself.

“We can’t,” he said, confirming my suspicion that he thought I was aiming for something more intimate. A kiss, maybe. Whatever he thought I was trying to do, the space between us now made it clear he absolutely was not going to allow it.

“I was just—” I started to explain, but he shook his head.

“It’s fine,” he told me. “There are just rules about what I can and can’t do, as your lawyer. No matter how much I want to.”

I stared at him, uncertain that he was saying what I thought he might be saying. Because it sounded like he had just admitted to wanting to kiss me just now. Which shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise since he had asked me out once before, but that was before I hired him. Before I spilled all my secrets and revealed that I was wanted for murder. Surely he didn’t still want me that way.

“Let’s get you a coffee so you don’t have to kill for it,” Mason continued, his lips twitching up at the edges and the humor reaching his eyes. “Then, I have a surprise for you that I think you’re really going to like.”

Chapter Eleven

Twenty minutes later Mason pushed the door open and waved for me to step through. I glanced at him before peeking into the apartment beyond. Even from the threshold I could see that the space was massive. An entry hall led directly into a living room that was decorated with dark furniture, contrasting sharply against the white walls and soft grey carpet.

I wrapped my fingers around my half-finished latte and stepped inside. Mason closed the door behind us and followed me as I quietly made my way down the entry hall. I stopped just before the wood floors changed to carpeting and peeked into the rest of the apartment.

From where I stood I could see a sliver of a kitchen to the left through the arched doorway leading off the living room and a hallway to the right with three doors that were all closed. One of them had to be a bathroom, which meant there were two bedrooms here.

The far wall opposite the front entrance held a glass door that was propped open with a brick, the familiar sound of Kenna’s voice trailing in from the terrace.

“…be here soon,” she was saying. I glanced back to Mason, brow furrowed. Kenna following me to D.C. hadn’t been part of the plan any more than paying for my bail had been. Mason didn’t say anything, but he had a look on his face like he was pleased with himself for being able to surprise me like this.

“Kenna?” I called, turning back to the door that led outside. If she was here, then that meant— “Rogue!”

I set the remains of my coffee cup on the coffee table, kneeling as I caught sight of the blur of dark fur and muscle that burst through the terrace door and barreled across the living room to slam himself into me.

I laughed, still close to tears from my earlier breakdown, and buried my face in his neck as I squeezed my arms around him, feeling something unwind inside me that I hadn’t expected to feel for weeks or months.

“You’re out!” Kenna said, her voice coming from the doorway Rogue had just rushed through. She sounded pleased with herself, and when I looked up, I found her leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed and dressed impeccably as ever. She was in cream-colored slacks and a dark purple top, sunglasses on top of her head and feet bare.

Because this apartment—this penthouse—was hers, I realized as I glanced around it again with the new context. Her shoes were near the door, in perfect order like they always were, and there was one of Rogue’s many doggie beds sitting in the corner of the living room next to his food and water dish.

“How did you get here so quickly?” I asked, and then changed my mind, standing up but leaving a hand to linger on Rogue’s head as I asked the more important question. “And did you really pay my bail?”

“Of course I did,” Kenna replied, like it was nothing to her. “Well, I was smart about it and paid a bail-bondsman using a combination of the money that you won the other night in the Boiler Room and put the deed to the cottage up as collateral so that we would have more cash flow in case we end up needing it.”

“That’s—” I started to say, shaking my head and taking a step back. “You put your cottage up as collateral for my bail? That’s too much, Kenna.”

“No, it’s not,” Kenna replied, narrowing her eyes at me. “As long as you don’t skip out on your hearings. Forgetting the fact that we’re friends and I would do this for any of my friends, it will be much easier to solve your case if you aren’t rotting away in a jail cell.”

“But,” I started to say and Kenna’s frown deepened as she threw a hand up to stop me.

“No,” she said, pushing off the door jamb and walking towards me. “I don’t want to hear it. Not only is it already done and you can’t do anything to change it, but this is my choice. This is what we do, right? We take criminals off the streets and we make sure that innocents don’t suffer in their place. And right now, you’re the innocent victim of a crime that needs solved. So allow me to do what I can do to improve our odds here and if you feel like afterwards you need to balance some sort of cosmic debt you can go back to working for C4 without pay. Got it?”

I pressed my lips together and nodded, fighting the urge to argue with her or correct her. Because it wasn’t some cosmic debt that I needed to correct. It was a real, genuine debt that I continued to rack up against Kenna’s infinite generosity. I knew how bail-bonds worked, and I knew they didn’t put up a two-million-dollar bail without a decent guarantee of a return on their investment.

The deed to the cottage was now at stake, but at least 1% of that two-million-dollars had to be paid to secure the bond. While I had won quite a lot the night Kenna and I had gone to the Boiler Room to speak with Mad Marco Plover, it couldn’t have been more than ten grand. Which meant that Kenna had paid at least another ten grand out of pocket to get me out of jail. The last thing I planned to do was take that for granted.

“Thank you,” I said softly, ducking my head for a moment as another wave of emotion attempted to overtake me. Between my five months of FBI training and the savings I’d gathered over the years, I had more than enough to pay her back as soon as they un-froze my bank account. Until then, I would accept her generosity for what it was and do what I could to make up the difference.

I yawned involuntarily and quickly picked up my coffee, determined to stay awake. It had been a long couple of days, and while the FBI finally had what they wanted I was walking free. For now.

“How did Rogue handle the flight?” I asked an hour later, my hair still damp from showering in the luxurious bathroom that sat between the two bedrooms of the penthouse apartment. I was dressed in my own clothes, which Kenna had thoughtfully packed up and brought from Oregon alongside my bail money, my dog, and everything I’d stashed away in the secret office so that Phoebe and Noah wouldn’t find it in their search.

Including the case file that had been on my mind, the one that didn’t fit into Grant’s M.O. I’d taken a cursory look at it while getting dressed, refamiliarizing myself with the details as a way to center myself and distract from everything else. I wouldn’t have time to tackle the case while working on proving my own innocence, but I knew from years of research that sometimes all you needed for a breakthrough was to let the details sit in the back of your mind.

And once my name was cleared and my trial was over, I could give this case my full attention. The victim, a young woman named Holly Jones who had been discovered with a gunshot wound to the chest at the edge of the Manassas National Battlefield Park, deserved to have her story told and her murder solved as much as anyone else.

Now, I was clean and dressed, my phone was charging on the counter, and the three of us were sitting in the living room together. The coffee Mason had bought me was long gone, but I’d spotted a brand new espresso machine in the kitchen during my tour of the place and I had a feeling it was going to get some serious use.

“He was an absolute angel, of course,” Kenna replied from where she was sitting back in one of the two recliners facing each other on opposite ends of the glass coffee table in front of the couch I was sitting on. “He curled up on the couch and just slept most of the way. He didn’t love the sound of takeoff and landing, but who does?”

“Wait, what couch?” I asked, furrowing my brows and leaning forward as if getting closer would help me to hear Kenna better. As if I had misheard her in the first place.

“On the jet?” Kenna said. She was sending me a look like I was the one who wasn’t making any sense and we stared at each other for a long minute until Kenna’s eyes widened in realization. Then she threw her head back, laughing at the punchline to a joke I really wasn’t getting.

I turned to look at where Mason was sitting on the edge of the other recliner like he couldn’t quite allow himself to be comfortable in the space. Rogue was curled up at my feet, snoring softly, though he stopped snoring and peeked one eye open at the sudden noise of Kenna’s laugh filling the room.

“Oh, God,” she said after realizing she was the only one laughing and finally catching her breath, shaking her head. “Hale, can you really imagine me bringing him on a commercial flight? That would have been a nightmare. They would have made me store him with the luggage. No, I couldn’t do that to him. Besides, we needed to make sure Mason arrived in D.C. ahead of you to put everything in place and make sure your bail hearing was handled as quickly as possible.”

“So you, Rogue, and Mason took a private jet here?” I asked, sitting back on the dark gray couch, pressing my hands to the tops of my thighs and savoring the soft feeling of my pajamas, so different from the prison clothes I’d lived in for the past day and a half. Clothes I had thought I wouldn’t have access to again for months at the soonest. “While I had to fly on a federal prison transport with my hands cuffed to the chair the entire way?”

“If I thought for even a second that Phoebe would have allowed me to offer space on the jet I would have done so in a heartbeat,” Kenna told me, suddenly serious. “But we both know she would have suspected me of having some evil plan to help you escape. Besides, this way we were able to get the apartment set up, locate a bail-bondsman who wasn’t a total rip off, and Mason managed to get your release hearing moved up a whole twenty-four hours.”

“Thank you,” I said again, and I had a feeling I would be thanking Kenna a dozen more times before all this was over. She shrugged my thanks away and turned to look at the uncomfortable attorney perched across from her.

“We got to talking while you were locked up and we’ve decided that while Mason will continue to work the reasonable doubt angle, that doesn’t stop us from actually proving your innocence and catching whoever did this to you,” Kenna said. “But now we only have until the trial to solve this case and prove your innocence.”

“Okay,” I nodded along, realizing how much sense that made. Both paths potentially led to keeping me out of prison, but that didn’t mean we were forced to only attempt one or the other. If I could prove my innocence, that was ideal, and any shot we had at catching Monica’s killer was something I wanted to pursue. “We should start by talking to Vienna Quinn.”

“We aren’t going to start with anything,” Kenna told me, a grim but determined look overtaking her face as she gestured between herself and me with her pen. “Hale, part of your bail agreement is that you aren’t allowed to investigate your own case. It’s up to the rest of us to find the truth, and it’s up to you to stay out of trouble.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” I argued. “Seriously, you can’t expect me to sit back and let you handle this on your own. This is my case, my mentor who was murdered. What if you stumble across an important clue and don’t even know it because you can’t see it for what it is?”

“Do you really doubt my investigative skills that much?” Kenna asked.

“No,” I assured her. “I just⁠—”

“You just can’t help yourself,” Mason said, speaking up for the first time. The sound of his voice, after sitting there silently for so long, startled me. “Which is why Phoebe is demanding you check in with her once a day, and why I’m going to keep working on the reasonable doubt defense.”

“I can still solve this,” I protested, and Kenna shook her head.

“It’s not a question of whether you can,” she said gently, reaching out and placing a hand on my knee. “But we need your case to be fool proof, or Phoebe and the prosecution team will use everything they can to poke holes in it.”

“Exactly,” Mason agreed, leaning even further forward, his elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped in front of himself as he looked me in the eye. I’d never seen anyone as serious as he looked in that moment and my heart ratcheted up a little, remembering the way his hand had felt in mine only a few hours before. “Listen, Avery. I know you want to see this through to the end, but can you please just trust us to do our jobs?”

“Of course,” I agreed right away, looking between them as I realized this was my team. My lawyer and my best friend both putting everything they had into proving my innocence and clearing my name. Getting in their way would only serve to unravel any case they could pull together in my defense. Still, I frowned as I agreed not to look into my own case, struggling to reorient myself to the situation I was now in.

“Now before we get started, we need to make this official,” Kenna said, pulling a dollar out of her wallet and handing it to me. I took it, my face scrunching up in confusion.

“You literally just paid my bail,” I told her. “Why are you giving me more money?”

“That’s your money,” Kenna told me. “I kept a dollar from the Boiler Room winnings. I figured you would need it so that you could officially hire me to solve your case.”

I looked at her blankly. “Aren’t you already working my case?”

“I’ve been working it as your friend,” she replied. “That’s not the same as working it as a P.I. If I’m your investigator of record, my notes are protected, my findings have legal standing, and Phoebe Richards can’t walk in here and demand my files. And my rate for this case is one dollar.”

I stared at her for a long minute, trying to decide if that was an actual requirement for creating a legally binding contract between us or if she had simply seen too many movies and tv shows.

Then, I decided it didn’t matter and passed the dollar back over to her. She took it, tucking it into her own pocket before picking up a notebook and pen.

“Now,” she said. “Who is Vienna Quinn and why do you think she’s the key to solving this case?”

Chapter Twelve

My voice stuck in my throat as I started to speak, and then stopped, shifting my weight as I stared at the duo who were throwing their entire professional experiences into helping me evade life in prison and hopefully prove my innocence. Knowing that they were both on my side made it slightly easier to begin my tale once more.

The story had a well-worn quality to it by now. I had told it to Noah. I had told it to myself in the long dark hours of a dozen nights that hadn’t offered anything more useful to do with my time. I had told it to Mason in his office above the bakery with the smell of burnt sugar coming through the floor.

It was a story I had told over and over again until all the edges were smoothed down like a river stone. So much so that by the time I took a stand, if I took a stand, I was worried it was going to sound rehearsed.

“I was at Orders Night with all the other NATs,” I said. “I had just received my assignment when Supervisory Special Agent Monica Park sent me a text asking me to meet her at her home address so she could discuss a lead she had developed on my mother’s murder.”

“And your mother died when?” Kenna asked. There was no apologetic softness in it, no careful handling of the subject the way most people did when I spoke of my mother’s death. It was unexpectedly refreshing.

“When I was fifteen,” I said. “She was murdered in what was ruled a home invasion gone wrong.”

“You don’t think that’s true,” Mason said. He hadn’t phrased it as a question, but I nodded along anyway.

“There are details that don’t add up,” I replied, and left it at that. My mother’s case was cold. Monica’s case was more important right now. I’d get back to figuring out who had killed my mother if I could shake the murder charges that currently weighed me down. I turned back to Kenna to continue. “When I arrived at Monica’s address the front door was left open. I entered quickly and found her on the ground in a pool of her own blood. Her throat had been slashed but she was still alive. I administered pressure to the wound and before I even had the chance to call 911 an officer was already coming through the door.”

“Which means it was either a witness to the murder or Monica’s killer who called 911,” Kenna said, sharp as ever. I nodded.

“For LEOs to arrive that quickly, it had to have been the killer who called,” Mason added, and both of us turned to look at him as he explained his reasoning. “Police response times vary, but nowhere in this country do officers typically arrive in under two minutes from a cold dispatch. Which means either those officers had to be incredibly close to the scene already, or the killer placed the call before they cut Monica’s throat. Either way, this wasn’t improvised. Someone deliberately built a timeline that would lead to the police finding Avery at that crime scene before she even had the chance to call for help herself.”

“So this person who framed you is highly organized,” Kenna said, noting it down. “Detail-oriented, and confident enough to pull off a high risk move like calling the police themselves.”

“That’s where Vienna Quinn comes in,” I said. “Because Monica’s killer didn’t have to be a mastermind to pull all of this off. All they needed was help from Quinn. Vienna is a fixer, like Mad Marco Plover, but she’s unstable in her own ways and her vehicle was caught on camera five minutes from Monica’s house, thirty minutes before I arrived. She has to know something about what happened that night.”

“What makes you so certain Quinn had anything to do with it?” Mason asked. “Fixers don’t typically get their own hands dirty. They’re more of the cleanup crew than the criminal masterminds.”

“Because Quinn has been accused of muddying the evidence in over a dozen cases and she’s always managed to slip under the radar or provide an alibi,” I told him. “In fact, that’s how she managed to get away with it this time too. She had the perfect alibi, showing her buying candy from a gas station at the exact moment I was supposedly slashing Monica’s throat.”

“How do you know any of that?” Kenna asked, always so perceptive. Mason looked away, staring at the wall where the kitchen was hidden, already fully aware that Noah was the FBI agent who helped me escape and brought this information to me. In my panic after Kenna had discovered who I was I had divulged every last detail to him. As my lawyer, he could keep this secret for me. As much as I knew Kenna was invested in clearing my name as well, private investigators didn’t have the same client privileges that would keep her from getting into trouble if she knew the answer to this and chose not to tell the police if they asked.

“I can’t say,” I tried to tell her, but Kenna was faster, sharper than even I had given her credit for.

“You have someone inside the FBI, don’t you?” she said, her eyes narrowing as the realization struck her. I bit down a curse that would only confirm her suspicions, and she tapped her pen against the notepad as she spoke to emphasize her point. “That’s how you ended up on the run and that’s how you’ve been staying ahead of the task force.”

“What matters right now is that Vienna Quinn is the only one in the world who can tell us who hired her to plant evidence against me and help them coordinate this frame job,” I replied, neither confirming nor denying anything in the hopes that she would get the hint and move on without asking me who I had on the inside. I’d done enough lying to her and even refusing to answer felt like betrayal despite knowing that if I told her Noah’s secret I would be betraying him instead. “Which means we need to get her to talk. It’s the only way.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Kenna said, subtly correcting me, separating me from the investigation activities and putting me firmly back in the realm of her client rather than her partner.

“Quinn is nearly impossible to get a hold of and doesn’t entertain requests from just anyone,” I said, hating the feeling of being sidelined but understanding her reasons.

“It’s a good thing I’m not just anyone,” Kenna replied, pulling her phone out and shaking it a little like I should be impressed. When I sent her a flat, unimpressed expression she huffed and rolled her eyes at me. “I’m a wealthy heiress with a network full of people who are used to getting away with things that normal people wouldn’t. I’m exactly the type this Quinn woman takes calls from.”

“Even if you do get ahold of Vienna Quinn, she’ll only agree to help if there’s a lot of money on the line,” I warned her. “The kind of problem that would be too expensive to solve any other way.”

“Fortunately, I know exactly the kind of problem that will get the attention of someone like her,” Kenna said, and then she dialed a number and pressed the phone to her ear. She cut a quick glance at Mason before turning her back to him as if that would lend her side of the phone call any privacy. “Hey, Alison? It’s McKenna Scott. Hi, I’m in D.C. at the moment and I ran into a little...trouble last night. Yeah, I’m okay, but...well I won’t be if I can’t get a hold of someone local who can help me clean up a bit of a mess I made. The kind that I don’t want getting back to anyone else, including my parents or their lawyers, if you know what I mean.”

“Does she really think that’s going to be enough to track down an elusive high-end fixer?” Mason asked, his voice dropping low as he leaned forward to whisper to me.

“Who knows, maybe this is just how the richest of the rich talk about cleaning up crime scenes?” I replied with a shrug “I grew up in a household barely scraping by on a tenured professor’s salary. I wouldn’t have the first clue what wealthy behavior looks like.”

Mason pressed his lips together, like he’d come to a decision, and then stood up and picked up his jacket from the back of the recliner. I watched him shrug it on while Kenna’s voice continued behind us, warm and unhurried as she continued to chat with the woman on the other end of the line.

“Well hopefully she gets somewhere with this,” he said, as he turned back to me, his brief case in hand. “But while she works this angle, I should begin laying the groundwork for the other side of your defense. The one that keeps you out of jail even if we can’t solve the murder. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow to go over the trial process. Stay out of trouble in the meantime.”

“I’ll do my best,” I told him, wondering where he was headed tonight. A hotel, probably. “Drive safe, Mr. Campbell.”

“Have a good night, Avery,” he replied, and headed for the door.

Hearing my name again felt like having a bucket of ice water dumped over my head, a stark reminder of all the times I’d looked over my shoulder these past few months and every time I’d worried that hearing it would mean the end of my freedom.

Kenna turned back around, pausing mid-sentence as she caught the sound of the front door shutting as Mason left. Then, she tuned back into the phone call, nodding along despite the fact that Alison couldn’t possibly see her.

“Yes, yes,” she said, a grin spreading across her face. “Thank you so much, Al. You’re a lifesaver. Yeah, I’ll let you know how everything goes. And say hi to Marc for me. Uh huh. Yeah, you too. Goodbye.”

“That sounds like it went well,” I said as she hung up and turned to give me her full attention.

“It did,” she replied, and then paused to reconsider, tipping her head slightly. “Well, I think it did. I either asked her to connect me with a fixer who can provide an alibi for me that will absolve me of several crimes, or I ordered a skilled maid who specializes in handling blood stains and animal urine.”

“Those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive,” I told her, and let myself collapse back against the couch cushions, the exhaustion of the day finally moving through me all at once. “But let’s hope it’s the first one, yeah?”

“Yes,” Kenna agreed, moving to sit across from me.

For a moment neither of us said anything. Rogue shifted against my foot, sighed once with great feeling, and was still.

“You really aren’t going to allow me to help you investigate?” I asked. “Now that Mason isn’t here, maybe we can do some real brainstorming.”

“Absolutely not,” Kenna replied. “I’m going to solve this for you Hale, but you’re in enough trouble as it is and I don’t want to make it any worse. While I was arranging everything after your hairbrained scheme to get yourself arrested, I reached out to Gracie to let her know we wouldn’t be around for a while. You know, just in case anyone attempted to reach out to C4 and it turns out that someone already did.”

“Who?” I asked, brow furrowing.

“Agent Phoebe Richards,” Kenna replied. “That’s how she knew to come to the cottage to find you. Gracie had no idea that telling Phoebe where to find you would lead to any of this, and I didn’t say anything to her about it, so she still doesn’t know. But Phoebe is ruthless and if she gets even a whiff of improper procedure in this case, she’ll toss out any evidence I find.”

“So that’s how she did it,” I said, looking down at Rogue as I thought about how easily this whole ordeal could have been avoided. I could still be living in Cavanaugh Cottage with Kenna and Rogue, not an FBI agent in sight, if I had the foresight to use any other name.

But of course Phoebe had connected my mother’s maiden name to the cold case charity that had been newly founded in Bend. If I were in her position I would have pulled up an alert for cold cases across the country on the off chance the woman who had been obsessed with solving them for years might do something foolish like solve one.

“There’s a strong chance we aren’t going to officially be operating as a charity much longer,” Kenna told me. “Because you were never legally operating under the name you used to sign the C4 charter, some could even argue that C4 was never a legal entity in the first place.”

“Fuck,” I said, eyes going wide as I turned to look at her, absolutely floored. I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d been so stupid, and now my stupid decisions were going to ruin the one good thing I’d managed to create out of this whole mess. “I’m so sorry, Kenna. I should have known better. I should never have signed that charter.”

“There are ways around this,” Kenna said. I felt the bed dip as she sat down next to me. “Even if we lose the charity designation, we can rebuild it. Or turn it into a legitimate business instead. C4 LLC.”

“The fourth C is charity,” I said, my words muffled by my hands as I hung my head in shame. I had been so excited to work as a cold case investigator, and instead I’d managed to wreck my life all over again in one fell swoop.

Kenna’s hand settled on my back and moved in slow, steady circles.

“We could always register the name Hale Hastings as a DBA for Avery McHale,” she said. “That’s how public figures maintain stage names and privacy. You might have been born Avery McHale, but you became Hale Hastings during what was quite possibly the hardest part of your life, and that’s all I’ve ever known you as. Hale Hastings is a part of who you are and you don’t have to let that go just because your past is catching up with you now.”

I lifted my head from my hands and turned to look at her. “Would legally changing my name make a stronger case for the charity?”

“That’s a great question,” Kenna said. “One we should probably ask your lawyer. It might even make a stronger case against any false identity charges and possibly help to keep my brother out of the spotlight at the same time.”

“If I attach my real name to the one connected to C4, doesn’t that open the charity up to being connected to my case?” I asked, trying to foresee the additional trouble I could be causing by considering this path. “I don’t want to do it if it means your assets get frozen.”

“You let me worry about that. You just worry about staying sane while we solve this mess,” I thought about the case file in my bedroom, so few details even after all these years. Kenna was right, there was nothing I could do to solve Monica’s murder right now, but there was something else I could still do.

Chapter Thirteen

Sitting on my new bed with Rogue pressed firmly against me from hip to knee, I flipped through the Holly Jones case file, but despite my renewed dedication to solving it I wasn’t really seeing the details in front of me. Instead, my mind was back in that jail cell with the rough uniform fabric and the thin blanket.

I sighed, setting the folder to the side and laying down, rolling on my side so I could pull Rogue close to me. This was what I hadn’t dared to hope for, and Kenna had managed to pull off a miracle. I was never going to take soft fabric, free access to coffee, or cuddles from my dog for granted again.

Not that I had before, but it all felt so much more precious now that I knew what it felt like to have it all taken away. Even those weeks when I’d lived in my car had been better than the single night I’d spent in that correctional facility.

I couldn’t go back to prison, I decided, closing my eyes against the memories though that didn’t help much. It was Rogue’s even breathing that kept me centered and reminded me of where I was.

My phone rang and I blinked a few times as I let Rogue go and sat up, realizing I’d been asleep. I squinted at the fractured, too-bright screen. It was just after 6pm, which meant that I’d taken a decent nap.

I rubbed my eyes and answered the video call on instinct.

“Noah?” I asked. My own mess of hair and bleary eyes stared back at me on the main screen, Noah’s dark eyes and darker curls framed in the smaller view and run through with the scatter of cracks across the glass. I tapped the screen to switch it so that his face was the only one I could see and furrowed my brows. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Noah replied. It was dark all around him, like he was sitting in a dim room a lot like I was. “Are you okay? I heard you were released on bail.”

“I bet you did.” I chuckled under my breath. “Let me guess, Phoebe’s told you all about how they didn’t put me in an ankle monitor?”

“Among other things.” Noah grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “She has a new theory that you were paid half a million to assassinate Monica and that’s how you managed to bail out.”

“She doesn’t actually believe that, does she?” I asked, frowning and laying back down, holding my phone above my face. Rogue huffed and shifted in his spot beside me, irritated at being jostled.

“I don’t think so,” Noah replied, rubbing his eyes, clearly tired. “I think she’s just frustrated. But, Hale? She’s not going to be lenient if you are even a second late to your mandatory check-ins and if she gets even a hint that you’re trying to investigate your own case⁠—”

“Why does everyone think that I’m incapable of staying away from my own case?” I asked, shaking my head. “This isn’t some television show where I have to put myself in jeopardy before the commercial break. Keeping this case procedurally sound is more important than anything else. The last thing I want is to find Monica’s killer only for the bastard to get off on a technicality.”

“Wow,” Noah said, full-body laughter ringing out from the other side of the line. “You really would have been the best agent, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” I replied, letting a note of smugness enter my voice, expecting it to make him laugh even harder. Instead, a look of distress crossed his features, and an awkward silence fell between us.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice soft.

“What are you sorry for?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

“When I sent you on the run, I was working off my own biases and fears,” he said. “I reacted without thinking about what it would mean for you, for your career, long term. And now you’re exactly where you would have ended up if I hadn’t gotten involved.”

“Okay, that’s just absurd,” I told him, “If you hadn’t pulled me out of that interrogation room, I never would have met Mason or Kenna. I wouldn’t have a good lawyer to make sure I was released on bail or have someone willing to pay that bail for me. I’d be rotting away in the prison system, awaiting a trial where no one believed in my innocence. I am walking free, with a team determined to keep it that way, because of what you did.”

“I guess when you put it that way,” Noah said, trailing off. He looked to the left, frowning, before looking back at the screen again. “Listen, I’m not going to let up on this investigation until I find the truth. Okay?”

“Okay,” I replied, yawning without meaning to.

“Get some rest,” Noah advised me. “And don’t miss your first check-in tomorrow or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No promises,” I replied, hitting the end call button. The room went dark and for an instant my heart began racing, the memory of my phone dying while stuffed in a grave flashing through my mind.

I turned the screen back on my phone, letting it illuminate the room around me and reminding me that I wasn’t there anymore. I had gotten out; Mason pulled me from the damp, dark earth.

I placed the phone screen-up on my chest and ran a hand through the warm fur of Rogue’s ribcage, feeling the way his chest rose and fell. I timed my breathing with his, in and out until it no longer felt like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.

And finally, my eyes fluttered shut with the light of the phone screen still casting shadows all around the room.

Chapter Fourteen

The first mandatory check-in with Phoebe was scheduled for 8am at the FBI Washington Field Office, but I stepped out of the taxi at 7:45. I stared up at the intimidating building, all gray cement and indifference.

In another life this could have been my job, coming in and out of those doors without a second thought as I tracked down leads and worked towards answers. 

Of course, I had been assigned to the Newark Field Office, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that a case or a special assignment could have brought me to D.C.

Now, instead, I was entering the building at the behest of the agents in charge of figuring out if I killed someone. 

The fact that Phoebe had convinced the judge to make her my point of contact rather than using the trial services team that usually tracked these kinds of situations told me all I needed to know about how likely it was that any of the people in the building—or in the justice system overall—believed in my innocence.

Still, I knew the truth, and being accused of murder didn’t actually ward me off from being able to enter the building.

Squaring my shoulders, I adjusted the blazer I borrowed from Kenna and then I walked straight forward, reaching for the door with a level of confidence I certainly didn’t feel.

A man I didn’t recognize was walking towards the door on his way out, and I held it open for him as he passed, marveling at how he didn’t bother looking up at me, didn’t even notice who I was.

He probably wasn’t an agent who had my visage burned into his mind over the past few weeks, I told myself. I shouldn’t get too comfortable or expect total anonymity in a place like this, first impressions notwithstanding.

The heels of my boots clicked against the glossy floor of the lobby, and I quickly stepped to the side to keep from blocking the doors even as I took in the space, so similar to all the television shows that depicted it. And yet, those shows somehow didn’t do it justice.

There was a feeling in the air, of coordination and dedication to the cause.

Or maybe that was simply the placebo effect of standing in a place you spent so long dreaming of, only to find yourself a bystander on the outside looking in.

“McHale, you showed up,” Phoebe said, walking across the lobby to meet me. Beside her was the familiar face of Supervisory Special Agent Briggs. The man who had locked me away in an interrogation room without arresting me and without any recourse for being heard even if I had decided I wanted to confess or make a deal.

He had simply turned the lock and walked away.

“Agents,” I said stiffly, turning cold in the face of the man who ran point on a manhunt to track me down rather than waste even half a braincell to realize I might not be the perfect suspect he thought I was.

“Ms. McHale,” Briggs said, voice warm as he held out his hand to shake mine “Or is it Hastings now?”

“Either is fine,” I replied, stepping back slightly and making it clear I wasn’t going to shake his hand. “I apologize but, given the circumstances, I’ve become very careful about where I leave my prints and other DNA. I’m sure you understand.”

“Certainly,” Briggs said. “Wouldn’t want to make the same mistake twice. I have a meeting to get to, but it’s good to see you’re making the effort to stay in contact now that you’ve been caught. Your lawyer can expect to hear from our investigative team soon to schedule a proper interview.”

I didn’t say anything, biting my tongue against several barbed comebacks in favor of turning to really take Phoebe in. She was dressed much like she had been the day before, her hair still in its braid despite several strands trying to make a break for it.

In fact, she looked a little like she hadn’t slept all night.

“Is there more to this check-in that I need to do, or does one smug asshole interaction satisfy the requirements for today?”

“I have paperwork for you to fill out,” Phoebe replied, staring after Briggs with a distant look in her eyes before shaking herself back into the moment and locking eyes with me.

“Come on, you can fill it out at the coffee shop across the street.”

I followed her out, partly because I needed to in order to fill out the paperwork she required and partly because I was curious why she looked so tired, so done with Briggs, and so ready to snap at me if I dared to mention the iron grip she had on my upper arm the entire way across the street and into the shop.

Even after all this, she still somehow thought I might run. Like doing so the first time had labeled me a flight risk despite all the times in training when I had proved myself a solid and dependable agent.

Once inside, she sent me towards one of the tables at the back while she approached the register. Resigned, I settled into the seat that had its back against a wall and scanned the room out of instinct.

There were half a dozen customers inside seated at various tables and nearly all of them were dressed up in suits, carrying guns hidden at their waistbands. It made sense that the coffee shop closest to the J. Edgar Hoover building would be full of agents. Each one of them was focused on their own lives, caught in conversation or on their phones, sipping coffee without a care in the world.

Well, without a care about any murder charges hanging over their heads, at least.

The bell above the door rang and I glanced over to find yet another suit-and-gun entering the shop, scanning the room the same way I was. She was a true brunette, unlike me, and short for an agent. Her eyes fell on me, and I stared back as I took in the look of recognition that crossed her face. She glanced over to Phoebe standing at the register and I could see in real time as the pieces connected for her.

Her hand, which had slowly crept up to the gun at her waist, relaxed and she turned to approach Phoebe instead. I watched them greet each other and talk for a moment, a few glances in my direction, before I switched my focus back to the others in the room.

This woman, whoever she was, wouldn’t be arresting me based on outdated information at least.

I hadn’t realized until that moment that I was afraid that might happen; some FBI agent would recognize me sitting here and make the connection to Monica’s killer without knowing I had already been arrested and released on bail. As if I could be stupid enough to think that sitting here with a warrant hanging over my head was the right move.

“Here you go,” Phoebe said, and I realized she was standing next to our table holding out a venti to-go cup, an identical one in her hands.

“Oh, thank you,” I said, unable to mask the note of surprise in my voice as I took the coffee from her. I took a sip, further surprised by the sweet, creamy coffee. It was exactly to my liking. “This is good.”

“If you say so,” Phoebe replied, sitting down across from me and setting her own drink—two sugars, no cream—on the table before flipping open the satchel at her side and pulling out several sheets of paper. “I’m going to need you to fill these out and I’ll need to see an ID. I know, it seems ridiculous considering we both know who you are, but I’m not skipping any steps here. If we do this, we do it right.”

“Okay,” I agreed, reaching into the pocket of my blazer and pulling out the wallet I’d been arrested with. The one with my real ID inside. I passed it over to her and she inspected the card closely, as if I might for whatever reason have a fake ID for my own identity. Finally, once she was satisfied, she passed it back and I tucked my wallet back into my pocket before turning my attention to the forms in front of me.

Phoebe passed me a pen, and I began filling everything out. Date, time, name, my new address which Mason had made sure I memorized for exactly this moment.

I hesitated at the section for employment.

“Is there a problem?” Phoebe asked and I looked up at her, shoulders dropping as I sat back, tapping the tip of the pen against the table.

“This entire situation has complicated my employment,” I told her. “I don’t want to lie on this paperwork, but I don’t actually know if I still have a job or if my boss has fired me by now. And I’m still working as a volunteer for C4, but that’s not a job either.”

“You’re still doing investigative work?” Phoebe asked, narrowing her eyes at me, voice turning incredulous. “Under the false name that you assumed when you went on the run?”

“Not this very moment,” I replied. “But I’ll be going back to it once all of this is over. And the name Hale Hastings is a legal DBA now, so even if I was doing so right this minute, I’m not breaking any laws.”

“Of course,” Phoebe said, not looking pleased with my answer, but legally her hands were tied and we both knew it. “As long as you aren’t working your own case.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I assured her. She stared at me for a long moment before deciding to believe me. Or, at least, to pretend she did.

“Put unemployed,” she told me. “Unless you want your bartending experience and tax evasion to be on record for your trial.”

“Would it help my case if I told you I tucked away money to pay those taxes once my name was cleared?” I asked, continuing to fill out the form.

“No,” Phoebe replied, but when I glanced up at her she was sending me a strange look like she couldn’t quite figure me out. Like I was a case she just couldn’t crack. “Wait, seriously?”

“I have a record of everything I was paid, what I should have been taxed, and the savings to pay those taxes once my name is cleared,” I told her, then paused to consider. “Or, well, I suppose I could pay them now that I’ve been arrested. That would mean going back to Oregon to get everything, though, so it might not happen until after my trial.”

“Seriously, what is your deal?” Phoebe shook her head, taking another sip of her coffee, and I smirked.

“I know you’re having a hard time believing it,” I said, “But my deal is that I’m innocent and just trying to minimize the damage of being framed by someone inside the FBI.”

“Yes, you’ve said as much before,” Phoebe said. “It isn’t my job to decide if you’re innocent or guilty, though. That’s for a jury of your peers to decide.”

“No,” I told her. “Your job is to collect enough evidence to prove that I did or didn’t do it. Do you really feel like you have enough proof of my guilt that there is no reasonable doubt in you?”

“My own beliefs have nothing to do with—” Phoebe started, but I cut her off.

“They have everything to do with it,” I told her. “You are in a unique position to investigate crime, to put people in prison and send them to trial. But if you really believe that it isn’t your responsibility to make sure the people you arrest and send through the justice system are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, you shouldn’t have a gun or a badge. People are falsely accused and falsely imprisoned often enough that there are entire laws built around getting those people back out of the system. But nothing we have built is so full proof that you don’t hear stories of people locked away only to be exonerated decades later. So if you’re certain that you’ve explored every avenue then fine. But don’t think for one second that just because you feel betrayed that you have the whole story or that arresting me relieves you of the responsibility to keep looking into this case to be absolutely certain you’ve got your killer.”

“Are you done?” Phoebe asked. I could hear in her tone that I had crossed a line and she had shut down. Nothing I’d said had gotten through to her. I nodded and she pointed at the bottom of the page. “Sign here.”

I signed and she snatched the paper away from me.

“I have to get to work,” she said, her voice flat. “I don’t want to wait for you to go through security every day just to sign some forms. You’ll meet me here from now on. “

“Phoebe,” I said, but even though there was an apology on the tip of my tongue I couldn’t bring myself to voice it. I couldn’t be sorry and right at the same time. Not about this.

“Save it,” she snapped, standing up and pushing her chair back, drawing every eye in the room towards us. She looped her satchel around her shoulder and grabbed her coffee cup, standing there, staring down at me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And then she was storming through the front door and across the street, and I was left there with half a dozen FBI agents suddenly aware that an accused murderer sat in their midst.

Chapter Fifteen

Rogue and I walked down the trail at a slow pace, and I allowed him to take his time to sniff the foliage every few feet. The Manassas National Battlefield Park had enough hiking that we could spend hours wandering the trails at this rate.

Despite what I’d said to Kenna, Phoebe, and Noah, it was eating away at me that I couldn’t work on my own case. No one else was more motivated to find Monica’s killer than I was, after all.

But I had made my peace with the reasonable doubt strategy when I first decided to turn myself in, and Kenna deciding to fly to D.C. and rent a penthouse while she worked the case didn’t change that.

It couldn’t, because if I thought for even a second that Kenna might be able to fully clear my name that hope would grow inside me until being found not guilty by a jury would never be enough.

And if I wanted to get on with the rest of my life, it had to be enough.

So, I was going to do exactly what I would if my name was cleared and I didn’t have a murder charge hanging over my head; I went to work.

“Come on,” I said, urging Rogue on. I was eager to get to the spot where Holly’s body had been located. It wasn’t particularly easy to know where Holly had been killed and then left without a care in the world, but I knew the trees in the crime scene photos like the backs of my hand now and I’d studied to map well enough to know that if we kept going on this trail it would eventually open up on the edge of the actual battlefield, right where Holly was found.

Rogue dutifully trotted along beside me and I smiled to myself.

I was extraordinarily lucky and I knew it. Between Noah, Kenna, and Mason I had the kind of community and concern that other people could only wish they had.

My smile faded as we finally reached the point in the path where the wooded trail transitioned to a huge field with several period-relevant pieces on display. There was a canon pointed towards the trailhead that left me feeling twitchy.

Mentally following the directions in the case file, I finally made it to the point where I knew Holly’s body must have been found. Not only were the trees identical to the images of the crime scene that were taken, but there was a small wooden cross tucked away in the bushes along with several vases filled with long dead memorial flowers.

Standing where Holly had died, I walked the crime scene despite the years between her death and my arrival. I took in the soft grass, the tree cover overhead, and the nearby path.

According to the crime scene photos Holly would have had to step off the path and onto the battlefield, her back to the woods. She had been shot through the heart, from the front. Which meant that whoever had killed her could have taken the same path I just did and arrived before her or they could have crossed the battlefield before meeting her here.

I’d snapped a few photos of the case file and I pulled it up now, zooming in on the ground around Holly’s body. The grass was undisturbed around her and the only footprints nearby were on the trail itself, indicating the killer must have arrived before Holly did, and when she’d reached the battlefield they shot her before leaving the same way they’d come.

“What do you think?” I asked Rogue, turning to him with a raised eyebrow. He stared up at me, clearly waiting for me to say something he understood. When I didn’t, he huffed and went back to sniffing the edge of the battlefield where it butted up against the woods.

Going to the scene hadn’t told me much except that Holly’s killer was likely there before her. As I stared out at the historic land, pivoting in a slow circle, my eyes caught on the shape of a tall building in the distance, sunlight catching the metallic structure in a way none of the other buildings in the area did.

Behind me, across the battlefield, I knew there was a low stone building nothing like the one I was looking at, and the difference between the historically preserved site and the evidence of progress was disconcerting.

Rogue and I stayed in the area for another few minutes as I scanned the space for anything the investigators might have missed. I knew better than to expect it, but my training had instilled in me the need to look for evidence even after years had gone by.

Then, once I was satisfied there was no evidence to be found and Rogue was satisfied he had sniffed everything of interest, we headed back to the path and continued on the loop which would bring us over to Henry House and eventually back down to the visitor’s center.

As we approached Henry House, I thought about all the history this area had seen. The battles fought here, the losses the union had faced twice over, and now a young woman’s death a century and a half later.

The union might have lost those battles, but they had won the war.

And Holly Jones might have been killed on that same battlefield, but I was determined to find her killer.

Approaching the visitors’ center, I looked down at Rogue. His nails clicked against the cement of the sidewalk as he kept pace with me. But I knew from looking online that he wouldn’t be allowed to go into the visitors’ center and I needed to talk to someone. To get some sense of what the employees and volunteers who worked here every day thought about Holly’s death, and what they might know.

“Come on, boy,” I said, leading him to the rental Kenna had so graciously paid for and refused to tell me the cost of. Still, it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out what the local price for a Rav4 rental was, multiply it over the course of the time we spent in Virginia, and then quietly add it to the tab I was keeping in the back of my mind.

Kenna would never accept cash, her relationship with money being so vastly different from mine, but I would find a way to pay her back for everything she’d done. The car rental, the bail money, and even her services while she worked to figure out who had framed me.

Situating Rogue in the car with the windows down far enough to give him good airflow but not so far down that someone could get their hand inside, I locked the SUV and headed towards the visitors’ center.

The building was partly old brick, but the rest was built up around the old sections of the building and painted in a blinding white. Inside, there were displays everywhere, with little plaques that explained the historical significance of the items being shown off.

I approached the desk, finding an older gentleman sitting there with a pleasant smile on his face.

“Hello, welcome to the Manassas National Battlefield Park visitors’ center,” the man said, and I sent him a warm smile.

“Thank you.” I glanced around to make sure there wasn’t anyone else nearby, not wanting to upset the regular visitors by discussing murder. Then I leaned in. “My name is Hale and I’m here on behalf of the Cavanaugh Cold Case Charity.”

“Oh,” he said, eyes going wide. I suspected it wasn’t every day someone came in more interested in the one recent murder than the thousands who died in battle. It took the man only a moment to recover, though, before he was leaning in as well. “I’m Marty McPherson, I volunteer here most days. Are you here to look into Holly’s death?”

“I am,” I replied. “Did you know Holly?”

“Fairly well,” Marty replied, his white, bushy eyebrows furrowing down as a look of loss filled his face, thin lips becoming thinner as he pressed them together. He looked like he might cry, and I felt a pang of regret for being the one to bring everything back up. This was the job, though. This was how cases got solved. If no one talked about the people who had been lost and fallen through the cracks they would remain that way.

“Is there anything you can tell me about her?” I asked. “I have the case file, so I know the basics and I visited the spot she was found. But I’d like to know more about her as a person.”

“Holly was a lovely young woman,” Marty told me, pulling himself together. “She volunteered here, when she could. She adored this place, you know, because she started her degree at the NOVA community college nearby. She would hike the trails on the weekends and come into the visitors’ center between classes.”

“So it wasn’t strange that her body was found here,” I said, mostly to myself, but when I saw the expression on Marty’s face I quickly amended, “I apologize, I simply meant that she came here frequently and I shouldn’t be looking into anyone who might have lured her here.”

“If you say so.” Marty looked away for a moment and then back at me. “It wasn’t strange for Holly to be in the park at any time of day, but it was strange that she came in when we all knew the storm was coming.”

“What storm?” I asked, thinking back to the case file, trying to remember any mention of a storm. The ground around Holly’s body was soft, wet mud. I remembered that. But her clothes were dry when she was found. Her body lying there in a storm might have explained the lack of DNA evidence, but it didn’t explain how she could end up completely dry by the time a tourist spotted her body.

“The big storm that year,” Marty explained. “ Summer thunderstorms around here are serious. They cause Bull Run to flood, wreak havoc on the paths, and make it difficult to navigate until things dry up a little. If you’re hoping to do more hiking in the area I suggest you do it before the next storm hits.”

“Thank you for the advice,” I said, but my thoughts were distant. I simply couldn’t reconcile the idea of Holly dying before the storm, rain pouring down on her and washing away the evidence, only for her body to be found lying in the mud, her clothes completely clean and dry except for the blood around the entrance wound. “With a storm like that, does the park close while you clean everything up?”

“No,” Marty shook his head. “We close the visitors’ center for inclement weather, but it’s a rare day when we keep the entire park closed. Even after snowstorms when everyone should stay inside, people are drawn here. There’s even a few designated sledding spots in the winter. We advise caution, of course, but the park was open the day after that storm. Does that mean something?”

“It’s hard to say just yet,” I told him, and his eyes narrowed at me.

“The police said the same thing when I asked them if they were making any progress,” he said. “They claimed they couldn’t tell me anything. That the details of the case weren’t for me to know. But it felt more like they had simply decided her death was random and put it at the bottom of their priority list.”

“I’m not going to do that,” I assured him. “I just don’t have any answers yet. But the thing most criminals don’t realize about cold cases is that they haven’t gotten away with anything and those cases always get solved, eventually. It just takes a little more time and dedication to find the answers. And that’s what I’m here to do.”

“Good,” Marty said as the door to the visitors’ center opened, a family of five entering and marking the end of our conversation. The last thing I wanted to do was discuss a crime scene with three children present, and Marty appeared to be of the same mind because he simply sent me a warm smile before turning to the newcomers and welcoming them in.

I left, headed to the SUV to check on Rogue, my mind filling with the handful of inconsistencies I was already finding in the investigation. It was those inconsistencies that would lead me to the cracks in the case I could pry open to find the answers the detective hadn’t.

And as I started the 45 minute drive back to D.C. I already knew what the next step in my investigation would be.

Chapter Sixteen

I rolled down the windows, the air blowing through my hair as I took the Capitol Beltway Inner Loop to avoid the toll charges that the other roads into D.C. would cost me.

Rogue was buckled into the back seat, his head hanging out the window, tongue lolling out. He was having the time of his life, unconcerned about trial dates, missing cold case evidence, or even the jerk in the lifted Ford F150 who thought it was his right to speed up, pull in front of me, and then slow down again.

Fighting the urge to flip him off, I turned on my blinker, moving into the lane beside him and speeding up again until I was going the speed limit. It only put me a half a car ahead of him, but it settled my nerves. The last thing I needed was to get into a car wreck in a rented SUV because some guy decided he absolutely had to be the one in front.

Once I was sure there would not be any other shenanigans from the drivers around me, I returned my focus to the screen built into the car, hitting the phone icon and then Gracie Shepherd’s number.

The phone rang twice, and then Gracie picked up.

“Hale?” she asked in lieu of a greeting. “I mean, Avery?”

“You can call me Hale,” I told her, grimacing at the way my name sounded in her voice. Like everyone else who had first known me as Hale and then attempted to make the switch to my birth name, the note of question whenever they said Avery left me on edge. It was like they weren’t sure who I was now, and the last thing I needed was for the people in my life to start questioning what they knew about me.

“Is everything okay?” Gracie asked, her voice rising a little, like the surprise of getting a call from me was wearing off only to be replaced by the worry that I was calling to give her some kind of bad news.

“Everything’s fine,” I told her. “I’m not sure what you know, if Kenna’s kept you in the loop, but I’m trying to keep myself busy and away from digging into investigating my own case while she clears my name so I’m focusing on a cold case local to D.C. instead.”

“Oh,” Gracie sounded distant. She was probably trying to reconcile the meaning of everything I’d said. A part of me wanted to jump in and give her a monotone rundown of my entire situation.

Yes, I was framed for murder.

Yes, I’ve been released on bail.

Yes, I do still have to stand trial for a crime I didn’t commit.

Yes, I’m still the same person you knew, just with a lot more baggage than you might have realized.

Instead, I kept quiet, waiting for the questions to come.

“Did you need help with the case you’re working?” Gracie asked, which wasn’t the question I had expected. But Gracie was smart. She’d put herself through medical school as a young mother, after all, and managed to become a Medical Examiner in the process.

“That’s why I like you,” I replied, a smile on my lips. “You’re clever. I wanted to run something by you. The victim is a 23-year-old graduate student, single gunshot to the chest. Which means the killer was standing in front of her. There was no DNA evidence, or much evidence at all really, but she was found lying on her back and the exit wound was higher than the entrance wound. Do you think that means the shooter was shorter than her?”

“Maybe,” Gracie said, “If the exit wound is higher than the entrance wound there are a lot of other elements to look at. If you have the autopsy it should clarify the bullet path, because a chest wound means that bullet would have hit rib bones and if that’s true the impact could have changed the trajectory of the bullet inside her body. That happens more often than most people realize. Instead, I would focus more on the angle of the entrance wound to determine if the bullet came at her from above, below, or parallel. Even then, you have to look at the terrain. Because someone shorter than her could still stand on an incline and create a parallel entrance wound.”

“Wow,” I said, my head spinning as I began imagining the scenario from several different angles and variables. “So you’re saying that even if the detectives knew what they were doing there’s always a chance that they read the forensics wrong and couldn’t find the bullet because they were looking in the wrong place.”

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Gracie agreed. “But I wouldn’t say that straight to the detective’s face. They don’t like being told they’re wrong. And don’t forget that the killer simply could have collected the bullet afterwards, to keep that evidence from falling into the investigators’ hands.”

“Right,” I nodded, gripping the wheel and glancing at my speedometer before focusing on the road again. “Except, this happened just after a major storm, so if he had collected the bullet we would have seen footprints leading to where…wait.”

“What?” Gracie asked, her voice rising in curiosity and a hint of excitement.

“If Holly Jones wasn’t shot until after the storm then her killer would have left footprints in the muddy grass. It was all around her, and yet there wasn’t a single print in any of the crime scene photos.”

“So the killer stayed at a distance,” Gracie offered, and though she couldn’t see me I still shook my head.

“No,” I said, speeding up just a little, eager to get back to the penthouse now that I had something solid to look into. “Gracie, there weren’t any footprints. Not even Holly’s. Whoever did this didn’t just grab their bullet on the way out. They professionally cleaned the scene of all evidence. It wasn’t the storm that kept the detectives from finding anything to go off. It was the killer’s skill at cleaning up the scene.”

The hike through the Manassas National Battlefield Park had tired us both out. As Rogue and I walked into the penthouse I unleashed him, watching him tiredly meander down the hall towards the living room. Kicking off my shoes near the door, I followed the same path Rogue had taken, pausing as a strange scene unfolded before me.

The accent chair directly across from the hallway sat empty, Kenna standing on the left side of the room with her arms crossed and a blonde woman in a black dress and bright red heels sitting on the couch with her arms splayed out across the back, completely at ease.

Despite her relaxed demeanor, this was clearly a standoff I had stumbled into, and one that Rogue’s arrival hadn’t eased the tension of. He was already at his food and water station, drinking as if I hadn’t offered him water a dozen times on our hike already.

“Ah, the woman of the hour, I presume,” blondie said, turning to look at me. Her eyes were a startling blue-gray with a dark smokey eye and her lipstick was the same shade as her shoes. “Avery McHale.”

“For now,” I muttered, remaining at the threshold between the hallway and the living room. “And you are?”

“Vienna Quinn,” the woman introduced herself with a confident air. “I was having a lovely chat with your guard dog here.”

“I’m sure,” I said, ignoring the guard dog comment for now. The last thing I needed to do was upset the delicate work Kenna had put into place to get Vienna to come here by insulting her before she could reveal whatever she knew about Monica’s killer. And Kenna wouldn’t be acting the way she was—holding back a barely concealed desire to take a swing at the woman she was scowling at—unless Vienna had refused to help the investigation along so far.

“You know, all of this might have gone much faster if you had simply let Ms. McHale know that I was here,” she said, shooting this comment to Kenna. “I’m certain she would have come running, and then I could have passed along my message and gone on with my day.”

“You have a message for me?” I asked, cutting a glance over to Kenna who remained stoic as she stared Vienna down. My attention returned to the fixer sitting in our living room like she owned the place as she replied.

“It’s simply this,” Vienna said, pushing off the couch and turning to fully face me. “Stop digging, because you aren’t going to like what you find.”

“That’s not an option,” I told her, and she shrugged lightly, as if she didn’t really care whether I heeded her words or not.

“Suit yourself,” she said, glancing down at her phone before looking up at me again. “That’s all the time I have, but it was lovely to meet you Ms. McHale.”

“Wait,” I said, stepping in front of her before she could move past me down the hallway. “I have questions. We have questions.”

“And like I told your investigator already,” Vienna replied. “I won’t be answering any of them. If you or any of your cohorts continue to push, I will be forced to file harassment charges and maybe even a restraining order. None of you have the legal power to keep me here, so if you don’t mind…”

“Actually, while I have you here, maybe we can help each other,” I said. “How would you like to eliminate some local competition?”

“Excuse me?” she replied, turning to look at me with narrowed eyes. Good, I had her attention. If Quinn had a temper the same way Plover did then maybe I could push her buttons enough for her to slip up and tell me something she didn’t mean to say.

“I saw that article about the case in Seattle where you threw Plover under the bus,” I told her. “I have a local case that I suspect someone in your line of work tampered with. If you can give me the names of some people to run down, maybe those people won’t be in the game much longer. Which means I solve my case and you have less competition.”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the news, McHale,” Vienna replied, her voice going waspish. “I assure you, I can handle my competition just fine without resorting to such tactics.”

“I bet you can,” I said, fighting the urge to cross my arms and instead tapping my middle finger against the side of my leg. “And I’m sure you have an alibi for July twenty-seventh, 2019?”

“Unlike some people, I have an alibi for every day of the year,” Vienna said, which wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but I could see she was thrown off by the conversation and looking to lash out at me where it hurt most. And it did hurt, this reminder that it was my lack of alibi that meant I had been charged for murder. I could tell that Vienna wasn’t satisfied with my non-reaction though, because she lifted a hand and pointed a finger at me, waving it a little. “You are going to be trouble, aren’t you? The sooner I get you out of my town, the better, so I’ll tell you this; it’s not your fault, Avery. The women who keep dying around you? Your mother, your mentor, and then there’s…” She paused, on the cusp of saying something else but cutting herself short. “Well, no one blames you, you know. You were just a little kid, after all.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, and I could feel the way Kenna came closer, standing at my back as Vienna spoke.

“You’re the spunky investigator,” Vienna replied, reaching the door and turning back to look at me with a raised eyebrow, getting off one last shot before closing the door between us. “Figure it out.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Okay, so that just happened,” Kenna said as I turned towards her. The sound of the door clicking shut behind Vienna still echoed in my ears even as her words echoed in my mind.

It’s not your fault, Avery.

The women who keep dying around you.

No one blames you, you were just a little kid, after all.

She had been so smug as she spoke, and so certain that what she was saying would get under my skin.

“Care to explain how Vienna Quinn ended up in our living room with no prior warning?” I asked, moving past Kenna and back into the living room. Rogue had made himself at home on the couch despite the dog bed sitting only a few feet away. I gave him a judgmental look for at least not even trying to intimidate Quinn. But as usual, he didn’t take notice.

“I would love to,” Kenna said, moving into the living room as well. She started pacing, clearly restless after her standoff with the notorious criminal fixer. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything to do with that. One minute I was going about my business trying to investigate your case and the next Quinn was waltzing in demanding to see you. She didn’t even knock.”

“Seriously?” I said, turning to narrow my eyes at the front door like Quinn might come back through without warning.

“Would I lie to you?” Kenna asked.

“So, she just showed up at our penthouse, sat there, and waited for me to appear but refused to actually tell you anything useful?” I surmised, sitting down next to Rogue and kicking my socked feet up on the coffee table as Kenna continued to pace, clearly trying to work something out.

“Pretty much,” Kenna confirmed. “She wasn’t completely silent. She said she looked into me, that she knew better than to take on any work for me, and that it was obvious I had reached out to her on your behalf, and that she only showed up here because she wanted to look you in the eye.”

That didn’t make me feel any better. “Well, she got what she wanted,” I said. “She passed on her message warning me to stop digging. I imagine that came straight from the person who framed me, which means she’s still in contact with whoever it is, and they’re still trying to get me to take the fall for this.”

“That part’s straightforward,” Kenna agreed. “But I’m more curious about what she said right before she left. What was she referring to? A third death?”

“I genuinely do not know,” I told her, shaking my head and wracking my brain for any memory that might explain what she’d said. She knew about Monica, of course, and if she did any research about me at all she would have known about my mother, but to imply that there was potentially a third death connected to me…I was as in the dark as Kenna. And the way she claimed that no one blamed me certainly implied otherwise. “I don’t have any memory of someone else in my life dying, and certainly not because of something that would have been my fault.”

“Maybe she’s just taunting you to throw you off?” Kenna suggested. “She seemed shaken when you mentioned having an alibi for that date, which I’m going to need you to explain to me.”

“I have a theory that Monica’s murder isn’t the only case with Vienna’s fingerprints all over it,” I replied. “I think someone hired her to clean up evidence at the crime scene of the cold case I’m working on. Well, her or someone like her. And I don’t know, I think Vienna is much too calculating to just taunt me with false information. I think there’s something to look into there.”

“Well, it’s my job to handle clearing your name so if there’s a pattern of women dying around you then I should be the one looking into it,” Kenna told me. “And I’ve done some research of my own. If Vienna Quinn is involved in your cold case we’re going to have to tread carefully. She’s a ruthless and unscrupulous woman and I wouldn’t put it past her to have three layers of misdirection around any crime she’s covered up.”

“Noted,” I said, reaching out and sliding a hand along Rogue’s back. He barely twitched, clearly only feigning sleep. “This guy needs some more exercise, I think.” That wasn’t true, Rogue had run himself out. But I needed some time to think. To clear my head after meeting the woman whose work had put me in the position of defending my innocence.

“Well, there’s a dog park a few blocks away,” Kenna said, but there was a note in her voice that suggested I shouldn’t take him there.

“What’s the problem with it?” I asked, and Kenna shrugged.

“Nothing, really,” she replied. “If you like entirely gravel dog parks. Besides, I’ve just got a better idea for where we could go to tire him out.”

I told Kenna about my call with Gracie and the details of my cold case as she drove us to a nearby brewery. The place had a quarter acre of off-leash area attached, picnic tables scattered all around the edges, and a walk-up window to order beer and meals for both humans and dogs.

It was certainly a better solution than taking Rogue to an all-gravel dog park.

The fact that Kenna somehow already had Rogue signed up and his vaccinations on record was something I would have to talk to her about later, but for now I decided to simply be grateful for her tendency to simply see the path towards what she wanted and take action to get there. In many ways she was like a one-woman wrecking crew, demolishing any obstacle in her path. Without her, I’d have been sitting behind bars long ago with no way out, but her determination could be scary at times. I was just glad we were on the same side.

There were only a few other dog owners this early in the day, and I watched with nervous eyes as Rogue went around to each of the other dogs. They followed the usual situations for introducing themselves to one another and when Rogue showed no signs of aggression to the smaller dogs, I felt myself relax a little.

So much had happened in the past three weeks since I’d first come across him that it felt like I’d had him much longer, but there was still so much I didn’t know about him. His reaction to people looming over each other was mostly manageable and the tendency to head South was no longer a problem now that we’d discovered Lexi’s remains, but I had so many questions about how he would behave in different scenarios.

The river, for example, had caused his entire body to tremble even as he pushed through his own fear to get to Lexi’s body. I didn’t know, yet, if taking him out on the water would ever be an option. Between working cold cases, being kidnapped by a deranged serial killer, and being arrested by the FBI I’d barely gotten a chance to do more than give him food, exercise, and cuddles.

If Kenna and Mason managed to keep me out of prison I vowed to focus on getting to know Rogue better, introducing him to new experiences, and even training him for something more. Lexi had planned to train him as a search and rescue dog, and while I wasn’t nearly as skilled at first aid or survival, I could see the two of us teaming up to help find missing people.

Or, now that he’d discovered Lexi’s remains, maybe he would be more suited to being a cadaver dog.

“What are you thinking about?” Kenna asked, popping a ketchup-dipped fry into her mouth.

“Dead bodies,” I told her, smirking. She made a face at me and I laughed, snagging a fry of my own and dipping it into the ranch I’d requested. “I was thinking about Rogue. He’s got such a strong sense of smell, a lot of energy, and is very biddable as long as you’ve got the rewards to back up your requests. He’d do really well with some kind of scent training.”

“And you jumped right to human remains detection,” Kenna said, and I nodded.

“He’s done it once before,” I told her. “Of course, he knew where Lexi was the whole time but⁠—”

“That is one of the many things we need to talk about,” Kenna interrupted, pointing a fry at me. “You keep acting like you’ve already told me things that you really haven’t.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry. Leading a double life is…complicated. Sometimes you kind of get lost in the lies and trying to keep up with who knows what. Plus, I thought Gracie would have told you. Maybe she thought it wasn’t her place. You already know that when Lexi disappeared she was going to a search and rescue training course. She decided to do that because she got a puppy and thought he would be good at finding people. That puppy was Rogue, and that’s why she was out on the Good Dog trail that day. That’s why Rogue was always trying to head South. Because he was trying to get back to her.”

“And an anonymous tip called into the police is what led them to finding her remains,” Kenna said, starting to put the pieces together. “Because Rogue led you to them first, and you couldn’t turn up in a witness statement without risking one of the police officers recognizing you.”

“Exactly,” I took another sip of my beer and smiled as Rogue lost interest in chasing a mini Aussie around and wandered back to my side. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain it to you properly, that must have been very confusing.”

“It was a little gut-wrenching to find out from Gracie that they found Lexi’s body the day of her memorial,” Kenna admitted. “Especially after all the time I spent looking for her. But I’m glad that it was you and Rogue. You knew better than to contaminate anything, and Rogue got the closure he deserved. We all did.”

“Speaking of closure,” I said, leaning in and dropping my voice lower. There wasn’t anyone too close to us, and we’d already used words like human remains and cadavers, but there was something about an active case that made me want to keep other people away from the conversation. “I have a theory about the Holly Jones case I want to run by you.”

“Shoot,” Kenna told me, reaching into her bag and pulling out a dirty rubber ball. She glanced around to make sure she wasn’t about to throw it at someone else and then gave it a toss. Rogue shot after it and the Aussie bolted after him. Rogue was faster, though, and running back to Kenna before the Aussie had time to realize the ball was already gone.

“If I’m right and someone like Vienna Quinn cleaned up the crime scene,” I said, talking my way through an idea that had been sitting at the back of my mind ever since talking with Gracie and realizing the crime scene had been professionally cleaned, “then whoever killed Holly had to be rich enough to pay those fees. That rules out a majority of the people in her life.”

“That’s sound logic,” Kenna said, throwing the ball again. “If it’s true, what next?”

“Next,” I said, watching with a slight smile as the Aussie snagged the ball out from under Rogue’s nose and took off running, causing Rogue to chase after him again. “Next I look into everyone in Holly’s life who could have theoretically paid a fixer to clean up the scene, and hope that leads me to evidence that doesn’t require me to agitate the only potential witness we have who can tell the FBI I was framed.”

Chapter Eighteen

I came into the penthouse with Rogue at my side, still trying to even out my breathing from our early morning run the next day. Beside me, Rogue was panting as he stared up at me, clearly waiting for an attaboy and a treat for his excellent work as my running partner.

I reached into the pouch at my side where I kept spare doggie bags and treats, pulling out a biscuit and giving him a hand signal to get him to sit before I offered him the treat. He greedily snatched it from my hands before popping right back up on all fours and turning around to head towards the living room.

I sighed, shaking my head at his antics. I was going to have to teach him the value of staying where I wanted him if I expected to reach a point where he could be considered a good candidate for cadaver work. It wouldn’t do to have a cadaver dog wander off in the middle of preparing to search for a body.

Kicking off my shoes, I followed Rogue into the living room and paused when I smelled the scent of coffee hanging in the air. Turning to the left I ducked into the kitchen to find Kenna already up, a coffee in her hands and enough for another sitting in the pot on the counter.

“You’re up early,” I said as I padded over to the counter and poured myself a cup. Kenna blinked up at me, clearly still only half-awake, and hummed in agreement. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said, more to her coffee than to me. “Except that Phoebe clearly has it out for you, making you drive in to downtown D.C. this early for a check-in every day.”

“Yes, well we already knew that,” I pointed out, sitting across from Kenna at the small kitchen table. “Why are you up? You clearly could use a few more hours.”

“I’m coming with you,” she told me.

“To my check-in?” I asked, frowning and wrinkling my nose. “Why?”

“Because Vienna Quinn may think she’s clever, but she slipped up yesterday,” Kenna replied.

She didn’t explain any further and when I raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged and pressed her lips together, miming zipping them and throwing away the key.

“Okay, well I’m driving,” I said, downing half my coffee as I checked the time and realized my run had gone longer than expected. With the traffic into D.C. being what it was, I didn’t have any time to spare getting changed. Phoebe would simply have to face me in my running shorts and tank top.

Kenna grunted her agreement, pulled a travel thermos out of one of the cupboards, and poured the rest of both of our coffees into it.

I paused just long enough to give Rogue his breakfast and remind him of the rules—be good and don’t let anyone in—before I was headed back down the hall and slipping on my tennis shoes before following Kenna out the door.

Kenna and I arrived at the coffee shop with only three minutes to spare. If I thought traffic was bad, finding parking was even worse. Still, I was on time even if Phoebe had arrived at the table in the back before us.

Kenna, who had finished the thermos of coffee on our drive over and was looking a little more awake, headed towards the register. I broke off from her, making a beeline for Phoebe instead, just in case she tried to get clever and claim I hadn’t appeared on time for the check-in because I wasn’t at the table at precisely 8am.

“Ms. McHale,” Phoebe said, keeping her tone neutral as she pulled out a blank copy of the form she had provided the day before and set it in front of me along with a pen. I sat down across from her and stared down at the form.

“Am I really going to have to fill this out every day?” I asked. “My circumstances haven’t changed.”

“Under normal circumstances this would be a weekly check-in and it wouldn’t feel like so much work to write everything down again,” Phoebe told me. She didn’t voice the part we both knew, which was that the only reason this wasn’t normal circumstances was because Phoebe had insisted that daily check-ins were required, in person, and that they had to be with her.

But that did mean I wasn’t locked away in the penthouse and a two-mile radius around it with an ankle monitor tracking my every move. Filling out a form every morning to appease the powers-that-be, or in this case Phoebe’s fear that I would flee again, wasn’t such a terrible price to pay.

“Same address, still unemployed,” I said as I wrote everything down. “Still not investigating my own case. And signed. There you go.”

“Thank you,” Phoebe took the form and the pen back, remaining as professionally neutral as possible considering the terse words we had shared the day before.

She moved to stand right as Kenna arrived with three to-go coffee cups in her hands. She passed one to me before stepping in Phoebe’s way and offering another to her.

“Agent Richards,” Kenna greeted. “I’m certain you’re quite busy, but if I could have a moment of your time?”

“Bribing a federal agent with coffee?” Phoebe asked, frowning and not taking the drink.

“Hardly,” Kenna said, holding the coffee cup out even further. “The coffee is yours even if you don’t stick around.”

“Thank you?” Phoebe asked, taking the cup and glancing between the two of us with suspicion, like Kenna might have laced the drink with something.

Considering I didn’t know what Kenna was up to, it wasn’t difficult to look as guileless and confused as possible, which put Phoebe on the back-foot as she moved to sit back down. Kenna took a seat beside me and leaned forward.

“We have some information regarding Vienna Quinn,” Kenna said.

Phoebe looked back towards me, eyes narrowing.

“I thought I was clear that you’re not to investigate your own case,” she said. Before I could defend myself Kenna quickly jumped in.

“I assure you, she hasn’t,” Kenna said, drawing Phoebe’s attention back to her. “As her private investigator⁠—”

“Licensed in Oregon,” Phoebe cut in and Kenna waved her off.

“My D.C. application is in processing and I’ll be working under the umbrella license of Madeline Hodges P.I. firm in the meantime,” she said, unblinking. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she had no jurisdiction to investigate outside of Oregon, let alone how to get around those rules, but Kenna had already thought of the problem and created a solution before anyone could start asking questions. “Point being, Vienna Quinn showed up at our home yesterday, and as you know Ms. Quinn was in the vicinity of Monica Park’s home only thirty minutes before her murder occurred.”

“And how did you come across that information?” Phoebe asked, narrowing her eyes at Kenna now. Neither woman paid me any attention, and I almost wished I had some popcorn to watch the back and forth between them. They were so similar, I realized, relying on systems and processes to smooth the path towards justice. I settled for sipping my new coffee as the conversation continued.

“My sources are confidential,” Kenna replied easily. “And Quinn didn’t divulge anything incriminating, but that’s not why I was up at the crack of dawn and dragged myself down here just to see you. Quinn naturally refused to discuss the details of the case with me, and it seemed she was only there to pass along a message.”

“What message?” Phoebe leaned in, genuine curiosity making her forget the combative stance she had taken in favor of finding answers.

“The official message was to stop digging, that Avery wouldn’t like what she found,” Kenna said, glancing over at me almost as if she were checking that I was okay with her revealing whatever came next. I didn’t know where she was going with this, but considering how much effort she’d put into clearing the legal hurdles—flying Mason and Rogue down here on a jet, renting an apartment and a vehicle, paying my bail, and ensuring her own legal right to pursue my case—I trusted her to know the right call here as well. I nodded and she turned back to Phoebe with a Cheshire grin. “However, Ms. Quinn said something else that caught my attention. Something I don’t think she was supposed to reveal.”

“And that would be?” Phoebe asked, clearly losing patience with Kenna’s dramatics.

“She alluded that there are three cases in Avery’s past, and implied that they were all connected,” Kenna finally revealed. “Monica Park, Alyssa McHale, and a third unknown victim from Avery’s childhood. While she said it wasn’t Avery’s fault, the implication was that she wanted us to believe there was another death that could be blamed on her. I know you’re convinced my client is the one who killed Monica, but let’s set that aside for a moment. Don’t you think it’s strange that the fixer who was nearby just before Monica’s murder not only had a mysterious message to pass on to Avery, but that she knew about these other two cases? Because, if you ask me, it almost sounded like the connection that Avery has to all three of these cases might point to evidence that someone has it out for her.”

“So you think that a notoriously clever and dangerous fixer simply slipped up and revealed something that only you could possibly recognize as a clue to clearing your client’s name.” Phoebe sounded doubtful, and she stood up then, still taking her coffee with her as she spoke to Kenna in a dismissive tone as she walked away. “It sounds to me like you’re grasping at straws, and unlike you I have actual investigations to get back to.”

“Well that didn’t go over well,” I said after a long silence. I’d stared after Phoebe, watching through the glass windows as she crossed the street to the Washington Field Office before turning back to Kenna with a frown.

“I think it went okay, actually,” Kenna said, tilting her head as she stared after the long-gone agent.

“Sure, if your goal was to give the FBI all of our information and let them completely ignore it, I guess you could say you did spectacularly,” I offered, pushing out of my seat and heading back to the car. A quiet voice at the back of my mind questioned what Kenna was thinking, telling Phoebe all of that. I quickly squashed the doubt, reminding myself of everything Kenna had done for me so far. She’d taken a risk here, and it hadn’t panned out, but that happened during investigations all the time. And she was right, there was something about the way Vienna had implied I was guilty of a third crime that had me itching to go digging, to follow this new theory wherever it might lead. But I knew that even without the FBI taking her new lead seriously, Kenna would, and if there was anything to find she would find it.

My job was to solve the murder of Holly Jones, and that meant heading back to the penthouse and starting the portion of the investigation where I called everyone Holly knew and began sorting them into those who were willing to help and those who might have the means and motive to kill her before sending Quinn in to finish the cleanup.

“Well, then I did spectacularly,” Kenna said as she slid into the passenger seat beside me. “Because I bet you anything that Agent Richards is in that building right now running every search she can to find any evidence of another death in your past.

“So that she can pin yet another murder on me?” I asked. Kenna shrugged.

“The more evidence we have, the higher the chance we’ll clear your name,” she said, buckling in as I pulled back into traffic. “Because framing you for one murder is complicated enough. The complications of retroactively framing you for another? You and I both know the more complicated things get the more likely Monica’s killer will have slipped up somewhere. And in the meantime, if Phoebe is looking into this lead that tells us something else.”

“What?” I asked. The light in front of us turned red and I pulled to a stop, looking over at her as I tried to unravel whatever twisted plot she’d come up with now.

“That she isn’t as convinced that you killed Monica as she wants us to believe,” Kenna replied.

That idea struck me, filling me with hope as I considered that Phoebe could be convinced of my innocence given enough time and evidence to prove it. I was shaken from the thought before I could focus on it for too long as someone behind me laid on the horn, the honk startling me.

I looked up to find that the light had turned green. I hit the gas.

Chapter Nineteen

No one in Holly’s life had close to the kind of money Vienna Quinn charged for her services. Most of them were fresh out of graduate school and weighed down by the debt of getting an education.

Her mother lived on the outskirts of D.C. and her father had moved to Wyoming several years before her death. As far as I could tell by scouring social media and identifying their living situations—a one bedroom apartment and an old cabin respectively—neither was particularly wealthy.

More to the point, both had solid alibis, even with the window of the murder changed to after the storm. Mrs. Jones had been on vacation in the Caribbean and Mr. Jones had been competing in a local log throwing tournament. He’d come in second place, which meant he had been there for the entire event and wouldn’t have had time to travel to D.C. and back without someone noticing.

I gleaned all of this from the cold case file and social media, not wanting to contact Holly’s family and reopen old wounds quite yet. Especially given how badly that had gone with Camille Nash’s family. Or worse, give them hope there was a break in the case only to discover that it didn’t pan out.

I was all too familiar with that process, the highs and lows of waiting to find out the truth about how a loved one died.

I sat at a cafe table in the Capitol Riverfront district, eating a panini while I waited for Kenna to wrap up some business with the P.I. whose license she was working under.

In the meantime, I had ordered myself a sandwich and set about giving a call to every non-family member in Holly’s life that I could find a phone number for. Half the people I called didn’t pick up, but the half who did had quickly agreed to discuss the case over the phone, sounding far too excited to talk to someone—anyone—about their deceased friend.

It was a stark contrast to the stonewalling I’d gotten while trying to dig into Camille Nash’s disappearance.

Everyone I talked to had the same story Marty did; about the detective on the case not prioritizing Holly’s murder in his caseload. I wanted just once to work on a case that had gone cold that wasn’t at least partly due to the investigation being poorly handled or entirely dismissed by the original detective.

Then again, the kind of case that couldn’t be solved by correcting the poor work ethic or prejudices of another detective were the hardest cases to crack. They were the ones that required new evidence, like Rogue finding Lexi’s body, before anything could be solved.

Rogue was laid out at my feet, a bowl of water near him with big damp splotches in the concrete showing that he had appreciated the waiter bringing him something to drink. Now, he was soaking up the late July sun, his dark coat gleaming in the sunlight and just a little shade cast by the edge of the table crossing over his face, protecting his eyes.

Just as I was finishing off the last of my panini, my phone rang and I checked the number, feeling a jolt of excitement as I realized one of Holly’s old roommates had decided to call me back.

“Cavanaugh Cold Cases,” I said as I answered the phone. “This is Hale Hastings.”

“Hi.” The voice on the other end of the line was feminine and airy. “You left a voicemail about looking into Holly’s case?”

“I did,” I replied. I’d left a voicemail for three different people, but only one had been female. “Is this Reagan Kobel?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Reagan said. I could hear the sound of a bike bell in the background as she spoke. “Has there been a break in the case?”

“Right now I’m just doing preliminary work to learn more about Holly,” I told her. Technically there hadn’t been a break, only new theories. And technically, even if there had been new evidence I wasn’t required to tell this woman anything. That would only cause her to get her hopes up. “But anything you could tell me might lead to something that helps solve this. Is there any chance you could meet up this week to talk about Holly and what you remember in the days before her death?”

“I’m working twelve-hour shifts all week this week,” Reagan told me. “Today’s actually my only day off. But if you’re available and don’t mind me bringing my kids, I would be willing to meet you.”

“That sounds perfect,” I said, “I’m in the Capitol Riverfront district at the moment. Is there any way we could meet somewhere nearby?”

“There’s a park the boys like to go to over there,” Reagan said. “It’s going to take me an hour to get them rounded up and drive over, but if you don’t mind waiting…”

“I don’t mind at all,” I assured her. “Send me the address and I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Will do,” Reagan said, and then must have pulled the phone away from her face because the next thing I heard was her shouting from a distance. “Boys, go get your shoes on, we’re going to the park!”

Then, she hung up.

Rogue and I took our time leaving the cafe, paying for my food and texting Kenna the change in our location. I put the address Reagan texted me into my phone and began following the directions to meet her.

The park was only a fifteen-minute walk from the cafe, so even after dragging our feet, Rogue and I ended up arriving a good twenty minutes before I expected to see Reagan.

In the meantime, I decided to do a little obedience training with him and to test his aptitude for scent work of any kind. I’d started researching search and rescue and cadaver dog training after Kenna and I got home from the doggy park brewpub, and I’d learned a lot of surprising things in a short amount of time.

The first was that it was unusual for a dog to be trained as both a search-and-rescue dog and a human-remains detection dog. They were two different kinds of training, and two entirely different scents to train with.

The second thing I’d learned was that not all dogs were up for the kind of work I hoped Rogue could do and that Lexi had planned to train him for. Even worse, it was unusual for a dog to start their training so late in life. Rogue had only been a puppy when Lexi adopted him, but he’d lived a rough life in the interceding years.

With 2,000 hours of training ahead of him, he would be nine before he was fully trained. He would start to pick things up after the first 500 hours but wouldn’t show any consistency until much later.

The last thing I had learned was that aside from a strong sense of smell and a high level of obedience, the main thing a cadaver dog needed was tenacity. If he was willing to keep looking for a treat or a ball for an extended period of time, there was still a chance that training him to detect decomposition scents could still pay off.

Not financially, of course. Most people lost money training their dogs to do this kind of work and volunteered their time and skills to help others find closure. But there was a high chance that the number of unsolved cold cases sitting back in the C4 office back in Bend were either people who had been murdered who didn’t have enough evidence to break the case or people who had gone missing and were likely dead but their bodies simply hadn’t been found.

So, while we waited for Reagan and her boys to arrive, I started out with some simple obedience training to give Rogue a warm-up. Sit, stay, roll over.

He had a little trouble with the last one, pretending like he was going to do a full roll before his whole body jerked and course-corrected until he was sitting in the same place he’d started without actually pulling off the roll over.

He still stared at me with those big brown eyes, expecting his reward.

I clucked my tongue, rolled my eyes, and gave him the treat anyway. I knew I would need to show some discipline as well, if we were going to make a real go at this, but there was still a voice in the back of my mind that pointed out these might be the last days I got to spend with Rogue before I was locked away in prison and he returned to the cottage without me.

If that were the case, then I was going to give him as many treats as he thought he’d earned and shower him with even more praise and love.

In the meantime, I still needed to test him on his determination.

Checking my watch, I found we had at least ten minutes left before Reagan would arrive, so I pulled out a rubber ball that I knew Rogue loved and showed it to him.

He perked up, clearly ready to play, but that wasn’t the name of the game today.

“Sit,” I told him, and watched as he listened. “Stay.”

I dropped the leash, taking just a few steps away and keeping a close eye on him in case he decided to bolt or otherwise disobey. He was still focused on me, though, as I took a few more steps backwards until I was parallel with a tree. Using some rather poor sleight of hand I dropped the ball behind the tree and then turned and pretended to throw it instead.

Rogue’s whole body thrummed with the desire to chase after it, but I’d told him to stay and despite his willful refusal to listen when we were somewhere he considered home—the apartment, the cottage, the penthouse—whenever we were out and about he was on his best behavior and chose to wait until I told him he could go.

Scanning the area in case there were any dangers or distractions, other dogs he might decide were more interesting than the ball or squirrels to chase, I gave him the go-ahead to run off into the baseball field and start looking for the ball.

He took off like a bolt, running so fast I knew I would never be able to keep up with him if he really did get loose and decided to go somewhere I didn’t want him to. This was a small test, but if I was going to keep doing this I knew I was going to need to get one of those insanely long training leashes. And maybe someone to help me train him so I didn’t accidentally do it wrong and end up teaching him how to find dead pigs rather than dead humans.

An issue I hadn’t even considered until I was reading an article last night about trainers who did just that because they couldn’t get access to the necessary remains that training a dog properly required.

Maybe Gracie would⁠—

“Are you Hale Hastings?” A voice from behind caused me to turn to see the brunette walking up with two young boys trailing along beside her. I looked back at the field to find that Rogue was still searching for the ball he was convinced must be in the field.

“I am,” I replied, turning to shake the woman’s hand. “Sorry, hang on a second. I was doing a training exercise with my dog. He’s almost done…I think.”

“No worries,” the woman replied, her voice just as light and airy as it had been on the phone. “Okay, boys, enough with the pinching each other. You can go play, but do not leave the playground, okay? I’ll be watching and I’ll know if you do.”

“Yes, Mom,” both boys replied in unison, before the shorter one reached out and pinched his brother’s arm then ran away towards the playground. In the field, Rogue continued his hunt for the ball, not needing any encouragement from me to keep trying to find it.

“When my husband convinced me to have another one so soon after the first, I should have known better,” Reagan said, a weariness taking over her the moment the kids weren’t looking. “I’m not even thirty yet, and I feel like I’m eighty-five.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I made a noncommittal hum and continued to watch Rogue’s progress. The wind picked up, blowing from behind us, and a scent must have caught his attention because his head perked up and he looked my way.

After sniffing the air for a moment, Rogue began running back towards me, and then past me to the base of the tree where he found his ball. Triumphant, he snatched it up and trotted over to me, his leash still hanging from his collar and his jaw holding the ball in a vice grip, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as he panted. He was clearly pleased with himself, showing me the ball but refusing to give it back.

I let him keep it, more than satisfied in my little test and in his tenacity.

“Wow, he’s big,” Reagan said, her eyes watching Rogue carefully.

“Yeah, but he’s harmless,” I replied. “He’s a rescue. He’s just got a lot of energy.”

“Tell me about it. I have a confession,” Reagan said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Half the reason I agreed to meet you was to get the kids out of the house for half an hour. If they stay cooped up too long they tear the house up.”

I grinned. “I definitely understand that.”

“So,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “You needed information about Holly?”

“How well did you know her?” I asked, confident Rogue wouldn’t run off now that I had his leash back in hand. He had flopped down in the grass and was gnawing on his ball, content for the moment.

“She and I were roommates while we worked on our undergrad,” Reagan replied. “After graduation, I got married and Holly went on to graduate school for historical preservation.”

“Which explains why she was in the Manassas Battlefield Park,” I added, and Reagan nodded.

“She was fiercely passionate about historical preservation,” Reagan told me, glancing over at the playground to watch her two boys chase each other around the swing set. “Her entire dissertation was focused on the effects of capitalism and the need to further restrict the ability to change zoning laws for the benefit of companies at the expense of historical monuments.”

“That is a mouthful,” I said, trying to understand what that even meant.

“That’s what I told her,” Reagan smiled. “‘You need something more pithy as the title, or no one’s ever going to read it.’ But she insisted it wasn’t about being pithy or eye-catching. She was very serious about keeping the encroaching modernization of the tourism industry from ruining one of our nation’s most pivotal historical landmarks.”

“It sounds like she was focusing on a specific landmark,” I pointed out, and Reagan nodded.

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” she said, uncrossing her arms and pulling open the tote-style purse she carried with her. She pulled a thick stack of papers out of it. “She never did finish it before…well, I kept her dissertation anyway. I guess it was my way of keeping something of her close. Part of her that would go on, you know? Not that I would have time to read it even if it wasn’t dry as a bone, but it felt disrespectful to just pack it away with everything else when I knew how much it meant to her.”

“Can I keep this, just for a little while?” I asked, flipping through the pages, curious. The chances of Holly being found dead in a national historical park after writing a dissertation on why tourism was negatively affecting preservation seemed like a clear connection.

“It would be good for someone to read it, even if I never could get through it,” Reagan agreed.

“Aside from this dissertation, was there anything else Holly was focused on in the weeks before her death?” I asked, watching Rogue continue to happily chew on his ball at my feet. He was so engrossed it felt like holding his leash was useless.

I still kept ahold, of course, but made a mental note to ask Kenna where she’d gotten that ball and order a dozen more for when he inevitably ruined the one he had now.

“Nothing that I can think of,” Reagan replied. “And trust me, I did think a lot about what she’d been doing in the days before. I was so sure that if I could just remember one little detail, something that didn’t seem important at first but was abnormal enough to mention, it would help the detectives figure out what happened. But there was nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Was there anyone new in her life?” I asked, and Reagan shook her head. “Anyone she knew who was particularly wealthy or recently came into some unexpected money?”

“No,” Reagan’s eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. “Do you think she was killed over a money dispute?”

“I don’t have any theories yet,” I told her. “I’m simply following the standard questions, asking the things I’ve learned over the years that tend to crack open cold cases.”

“Oh.” Disappointment filled Reagan’s eyes, no longer hopeful I would get anywhere. “If you do find anything…”

“Trust me,” I assured her. “The moment I have answers, the police will know about it. Whoever killed your friend isn’t going to get away with it, even if they already think they have. I’ll get this back to you as soon as I’ve read it.”

“Take your time,” Reagan said. “It’s dense. I wouldn’t blame you if you give up after the first few pages.”

I nodded, saying my goodbyes rather than the other things I wanted to say. That I wouldn’t give up, so long as I was free to keep looking into this, and that I could use some dense reading to keep me distracted from my own case.

Instead, I waved goodbye, convinced Rogue to relinquish his ball, and carried the 200 pages of writing with me as I walked back towards the parking lot to wait for Kenna to come pick me up.

Chapter Twenty

…the value that historical locations provide as both a reminder of humanities greatest achievements and most tragic failures, as well as the ability to immerse yourself in the lived experiences of those who came before us, is greatly diminished by the ever-encroaching sprawl of modern civilization.

While this author does not deny the value that tourism has on the local economy, and the potential negative effects of commuting from lodgings farther away from the historical site, the offset damage that closer commercially zoned property has on the local environment shows scientific evidence of greater impact.

Furthermore, the negative impact of the visual reminder of modern civilization on the individual’s ability to remain immersed in the experience of the historical site vastly outweighs any benefit that the inclusion of commercial property near a historical location might provide.

My head spun as I picked apart the long opening statements of Holly’s dissertation, but despite her wordy and technical sentences, what she was trying to express made some sense.

How she could go on about it for another 199 pages was beyond me, but so far I supported the ideas she was trying to express. They didn’t point to any one particular person who might have attacked her, but as I closed my eyes and remembered the feeling of being inside the park and the way it sent me into a reflective state as I stared out at the battlefield, I couldn’t help but agree with her.

The tall silver building I’d noticed shining in the sunlight had been an eyesore against the backdrop of all that nature and history and it had taken me out of the experience.

Furrowing my eyebrows, I pulled up the map on my phone and zoomed in on the section where that building had to be. I clicked on the spot and the image that came up alongside the rates for the Bull Run Hotel was exactly the building I’d seen.

I scanned through the mixed reviews of the hotel, many people saying that being so close to the national park was a wonderful experience while others complained that seeing it against the horizon while standing on the battlefield was an unpleasant experience.

And, more importantly, the oldest review of the hotel was a glowing commentary on the hotel’s grand opening only a year prior. Which meant that while the hotel itself couldn’t have been the inspiration that spurred Holly’s passionate dissertation, it also meant she hadn’t lived long enough to see her worst fears realized.

I wasn’t sure if that was a blessing, or a thread I needed to pull on. Maybe both.

“Good morning!” Kenna said, waltzing into the kitchen with much more pep in her step than she had the day before. I hadn’t known if she was going to be up this early, if she planned to come to my check-in with Phoebe again today, but I’d made enough coffee for the both of us just in case and she wasted no time in filling her travel mug with what was left in the carafe.

“Morning.” I yawned around the word and closed the stack of pages, turning off my phone. “You’re happy this morning.”

“That’s because I have a surprise for you,” Kenna replied, a twinkle in her eye as she stood beside the table.

“Oh?” I asked warily. There had been plenty of surprises lately and more than half of them had involved Kenna spending some amount of money on me. If this was more of the same, the two of us were going to have a serious talk and with my mandatory check-in schedule soon, I wouldn’t have time for that kind of discussion until later. “Can it wait? I’ve got to get going or Phoebe will put out an APB on me.”

“Don’t worry.” Kenna’s grin widened. “This surprise requires an audience, and I think Phoebe is the perfect candidate. Come on, let’s go. We don’t want to keep her waiting.”

I followed Kenna out the door, patting Rogue’s head as I passed him and assuring him we would be home soon, watching as Kenna nearly vibrated out of her skin with excitement.

“Did you make a break in my case?” I asked, because that was the only thing I could think of that would have her this amped up, this early in the morning. Kenna took a sip from her travel thermos, but she couldn’t hide the grin on her face.

“That would be telling,” she replied as we stepped onto the elevator and she pushed the button to send us down to the garage. “And you’re not meant to be involved in your case. Just trust me, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, because I did trust her. She had more than earned that trust. Still, the last time Kenna had tagged along to my A.M. check-in things had not gone as planned. I decided to let her keep her secrets for now, just relieved she hadn’t bought me a new car or an all-expenses-paid trip to a non-extradition country.

I sat in the passenger seat and tried to return to reading Holly’s dissertation on the way to the cafe outside the Washington D.C. Field Office, but I couldn’t focus. Kenna had clearly figured something out and I couldn’t help but wonder what it was.

As soon as we found parking, Kenna was out of the car and headed into the coffee shop. We were a good ten minutes early and Phoebe hadn’t arrived yet, which felt like a win in my book. Kenna, despite having at least half a thermos of coffee in the car, went straight up to the cashier while I settled in at the table in the back.

Watching the room the same way I had two days ago, I took note of the agents and civilians sitting at each table. The same six agents that were here two days ago were here again today; at the same seats they were in the first time. A trio at a table by the door, a lone agent tucked up against the wall, and two women sitting across from each other, heatedly discussing the papers in front of them.

There were two civilians at the table next to mine, one of them checking the stroller beside her every few minutes. A new mom, probably, and by the way the other woman’s hair and nose shared a clear resemblance to the first she was here to meet with her sister.

The space only had three unoccupied tables, one of them still covered in a crumpled napkin and a ceramic mug meant for a latte. Whoever had been sitting there was long gone, only their mess left behind.

The bell on the door jingled and Phoebe walked in, clocking me right away and forgoing any coffee order in favor of getting our daily ritual out of the way and getting back to her job. I wondered if she regretted demanding these daily check-ins yet, or if she still felt certain that I was going to vanish without a trace once again.

“McHale,” Phoebe was curt as she stood across from me, not even bothering to sit down as she pulled out the mandatory check-in form.

“Richards,” I replied, matching her tone.

“Cavanaugh,” Kenna chimed in as she carried three to-go coffees over to the table. I bit back a grin as Phoebe nearly jumped out of her skin at Kenna’s appearance, clearly not as aware of her surroundings as she should have been.

She recovered quickly, but I didn’t miss the way her eyes narrowed when they fell on the three cups in Kenna’s hands.

“Are we making a habit of this?” Phoebe asked, even as she took the coffee Kenna offered her. I took mine as well, sending Kenna a grateful smile.

“If you mean daily mandatory check-ins, I think the mandatory part of it implies that we have to,” Kenna replied cheekily and I felt like I could see Phoebe’s blood pressure rising.

“These check-ins are mandatory for Avery McHale,” Phoebe pointed out. “You are not required to be here.”

“Except I am,” Kenna shot back. “Because it’s my rental car that gets us here, and my client who has to meet with you every day. Besides, I wouldn’t want to miss a moment of our banter, Agent Richards.”

“I’m so glad I can keep you entertained,” Phoebe deadpanned and then turned to look at me. “Could you please fill out that form, I’m on a tight schedule today.”

“You might want to clear that schedule,” Kenna cut in even as I began filling out the form. “I have something related to Avery’s case that I think you should be aware of.”

“You know, private investigators aren’t usually this forthcoming with law enforcement on their breakthroughs,” Phoebe pointed out, and it was a good point. Most of the time P.I.’s were known for getting themselves into too much trouble because they wanted to bring the criminal in themselves rather than let law enforcement take the glory. But I also knew that Kenna wasn’t doing any of this for glory.

“Normally, I would keep this to myself,” Kenna replied, nodding as if Phoebe’s perception of her were completely reasonable. “Right now, I’m more interested in proving that Hale is innocent and figuring out who actually killed an FBI agent in cold blood.”

“Alright, what have you got?” Phoebe asked, and Kenna grinned, glancing over at me long enough to send me a wink before she lifted her phone up, not quite handing it over to Phoebe before pulling back.

“First, you need context, or none of this will make sense,” Kenna said. Phoebe impatiently waved for her to continue. “When I first met Hale Hastings, who you know as Avery McHale, she was dealing with some strange issues with her apartment. The two of us did a stakeout and discovered that her landlord was sneaking into her apartment and moving things around, eating her food, and even let her dog out.”

“Right, the Simon Crawford case that your local detective was so worried would fall through the cracks if our suspect didn’t give a statement about it before handing over custody to me,” Phoebe said waving a hand for Kenna to hurry things along. “I read both of the cases that were so pivotal I couldn’t take a wanted fugitive into custody.”

“Oh, so you are a decent agent.” Kenna’s eyes lit up with excitement as she spoke. “If you know the details of the Simon Crawford case then you know the reason we started looking deeper into his whereabouts and eventually found him in a coma at the hospital after being mugged, is that Hale received a threatening gift basket that included photos of her that she did not consent to. We discovered that one of those photos was taken by the surveillance equipment hidden in her vents.”

“So you say, but from the report I read all you have are pictures of cameras in her vents and not the cameras themselves,” Phoebe pointed out. “For all we know you could have planted those, taken those photos, and then removed them. Besides, what does any of this have to do with Avery killing Monica?”

“Well,” Kenna said, frowning a little at Phoebe’s point about having faked the cameras, and by that logic having faked the stalkerish photos as well. She didn’t argue, though. She was far too focused on getting to the point that Phoebe so clearly wanted her to get to. “I’m less concerned with finding Monica’s killer, because that’s your job. My job is to convince you that Hale didn’t do it. And sending her to trial for a murder she didn’t commit doesn’t seem like your style, so as long as I do that, I’m happy.”

“And you think you have evidence that will exonerate her?” Phoebe asked, and Kenna finally turned her phone so that Phoebe could see what was on the screen. For my benefit more than anything, she explained.

“Lachlan Shepherd took that gift basket into custody along with all of the photographs that were inside it,” she said. “They ran all of it for prints and DNA. Aside from Hale and I, there was one partial print that they found on the inside of the cellophane packaging and you’ll never believe who it belongs to.”

“Who?” I asked, unable to stop myself. I needed to know. If there was a partial print identifying the person who had stalked me in Bend, there was a high chance that same person knew from the moment I arrived exactly who I was, and an even higher chance they were the reason I had to go on the run in the first place.

“ASAC Coal Shepherd,” Phoebe said, her voice ringing with the same disbelief I felt at hearing his name. Then she snatched the phone out of Kenna’s hand, grabbed the mandatory check-in form that I had idly signed while Kenna was explaining her train of logic, and gave each of us a pointed look. “You two follow me and don’t say another word. We’re taking this to SSA Briggs. Now.”

Half an hour later I stormed out of the Supervisory Special Agent’s office, absolutely steaming at his dismissal of the evidence that we had brought to him. Coal Shepherd’s fingerprint had been on the inside of the cellophane that had wrapped the gift basket holding photos of my entire first month in Bend.

I had no reason or ability to place it there myself, and neither did Kenna. And yet Michael Briggs thought he knew better than either of us.

Poor chain of custody had been his first claim, followed by no connection between my gift basket and Monica’s murder.

But the truth, the thing that I hadn’t expected him to say aloud but he had anyway, was that Coal Shepherd was a respected ASAC and I was a disgraced New Agent Trainee desperate to evade the murder charge hanging around my neck like an albatross.

Knowing that my temper was far too high to be allowed to stay in the Washington D.C. Field Office, I pushed past Kenna who was saying something about finding another way, and made my way towards the exit. Before I knew it, I was out on the sidewalk, the sun shining overhead and other people going about their business. None of them were fighting an uphill battle against a murder charge, but then again, none of them were taking much notice of me either.

Things could be worse, I reminded myself, and then clenched my fists and gritted my teeth, heading across the road as the lights changed color. I didn’t want to calm down or look on the bright side. I wanted to bring Coal Shepherd in for questioning and get to the bottom of why his fingerprint had been on the inside of the gift basket that had sent me spiraling and looking over my shoulder for any signs of a stalker the past two weeks.

I headed north up 4th street, knowing that any other direction would lead me directly to one monument or another. I didn’t want to face crowds of tourists right now. I just needed to keep moving. To get as far as possible from the smug face of the man who still, after all this time, was convinced I was the only person who could have killed Monica.

Briggs would rather be wrong and put an innocent woman in prison than be uncertain and risk anyone questioning him. But he wasn’t the only person in the world who could handle the details of this case.

Noah might not have the authority to bring Shepherd in about Monica’s murder, and, if I was being honest, the connection between that case and my stalker situation was tenuous at best, but he was OPR. There were any number of reasons an OPR agent might request that an ASAC meet him in DC. and all he would have to do⁠—

“Avery!” Phoebe’s voice shouted from half a block away. I flinched and glanced around, though no one in the area had any reason to think I was the same Avery McHale who had been wanted on the news until recently. I turned to glare at her as she approached. She had made a serious miscalculation if she thought that now was the best moment to start back up with claiming I was trying to flee.

“It’s Hale,” I told her under no uncertain terms. “I go by Hale now, and I have the legal DBA to do so. Please use my correct name.”

“Hale,” she said, stepping back just slightly, eyes widening in surprise like she hadn’t expected me to stand up to her like that. “Wait up a minute?”

“No,” I told her. She opened her mouth to argue, and I put up a hand. “You see me every morning at eight a.m. and that’s our check-in. Anything beyond that is you becoming obsessive, and I’m not afraid to file a restraining order and ask for a new supervising agent.”

“Okay, that’s probably deserved,” Phoebe replied, taking one step closer now, like she had regained her sense of authority. “I just wanted to talk, if we could.”

“I don’t think I want to talk to you right now,” I said. “I’m so sick of talking to people who don’t believe me, and I don’t have any energy left to argue with you people anymore.”

“I don’t want to argue,” Phoebe told me. “I’m on your side with this. It’s weird that Shepherd’s print was on that cellophane and irresponsible of Briggs to outright dismiss it without at least looking into it further.”

“You’re agreeing with me?” I asked. Phoebe nodded and then glanced around at the intersection we were standing at before tilting her head across the street and leading me to a patch of green in the middle of the city.

“Listen,” she said as she made a beeline for a park bench and sat me down. There was something earnest in her voice that caused me to follow along. “Something about this doesn’t add up. Briggs should have at least entertained the idea, given it was Shepherd’s own son who gathered the evidence. That in itself is strange enough. But to just dismiss it out of hand?” She shook her head. “No. Something’s not right.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” I said. “None of this makes sense. The stalker, Monica’s death…all of it.”

Phoebe sighed. “I don’t know that I believe this is some grand conspiracy, Av—Hale. Look at this from my perspective. The evidence lines up and you ran from the investigation. Everything points to you, so asking me to believe you’re innocent is like asking me not to believe my own eyes.”

“But it’s me,” I reiterated. “You know me, Phoebe. Or, at least I thought you did. What reason could I possibly have to kill Monica? What’s my motive? All I ever wanted was to be an FBI agent. To get to do what you’re doing right now. Killing Monica doesn’t get me that. It only fucks up my life in every way imaginable.”

Phoebe regarded me. “Listen, I’ll do what I can to convince Briggs to bring Shepherd in,” she said. “Not because I believe you, but because I prefer to keep things procedurally sound. And because it’s stupid not to check every angle of this case no matter what the truth turns out to be.”

“He’s not going to go for it,” I told her. “You heard him in there. He claimed that Lachlan could have accidentally transferred his father’s fingerprint onto the cellophane while collecting evidence. He’ll literally say anything to avoid accusing a higher up of any misconduct.”

“That’s because he’s in a complex position,” Phoebe pointed out. “Shepherd is the New York ASAC, he has a decorated history and the respect of everyone in the FBI who knows him or even knows about him. Briggs will need something more than a fingerprint on a gift basket to bring Shepherd in.”

“Okay, then what do we do?” I asked, leaning forward. This was just like old times, Phoebe and I discussing case law and procedure as we studied for our tests. The only thing missing was Marissa Weiss. I had to wonder how she was doing, if she had settled into being an FBI agent in Tucson.

“You don’t do anything. Just wait for me to look into this some more,” Phoebe told me and nodded along as I grimaced at her words. “I know, I hate it too, but if Shepherd is part of this then a single fingerprint isn’t going to be the only evidence he’s left behind. There will be connections, threads that lead back to him. So if you really want me to believe you’re innocent then you’ll wait and let us investigate. The procedures we use exist for a reason, Hale.”

“I know,” I told her. “They just don’t always protect the innocent throughout the entire process.”

She eyed me carefully, then leaned back on the bench, looking out across the path lined with trees on either side. “That friend of yours, Cavanaugh. She’s tenacious. You two are a lot alike.”

“Thank you?”

“She knew I’d start looking into your mother’s murder after yesterday morning, didn’t she?”

I looked down at my hands in my lap, twisting the loose threads on the sleeve of my shirt. “I think…yes. She figured you wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, she was right.” We both watched as a pigeon landed nearby, cautiously hopping closer, clearly expecting us to toss something tasty its way. “You know, that’s how I found you in Bend. The connection to your mother. I remembered how obsessed you were with finding her killer when we were roommates.”

“I know,” I told her. “I figured it out. You connected the dots when you saw a cold case charity with my mother’s maiden name, and then called and confirmed the timeline of my arrival in the area with the local M.E. who was on the board with me.”

“Damn,” she said, regarding me again, perhaps with new eyes. “You would have been a helluva FBI agent.” She immediately looked like she regretted the words. “Anyway, Cavanaugh’s mention of your mother made me go back and review my research as I was looking for you. Something came up that I’d dismissed at the time.”

“Dismissed?” I asked.

“I was…preoccupied,” she replied. “Maybe a little too preoccupied…with finding you. Anyway, it was a witness statement from your mother, from about eight years ago.”

“She died eight years ago,” I said, and Phoebe gave me a grim nod.

“This witness statement was filed a week before she died,” Phoebe told me. “It was meant to be connected to a case from seven years before that, but because the case had been closed and sealed it never properly made it into the file. I can’t give you access to the file itself. In fact, I can’t even access it. But if you go through the proper channels you should be able to access the witness statement. I don’t know if that will get you any closer to solving her murder, but maybe it will keep you out of trouble for a while.”

She gave me a wan smile before standing.

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head and following her lead. We crossed the street side by side, no longer completely at odds despite everything. I approached the Washington D.C. Field Office with more hope in my heart than I’d left it with. Not only was Phoebe partially on my side, at least when it came to properly following procedure on my case, but she’d given me something no one else had been able to in the past eight years.

“I know it’s a lot,” Phoebe told me, holding the door open for me to enter ahead of her. “But don’t get your hopes up. This could be nothing for all I know.”

“But,” I countered, refusing to cave to the nihilism that plagued her. “It could be everything.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“Do you really think Coal Shepherd is the one behind all this?” I asked as Kenna and I drove back to the penthouse. I was buzzing with energy, too much coffee and too many questions causing my mind to run on overdrive.

The fact that Briggs had dismissed the idea so quickly, pointing out all the holes in the evidence, had me doubting. Even if I knew I hadn’t framed ASAC Shepherd, Briggs was right that there were too many variables. Shepherd could have come across that cellophane some other way, or someone else could have put his print inside it just like they had put my prints on that knife.

Vienna Quinn has three layers of misdirection for every case she handles.

Maybe Coal Shepherd wasn’t involved in any of this and had simply been an easy scape goat, just like I was.

Except…

“I don’t know,” Kenna said. “But I do know that Lachlan wouldn’t have put his own father’s print in the system to find a match if he’d known that’s who it belonged to, I know I didn’t bribe anyone to do it, and I know that you didn’t place it there after opening the gift.” She paused, glancing at me. “You didn’t, right?”

“No!” I said, looking at her askance, horrified that she thought I might have. “How would I have even done that?”

“It’s okay, calm down,” Kenna assured me with a smile. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t starting to question it either. What if, somehow, Coal Shepherd’s prints were on my hand and came off on the cellophane when I opened it?”

“Wait, is that something that could have happened?” I asked, eyes going wide despite knowing that no, that didn’t happen. That was absurd. Kenna’s snort of laughter assured me as much even as I continued to think up ways that Coal’s print could have come into contact with that cellophane.

“The way I see it, there are only two possibilities,” Kenna said. “Either Coal Shepherd put that gift basket together, which makes him your stalker and possibly connected to Monica’s killer, or someone else put that print there while they put the basket together in the outlandish hope that you would hand it over to the police and have it run for prints while also hiding out as a fugitive yourself. Which one do you think is more likely?”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” I protested. “I didn’t even know who ASAC Shepherd was until I was already in Bend for a month, and he was only there for three days before he had to fly back to New York,” I told her. “He didn’t have time to stalk me for months, let alone curate an entire stack of photographs to gift me with after, what, murdering my mentor and framing me but not wanting me to go down for it badly enough to turn me in once he knew where I’d run off to?”

“Our job—my job—isn’t to make sense of the madness of a criminal mind,” Kenna told me. “My job is to convince the FBI that you are not the criminal they think you are. And based on what you just told me, Phoebe Richard’s might be starting to come around.”

“Yeah, she’s not the one you have to convince, though,” I pointed out. “It’s Briggs who needs convincing, and he’s nowhere near close.”

“Briggs has a stick up his—” Kenna started to say and then cursed and swerved into the lane to our right, narrowly avoiding a collision with a motorcyclist who had no respect for vehicles much larger than his. “Not the point. The point is, if we can convince Phoebe you’re innocent then not only does Mason have another person who will testify to your character if we do end up facing a trial, but she’ll put every FBI resource she can pull towards figuring out who did kill Monica. And she’s already given us our next lead towards untangling this whole mess. “

“If she can get the case unsealed,” I pointed out.

“It’ll be nice if she manages that,” Kenna agreed, pulling off the freeway and into our neighborhood. “But in the meantime, I think there’s something else we should take a look at.”

“Thanks, Madeleine,” Kenna said, hanging up the phone and giving me a sly smile. “It really pays to know people.”

“She can get us the witness statement?” I asked.

“She said she’ll have it in my inbox in twenty minutes,” Kenna confirmed. “Why don’t you tell me how your cold case is going in the meantime?”

“Well,” I said, waving towards the thick stack of paper sitting on the coffee table in front of me. I had carted it back inside after the drive home but hadn’t had the energy to dig back into it. “Holly Jones was passionate in pursuing a masters in history with a focus on historical preservation. She was killed on the battlefield of a historical site, and she opposed the encroachment of commercial tourism.”

“Is there a chance she upset someone in commercial tourism badly enough that they wanted her dead?” Kenna suggested and I nodded along.

“That was what I was thinking as well, but without anything to go off of and no chance that Quinn would tip me off to who hired her, I’m at a loss and stuck reading this massive dissertation.”

“What was her conclusion?” Kenna asked, and I frowned, shaking my head.

“I haven’t gotten there yet,” I replied. “I’m only about three pages in. Her writing is…dense.”

“Skip to the ending.” Kenna shrugged, and I stared at her, slack jawed at such a suggestion.

“Is that what you do?” I asked. “Skip to the end of a book and read all the spoilers before you even start? That’s…you can’t do that.”

“Hale, you can do whatever you want,” Kenna replied. “Plus, I enjoy a story better when I know what clues I’m looking for along the way. But this isn’t some fiction novel, it’s a dissertation. If you read her conclusion and it doesn’t give you a clue about the killer, then maybe you’ve saved yourself some time.”

“Maybe,” I said, glancing over at the stack of pages and considering Kenna’s suggestion. “Still…it feels, wrong somehow.”

“That will have to wait anyway, we have some different reading to do,” Kenna said, lifting her phone into view. “We’ve got your mom’s witness statement.”

“That was fast,” I said. “Would you like some privacy?” Kenna asked.

I shook my head. “No. It’s fine. Just…let’s just read it.” I appreciated the offer, but honestly right now all I wanted was to read my mother’s words in hopes that it might give me the clue I’d been looking for ever since I was fifteen.

I sat next to Kenna on the couch and leaned in to read it with her. My mouth was dry, my heart rate picking up speed. This was something my mother had written in the week before she died that I didn’t know about. Something that could lead to answers about who had killed her.

After all this time, everything I had done to put myself through college and join the FBI, and now there was finally a chance that I could understand what happened that night.

“On the night of October, 7th, 2007 my seven-year-old daughter ran out of the house after an argument. She was standing in the road, yelling back at me, when a car came around the corner at twice the speed acceptable for a neighborhood. The driver, who I was close enough to distinctly see was male, swerved around my daughter and crashed the car into the utility pole across the street. I took my daughter back inside and called 911, before going out to render aid. By the time I reached the vehicle the young man and young woman he was with were out of the car. The ambulance did not arrive in time to save Naomi Howell, but I am quite certain that she was not the one driving that night and her parents deserve to know the truth.” Kenna read the entire statement aloud, which was good because the moment she said the words crashed the car I had closed my eyes as the faint flicker of memories came back to me. “Signed, Alyssa McHale, October 5th, 2015.”

I remembered the sound of a car’s tires on pavement and a loud bang that I thought was my mother slamming the door open as she rushed outside, yelling at me to get back inside. I remembered her hands, too tight on my small arms, the warmth of them against my rain-soaked skin. The way she had squeezed my entire body so tightly as she carried me back inside, ordered me into my room and demanded I stay there until she came back.

I didn’t remember the car, or seeing the wreck. At least I didn’t think I remembered it, but I did remember sitting in my own car a few weeks ago watching a mother and son walking down the street. The flash of fear as he got too close to the road before she pulled him away. The flash of a car turning the corner that wasn’t really there.

“Naomi’s the third woman,” Kenna said softly. “The one Vienna alluded to.”

“But this happened eight years before my mom died,” I said, matching Kenna’s tone. “Why did she wait so long to make a statement?”

“I don’t think she did,” Kenna replied, sitting back and staring at me with an expression of sympathy. “From the tone of her words it sounds like she’s angry. I am quite certain, she says, as if someone’s questioning her judgement about whether Naomi Howell was the one driving.”

I pulled out my own phone, searching Naomi’s name and scanning the obituary, memorial posts, and comments on social media to confirm what Kenna was saying.

“The police wrote down that she was the one driving,” I confirmed.

“And these dates,” Kenna pointed out. “This is two days before the 7th anniversary of Naomi’s death. There’s a good chance your mom didn’t know the police thought Naomi was the one at the wheel until she read something about it in the lead up to the memorial. It’s clear that afterwards she turned in this witness statement to give peace to Naomi’s family, and possibly to get the case reopened so the guy who was with her could face charges for her death.”

“So, it was my fault,” I said, shaking my head. “Quinn said that no one blames me, that I was only a child, but that guy swerved around me and ended up hitting the pole.”

“He was the one speeding in a neighborhood, and who knows what else,” Kenna assured me, though it didn’t assuage the guilt that was welling up inside me. “More importantly, how did Quinn know about this case in your past, how it connects to your mother’s murder, and why does she seem to think that all these deaths around you are related?”

“My head hurts,” I told Kenna, closing my eyes again and shaking it, though that didn’t make it hurt any less. Was that really what happened? Had Naomi’s death somehow led to what happened to my mother?

“Hey, why don’t you go take a nap?” Kenna suggested, shifting away from me and standing up. “You’re not supposed to be investigating your own case anyway, even tangentially. I’ll figure all of this out and you make sure Rogue gives you some healing cuddles. I’m sure you need a little time to yourself to process all of this.”

“Thank you,” I told her, opening my eyes and pushing myself off the couch. I grabbed the dissertation, part of me wanting to focus on that instead of following her suggestions, but as soon as I reached the bed and had Rogue curled up next to me I realized there was nothing I wanted more than to forget everything I’d just learned.

Because despite never intentionally doing anything to hurt anyone, somehow three women were still dead because of me.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I was woken from my nap by the vibration of my phone against my hip where it was still tucked into the pocket of my jeans. I groaned, wiping the drool from my face and digging the phone out of my pocket.

It was an unknown number, of course, because there were very few people whose numbers were programmed into my phone. Still, it was a local area code and I’d given the number out to several people who had known Holly Jones.

Better to answer and face down a telemarketer than to let it go and end up playing voicemail tag with someone who might have more information on Holly’s case.

“Hello?” I answered, still bleary eyed and half asleep.

“This is Supervisory Special Agent Michael Briggs,” Briggs’ voice rang out through the speaker, louder than I liked, and I winced as I held the phone away from my face and realized I’d somehow answered on speakerphone.

Stupid touch-screen devices.

Hitting the button to turn off the speaker, I put it back to my ear, just catching the tail end of what he was saying.

“…pologize for the inconvenience,” he said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “We have some questions for you regarding your case.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch all of that,” I told him. “You said you have some questions for me?”

“Yes, we need you to come in,” Briggs said, a note of impatience entering his voice at having to repeat himself. “We’d like to schedule an interview to discuss⁠—”

“Stop,” I said, cutting him off. “You’re doing it again.”

“I’m sorry?” he said, sounding highly offended that I had interrupted him, as if he wasn’t going off-script and outside the law again.

“You’re trying to speak to me without my lawyer present,” I told him. “If you’d like me to come in and discuss any part of the case you will have to schedule that interview through my lawyer and you can bet he’s going to hear about this call.”

“Ms. McHale,” Briggs said, a stern note in his voice. “You were in my office not three hours ago making accusations against another well-regarded FBI agent, who has seniority and several medals of commendation. You cannot apply the law only when it suits you.”

“Actually, I came in to discuss a stalking case that was, as far as I was aware, entirely unrelated to my murder charge,” I told him. “And the same could be said to you, you know. You can’t just apply the law only when it suits you.”

“I will coordinate with your lawyer,” Briggs snapped. Clearly I’d struck a nerve with him and the feeling was mutual. I hung up without so much as a goodbye and flopped back down on the bed, somehow more exhausted after my nap than I had been before.

I stared up at the ceiling, mentally trying to track all the moving pieces in my life. I needed a murder board to make sense of it all, I realized. Or maybe three. One for Monica’s murder, one for my mother and Naomi Howell, and a third for the stalker I had picked up in Bend.

My phone began ringing again, and I sighed, pulling it into view only to sit up straight as I realized it was Noah who was calling me now.

“Hello?” I answered again.

“We need to talk,” Noah replied, curt and giving nothing away.

“If Briggs put you up to this,” I warned him, shaking my head. “He already knows he has to go through Mason to do an interview with me.”

“This isn’t about Briggs,” Noah said. There was something about the way that he was speaking that worried me. It was too clipped, urgent without giving anything away. But Noah had always had my back from the beginning and if he was this serious about something then I wasn’t going to dismiss it. “And it’s not a conversation I want to have over the phone so tell me where to meet you.”

“There’s this dog-focused brewpub nearby,” I said. “I can text you the address and meet you there in half an hour.”

“What’s going on? Can you even legally meet with me? Does Phoebe know about this?” I asked as I unclipped Rogue’s leash and watched him run off towards the other dogs in the park. Noah had met me at the door, a dark expression on his face that I had a hard time discerning the meaning of. When I first asked him, he had simply shook his head and waved me towards the building.

Now that we were on the other side, with a table to ourselves and some relative privacy, I had to know what was going on.

“Forget about Phoebe for a minute. Why didn’t you tell me you were being stalked?” Noah asked, and I stilled.

“I didn’t want you distracted from figuring out who killed Monica,” I replied slowly, voice low. I glanced around, but the picnic tables on either side of us were empty and everyone else was either focused on their dog or their beer and conversation.

“And it never occurred to you that the two might be connected?” He asked.

“Not until a few days ago,” I replied. “And by then I was already in the process of getting booked and we didn’t really have a chance to talk.”

“Hale,” Noah said, exasperation in his voice. “You should have told me.”

“I see that now,” I said, running my hands through my hair in frustration and then freezing again as I realized it was a habit I’d picked up from watching him do the same thing so many times. “Look, it all seemed unrelated and unimportant at first. Kenna and I caught my landlord waltzing into my apartment and he made it seem like it was just a power trip. I didn’t have any leverage, so I moved in with Kenna. Then, after you left the Fourth of July barbecue, I remembered a package that had been delivered to my door by mistake and I opened it. That’s when I found the photos.”

“And that’s when you should have called me,” Noah broke in, but I glared him down and kept talking.

“I told Kenna the next day, and she came to the same conclusion I did; that the photos were taken by my weird stalker landlord,” I explained. “As far as I knew, Kenna had it handled. Even when she found the cameras in the vents of my old apartment⁠—”

“She found what?” Noah’s voice got louder and I glanced around to make sure we weren’t drawing any undue attention. There was one woman who had looked up at the sound of raised voices, concern in her expression. I sent her a quick, reassuring smile before turning back to Noah.

“We brought in the police,” I told him. “By the time they got into the apartment to look for the cameras, they were already gone. And, again, we both thought it was Simon Crawford. The moment I realized the gift basket might be from someone else I told Detective Shepherd.”

“Who, it turns out, is the son of the FBI agent you now think framed you and killed Monica,” Noah finished and I shrugged, looking away. I didn’t know what to think except that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this, let alone talking about it. “You’re making it very difficult to pull together a proper case for you against whoever did frame you that doesn’t make you look complicit, you know.”

“You’ve opened a case where I’m the victim?” I asked, incredulous. “There’s no way the FBI would allow that.”

“Maybe not the usual chain of command, but maybe you’ve forgotten that I’m OPR. I was given the go-ahead to open and investigate an Office of Professional Responsibility case the moment I identified those changes that were made from Director Grant’s account. I know the murder charge is the big, splashy case that has everyone’s attention but at minimum we have a leak in our system and at worst we have a respected FBI agent who is also a corrupted criminal framing you for murder.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a slight relief at hearing there was an official OPR case. After as many times as I’d said or thought the words ‘I was framed’ they had begun to feel empty and fruitless.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Noah said. “I still have a lot of work to do to make an airtight case, and you having a stalker might just be the angle I need to work to get it there. Do you have those photographs that were sent to you?”

“Not on me,” I told him. “Kenna handed them over to Lachlan Shepherd to be included in the case against Simon Crawford.”

His eyes practically left his skull. “So you’re telling me the son of the man you suspect has been stalking you and quite possibly framed you for murder is the one now in charge of all the evidence that points towards his father as the culprit?” Noah’s voice was getting louder again, and I realized this was the most riled up I had ever seen him. Gone was the easygoing facade of a NAT who was too talented for his own good. This was Noah Delgado unvarnished and unprotected by layers of technology between us.

Another glance at the woman a few tables over told me she was still watching, still concerned. This clearly wasn’t the place to be having this conversation. I whistled for Rogue and tilted my head towards the exit.

“Maybe,” I replied, a sheepish look spread across my face. I searched Noah’s expression as the two of us stood up, not liking what I saw there. “You don’t think Lachlan would destroy evidence for his father, do you? He was the one who told Kenna his father’s print was on that gift basket.”

“That wasn’t something he could hide once the prints were run. Other people would have known, he would have had no choice,” Noah pointed out as I clipped the leash to Rogue’s harness and we headed towards the door. I gave the dog a few treats on the way out to convince him to leave early, which worked surprisingly well. “I don’t know what kind of man Lachlan is in this sort of situation, but the one thing I do know is that we need to get those photographs in custody right now.”

“Kenna!” I called as I entered the penthouse, Noah on my trail. “Kenna I need to talk to you!”

“What’s going on?” Kenna called back from her bedroom, emerging with a wild look in her eyes, panicked by the urgency in my voice. “Is everything okay?”

“You gave the gift basket photos to Lachlan,” I told her. “And now Lachlan’s father is implicated as the one who put that gift basket together. We need to make sure he doesn’t⁠—”

“Wait,” Kenna snapped, her eyes going to Noah as she put the pieces together. “I know where this is going. Lachlan wouldn’t destroy evidence.”

“Not even to save his father?” Noah asked.

“No,” she said, planting her foot. “He’s not that kind of man.”

“Good,” Noah replied. “Then he won’t have a problem sending those photos to me.”

“You’ll have to request them through the proper channels,” Kenna told him, crossing her arms. “Lachlan Shepherd is the most honorable man I know. I would hang Hale’s entire defense on that fact if I had to.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Noah told her, and then turned to me. “I should go. I need to get eyes on those photos and see if there’s anything I can tie back to Coal.”

“If you just want to look at the photos themselves, I have copies,” Kenna offered and both Noah and I turned to look at her. “What? I make copies of everything.”

“Kenna, why didn’t you just say that to begin with?” I asked, exasperated.

“Because I don’t like accusations,” she replied. “Especially when they’re unfounded.”

“Would you be willing to show me those copies?” Noah asked, his voice more measured as he read Kenna’s body language. She looked at me then, asking a silent question that I appreciated but did not need the courtesy of.

“If he wants to see them, show them to him,” I told her. “He’ll get the originals soon enough.”

“I know, but it’s your privacy,” Kenna said, even as she moved to the satchel tucked against the wall next to the hallway.

She picked it up, pulled a tablet of some kind out that I had never seen before, and unlocked it. She walked to the kitchen and sat down, setting it on the table. Noah and I followed her, taking the other two seats and watching as she navigated through several folders before turning the screen fully towards Noah.

I could only see a portion of it, but I was familiar enough with those images to see that Kenna had taken both a physical photograph of each one and had photocopied them as well.

“They’re in the same order Hale found them in,” Kenna told him. “Just swipe to the left to see each one.”

Noah nodded and I watched his eyes as he searched each image for any clue. Anything that might stand out and point him in the right direction to look next.

“These are all after you arrived in Bend,” he noted.

“I noticed that as well,” I told him. “They’re chronological, as far as I can tell. I don’t recognize some of them, but⁠—”

“This one,” Noah said, stopping on a close-up of my face that I hadn’t been able to place. There was nothing special about it as far as I could tell, but Noah was staring at it with wide, horrified eyes.

“What?” Kenna asked, turning the tablet to look at the image. It didn’t look like anything special, just my dyed dark hair still damp from a shower and roughly cut, a wood panel wall behind me.

“This image wasn’t taken in Bend,” Noah told me, turning the screen fully towards me and pointing at the barely-there edge of a metal sign hanging on the wall, cropped along the edge of the photo. “I remember this sign. It was in that diner you and I met in, when you decided you were done running.”

“Tobacco Hill Cafe,” I supplied, because knowing where I was at all times was a habit now. Much like Vienna Quinn always had an alibi to keep her name cleared, so did I.

“Hale,” Noah’s voice was grave now, and he looked genuinely scared. “This photograph was taken from my point of view.”

“What?” I shook my head and wrinkled my nose. That didn’t make any sense. Not only had Noah been the one to keep me from officially being arrested by sending me on the run, if he had taken this photo while we were in that diner I would have noticed.

“I don’t understand,” Kenna chimed in, and I made a noise of agreement, waving for Noah to explain.

“We were both on high alert at the time,” Noah said. “I don’t remember anyone else in that diner aside from the waitress and she was never directly behind me. But this photograph looks like it was taken from right behind me. Almost as if I wasn’t there.”

“You never left your seat,” I told him, certain of that. Noah had arrived first, and I had slid into the booth across from him. We’d talked, worked out the next steps to get me to Oregon and in contact with Trick, and then I’d left. This photo would have been impossible unless it had been taken straight from Noah’s memory of me.

Or…

“Were you wearing a wire?” I asked, trying to keep the accusation out of my voice. Noah was an OPR agent who had released a murder suspect in the dead of night. It would make sense that he might create an insurance policy for himself in case it turned out that I was the killer. Or in case his bosses discovered what he’d done, and he needed to prove that he was managing me the entire time.

“Of course not,” Noah denied, and despite my best efforts I must have sounded at least a little accusatory because he looked insulted that I had even thought to ask the question.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember that moment, to go back and see the space again. The diner was secluded; only four cars in the parking lot. Mine, Noah’s, and two staff vehicles that were pulled off to the side to leave the spaces in the front for the customers.

There were knick-knacks and road signs all over the walls, a line of booths running along the front, one for each windowpane. Half a dozen table-and-chair sets between the booths and the counter. And not a single other soul in that room aside from Noah and I once the waitress had left.

Noah was right, she’d always approached from the side while taking our orders and delivering our food. There was no way she could have taken a photo from that angle that would result in this image.

There could have been a camera hidden in one of the knick-knacks, but even then I didn’t remember one on the far wall behind Noah, clear across the diner. It would have had to sit just above that stupid ballcap that was perpetually on his head—with the Mug+Shots logo—something I was fond of now but hadn’t really understood back when…

“Your hat,” I said, looking him over and finding that he wasn’t wearing it for once. “The Mug+Shots hat you’re always wearing. Where is it?”

“It’s in my car,” Noah replied. His brow was wrinkled, not understanding the implications of what I was suggesting for a moment before his eyes went wide and he shook his head like he didn’t think it was possible.

“I need to see it,” I told him, and he didn’t argue. Instead, he quickly led the way down to the parking garage and Kenna and I followed, leaving Rogue to chew on an antler Kenna had purchased.

Noah unlocked his trunk and moved to pull the hat out, but I held up a hand to stop him. Absolutely silent in case there was audio involved, I looked at the hat sitting in the trunk. It had been tossed in there without a care, and was sitting on its side, the logo facing the right interior of the car.

I reached in to pick it up but hesitated as I remembered my training. Looking around at the duo behind me, I lifted my hands to indicate I needed something that would keep my fingerprints off the potential evidence.

Noah pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of his pocket and passed them over. Once I was properly equipped, I lifted the side of the hat and flipped it, scanning the interior. Inside, where the embroidery of the Mug+Shots logo should have shown the messy back side of the design, there was nothing. The entire interior of the hat had a layer of black fabric hiding the stitching altogether.

I took a step back and closed the trunk, tilted my head for a moment as I considered, and then gestured for the two of them to follow me into the stairwell before speaking.

“You’re familiar with the merch that Mug+Shots sells, right?” I asked Kenna, and she nodded just like I expected. “Do all of the hats have that smooth fabric interior?”

“No, I don’t know any hat manufacturers that would do that. And Trick certainly doesn’t make enough in merch to be fussing over hiding the interior of a hat,” she replied, glancing over at Noah. I could see the realization dawning on him, horror quickly following after.

“Then I would bet everything that someone altered that hat, and that once we open it up, we’re going to find some kind of camera inside,” I said, and Noah flinched, turning to meet my gaze.

“I wore that hat every day during training,” he said. “I loved that thing.”

“Where did you get it?” I asked. “Did you buy it?”

“No,” Noah shook his head. “Trick sent it to me, just after I was assigned to go undercover at Quantico. It was in a box with a note that said to represent the PNW while I was away. Except…I never told Trick where I was going.”

“If you’re implying that my brother is the one who has been stalking Hale,” Kenna’s voice rose, turning defensive, but Noah quickly calmed her with a short shake of his head.

“No, I’m saying I don’t think the hat was from Trick at all,” he said, eyes going distant before falling on me once again. “But whoever sent it did so knowing I was about to join you as a NAT for five months of training. They knew…and they used me to keep an eye on you this entire time.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I walked into the Washington D.C. Field Office with Mason on my left and Kenna on my right. Somewhere in this building I knew Noah Delgado was still suffering from the realization that he had played an unwitting part in my stalker’s ability to keep tabs on me, not just in Bend but all the way back to the first day I stepped on the FBI Academy campus.

Elsewhere, a forensics team was no doubt pulling apart that ball cap to find the micro camera inside, Phoebe was attempting to convince a judge to unseal the case that seemed to be the key to my mother’s murder, and Briggs was still convinced I was the one who had killed Monica Park.

That was why Mason and I were here, to allow Briggs to conduct the interview he so desperately wanted. And Kenna was here because…well because she wanted to see this through, even if they wouldn’t let her in the interview room.

I thought she had decided to come along as my emotional support for before and after, but the moment the three of us made it through security and into the building proper she waved and made a comment about following up on a lead before disappearing down a hallway like she had the entire layout of the building memorized already.

Knowing Kenna, she’d likely pulled up a visitor’s map and memorized it before we arrived. Or worse, she’d somehow gotten her hands on the blueprints and someday the FBI would come knocking at our door asking after her intentions.

That was a problem for another day, I decided, and followed Mason to SSA Michael Briggs’ office. We stopped outside and Mason turned to pin me with a serious look.

“He’s going to try to turn things around on you, but there’s no rush for you to answer,” he told me. “Anything you aren’t sure you should say, don’t say it. I’ll defend your fifth amendment rights until I’m blue in the face and he’s ready to throw us back out.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Avery, the goal here is not to help this man find answers,” Mason continued, reaching out to rest a hand on my forearm for the briefest of moments before he seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled back again. “The goal here is to appear as cooperative as possible without giving him anything else to use against you. Understand?”

“I understand,” I told him, and I didn’t just mean that I understood what he was saying. I also understood what he wasn’t saying, what he couldn’t say right now. That moment between us in the SUV had been so charged, and the way he’d pulled back—both in the SUV and in my life in the days that followed—made sense. He was my defense attorney and the attraction growing between us wasn’t simply inconvenient.

It was dangerous.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Mason knocked on the door to Briggs’ office, satisfied he’d gotten his message across and that I was as prepared for this interview as I could be.

Briggs opened the door and waved us in. I was surprised, considering I’d expected him to throw me into another interrogation room and maybe even lock the door again. I didn’t trust this man as far as I could throw him.

Still, he was the one in charge of figuring out who actually killed Monica, and if I couldn’t convince him it wasn’t me, then I was going to have to face a trial and all the bad media representation that came with it.

“Thank you for coming in today,” Briggs said. “We just have a few questions to go over and then you’ll be on your way.”

I didn’t say anything and neither did Mason, so SSA Briggs continued.

“First, we have your phone logged on our intake form, but we do not have it in evidence,” Briggs said and I raised a judgmental eyebrow at him. He was all but admitting their failure to keep the evidence secure and none of that sounded like a question.

“I was cooperative in handing over all items and evidence that night,” I agreed, remembering the gut-punch feeling that came with Noah informing me that the phone had vanished. That had been the day he suggested someone inside the FBI had framed me, and that I should go into hiding until we could clear my name.

“I’m hoping you’ll be just as cooperative today,” SSA Briggs told me, not even glancing in Mason’s direction. “If you return the cell phone to us, we can continue to investigate a potential thread of evidence that would substantiate your claim of being lured to Monica’s residence that night.”

I was floored at those words, looking to Mason with total bafflement.

“Are you implying that you believe my client was the one who removed her own phone from evidence after handing it over?” Mason asked, and Briggs barely glanced at him before looking back at me.

“We will be willing to overlook a tampering with evidence charge if you provide the phone today,” Briggs told me. I continued to stare at him, part of me still uncomprehending how he thought I was the one who had taken my phone out of evidence. The other part of me, the part that had been trained to be an FBI agent just like he was, recognized something in the way he was bargaining like this.

Briggs was desperate to find my phone because someone higher up was putting pressure on him, possibly even blaming him for the break in the chain of custody that had allowed my phone to vanish in the first place.

And maybe, just maybe, Briggs was facing blame for my escape that night as well.

The truth was that he should have arrested me rather than simply detaining me. Even with the print match pending verification, it was Briggs’ decision to lock me in the interrogation room without an official arrest that had allowed Noah to help me escape.

“I can assure you, Supervisory Special Agent,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “When you do find who took that phone, you’ll finally be on the right path to putting Monica’s killer away. Until then, I’m sure your boss will understand my so-called lack of cooperation in supplying you with a phone I do not have. Especially when I file a complaint of misconduct against you for losing the phone in the first place.”

“Agent McHale,” Briggs snapped, falling back on the patterns he was familiar with, the power that the Bureau’s hierarchy gave him as he tried to put me in my place with an authoritative tone. I wasn’t an agent anymore, though, and the only power this man had over me was the power I gave him. Even once I was facing a set trial date, it would be the prosecutor, judge, and jury who held my fate in their hands.

This man had nothing over me, and I wasn’t about to let him push me around.

As I opened my mouth to tell him so, a knock came at the door and then it swung open before Briggs could muster a reply. Phoebe’s head popped into the room and she took in the scene in front of her for a moment but didn’t look apologetic for interrupting as she refocused her attention on her boss.

“SSA Briggs,” she said. “I’ve found something I think you’re going to want to see.”

I stood in the conference room where Phoebe had led us, Noah and Kenna already standing over a pile of documents they were discussing. Phoebe’s interruption seemed to have distracted Briggs not only from the interview he was trying to conduct but from realizing that Mason and I had followed them into the room.

Phoebe looked right at me before closing the door, telling me she knew I was there and had decided for whatever reason not to mention it.

I stepped into a corner, the wall at my back and out of eye-line of Briggs just in case he noticed me and decided to send me away. As much as I had tried my best to stay out of my own case, I needed to know the truth, and I needed to know the FBI was handling everything professionally rather than simply deciding certain evidence wasn’t worth following because it didn’t lead them back to their obvious suspect.

“Why is she here?” SSA Briggs asked, gesturing towards Kenna. “We don’t need the help of an amateur investigator to solve this.”

“I am the private investigator on record for proving the innocence of Avery McHale,” Kenna replied, clearly taking offense at the man’s assessment of her as an amateur.

“What you are is not FBI,” Briggs argued. I looked to Phoebe, , and I could see that even she was losing patience with Briggs’ grandstanding.

“McKenna Scott has brought some potential evidence to my attention,” Phoebe stepped in, putting herself between SSA Briggs and Kenna much like Mason had put himself between her and I when she showed up at my door. “It was a thread I didn’t put much stock in, but I wanted to do my due diligence so that Ms. McHale’s lawyer couldn’t claim otherwise in court.”

“I take it this potential evidence has become relevant, then?” Briggs asked, crossing his arms and glancing down at the file folder and pages spread out on the table before looking back up at Phoebe. There was something about how Phoebe presented herself, how she spoke and how her arms remained clasped behind her back like she was standing at attention, that caused Briggs to warm to her in a way I hadn’t seen him do with anyone else.

“I believe so,” Phoebe answered. “If I may explain?”

“Please do,” Briggs said, which was more polite than the get on with it I had expected from him. He clearly respected Phoebe more than anyone else in the room. I had to hand it to Kenna. She couldn’t possibly have known Briggs would listen to Phoebe, but she had known that the right way to convince the FBI of my innocence was to convince Phoebe to spearhead any clues that might exonerate me.

It seemed like her plan was working quite well.

“What I’m about to say is going to sound outlandish at first, sir,” Phoebe prefaced, still holding her military stance and looking Briggs directly in the eye. “But I think there’s enough coincidence here that we can’t consider it coincidence anymore. To start, you need to know that three women have died around Avery McHale. Monica, her mother Alyssa McHale, and a young woman named Naomi Howell. And I’ve come to believe that all three cases are connected.”

“Three deaths would make her a serial killer,” Briggs said, and he sounded like he liked the idea of that. He wouldn’t have simply caught the person who murdered an FBI agent, but also uncovered a serial killer in the process, which was certainly an accomplishment worth awarding. I scowled at him from my corner, watching him jump to conclusions about me before he knew all the facts. But Mason was standing beside me, another onlooker in this strange moment. He wrapped a hand around my wrist, tapping his index finger against the soft inner section where my tendons moved against his fingertips as I clenched my hands, holding myself back.

I glanced over at him. He gave a slight shake of his head, a warning to keep quiet, and then looked away again and dropped my wrist like nothing had ever happened.

I could still feel his fingertips pressing against my pulse point though.

“Ms. McHale had a strong alibi for her mother’s death,” Phoebe said, quickly unraveling Briggs’ new theory without actually telling him he was wrong. “But there does seem to be a connection between Naomi Howell dying in a car crash and Alyssa McHale being murdered in her home seven years later. It’s tenuous, but it appears that Mrs. McHale may have been killed to keep her from revealing something about Ms. Howell’s death.”

“And what does this have to do with Monica’s murder?” SSA Briggs tapped his foot, clearly becoming impatient, but he was still listening and so was I.

What did Naomi’s death and my mother’s murder have to do with Monica Park, other than all three being connected to me?

“Monica Park was looking into Alyssa McHale’s death,” Phoebe replied. “We know this from evidence collected at her residence and from Avery McHale’s own statements regarding how they met and how she claims she was lured to Monica’s house that night,” Phoebe explained patiently, laying out every detail in just the right order to finally make sense of the connection between all the women in my life who had died. “If she found evidence that implicated someone in Alyssa’s murder then we must consider that person would have far more motive than Avery did to kill Monica.”

“And we do know that Monica was on to something,” Noah added, not looking in my direction.

“You think you know who killed Alyssa McHale,” Briggs surmised, and his body started to relax as intrigue took over. “And you think the same person killed Monica and framed Avery in the process, just to keep it covered up.”

“We do,” Phoebe said, and my heart started to race. The FBI thought they knew who had killed my mother. At least, two agents in the FBI thought they did. I bit my lip to keep from making a sound. I wasn’t about to screw this up by reminding everyone I was in the room. If there was even a shred of new evidence regarding my mother’s murder, I needed to know about it.

I needed to know who had done this, who had ruined my life over and over again.

“Sir,” Noah cut in, and I felt the urge to scream as I sensed the way he was about to couch the information in platitudes and caution rather than come right out and say it. “The accusation we’re about to make, it could ruin our careers if we’re wrong.”

“And it could skyrocket those careers if you’re right,” Briggs pointed out. “Stop stalling and tell me who you think did all of this.”

“We know for certain now that Avery has been stalked since she began at the FBI, if not longer,” Phoebe told him. “Between the camera found in Agent Delgado’s hat and the records surrounding his undercover assignment to the same training class as Avery, there’s no doubt about that. And now that we’ve unsealed the car crash file for Naomi Howell, we have a third piece of evidence pointing to the same man. Coal Shepherd.”

The moment Phoebe said his name it was like my ears had filled with cotton, and all I could hear was my own heartbeat.

Had Coal Shepherd killed my mother to keep her from getting Naomi Howell’s case re-opened? Had he killed Monica to stop her from pointing a finger at him? Had he framed me for Monica’s death because he knew if I became an FBI agent I would eventually find the case that had caused him to kill my mother and put the pieces together?

I felt fingers around my wrist again, gentle and comforting this time. I blinked and looked over at Mason, who sent me a look of concern and mouthed, are you okay?

I nodded, looking away from him before I could fall apart the way I had in the SUV when I was released on bail. Right now, all Kenna, Noah, and Phoebe had were theories and a loose connection between three deaths that all seemed to have a connection to Coal Shepherd in some way.

“…not going to accuse an honored and well respected ASAC of murder and criminal conspiracy, tampering with a crime scene document, and whatever else this theory of yours could bring up against him,” Briggs was saying as I tuned back in to the conversation.

“Sir,” Phoebe said, as stern as I imagined she would dare get with a superior. “Lachlan Shepherd was the other person in the car the night Naomi Howell died, and Alyssa’s witness statement puts him behind the wheel. If Alyssa had lived, then that case would have been re-opened, and ASAC Shepherd’s son would have been charged with intoxicated vehicular manslaughter at best. That’s enough to motivate him to kill her, don’t you think?”

“What I think is that you are toeing a very dangerous line,” Briggs told her. “For all you know, Lachlan could be the one covering up his own crimes. Or all of this could simply be coincidental.”

“We don’t allow our hearts, our fear, or our doubts to cloud our investigations,” Phoebe shot back. “That’s what you told me when I joined this task force. If Shepherd is innocent, then following procedure will prove it, but we cannot simply ignore this line of questioning. Sir.”

Briggs stared Phoebe down and everyone else in the room remained silent, watching their standoff and waiting to see what Briggs would say. Across the room I caught Kenna’s eye and she sent me a sympathetic look. She had been just as quiet as Mason and I throughout all the back and forth between the agents, and I realized she was doing the same thing I was; hoping they wouldn’t realize she was still in the room.

But none of what Phoebe said was news to her. She had been here, with Phoebe, uncovering the evidence that pointed towards Coal Shepherd not only killing Monica, but also my mother. All to protect Lachlan, who Kenna knew and trusted and cared about.

As devastating as it was to realize that I was in the road when he swerved, I couldn’t imagine what he had been feeling all these years, knowing he was the one driving when Naomi died, knowing at the very least that he had lied to the police about who was driving or that his father had done so for him before sealing the case.

And now, if we were right, all of that was about to come back out in the open and wreck his life.

“Fine,” Briggs finally said, and Kenna and I both returned our focus to him. “I want you to get a warrant on all his financial information, quietly. I’ll call him in for a routine consultation so that he’s in D.C. in case you do find anything, but we will not be alerting him or interrogating him about this development until you can provide some financial connection to any of these very circumstantial elements. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Phoebe agreed and Briggs stormed out, not giving me or Mason a second glance.

“Well,” Kenna said, “That went better than I expected.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“For what it’s worth, I think this is a terrible idea,” Kenna said the next day as the two of us sat in chairs that had plenty of padding and yet still managed to be uncomfortable. We were in the lobby of the Washington D.C. Field Office, watching people come and go. I’d come for my daily check-in and had chosen to stick around when Phoebe had let it slip that Coal Shepherd would be arriving in the next hour.

“He’s spent enough time watching me without my knowledge or permission,” I told her. “Turnabout is fair play.”

“That’s a healthy mindset,” Kenna quipped and I rolled my eyes before turning my gaze back to the dissertation in front of me. After another evening of trying to make my way through the beginning of the thesis, I had decided to follow Kenna’s advice and read the last ten pages first.

“Thank you for being here with me,” I said, glancing up from the dissertation every few seconds just in case I missed him coming in. “I know staking out the FBI lobby isn’t the best use of my time, or yours. You don’t have to stay.”

“Of course I do,” Kenna replied, and then didn’t expand whatsoever. Instead, she also turned her focus to the dissertation I was reading. “How is the Holly Jones case going?”

“Slow,” I replied, “But you were right about skipping ahead. The writing in the back half is looser, more a stream of consciousness. I think the beginning is so dense because she’s spent too much time trying to fit all her ideas into one manifesto and overworked every sentence to death.”

“Brutal criticism for a woman who’ll never have a chance to finish what she started,” Kenna said, and I blanched. She was right, of course. The words on these pages dripped with Holly’s passion for historical preservation and no one else had read them since her death. It was my job to find her killer, but that didn’t mean disrespecting the dead in the process.

“Sorry,” I murmured. I turned the page and paused to find a note in the margins.

7/27 @ 6:30

The day Holly died. And now I had a general time when she was set to meet her killer. She hadn’t written a name or location. Nothing that would guarantee a conviction.

Still, it bolstered me, confirmed that I was on the right track.

“Listen to this,” I said, running a finger along the page as I read it aloud. “The evidence of my thesis can be seen in the city council’s uninformed decision to rezone lot number 240231631 from residential to commercial. This unremarkable action was decided without any consideration for the nearby historical environment and the plans that the Havemeyer Real Estate Development team (can I specifically call them out or do I need to rewrite this to be theoretical or unidentifying? Confirm with thesis advisor) have submitted for their hotel make it quite clear that the building will be visible from the Manassas National Battlefield Park. In fact, after discussing the plans with Mrs. Havemeyer herself, I have been informed that being able to see the battlefield—and therefore be seen from the battlefield—is a feature the hotel is proud to offer.”

“So Holly was harassing the developer for the project,” Kenna said. “And possibly working to have the rezoning retracted. People have killed for less.”

“It’s certainly…” I started to say and then trailed off as the blond head of hair so similar to Lachlan’s appeared in the doorway. I watched as Michael Briggs and Coal Shepherd made their way towards security together. Shepherd said something under his breath and Briggs threw his head back and laughed, both showing their badges to the guard and neither noticing nor paying me any attention.

“If you follow them through security Briggs could claim that you’re tampering with the case and breaking your bail agreement,” Kenna told me before I could even move to stand.

“Briggs can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” I replied. “Did you see that? He’s laughing, acting like Shepherd’s best friend. Like that man isn’t central to the destruction of everything important in my life.”

“Hey, I know,” Kenna said, grabbing my arm to keep me from getting up and following. I looked towards her, my eyes pleading with the words I couldn’t say. Because I knew she was right. If I followed them, it would compromise both the case and my limited freedom. Kenna stared back for a long moment, willing me to stay. Something in my expression must have affected her, though, because she let go of my hand and stood up. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to go track down this Havemeyer woman and stay out of Briggs’ sight, and I am going to go visit my new favorite FBI agent and offer to help go through the financial records while I keep an eye on Shepherd and let you know what’s going on.”

Charlotte Havemeyer was nothing like I expected her to be. The petite woman, sporting an A-line bob and a white-and-yellow summer dress, had agreed to sit down for brunch with very little explanation outside of wanting to discuss the details of one of the properties she had developed.

A part of my mind was still back in that lobby, watching Coal Shepherd walk into the field office with no indication that he knew he was suspected of being the reason Monica Park was dead.

If Briggs had taken the same precautions with me, there was a high chance I would be sitting behind bars or worse. I certainly would have answered all his questions, non-the-wiser to his suspicions that I was a murderer.

I wouldn’t have asked for a lawyer until they already had my statement, confirmation on my prints, and cuffs around my wrists. I couldn’t imagine how that version of my life would have gone, what public defender I would have been assigned. Certainly not Mason Campbell, who had done more in a few days than any other defense attorney I could hope to have if I hadn’t fled to Bend.

Now, I was free to attempt to solve Holly Jones’ murder while others worked to solve the cases attached to my name.

“How can I help you today, Ms. Hastings?” Charlotte asked once we were seated across from each other, waters and menus on the table in front of us. I scanned the menu for a moment, checking for what I already knew I wanted, and then looked up and met Charlotte’s eyes.

“I’m working on a project in relation to the Manassas National Battlefield Park,” I told her. “I understand you were the real estate developer for the Bull Run Hotel?”

“Yes, I was,” Charlotte sounded proud of the accomplishment and if she had any idea that I was making connections between the hotel and the murder on the battlefield, she didn’t show any signs of worry.

“This may be a sensitive subject,” I said, leaning in a little and dropping my voice low. “But I noticed that there are an abnormal number of reviews for the hotel that are simply complaints about how it can be seen from the battlefield.”

“What kind of project did you say you were working on?” Charlotte asked, dropping her eyes to the menu in front of her and feigning disinterest. She wasn’t very good at it. Charlotte struck me as the type of woman who wore her heart on her sleeve and was more familiar with a bluff as an interesting landmark rather than an action she could pull off.

“I didn’t,” I replied. “Does it bother you, that so many people have given your property a negative review based on its mere presence?”

“No,” Charlotte replied, but her voice went up a little and she had begun to tear her napkin into little pieces on the table in front of her.

“Mrs. Havemeyer,” I said, letting a gentleness creep into my voice. “It would be reasonable if it did bother you. Anyone would understand if you were upset that the hotel you designed and built was being degraded for something you couldn’t control.”

“But I could have,” Charlotte said, and then quickly looked up at me, eyes going wide. She clearly hadn’t meant to say it, but the truth was out now, settling between us. The confessions quickly came spilling out after. “I knew people would be able to see the hotel from the battlefield, because you can see the battlefield from the hotel. That was part of the design. But I shouldn’t have listened to Rick. If we had moved the hotel just a block or two farther away, we could still have increased tourism without ruining the view of the monument. She was right, and I’ll never live that down.”

“Who was right?” I asked, but I already knew.

“There was this young woman,” Charlotte explained. “She came by the work site and my office several times, talking about how our hotel plans were going to ruin the historical preservation. She even had me convinced to look into other properties a few blocks away, but when Rick found out I was thinking about pushing back the construction and starting over with the location, he flipped out and threatened to pull his funding. I think he must have scared that poor girl off because I spent days trying to think of ways to explain why I couldn’t move the project, but she never came back around.”

I stared at Charlotte, trying to decide if she was being honest about her experience. It was clear to me that the young woman she was talking about was Holly, but did she really not know that Holly was murdered only a few short miles from where the Hotel had been built?

“Mrs. Havemeyer,” I said, hating to be the one to tell her, but I needed to know. I needed to see her honest reaction to the truth. “I regret to inform you, the young woman you mentioned was named Holly Jones.”

“Yes, that was it,” Charlotte nodded along, unaware of the blow that I was about to deal to her day.

“Holly Jones was murdered,” I told her. “In Manassas National Battlefield Park.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Charlotte replied, confusion the predominant expression on her face. “I would have heard if someone had been murdered that close to the hotel.”

“This was before the hotel was completed,” I replied. “Possibly before you ever even broke ground.”

“But—” Charlotte paused, doing the calculations in her head. The time frame of when Holly had stopped coming around compared to when she had signed off on the hotel’s final plans. I could tell the moment it hit her that I was telling the truth because her face turned ashen and she put her hand to her mouth, pushing her chair back as she stood and rushed towards the bathroom with a barely audible, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

By the time Charlotte returned to the table our food had arrived, but she didn’t look interested in the breakfast burrito she had ordered anymore. She inhaled through her nose, clearly trying to steady her stomach after her tragic realization.

I reached out across the table, grasping her hand in mine and just sitting there with her for a few minutes. I understood better than most what it was like to be on the outskirts of a case and to feel all the guilt and weight of realizing someone was dead and you were partially involved.

All I’d done was storm off after a fight with my mother like any child might, completely oblivious to the danger I was putting myself in. I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. All Charlotte had done was to build the hotel her investor wanted, and now the death of a woman would forever stain her pride in doing her job well.

“I can’t believe Holly is dead,” Charlotte said quietly, staring down at her hands in her lap. “She was so sweet. Passionate too. She didn’t deserve to die so young.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” I told her.

“But I didn’t even know she was dead until a few minutes ago,” Charlotte said, her voice choking on the words as she looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. She was more affected by the news of Holly’s death than I had expected and unless she was a phenomenal actress I found it hard to believe she could be involved. “I don’t know anything that could help you, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I assured her. “I don’t need you to solve the case for me. Just talk to me about her. As much as I’ve looked into this case, all I really know is that Holly was a passionate student. The more I know about her, and about how she spent those last few days before she died, the better my chances of making a break in the case.”

“I didn’t know her very well,” Charlotte told me. Her voice had gone flat, disconnected. I could tell I was losing her, losing the only progress I had managed to make on this case.

“You talked to her enough that she convinced you to reconsider the project,” I point out. “Was there anyone else Holly met with about the hotel aside from you?”

“There were a few people,” Charlotte said, nodding even as her eyes grew distant as she thought back to that time. “Let’s see, I know she talked to the foreman a few times, trying to convince him to quit the project. She made a big fuss at city hall, putting on a one-woman protest for a few days after the zoning on the land was changed. She had a petition to have the zoning changed back, actually, though there weren’t many people who signed. Mostly the people who live around the area who didn’t want to listen to the construction all day.”

“Okay, that’s a good start,” I said, nodding along. “Anyone else you can think of?”

“I know she tried to meet with Rick a few times,” Charlotte finally said, looking up from the spot where our hands were clasped, our eyes meeting. “The owner of the hotel. He was always avoiding her, and he despised the idea of moving the project. He wanted to be able to see the battlefield from the hotel rooms. I thought he must have scared Holly off, but I should have known better. She was so passionate about keeping commercial property at a distance from historical land she never would have stopped unless...he did something to stop her.”

“What is Rick’s full name?” I asked, focusing on the horror in Charlotte’s voice.

“Richard Duncan,” Charlotte replied. His name was like poison in her mouth. While the only thing I had to go on was her point of view, I could tell that she’d made up her mind about what must have happened.

“And do you have anything that could prove Richard did this?” I asked, pulling out my phone and opening the notes app to take down the information even as the waitress came by to refill our coffees and hand off the receipt for our meal. “For example, if you had access to his calendar, we could see if he had an alibi, or even if he was foolish enough to schedule his meeting with Holly. There was nothing at the crime scene that could lead back to him, so we’re going to need to build a case against him that proves means, motive, and opportunity. We have the motive, but we still need the other two.”

“I can look,” Charlotte replied. “I could call his assistant and pretend I’m trying to remember a meeting he and I had back then, to see if there was anything scheduled.”

“No, that’s okay,” I told her, not liking the idea. Yes, we needed evidence but that wasn’t this woman’s job. It was mine. “I’ll go through the proper channels and find something I can use against him. I’ll also look into the other people you mentioned. Trust me, you’ve already done more than you know just by telling me what you have.”

“But…if he was responsible…I can’t just let him get away with this,” Charlotte said, her voice soft but fierce.

“He won’t, trust me,” I assured her, finishing my waffle and setting Kenna’s business card in the receipt book the waitress had left behind. “You have my number, so if you think of anything that might help me find evidence do not hesitate to call.”

“Yes, of course,” Charlotte said, though she had a distant look in her eyes. She then stood up, leaving her burrito entirely untouched as she bid me farewell and headed out the door. I stared after her, not liking how our interaction had ended but not having the power to do anything about it. I had a feeling Charlotte might do something reckless to get the evidence needed to prove Richard Duncan had killed Holly Jones. Because knowing he’d done it and proving it were two different things.

I would have to get to that evidence first before Charlotte could get herself into any trouble. Picking up the uneaten burrito off the table, I waved down the waitress from before to get a to-go box, smiling to myself. Unlike Charlotte, I had access to a whole host of capable investigators who could find the information I needed much faster than she could.

And now I had a fairly decent bribe with which to convince them.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Special delivery,” I said, lifting a plastic bag with three takeout containers into view as I walked up to the pair of desks where Phoebe, Noah, and Kenna were clustered, pages and pages of financial records spread out all around them. It was strange to see Kenna sitting there, dressed in a similar blazer to Phoebe and her presence clearly accepted by the two FBI agents.

She almost looked like she belonged there, belonged to the FBI.

I tamped down the thrum of jealousy that ran through me and guilt quickly followed. Kenna was only there, scanning page after page of financial records, because I couldn’t be. She was working towards securing my freedom and putting my mother’s killer behind bars.

“You brought food?” Kenna exclaimed, which caused both Phoebe and Noah to perk up.

“I’m still not letting you look at these financials,” Phoebe said blandly, looking back down at the papers in front of her. I glanced over at Kenna and then back to Phoebe, trying to tell if she was serious or not.

“I brought food because you’re all working hard on this case when I can’t,” I told her, trying not to sound too sharp but failing miserably. “And because I need to borrow Noah for a few minutes.”

“Dibs on your food if you’re not back in five,” Kenna told him even as she took the bag full of burritos. Noah stood up, completely unbothered by Kenna’s taunt, and followed me away from the desks and into a hallway.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, and I nodded, quick to assure him that this wasn’t an emergency or some secret about to ruin his day.

“Listen,” I told him. “I think I may have solved a local cold case and⁠—”

“Of course you did,” Noah said under his breath.

“—and I need to gather evidence in order to prove the guy did it, but I think he used Vienna Quinn to clean up his crime scene,” I continued, ignoring his interruption. “Aside from a full confession straight from his lips, the only thing I can think of to prove he did it would be a calendar appointment labeled ‘kill Holly Jones’ or bank statements showing a substantial payment to a shell account the day she died which would at least indicate that he could have hired Vienna even if we can’t prove anything. And I need to get this figured out quickly, because I think the woman I just met with is going to put herself in a dangerous situation to get that kind of evidence herself.”

“You and I both know that short of catching Vienna in the act, we’re never going to be able to touch her,” Noah said, shaking his head. “And even if we did bring her in for questioning again, she wouldn’t talk. I hear she has an excellent lawyer, though I’ve yet to actually see him show up. Even if we did have a transaction between your suspect and Quinn, that’s too circumstantial to mean anything.”

“Then what do I do?” I asked. “How do I get proof that this guy killed my victim in cold blood?”

“We could bring him in,” Noah suggested. “Sweat him out in the interrogation room. But if Briggs finds out you’re using FBI resources without his go-ahead he might just have an aneurysm.”

“Maybe I could go undercover, tell him that Vienna sent me and act like I already know all the details,” I suggested. “Or—hold on. I need to get this.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket where it was buzzing and frowned as I recognized the number as the same one I’d called this morning to schedule brunch with Charlotte. I answered immediately, putting it on speakerphone so Noah could hear as well.

“Hello?”

“Hale?” Charlotte was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear her. “I need your help. I went to Rick’s office, he was supposed to be out reviewing a new hotel site today and I thought—he came back and I hid in his office bathroom but I’m afraid he’s going to find me in here and I left his calendar open on his computer so he’s definitely going to know that I was snooping and⁠—”

“Charlotte, what is the address?” I asked, interrupting her panicked rambling and grabbing a pen and paper from a nearby desk to write it down. “Okay, stay quiet and stay hidden. I’ll be right there.”

“What are you going to do once you’re there?” Noah asked, and I shrugged.

“I’m going to start asking questions he doesn’t want anyone asking,” I replied. “If I’m lucky, he’ll confess everything and I won’t have to think up a different way to prove what he did.”

“Hale,” Noah said, frowning and shaking his head.

“I can’t just leave her there,” I told him. “Thank you for talking to me about this but I have to go.”

“I’m going to assign a few agents to go with you,” Noah said as we walked back towards the bullpen.

“What about Briggs having an aneurysm?” I asked.

“I’ll just tell him I was worried you might skip town,” Noah replied, as if he wasn’t the reason I had run in the first place. I wrinkled my nose at his little joke and then turned serious again.

“I don’t have time to wait for you to gather agents,” I told him. “Send them after me if you must, but I have to go.”

“Come out now or I’m calling the police!” A man’s voice reached my ears just as I reached the door at the top floor of the building Charlotte was hiding in. The little plaque on the door read Richard Duncan III, Investments & Loans. “Show yourself, or I’ll be forced to shoot!”

My heart rate kicked up, and I reached for the gun at my waist only to remember I didn’t have one. The instinct was still drilled into me from the Academy, but it didn’t do me any good without the weapon to back it up.

The door was slightly ajar, and I pushed gently on it, taking in the scene.

A man with red hair, dressed in a dark grey suit, stood in the center of the room. He was facing to the left, towards the other door where I presumed the bathroom was. Where Charlotte was hiding. He’d realized someone was in there, but by the way he was threatening to involve the police I doubted he knew it was Charlotte or that she had come to his office to look for evidence.

I had to act quickly, I knew, and could only pray that Charlotte was smart enough to play along.

With two short raps on the door, I opened it a little wider.

“Excuse me,” I called at the same time, and then dramatically flinched back as Rick Duncan swung his gun arm around and pointed the barrel towards me instead. “Woah, wait, don’t shoot! I’m here for the meeting with Mrs. Havemeyer?”

“Meeting?” Rick’s expression shifted from panic to confusion as he took me in. Thankfully I was dressed in professional clothes.

“The investment meeting?” I said, not looking away from the gun. “I, uh, sorry I must have the wrong office.”

“No,” Charlotte called from the bathroom. “This is the right office.”

“Charlotte?” Rick lowered the gun, turning to stare at the bathroom with a confused expression. “What are you doing in there?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Charlotte snapped through the door, and I had to hand it to her, not only was she sharp enough to catch on to my cover story but she was managing to play along despite my earlier assessment that she’d lost every hand of poker she ever played.

Then again, she had a door between her and the man with the gun. That changed as she unlocked the bathroom door and swung it open, stepping into the office. She glanced towards the desk first, which wasn’t good. Anyone in her situation would be more concerned with smoothing over the appearance of a gun in front of a potential client than scanning Rick’s desk for the evidence she had clearly been searching for.

“We don’t have a meeting scheduled,” Rick told her. “And since when do you just come into my office when I’m not here?”

“Since when do you kill people to get what you want?” Charlotte shot back, heated, and it was all I could do to keep from groaning. We were so close to getting her to safety, but of course she had to go and say that.

“What are you…wait, my calendar. I thought it was a glitch, but that was the day—” Rick cut himself off, but we all knew what the rest of that sentence was. The day I killed her. The gun came up again, pointed at Charlotte, and this time there was no door to protect her. He looked over at me, still hovering in the door, trying to decide if I had the speed to tackle him before he got a shot off. “You’re in on it. Get over here. Now!”

At his insistence, I moved from the doorway to stand beside Charlotte. I was closer now, but it wasn’t a good angle. I would be running straight towards the gun and if he squeezed the trigger, I was the one who would be shot.

“It’s over, Mr. Duncan,” I told him. Because Charlotte’s ability to bluff might have been suspect, but mine was just as well-honed as ever. “We have your DNA, collected at the crime scene.”

“If that’s true you would have already arrested me instead of sending this spineless woman in to look for evidence,” Rick replied, pointing at Charlotte with his gun.

“I assure you, Charlotte is only here because she didn’t know about the evidence we gathered already,” I told him, but he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “She promised there was nothing to find. I don’t believe you. No, you’re both dead now. I’ll have to call her again, but she’ll help me handle you just like I handled Holly.”

“Richard Duncan, you’re under arrest,” Noah’s voice from the doorway was a godsend. He used that familiar authoritative tone that all agents used to talk down a dangerous person with a gun and as he stepped into view, I saw that he had a gun of his own trained on Rick, along with two other agents I didn’t recognize. “Drop your weapon and put your hands where I can see them.”

“No,” Rick started to say, swinging around to face Noah, his gun pointed at the other man. And that was my opening. I threw myself forward, racing across the few short feet between Rick and I before tackling him to the ground. The sound of a gunshot went off, the thud of a bullet hitting wood and the clatter of the gun hitting the ground in the same moment that Richard Duncan III broke my fall.

I grabbed his wrists with force, pulling them behind his back to keep him from reaching for the gun again. Straddling him, holding him still, with Noah standing over me and grinning as he handed me the cuffs, it threw me back to the day everything had gone wrong. To the hours before Monica’s death, when I’d been taken hostage by Director Grant only to escape his grasp and pin him down, arresting him for what he’d done to the missing Hogan’s Alley actors.

And for one brief, glorious moment, it felt like everything was back to the way it was meant to be. Maybe, once my name was cleared, maybe there was still a chance that I could have this. But first we had to prove that Coal Shepherd was the one to murder Monica Park.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“And that’s when you came in,” I said, sitting back in the chair at the conference room table across from Noah. I had just finished my statement for the Holly Jones case, explaining everything I’d learned and handing over the dissertation as evidence. “I still can’t believe we got a full confession after how much he paid to have Quinn clean up after him.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as an agent it’s that criminals always end up doing the stupid thing,” Noah replied. He clicked his pen, setting it down and looking at me across the table. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “I’m going to feel the adrenaline crash soon, but I still have enough left in the tank to get myself home and hopefully get Rogue out on a walk. It’s been a long day.”

“It’s not even 4pm,” Noah countered and I made a face. I was about to respond, some inane quip about it being 5 o’clock somewhere, when the door to the conference room slammed open and both of us jumped.

“Not another word,” Mason said, glowering. “If you think that anything my client has said is admissible, you are gravely mistaken. You cannot just⁠—”

“It’s okay,” I said, moving to stand and reaching out a hand in a calming gesture.

“No, it isn’t,” Mason said. His whole body was held tight, and he was staring down Noah, who hadn’t bothered to stand up and didn’t look particularly impressed with Mason’s arrival. “I’m going to need a recording of everything you asked her and everything she said, and if you stepped one toe out of line⁠—”

“Mason.” His eyes snapped to mine, my tone breaking him out of his focus on dressing Noah down for something he hadn’t even done. “It’s fine. I’m not here about Monica; I needed to make a statement about another case.”

“What other case?” Mason asked, and I shrugged, looking away for a moment as I realized I hadn’t told him anything about the cold case I was looking into. This man was my lawyer, and yet I hadn’t even thought to tell him I was continuing to work. I had to wonder what he thought I was doing all this time when we weren’t facing down Briggs together.

“A local cold case,” I told him. “One that I solved.”

“Agent Delgado, may I have a moment alone with my client?” Mason asked. His panic and irritation were gone, leaving a cold blank wall in their place. I almost flinched, the change in his demeanor so stark it was like he was an entirely different person now.

Noah’s gaze flicked to me, checking to be sure that was what I wanted. I nodded, still trying to reconcile the change that had come over Mason, but having no reason to avoid a private conversation with him. I had seen this reaction before, I realized. Not from Mason, but from the lawyer my father had hired once it became clear Detective Pearson was trying to dismantle his alibi and fit him into the role of a killer.

This was the mask lawyers put on to keep investigators from knowing just what they were thinking. And I had to admit, as Noah left and closed the door behind him, I could not have predicted what he was thinking for the life of me.

“What am I going to do with you?” Mason asked, moving to take Noah’s seat across from me, setting his briefcase on the seat beside him. “Avery, how can I protect you if you keep things from me?”

“You didn’t need to protect me,” I told him. “This cold case has nothing to do with Monica’s murder. I’m not the victim here. I’m the one who caught the killer.”

“You didn’t think your mother’s case was connected to Monica’s before, and now you do,” Mason said, still in that even, unemotional tone. “You had no way of knowing if your new cold case would end up connecting back. Worse, even if they’re unrelated, everything you do right now is under a microscope. The decisions you made while investigating this other case could be used as behavioral evidence against you. Any mistakes, any procedural failings in that case, and the prosecution will use it to call your character into question if we go to trial.”

“What is this really about?” I asked, because if he were hiding his reaction to me solving another case, then worrying about how the potential for that case to reflect negatively on me in a court of law didn’t fit. There was something else, something he wasn’t saying.

“It’s about you going off on your own, putting yourself in danger,” Mason replied, leaning forward and pressing his finger into the table between us as if he could push an invisible button that would make his point for him. “It’s about the fact that you’re only in this mess because you left yourself open and vulnerable. Your self-preservation instincts are non-existent and I’m afraid that someday I’m not going to be able to get there in time. That the next time I find you in a grave, I won’t be able to pull you out.”

And there it was.

The thing we hadn’t gotten a chance to talk about and the thing neither of us were acknowledging, all wrapped up in one. Mark Kinsman had nearly killed me and if it wasn’t for Mason—and Kenna—I would still be in that grave instead of sitting across from him in the conference room of a federal building in D.C.

And he wouldn’t care so much about that if he didn’t care about me, more than he should. More than a lawyer should care about his client, at least. This cold wall he had erected between us wasn’t about case law or procedure. It was about his concern for my safety and my inability to leave something well enough alone.

“Mason, I—” I started to say, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell him even as I spoke. Because somehow in the tangle of custody hand offs and uncovering a connection between the cases in my life, I had uncovered something else. Something I’d buried a long time ago, along with my mother’s body. And we were so close to answers now that the idea of facing a trial, of going back to being the only suspect in Monica’s murder felt incomprehensible, but the truth was that it could happen at any moment. Our relationship as attorney and client was far from over, even if we did manage to clear my name. I still had so much to answer for. “I need⁠—”

What?

I need to go, before I do something stupid.

I need a new lawyer, before the tension between us kills me.

I need you to⁠—

I need you.

“Hale, you are not going to believe what we’ve found,” Kenna said, waltzing into the room completely unaware of the tense silence that had fallen between us as I searched for the right words. Mason stared at me for another long moment and then blinked and turned to Kenna, and then all the tension in the room was gone.

“What did you find?” I asked, and Kenna opened her mouth, glanced at Mason and then back to me, and tilted her head. “Uh, actually, I think I’m legally required not to tell you. But you should come with me.”

“Okay…” I said, drawing the word out as I glanced over at Mason, who looked annoyed at the interruption.

“Go,” he said, “I’ve got a meeting I have to get to.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing I wanted to say seemed to fit the moment so I closed it again, shaking my head and following Kenna out the door.

“You’ll find out eventually, of course,” Kenna was saying as she led me down a hallway. “And I want to tell you so badly, but the last thing I want to do is compromise this case by revealing something myself. However, there’s nothing stopping you from coming in here and watching the show unfold.”

Kenna opened a door to reveal a familiar set up; the sparse room and glass partition of an observation room. It was empty, but the interrogation room on the other side of the one-way mirror was not.

I walked in, staring at Coal Shepherd sitting on the opposite side of the table, his expression confused as he spoke to the two agents across from him. Even from just the backs of their heads I could recognize Michael Briggs and Lindsay Windrow.

It felt like going back in time, seeing the two of them sitting across from a murder suspect. Except this time I wasn’t the one in the hot seat.

“What exactly are you implying?” Shepherd asked as Kenna shut the door behind us and came to stand beside me, the two of us watching the interrogation I was almost convinced SSA Briggs would never get around to conducting.

“We aren’t implying anything,” Windrow told him. “The evidence is clear. A bank account for a shell company set up in your name was used to purchase a hat from a bar in Bend called Mug+Shots. That hat was found to be bugged with a micro camera and used to observe Avery McHale during her training at the Academy. Another purchase from that account ties you to a threatening gift basket that contained evidence of continued photography following Ms. McHale’s time in Bend, along with a partial fingerprint inside the cellophane wrapping that belonged to you. And then there’s the storage unit you have been paying for, located in Bend. A warrant on that facility revealed the very same cameras that were documented to have been recently removed from air vents in Ms. McHale’s apartment.”

“I don’t have an account connected to a shell company,” Coal protested, eyes wide. “And what reason would I have to stalk that woman? Don’t you see, I’m clearly being framed here.”

I flinched as he said those words, jaw going slack at the audacity he must have to claim that he was the one being framed rather than the one who had framed me.

“Are you telling me that there’s an account spanning nearly two decades with your name on it, that has been used in several crimes, all to frame you for stalking Ms. McHale?” Briggs chimed in, and I felt another jolt of shock, this time at the idea that he would be this direct with Shepherd after spending so much effort fighting the idea that Coal could be in any way responsible for the crimes he had clearly committed.

“I’m telling you that I do not own a shell company, a bank account, or any connection whatsoever to Avery McHale,” Shepherd replied, and Windrow clicked her tongue, shaking her head.

“Now that just isn’t true,” she said. “After all, Ms. McHale was at the scene of the car crash that put your son in a coma for three days, wasn’t she?”

“What are you—that case was sealed to protect a minor,” Coal said and then narrowed his eyes, looking between Windrow and SSA Briggs as realization dawned on him. “I would like to speak to my lawyer.”

“Certainly,” Briggs agreed, just as he’d done with me. “You don’t have to answer any further questions until we have a lawyer present, but I want to make sure you understand just how bad this looks. We have agents in Bend at this very moment who are⁠—”

A knock came to the interrogation room door and Phoebe stepped inside, closing the door behind her and making her way to SSA Briggs, bending over to whisper in his ear and pass him a tablet, pointing to something on the screen.

“Ah,” Briggs said, looking back up at Shepherd. “It seems that a witness has been very forthcoming in confirming what we already suspected. Simon Crawford, a landlord in Bend who owned the apartment that Ms. Hastings…I mean Ms. McHale was renting, has informed us that he not only gave you access to the apartment before her arrival but that you paid him to keep an eye on her and take surveillance images of her while she was in town.”

“Why would I do that?” Coal asked, throwing his hands in the air and sitting back in his seat, exuding frustration. “Michael, think. Why would I stalk the NAT who killed Monica? How would I even know where she was, where she planned to run after her escape? The fact that this is even a conversation is insulting.”

“We aren’t so sure that Avery McHale was the one who killed Monica Park,” Briggs said, and that was the final nail in the coffin of Coal Shepherd’s willingness to talk. He pressed his lips together and scowled at the three agents in the room.

And only a thin layer of glass away, Kenna and I watched as Phoebe leaned down again and whispered something in Briggs’ ear that caused him to stiffen and turn to look at Coal, his body language screaming distrust.

“Are you certain?” SSA Briggs asked, looking back at Phoebe again.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, giving him a curt nod.

Michael Briggs stood up and pushed his chair back, the other agent following his lead.

“Give us a moment,” Briggs said to Shepherd, and then all three agents filed out of the room and Coal Shepherd was left alone in an interrogation room, the accusation of Monica Park’s murder hanging over him, a direct mirror to the way Briggs had left me to feel the weight of that accusation in my own interrogation room over two months ago.

“I wonder what that was about,” Kenna said, filling the silence before leading us out of the observation room and back towards Phoebe’s desk. She wasn’t there, however, and neither was Noah. Even after Kenna and I checked in at Briggs’ office, none of the agents in that interrogation room could be found and I was left to wonder what had just happened and whether it boded well for my case or spelled my doom.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Do you think I have time to go check on Rogue?” I asked Kenna, still staring at the closed door of SSA Briggs’ empty office. After waiting twenty minutes for anyone to explain what was happening, Phoebe, Noah, and Briggs had come back into the bull pen with their heads down as they quietly discussed whatever had their attention so rapt and no explanation for where they had gone.

That had been two hours ago. Phoebe and Briggs had walked straight to his office, Noah pausing to look up and catch my eye just long enough to slow him down, but he hadn’t been able to tell Kenna or I anything.

“Stick around,” is all he had said. “If this pans out, you’re going to want to be here for it.”

“Knowing your luck, the moment you leave they’ll finally come out and explain what’s going on,” Kenna told me. I knew she was right, but I had to make sure my dog was taken care of.

“Just call me, if anything interesting comes up,” I told her, moving to stand. She put out a hand to stop me.

“I’ll go take care of Rogue,” she told me. “You stay here. I have a feeling whatever’s happening is going to be good news for the case and you’re the first person who should hear any good news.”

“But you’re the one putting all the investigation effort in,” I argued.

“Which is precisely why I should be the one to go,” Kenna countered. “I’ve done my job here and now these agents believe you. They believe in your innocence enough to look into other suspects and follow other leads. I’ve done my job, and frankly I could use a good run with Rogue and a bubble bath. If I haven’t heard from you in three hours, I’ll be right back here at your side waiting for news, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, and then squeezed her hand in thanks. She left, and I remained, watching the door to Briggs’ office like a hawk. Which was why I knew the moment the three agents sequestered inside had finished their meeting. The door cracked open and Briggs exited first, not even looking my way as he marched towards the interrogation rooms.

Noah came next, his eyes meeting mine across the bullpen. They were wide, like he couldn’t quite believe whatever had just occurred, but when I stood to approach him, he shook his head and hurried after Briggs.

Which left me with Phoebe, who was watching the other two agents with a slight frown. She looked conflicted, like she wasn’t certain she was supposed to follow them or that she wanted to. I decided to make use of her moment of indecision and approach her.

“Agent Richards,” I said, noting the way she startled at my voice. She really hadn’t even noticed me approaching. Whatever was happening it had left the most solid agent I knew totally floored. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t—,” she started to say, shaking her head for a moment. The little shake seemed to clear something in her mind though and she refocused her attention on me. “Hale, you’re still here. And you—he—oh god. Come on, you should be there for this.”

I wanted to ask her what it was that I needed to be there for, but she was already striding towards the interrogation rooms once more. She led me into the viewing room and turned on the sound. But it wasn’t Briggs’ or Noah’s voice that came through.

“…is the last thing you want to do, Alyssa,” Coal said, his voice clear as day despite his mouth not moving. That’s when I noticed the recording device that Briggs was holding up. He paused the recording, apologizing as he rewound the recorder and pushed play again. This time, it was a woman’s voice speaking. A voice I’d almost forgotten after all these years.

“Alyssa McHale speaking, may I ask who’s calling?” my mother said, her words reaching out through time. I closed my eyes, soaking in her voice. Trying to let the memory of it outweigh the memory of finding her so cold and still, her hair splayed out in a halo around her. This was a call my mother had taken when she was still alive. A call with Coal Shepherd on the other end of the line.

“Mrs. McHale,” Coal’s voice came through loud and clear, unmistakably his. “You need to stop interfering in a case that has already been closed.”

“Who is this?” my mother asked. She hadn’t even known who Coal was.

“Who I am is not important,” Coal said from the speakers, even as he stared at the agents across from him, mouth pressed into a thin line and giving nothing away. “But you’re putting your entire family at risk by putting your nose where it does not belong. Leave the Naomi Howell case alone or face the consequences.”

“It’s that boy who should face the consequences,” my mother shot back. “Naomi was not driving that night, and her family deserves to know the truth. They deserve closure, and Naomi deserves justice.”

“Opening this case up again won’t change anything,” Coal said. “Naomi is dead, and if you continue down this path you will be too. Interfering in these matters is the last thing you want to do, Alyssa.”

The recording of the call stopped there, but that was more than enough to confirm for me what we had known for a while now, that Shepherd had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill both my mother and Monica Park.

“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s your voice isn’t it?” Briggs asked, setting the recorder down on the table between them. Beside me, Phoebe was watching with rapt attention. Coal leaned forward his expression hardening as he set his clasped hands on the table in front of him.

The recording of Coal’s words echoed in my head as I stared at a man who had affected the entire course of my life without me ever knowing.

Coal Shepherd had ordered my mother’s murder, and no matter what he claimed, there was no mistaking his voice on that recording.

This wasn’t some fingerprints on a knife and a perfectly timed call to 911.

This was the proof I had been searching for, for eight years.

“Fine, yes,” Coal spat, eyes narrowing at the two men across from him. I could see the slightest reflection in the two-way glass, superimposing my own shocked face over his vicious stare. “I made that call. I made that threat. But I did not kill her, and I did not order her to be killed. I was just trying to⁠—”

He stopped talking, then.

“Mr. Shepherd,” Briggs said, leaning forward. “You realize just how incriminating this appears, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Coal said, lifting a hand off the table as if to gesture, before aborting the movement and dropping it back onto the surface. He let out a frustrated breath and sat back, staring at the two agents across from him. “Like I said before, I’d like to speak with my lawyer.”

“Certainly,” Briggs said, so much more accommodating than he had been when I’d asked for a lawyer. “Do you have a phone number or will we need to go looking for a way to contact them?”

“I have his card in my wallet,” Coal said, reaching into his front pocket and pulling out a sleek black wallet, plucking cream cardstock from inside. “His name is Mason Campbell.”

“Well,” Noah chimed in when silence echoed through the room, glancing over at Briggs. “This is awkward.”

“Mr. Shepherd,” Briggs said, not responding to Noah’s bit of banter. Ever the straight-edged, no-nonsense agent I’d come to know him as. “Mr. Campbell is currently working as the lawyer for another suspect in this case and will not be able to defend you.”

“What?” Coal wrinkled his nose, like he couldn’t quite comprehend what the agents were telling him. “He can’t be, that’s a conflict of interest. He was...he...I raised that boy like he was my own. I’m the reason he even has a law degree.”

I blinked, and turned to look at Phoebe, like she might have some insight about the connection between the two. Mason never once mentioned that Coal was like a father to him. I’d seen the two dining together at Mug+Shots the day Coal left Bend to return to New York and I knew Mason and Lachlan were close, but close enough for Coal to claim he had a hand in Mason’s upbringing?

“That does not qualify as a conflict of interest,” Noah told him, not sounding in any way apologetic that Coal’s preferred defense wasn’t available. “Unfortunately, he already has a client in this clusterfuck of a case.”

“Delgado,” Briggs admonished, and even looking at him from behind I could see that Noah looked apologetic for his language and what he had divulged. It was fascinating to see him in a situation where he could be cowed, considering every interaction I had ever had with him had done nothing but highlight his confidence and self-assurance in his actions.

Cocky bastard, I thought fondly, catching the way his eyes were still on Coal despite the reprimand. Watching for a reaction from the other man.

“He’s representing her, isn’t he?” Coal said, gaze drifting to the two-way window that was dark on his side, as if he could see me. “Alyssa’s daughter. That’s why he can’t help me.”

“So you do know who Avery McHale is.” Noah said the words like he’d caught Coal in a lie. “Which makes sense, considering the gift basket you sent her, and the surveillance cameras you were keeping in her apartment until recently. The ones we found in the storage facility you keep in Bend.”

“None of that is true,” Coal protested, eyes going wide.

“You don’t know who Avery McHale is?” Noah asked, his voice turning innocent.

“Of course I know who she is,” Coal replied. “Everyone in the FBI knows who she is. She killed Supervisory Special Agent Monica Park.”

“Allegedly,” Noah said. “Except, if you knew she was a suspect in Monica’s murder, why didn’t you tell anyone you knew where she was? You have family in Bend. You visited over the week of the Fourth of July, and according to a credible witness you entered her place of employment not once but twice that week while she was working. Are you telling me you simply did not notice the wanted felon right under your nose?”

“Or perhaps you did know she was there, and didn’t react because you had known the entire time,” Briggs jumped in. “Perhaps you were keeping an eye on her, waiting to find out what she knew about your involvement in her mother’s death. Plotting the next steps in your attempt to frame her so that she could never use the FBI resources she was about to gain access to, to solve her mother’s case.”

“That’s absurd,” Coal said, his fingers clenching the edges of the table. “I didn’t kill Monica, or Alyssa, or frame Avery. None of this is true.”

“Then what is the truth?” Briggs asked. “Why don’t you tell us what actually happened? Why did you leave that threatening voicemail on Mrs. McHale’s phone?”

“She was going to ruin everything,” Coal said, reaching his breaking point. Without a lawyer there to remind him of his right to stay silent, it all came pouring out. And unfortunately for him, anything he said could and would be used against him in a court of law. “Everything was fine, no one else had to suffer for what happened, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She wanted to give justice to a dead girl and ruin my son’s life in the process.”

“So, to clarify,” Briggs said calmly, on the night Naomi Howell died, Mrs. McHale stated that she witnessed the crash and that it was a young man driving. But the official report states that officers on the scene found Ms. Howell deceased behind the wheel and your son Lachlan Shepherd concussed and injured in the passenger seat.”

“It wasn’t his fault!” Coal exclaimed. “If that little bitch hadn’t been standing in the road he never would have swerved.”

“Are you confirming that your son was the one behind the wheel that night?” Noah asked, and Coal clammed up again. “Because if that were true, and if you threatened Mrs. McHale to keep her quiet the same week that she was killed, that gives you means and motive to have her permanently silenced.”

“And if that’s true,” Briggs continued, “then it follows that your obsession with Avery McHale has extended from her childhood, that your attempt to relocate her first assignment and your credentials used to send a message from Monica Park’s phone about finding a lead on her mother’s murder was the perfect lure to cause her to arrive at exactly the right time to find SSA Park dying, her prints on the knife, and the police already on the way.”

“Do you know how insane you sound?” Coal asked, looking frantically between Noah and Briggs like one of them might show a crack in their facade or tip him off that all of this was some massive practical joke. “I am the ASAC of the New York City Field Office, a decorated and well respected agent who has solved more cases than both of you combined. You are making a serious mistake right now, and you can rest assured I will be using every available resource at my disposal to ensure the two of you never work another case in your lives, do you understand me?”

“Shepherd, we have your financial records, your computer logs, and several corroborating witnesses,” Briggs said. His voice was weary, like bringing these accusations against Coal Shepherd had taken everything out of him and he just didn’t have the energy to entertain the other man’s threats. “You can’t fire either of us because you’re under arrest for the murders of Monica Park and Alyssa McHale.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Phoebe turned and looked at me, eyes wide. I stared back, my heart beating hard in my chest and my hands shaking, because if Briggs was arresting Coal Shepherd for the murder of Monica Park, then that meant...

“I owe you an apology,” Phoebe said, the first to recover from the shock of those words. “I spent so long convinced that you had betrayed everything we believed in, treated you like a criminal, and all this time you were innocent.”

“I appreciate that,” I told her, tuning out the threats and accusations that Shepherd was making in the other room even as Noah slipped cuffs around his wrists.

“I’m sure this is obvious, but we’ll be dropping the murder charge against you,” Phoebe said. “You’ll want to hear from your lawyer before you skip town or anything, but as far as I see it, you’re free to go.”

“Thank you,” I told her, fully turning my back on the observation window as Shepherd’s threats turned to demands that he be given his phone call, that he was going to take this all the way to the head of the FBI. I tuned him out after that, unable to stomach listening to another word of his grandstanding. Instead I gave Phoebe a conspiratorial grin. “You know, I think I’m going to miss our little mandatory check-ins.”

“Very funny,” she said. There was no humor in her eyes though, and I could see that something was bothering her.

“I am free of the mandatory check-in’s, aren’t I?” I asked. Phoebe blinked a little, like she had been somewhere else in her mind and my question brought her back.

“Absolutely,” she said. “But make sure you talk to your lawyer and that all the paperwork is squared away.”

“You said that already,” I told her and she blinked again, surprised at being called out for her distracted behavior. I had just discovered the man who framed me for killing Monica Park was also the man who had killed my mother, my name was finally cleared, and yet somehow, I was not the most affected person in the room. That was okay, though. I knew the shock of it would keep me running for a while and that the moment I was finally alone it would hit me like a freight train, so I stepped forward and rested a hand on Phoebe’s shoulder as I waited for her to pull herself together.

“It’s just…” she started to say and then shook her head, as if she couldn’t find the words or didn’t find them sufficient. “I was so sure that trusting the evidence and the system was all we needed to do to bring justice to the world. But you could have gone to prison for life and the entire time I was treating you like you were a criminal.”

“Not the entire time. Besides, following the evidence and trusting the system is exactly what got us here,” I said, glancing over to the interrogation room to find that Briggs and Noah had left, only Coal Shepherd remaining, steaming but silent as he sat at the interrogation table with his wrists cuffed in front of him. “It just took a few more steps to get there.”

“Still, I owe you more than an apology,” Phoebe insisted and I looked back at her, finding the same fervor she saved for solving cases was now turned on me, on trying to find a way to fix what she had broken between us. “I could have trusted you. I should have.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” I argued. “I had plenty of people in my life who believed me and acted accordingly. But if you hadn’t found me in Bend, I would still be there, living with questions hanging over my head and a murder charge haunting my every step. I mean…I wish you had been a little faster to agree to the private transport, but otherwise you were well within your rights as a federal agent.”

“But I wasn’t within my rights as your friend,” Phoebe insisted, and I got the feeling she wasn’t going to drop it. The guilt she felt, the conflict inside her, wasn’t really about me. It was about her own rigid views and refusal to recognize that there were grey areas in all her black and white thinking.

“Maybe we can fix that,” I said, fidgeting with the edge of my shirt as I glanced between Shepherd in the other room and Phoebe right in front of me. “I’ll be staying in town, dealing with the other charges I racked up in the process of proving I was innocent. Maybe we could go get a coffee sometime and not fill out any forms while we’re there.”

“Very funny,” Phoebe said again, but there was amusement in her voice this time. “You did rack up quite a few charges trying to prove your innocence, didn’t you?”

“I would name them all for you, but we might be here all night,” I told her.

“I’m going to make this right,” Phoebe said. Her voice filled with determination, and before I could respond she spun on her heel and walked out of the observation room without another word. I stared after her, wondering if anyone had considered suggesting she switch to decaf.

But my focus quickly shifted from where Phoebe had rushed off to and back to where Shepherd continued to sit in the interrogation room, looking absolutely miserable.

And a thought came to me. One that I knew I shouldn’t follow the path of but could not stop myself even if I wanted to. And the truth was that I didn’t want to. I wanted answers. I wanted what Coal Shepherd did to make sense. To justify everything I’d been through not only in the past two months but in the years I’d spent with questions filling the void where my mother was meant to be.

Knowing better and unable to stop myself, I reached over and hit the button that turned off the camera in the interrogation room. Then, I slipped out of the observation room and into the room next door, quietly closing it behind me.

Coal Shepherd had a lot to answer for, and it was time I was the one asking the questions.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I stood at the door to the interrogation room, staring Shepherd down. Now that I was in the same room as him, something in me felt like it was snapping into a million little pieces.

This man was the reason my mother was dead, the reason I’d fought so hard to become an FBI agent, and the reason that I’d been forced to go on the run when he framed me for Monica’s murder. He had watched me at the Academy, used Noah as a way to keep tabs on me without showing all his cards, and then continued to surveil me in Bend. He had put a camera in my bedroom, and another in my bathroom. He had paid my landlord to take photos of me.

And when he arrived in Bend to visit his family he had pretended he had no idea who I was.

Which…why hadn’t he simply sent the local FBI to pick me up and finish the frame job? And for that matter, what were the chances that Noah would send me to Trick, to Bend, when Shepherd’s whole family lived there?

The red yarn in my mind connecting everything together was a tangled mess of motivations and alibis that I couldn’t quite make sense of, and the moment I began asking questions it felt like the entire case started to fall apart.

“All of this, just to protect your son?” I asked, the interrogation room door at my back as I scowled at the man who existed at the center of the web of lies I was trying to untangle.

“I’m not talking without a lawyer present,” Shepherd said, not even glancing my way. He stared straight ahead, and some part of me wanted to force him to look at me. To make him face the devastation he had wrought in my life.

I was breaking rules here, but putting my hands on this man was a line I would not cross. Instead, I crossed the room, sitting down in front of him and forcing him to look at me.

“This isn’t part of the interrogation,” I told him. “There are no cameras, and no one watching from the observation room. It’s just you and me, Shepherd, so why don’t you just drop the act?”

Shepherd’s eyes went to the camera in the corner, that little red dot gone dark, before returning to me. And as he looked at me—finally looked right at me—I could see the glint of recognition in his eyes.

“You,” he said, a look of disgust and hatred filling his expression, heavy brow furrowing and face turning redder by the second. “This is your fault.”

“No,” I told him. “You did this. You did all of this to yourself. To me. And now, you’re finally facing the consequences of your actions.”

“I wouldn’t have needed to do anything if you hadn’t been in the road that night,” Shepherd snarled. “You did this.”

“Tell yourself whatever lies you want to,” I said, surprised at how unaffected I was at his accusations. In a way he was right. If I hadn’t been in the road that evening, Lachlan wouldn’t have swerved and Naomi wouldn’t have died. My mother wouldn’t have realized Coal covered up Lachlan’s fault in the accident and made her statement to the police seven years later. And it was that statement that had caused Coal to threaten her, to send someone after her, to leave me without a mother.

But none of that, and none of what had come after, was my fault.

“You were the one who chose to break the law,” I told him when he didn’t reply. “And because of you, two women are dead.”

“I didn’t kill them,” Coal said, eyes meeting mine again.

“Ordering their deaths makes you just as guilty as if you killed them yourself,” I replied, glaring at him. We were getting off track. I hadn’t come in here to split hairs over what charges he was facing and what the morality was of hiring someone to kill versus doing the deed yourself. “I don’t care where you place the blame for this. What I want to know is why you didn’t just finish the job. You knew where I was, you followed me to Bend, and you had eyes on me the whole time. So why didn’t you just tell someone?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Coal replied, emphatic. He was almost believable, except the timelines and evidence against him were overwhelming, and while there were things that weren’t adding up, the means, motive, and opportunity were all there.

“I handed you a menu,” I told him. “I stood right next to you and poured your coffee.”

“No,” Coal shook his head. “You’re making things up. You’re in on it.”

“In on what?” I asked, because he wasn’t making sense. I’d come in here hoping for answers but all I was getting were more questions.

“The conspiracy,” he said, sitting back and trying to cross his arms. The cuffs kept him from that, but he still managed to send me a smug look, like he had everything all figured out now. “You’re framing me for your own crimes, and you’ve convinced those two agents to help you.”

“Don’t you dare,” I told him, my voice going as cold and hard as a block of ice. “Do not try to turn this around on me. You are the one who framed me. You are the one who killed my mother, and my mentor, before stalking me and sending me threatening photos. Just admit it, you did this!”

“Avery,” Noah’s voice came from the doorway, and I froze, turning to look at him. I wasn’t supposed to be in here, and certainly not with the camera off. I wasn’t an agent or a lawyer. I didn’t have any right to be interrogating Coal Shepherd.

“Sorry,” I said, taking a deep breath as I stood. “I just⁠—”

“I know,” Noah’s voice was steady and comforting, but stern. “But you can’t be in here. Come on, let’s go.”

“I just don’t get it,” I told him as I followed him out of the room, not bothering to look back at Coal. I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore.

“What don’t you get?” Noah asked as he led me down the hall, farther and farther away from that room. Away from the answers I knew I wasn’t going to find by demanding them from Coal Shepherd.

“Why he didn’t just turn me in,” I said, shaking my head. “He went through all that effort to frame me but when I went on the run he knew where I was, yet he never once sent the FBI to come get me.”

“Expecting people like that to have a good reason to do anything is a fool’s errand,” Noah told me, and as we walked, I realized he was leading me to the front door. Because now that they had Monica’s killer, I didn’t need to be there anymore. I was free to go, my name cleared. It was a strange feeling, and I decided to focus on Noah’s words rather than the twist in my gut when I thought about what came next. “But if I had to make a guess, I would say that framing you was the only way he felt he could keep you from digging into your mother’s death but letting you go was the best way to keep you from proving your innocence. I mean, look what happened when the FBI did finally catch up to you.”

“I guess,” I said, my head still spinning.

“Hale, it isn’t your job to make sense of what Coal Shepherd did,” Noah told me. We stopped just inside the doors, the rest of the world waiting on the other side. “That’s for the case agents and the lawyers to figure out. Your job now is to go on with your life. We did it, you know. We figured out who really killed Monica and we cleared your name. I think that’s enough to ask for, for one day.”

“You’re right, of course,” I told him, glancing through the glass doors and out into the city. My whole life was ahead of me out there, so long as Mason could help me navigate the other charges I was facing. We didn’t have all the answers yet, but we had enough that the agents and lawyers could figure out the rest.

“Go home, Hale,” Noah told me, pushing the door open and gesturing for me to step through. “Celebrate your victory and let us worry about dealing with Coal Shepherd, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, and then I turned to face my future as a free woman and stepped through the doors.

Chapter Thirty

The first thing I did was call Mason to let him know, but he must have still been in his meeting because he didn’t answer. I left him a voicemail, letting him know what had happened and to call me back. Then, I ordered a rideshare and went straight home from the Washington D.C. Field Office.

It felt strange to exist in public without needing to look over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I knew now that Simon was the one who had taken those pictures for Coal, that the FBI knew I wasn’t a killer, and that there was no one left watching me.

Still, I had spent so long with the feeling of eyes on me that it was impossible to shake the feeling that they still were.

Slipping through the door to the penthouse, I closed and locked it behind me, dropping my bag on the hook and kicking off my shoes. The telltale sound of nails on a hard surface came to me and I laughed as Rogue rounded the corner and sprinted down the hall.

“Hey, buddy!” I said, watching his tail wag as he began to jump up before remembering the rules and aborting that in favor of shoving his face into the side of my leg. He was warm to the touch which I figured meant he and Kenna were taking their afternoon on the terrace.

“Hale?” Kenna called, and I grinned as I realized she didn’t know anything about the realizations and revelations that had occurred in the past few hours. Which meant I was the one who got to tell her.

“Kenna!” I called back, walking down the entrance hall and through the living room before reaching the door to the terrace. It sat open, a brick stopping it from closing. Peeking around the corner I found Kenna sitting right where I expected her, sunglasses on her head and a frown of concentration on her face as she flipped through a file in her lap. “They dropped the murder charge.”

“What?” Kenna’s head snapped up and she looked at me through her sunglasses, mouth slightly open as if she were about to say something but couldn’t find the words.

“I wish you’d been there,” I told her. “But it was your work that helped solve the case. You convinced Phoebe to consider other options, and when she was looking into my mother’s case for connections she found a phone call between Shepherd and my mother that happened two days before she was killed.”

“Wow,” Kenna said, sitting back and closing the file in her lap. “So it was Coal Shepherd who killed both your mom and Monica, then?”

“It was,” I said. “Thank you, Kenna, seriously. They wouldn’t have realized what he’d done without the work you did.”

“Hey, that’s what you pay me for,” Kenna grinned at me, her face scrunched up like she was having a hard time taking my gratitude.

“One whole dollar was not enough to cover what you’ve done,” I told her, shaking my head.

“Consider us even, for you solving Lexi’s case,” Kenna said, reaching out to scratch behind Rogue’s ears. She leaned forward, and her expression fell, the light atmosphere that had filled the terrace before was gone in an instant.

“Kenna?” I asked, suddenly worried. This was not the response I had expected from her after announcing my newfound freedom. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh no, nothing,” she said, her hand waving in the air like she could dismiss whatever was going on in her mind even as her mouth pressed into a tight line, creases at the corners of her eyes appearing. “It’s just…I keep thinking about Lachlan, first Naomi dies when he’s driving, and then Lexi goes missing and he couldn’t solve the case, and then his daughter was nearly kidnapped. I can’t even imagine what he must have been living with, all this time.”

“Yeah,” I said, my eyes going unfocused as I thought about that. Lachlan wasn’t the only one who had caused someone to die because of his reckless actions. My mother’s death was a direct result of that crash, and even Naomi’s death could be partially placed at my feet. At seven years old I had stood in that street and caused a car accident that had killed a young woman, and eight years after that my mother died trying to right the wrong that had come of it.

In a way, Coal had been right. It was my fault.

“I’ll give Gracie a call, make sure she’s there for him when he finds out what his dad has done,” Kenna said. She was already going into solution mode, and I felt a deep sense of gratitude that all of this had brought her into my life. Despite her upbringing she was generous, not just with her money, but with her heart, and always looking out for her friends.

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed. “I have to stay in town and try to get my other charges handled, but you should head back to Bend. You could be there for him, as well, when the news hits.”

“Maybe,” Kenna said, but she looked conflicted. “Are you sure you don’t need me here?”

“I’ve got Mason, and Noah,” I told her. “Phoebe too, apparently. She wouldn’t stop apologizing once they charged Coal and she realized that meant I was innocent.”

“As well she should,” Kenna muttered under her breath, and I continued, pretending I hadn’t heard her.

“Really, you should head back and make sure Lachlan gets through this alright,” I said. “It’s not just finding out that his dad is a murderer. He’s also about to find out that his father killed two women and tried to frame me, all in an attempt to keep the truth about his mistake that night from getting out.”

“You’re right,” Kenna said, sitting up straight. “I’ll get a flight back to Bend in the morning and be there before the news hits.”

She stood, offering me a hand to help me up and I followed her into the penthouse with Rogue trailing behind us.

“I can get a hotel, if—” I started to say and Kenna turned, lifting her sunglasses to give me the full force of her incredulous stare.

“When will you learn?” she asked, all the weight of her previous insistences behind the words. I shrugged and she huffed, rolling her eyes. “Hale, I rented this place for a full month. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need. And when you get back to Bend, your room is still yours.”

“Thank you,” I told her. I couldn’t wait to be back home, sitting on the couch with Rogue lying on my feet.

“You can thank me by giving up this notion you have that you need to get out of my hair, or stop relying on my resources,” Kenna answered, and then she paused and really looked at me, tilting her head. A slow smile began to spread on her face and she pushed her sunglasses all the way up to the top of her head as she stepped forward, suddenly beaming. “Hale, they dropped the charges!”

“I know,” I told her, brows furrowing as I took in her sudden change in demeanor. “I just told you that.”

“Right, but you’re acting like it’s nothing,” Kenna said.

“Trust me, I know it’s not nothing,” I replied. “You know how I am. It takes me a little time, and privacy, to really process this kind of thing.”

“Well,” Kenna spun around and headed towards the kitchen. “We’re going to process a different way. With lots and lots of champagne.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I told her, following her into the kitchen.

“Why not?” she asked, opening the fridge and pulling a full bottle of champagne out of the vegetable drawer, lifting it into view with a triumphant ha! before spinning around to the cupboard where all the glassware was stored.

“I mean, we were just talking about how devastating this is going to be for Lachlan, and I still have obstruction of justice, evading the police, falsifying my identity, and crossing state lines in a motor vehicle with the intention to commit a crime hanging over me, just to name a few of my crimes. This is far from done.”

“Sure, sure,” Kenna said, not slowing down as she began to uncork the champagne. “But none of that negates the fact that they dropped the murder charge against you. You cleared your name! You proved that you aren’t a killer and you caught the guy who did it!”

“It was a team effort,” I told her, and that was true. The biggest role I’d played in catching Coal was staying away from investigating my own case. Instead, Kenna, Mason, Noah, Phoebe, and even Briggs had some part to play in bringing Coal Shepherd to justice.

“Call it what you want, but I’m calling it a win,” Kenna said, and she emphasized her words with the loud pop of the champagne cork coming free. She poured two glasses and handed one to me. “Come on, a toast to your freedom at the very least. You’ve earned it.”

“To my freedom,” I said, taking the flute and clinking it against Kenna’s before sipping at the fizzy drink. I felt the bubbles in my nose, and an odd mixture of dread and relief. Taking in Kenna’s grin as she sipped at her own glass, I decided to let myself have this one moment of success. There were still hurdles to get over, but Kenna was right. We had caught Monica’s killer, solved my mother’s case, and cleared my name.

And with so many people who had my back, I knew I could handle whatever came next.

Chapter Thirty-One

There was a knock at the door an hour later. I felt dizzy with the champagne in my system and Kenna was in the kitchen making grilled cheese sandwiches to settle our stomachs after realizing we’d begun drinking without having much to eat.

“Can you get that?” Kenna called from the kitchen, and I pushed myself up off the couch, frowning as I reached the door. It wasn’t late, but Kenna and I hadn’t ordered anything and we hadn’t given our address to anyone except Mason…and the FBI.

I hesitated before opening the door, but the champagne in my system mixed with the relief of my recent freedom emboldened me and I turned the handle. On the other side of the door I found Noah Delgado and Michal Briggs, still dressed in their suits and standing shoulder to shoulder.

The one person who’d had my back this entire time and the one who had made the entire process of clearing my name a nightmare. If it had just been Noah I would have offered him a glass of champagne with an ear-splitting grin on my face. As it stood, Brigg’s presence told me this was not the time or the place.

“Agents,” I said, glancing between them before deciding to keep my focus on Noah, whose expression was unreadable but didn’t set off any warning alarms that this was the kind of situation where I needed to start running again. He had his professional mask on though, which meant this was FBI business, and I felt dread creep down the back of my neck at how little I’d gotten to celebrate my freedom before yet another legal curve ball headed my way. “How can I help you?”

“Ms. McHale,” Special Agent Briggs said, drawing my attention back to him. “May we come in?”

“No,” I said, the word slipping from my mouth before I could really think to stop it. “Sorry, what is this about?”

“We’re here in an unofficial capacity,” Noah told me. I narrowed my eyes at him. Even an off-duty FBI agent was required to act on any illegal behavior or evidence they found. And while there was nothing of the sort in the penthouse, I had only just cleared my name. I trusted Noah not to do anything that would lead to more trouble for me, but I would never forget the way Briggs had locked that interrogation room door.

I didn’t care if his excuse about only doing so to give himself time to run down another lead had passed muster with his superiors. They weren’t the ones who were illegally detained without an official arrest, and he would soon find that to be one of the counter charges used to attempt to reduce the severity of my rap sheet.

“Is everything okay?” Kenna asked, coming down the hall and bringing the smell of melted cheese and toasted bread with her. I turned to find her holding two plates and I took one of them, taking a huge bite of the grilled cheese as I stepped aside and allowed her to take in the agents on our doorstep.

“Mrs. Scott,” Noah said, and Kenna’s shoulders immediately tensed.

“I do not consent to you entering my property,” Kenna said right away, clenching the edge of her plate, her knuckles turning white. “Please leave.”

“This will only take a moment,” SSA Briggs said, ignoring Kenna entirely as he stared at me. He straightened, like he was standing at attention. “I’m here to apologize for the part I played in your experience following SSA Park’s death, and to let you know that all charges against you are being dropped.”

My mouth was already halfway open, prepared to tell this man that an apology simply would not be enough. But then his words hit me, and I looked to Noah again. He nodded, a slight smile cracking his professional facade.

“All the charges?” I asked, feeling faint.

“All of them,” Noah told me. “Between a meeting that the S.A.C. had with your rather determined lawyer, and Phoebe Richards barging into the office during that meeting, the FBI has concluded that we’ve put you through enough and that pursuing those charges would be a PR nightmare for the Bureau.”

“Phoebe did that?” I shook my head. “Wow.”

“There’s more,” Noah said. “This isn’t an official notification, but you should know that the Office of Professional Responsibility is looking into how an ASAC was able to frame a New Agent Trainee, and, given the circumstances, I think you have an excellent case for reinstatement.”

“You could even end up receiving back-pay for the two months of missed work that this debacle has caused,” Briggs chimed in.

“At minimum.” Noah nodded.

Kenna made a high-pitched sound from somewhere deep in her throat, and I glanced over to her again, curious where her thoughts were. She raised an eyebrow at Briggs, unimpressed as she addressed him. “If you think she’s going to settle for two months back-pay and this can all be swept under the rug, you’re worse at your job than I thought. I know for a fact that between the loss of reputation and the mishandling of evidence, she’s owed quite a lot more.”

“The FBI does not officially admit to any wrongdoing,” Noah said, the words automatic. He looked like he hated that they had to come from him. “But Ms. Hastings is welcome to file a Federal Tort Claims Act to recover any losses caused by the situation.”

“Pft,” Kenna said, the noise making it clear what she thought of Noah’s automatic response. “The FBI can refuse fault all they want; we both know the truth.”

“Hey, now is not the time to handle any of this,” I said, setting a hand on her arm. She sent me a petulant look, and I rolled my eyes at her antics, knowing she wasn’t really going to start arguing with the federal agents at the door. Not when I had just been cleared of all wrongdoing. I turned back to the men in the hallway and sent them a neutral smile. “Thank you for telling me about the dropped charges, gentleman, and for the apology.”

“Of course,” Briggs said. Noah said nothing, but there was the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth as he watched Kenna stare them down, amused.

“One last thing,” Noah said, putting his arm against the door jam and leaning in. “I think you should know that the Newark office has requested a transfer for Coal Shepherd. He’ll be moved tomorrow, to begin the process of charges and trial for what he did to your mother. Because part of the case against him for killing Monica is predicated on his effort to frame you in order to keep you from learning the truth, the prosecution wants to make sure we have an established murder charge there before trying him here for what he did to Monica…and to you. And, Hale, I think you should be prepared for both the defense and the prosecution to call you to the stand to testify against him.”

I stared at him, trying to wrap my mind around the complexities of the cases against Coal and pushing down any response I had about being called to testify.

“We can think about that tomorrow,” Kenna assured me, grounding me back in the moment.

“Thank you,” I said, and then turned to Noah. “And thank you. For everything.”

“Why does that sound like goodbye?” Noah asked, his brow furrowing.

“Because it is, for now,” I replied. “I know you’re going to have a lot of work to do to sort all of this out, and as much as I appreciate the idea that I could be reinstated, the truth is I need a little time to get my life back in order before I even consider that.”

“Of course.” Noah nodded, but I could see there was disappointment in his eyes. “I guess I’ll see you around, Hastings.”

“You haven’t seen the last of me, Delgado,” I shot back.

Before Noah could reply, the elevator down the hall dinged and Mason stepped out, freezing for a moment as he found the two agents standing in the doorway. He recovered before either of the men turned, striding towards the four of us.

“Agents,” Mason said, sternly. “Don’t you think you’ve harassed my client enough for one lifetime?”

“They were just stopping by to let me know that my charges were dropped,” I told him, but that only made his expression darken.

“Well, as nice as that is, that isn’t their place,” Mason said, directing the words to the two men. “And I think that it’s time the two of you go.”

“We were just leaving,” SSA Briggs said, jerking his head towards the elevator. Noah pressed his lips together, clearly reluctant to leave despite Mason’s less than friendly demeanor.

“I’ll call you,” I told Noah, and he glanced back at me for a moment before nodding and following Briggs into the elevator, leaving Mason, Kenna, and I standing in the doorway.

“Well,” Mason said, looking irritated. “I suppose they’ve managed to ruin the surprise, but I came here to let you know that yes, the FBI has dropped all charges against you.”

“That’s fantastic,” Kenna said, taking the news much better from Mason than she had from the two agents. She stepped back from where she had been blocking the door. “Come in, we’ve got a little champagne left. I think this warrants a little celebration, and while you’re here, we can talk next steps.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“So, you cleared my name, got the FBI to drop all charges against me, and helped me solve three cases,” I said as I sat down next to Mason on the couch, my drink in hand. “I know you said you would do this pro bono, but I feel like I owe you something.”

“You don’t,” Mason told me. “This case—this type of case—is why I became a defense attorney. I could have worked prosecution, or any number of other jobs, but what I did for you and your case is what gets me up in the morning. Besides, keeping a high-profile case like yours from even getting to trial is exactly the kind of good publicity that my firm needs in order to land higher paying clients. I got exactly what I wanted out of this, Avery.”

“Hale,” I said, before I could stop myself. And the truth was, I didn’t want to stop myself from correcting him, or anyone else. The name Avery McHale was synonymous with the murder of an FBI agent even if my name had been cleared. “I’m changing my name, legally, to Hale Hastings.”

“Hale, then,” Mason said after a moment of consideration.

“Without any other charges to deal with, does that mean you’re no longer my attorney?” I asked.

“So it would seem,” Mason nodded, sitting back on the couch. “You know, Kenna’s right. You’re going to want to sue the FBI for what they did, and you’ll win. I’m not the lawyer to work with on that, but I know a few people who would be a good fit. And another few who I would recommend to be your counsel during Shepherd’s trial.”

“God, that’s going to be a nightmare,” I said, staring out at the living room. Now that I was cleared of all charges, I was going to fly back to Bend with Kenna tomorrow, but soon enough I would have to be in Newark for depositions. Part of me dreaded it, but the other part was excited. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad everything that had happened the past few days. I’d call him tomorrow, once I’d sobered up a little. And then I would make a plan to visit him, and to visit my mother’s grave. Then, once the trial was underway, I would testify against Coal Shepherd and see that he was prosecuted for what he had done. The lives he had ruined.

“You’ll get through it,” Mason told me quietly. “You’re stronger than you know.”

“Thank you for getting me this far,” I said, just as quiet. There wasn’t much chance that Mason and I would wake Kenna, with how she was passed out and curled up in the accent chair, but I liked the cozy atmosphere the two of us had created by sitting together, the lights low, our voices soft.

“I don’t plan to abandon you now, you know,” Mason said, leaning in. “Not after everything I’ve done to make this happen.”

“Oh?” I asked, glancing between his face and the glass of whiskey in his hand. He must have read my mind because his eyes widened and he pulled back a little.

“I promise I’m not about to accost you with poorly thought-out pick-up lines again,” he assured me. “I just meant, I’d like to come with you to Newark and get you set up with a colleague of mine to make sure you have everything you need to put Coal Shepherd away.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, voice low and not leaning away like he had. “But I wouldn’t be terribly upset if you did try another one of your terrible pick-up lines on me.”

His eyes widened as he took me in, and then took in the room as a whole before leaning back in.

“Well, considering I’m no longer your attorney, I suppose it wouldn’t be too inappropriate,” he said, lifting a hand and tucking a strand of my dark hair behind my ear. “Why don’t I try the most classic of them all? Hale Hastings, would you please go on a date with me?”

“Yes,” I said, my smile growing as our eyes met. I wanted to lean forward and kiss him then and there, to skip all the awkward steps and jump right to the familiar comfort of knowing you’re with someone who knows you better than anyone else. Mason had been with me through some of the hardest moments, had literally pulled me from my own grave and had given me back my freedom.

But I knew better than to think we could simply skip the early stages, the butterflies on the first date, second guessing your outfit choices, testing the waters and finding the boundaries in the relationship.

I was getting way too far ahead of myself. All he was asking for was one date, but after years of not taking relationships seriously and losing touch with the men I dated in the first few weeks due to my dogged focus on solving my mother’s murder, on finishing college, on becoming an FBI agent, I was finally ready to put that energy into building a life with someone.

And I had a feeling that Mason was the kind of guy who I could build a life with. He’d held his ground in that SUV, when I’d needed comfort that would cross the professional boundaries between us. That kind of moral integrity only made him more attractive to me.

And that meant it would be worth the wait, to go through the process of dating and build something real between us that would stand the tests of time.

“Well then,” Mason said, drawing me out of my mind and interrupting my bad habit of overthinking. “As soon as we get home, I’ll take you to dinner.”

“That sounds perfect,” I replied, feeling giddy. It was like the fuzzy feeling of champagne had returned, filling me up.

Mason shifted closer and slid an arm around my shoulder. Then he lifted his glass of whiskey in a toast. “To new beginnings.”

“To putting the past in the past,” I replied, clinking my drink against his before taking a sip and enjoying the warm burn of it sliding down my throat. And in the accent chair, Kenna let out a soft snore.

I couldn’t wait to tell her everything in the morning.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Are you sure you don’t want me to send the jet to somewhere tropical instead?” Kenna asked as we approached the airport. She was driving, and both our bags were packed in the trunk of the Rav4. Rogue was sitting in the back seat, watching the world fly by as we headed towards DCA.

“I just want to go home,” I told her. “Besides, do you really want to go on a tropical vacation with Mason and me?”

“Mason and me,” Kenna said, “I like the sound of that. I don’t have to be on the plane to send it somewhere. You know he’s not your lawyer anymore, right? Nothing keeping the two of you from hooking up if you wanted to. I know I would, if I had a guy looking at me the way I see him look at you.”

I went quiet, a small, private smile lingering on my lips. Between the chaos of getting my bags packed, Kenna coordinating the flight plan, and getting the dog loaded in the car while the two of us suffered hangovers from the night of celebration, I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her about Mason asking me on a date.

“Wait,” Kenna said, glancing over at me before looking back at the road. “Wait, did you already hook up with him?”

“When would I have had time to do that?” I asked and then regretted the question immediately.

“Uh, when I was passed out in the living room and you didn’t even bother to wake me up and send me to bed. Oh god, please tell me you didn’t hook up in the living room while I was in there.”

“We did not hook up in the living room,” I assured her, and then, because I knew where her mind would go, I added, “We did not hook up at all, thank you very much.”

“Then why were you all quiet over there?” Kenna asked. She flicked on her blinker and merged into the right lane, following the signs for the car rental drop-off.

“Because,” I said, drawing the word out. But there wasn’t any good reason to keep this information from her aside from how much I enjoyed torturing her by holding it back. She said my name in a whining voice and I immediately caved. “Okay, fine. Last night after you passed out, Mason asked to take me out to dinner.”

“What?” The volume of Kenna’s exclamation was nearly enough to blow an eardrum, and I flinched away from her, happy to play into the dramatics as much as she was. “He asked you on a date?”

“He did.” I looked over at her to find that she was already looking at me, the car pulling to a stop outside the rental drop-off.

“Hale,” she said, eyes wide. “Are you ready for that? I know you said you never took your relationships seriously before, but Mason strikes me as the type of guy who wants something serious. A hook-up I could tease you about, but a date? I don’t know.”

“I do,” I told her. “I’ve spent so long treating everything in my life as secondary to figuring out who killed my mom, and now I know. I know who killed her and I know what it’s like to not have a choice about where your life is headed. I’m ready to do everything that I’ve been denying myself. Not just for the past two months while I was on the run, but for the past eight years. I stopped caring about everything that makes life worth living the day I found my mom. Now that I’ve found her killer I think it’s finally time to start enjoying things again.”

“Wow,” Kenna said, turning off the car and just sitting behind the wheel, staring straight ahead.

“Sorry, I know that’s pretty dark,” I told her, grimacing and unbuckling my seatbelt.

“No,” she said, turning to look at me, her eyes wide. “It’s not dark. It’s inspirational. But he’s catching a ride home on my personal jet and if you think for one second that I’m not going to give him the shovel talk then you’re sorely mistaken. As your best friend it’s my right and my duty.”

She got out of the SUV then and closed the door behind her, never seeing the expression on my face at the phrase ‘As your best friend’. She was right, of course. At least, she was right about being my best friend even if I disagreed with her desire to threaten the same man we were about to spend several hours on a plane with. Still, those words hit me harder than I expected.

Just like choosing to accept the date with Mason, I realized that Kenna was also a part of my new life, and that included everything she brought along with her. Offers to send me to nice places on her private jet, to buy me new outfits, to pay my bail. All of that was part and parcel of being best friends with McKenna Scott.

And if accepting her financial help was the price I had to pay, it was one I would gladly accept to have her in my life.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Kenna’s private jet was something akin to a comfortable living room that just happened to be in the air.

Closer to the cockpit there were four chairs designed more like a standard airplane seat, though the supple leather and diamond patterned stitching elevated them. They were set up to face each other, two on one side of the aisle and two on the other, with a collapsible table between them.

Then there were two recliners and a couch positioned in the middle of the jet, with a coffee table sitting between them. Though I knew it all must be bolted to the floor to keep it from shifting during take-off and landing the designer had managed to hide the technical aspects with plush cream carpet.

At the back, there was a door to the bathroom on one side, and a fully stocked bar on the other.

Kenna, who sat on the couch with her laptop open, had refrained from teasing or threatening anyone, thankfully. Mason was in one of the recliners and had spent most of the flight working on some kind of paperwork. But even when his focus was on something else, I could tell his attention was tuned into me, flicking up to watch as I stood and made my way back over to the bar to mix up another greyhound.

It was nice to know he was still protecting me even after everything he had already managed to pull off, getting my name cleared and my other charges dropped all in one fell swoop.

Rogue’s gaze also followed me from where he sat between the couch and the coffee table. He was a little more relaxed now, but his entire body had been tense long after we’d reached altitude and he continued to stay on high alert anytime I moved around the cabin.

“I get why you have your own plane now,” I said to Kenna as I poured the grapefruit juice into my glass. “Commercial flights are spoiled for me.”

“Technically I’m just renting the plane for this flight,” Kenna told me with a shrug, her attention still mostly on the screen in front of her. “Oh, there’s an email for C4!”

She clicked the touchpad, opening the email, only for her expression to drop into disappointment.

“False alarm,” she sighed. “It’s just a donor.”

“Just a donor,” I replied, rolling my eyes at how dismissive she was about money that would keep our charity running. She looked up at me as I walked back towards her and grimaced, clearly realizing how out-of-touch she sounded.

“I don’t know what else I was hoping for,” she told me. “Maybe a client asking us to research their cold case, or an email from Gracie about her progress getting the public records case files organized.”

“Hold on, does this plane have Wi-Fi?” I asked, pulling my legs up to sit crisscross on the couch beside Kenna. She let out an insulted sound that I took to mean ‘of course the plane has Wi-Fi’ and then reached out for my phone. I passed it over and she quickly typed in the password before handing it back and returning to checking her emails.

As I opened my messages app notifications began popping up one after another, making my phone almost unusable as missed calls mixed in with messages I could only catch the first half of filled my broken screen. 

Call me back, it’s urgent

Two missed calls from Noah

I’m so sorry this is happ-

Missed call from Noah

The moment you land cal-

Three missed calls from Unknown

Another missed call from Noah

Please Hale I need to kno-

Voicemail from unknown

“Shit,” I said, and Kenna glanced up at me, Mason also looked my way. Rather than open the messages and piece together what was happening based on what Noah might have texted me, I decided to go straight to the source and hit call on his contact. 

He answered halfway through the first ring. 

“Hale, thank God,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay,” I said, brow furrowed. “Are you? I have a lot of messages coming in from you and from an unknown number.”

“Yeah,” Noah said, sounding breathless, like all the tension in his body was finally escaping him, leaving a hollow space in its place. “Yeah, I’m okay, but, Hale? I’m so sorry. I was so worried that he went after you, but it sounds like he’s decided to take the smart route and⁠—”

“Noah,” I interrupted, “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“Oh,” the sound of realization on his end wasn’t comforting in the least and neither was the pause that followed, but after one long moment where I was left to stare back at my two companions, he answered. “Hale, Coal Shephard’s plane had to reroute back to DCA due to a medical emergency with one of the Marshals, and by the time they could take off again there was a storm coming in that made it unsafe to fly out. The agents decided to drive him up to Newark instead.”

“Okay,” I said, tapping a finger against the seat of the couch, a sick feeling rising in my gut. That wasn’t the whole story, it couldn’t be considering just how panicked Noah had been in his effort to get ahold of me. “What aren’t you saying?”

“It was only supposed to be a three-hour drive, but the Newark Detention Center called about an hour ago,” Noah replied. “The transport van never showed up and when they tracked the GPS coordinates they found it had gone off the side of the road only twenty minutes into the drive. Shepherd managed to escape. He’s not in custody anymore, Hale. He’s on the run.”

To be continued…

Ready for Hale’s Next Adventure?

The charges are dropped. The case is closed. Hale Hastings is finally a free woman.

But freedom comes with a deadly catch. The man who killed her mother is stilling the wind and to our him out, Hale has to do the one thing that terrifies her: stay in one place.

After months as a moving target, standing still feels less like safety and more like waiting for the other shoe to drop. She throws herself into the future, determined to solve cases and lock up criminals. For the first time, her life feels like something worth fighting for. Yet the fallout from this powerful man’s secrets is still settling around her loved ones, making tru peace impossible.

When a chilling cold case draws her deep into a local trail, Hale is pulled into a dangerous mystery someone wanted buried. With her mother’s killer circling and a new threat emerging from the shadows, Hale realizes the life she fought so hard to reclaim is built on a precipice.

She isn’t running anymore. But surviving the fall might be impossible.

To get your copy of After the Fall, CLICK HERE or scan the code below with your phone.

FREE book offer!

What Happened to Hale at the Academy?

I hope you enjoyed Over Your Grave. If you’d like to learn about what happened to Hale leading up to her escape from the FBI, then you’re in luck! Away From Her introduces Hale and tells the story of the case that sent her on the run. Interested? CLICK HERE to get your FREE Copy Now!

***Not Available Anywhere Else!***

You’ll also be the first to know when each book in the Hale Hastings series is available!

Download for FREE HERE or scan the code below!

The Hale Hastings Mystery Thriller Series

(with Ash Mercer)

Free Prequel - Away From Her (Hale Hastings Bonus Story)

In Her Bones - (Hale Hastings Series Book One)

Over Your Grave - (Hale Hastings Series Book Two)

Before She Knew - (Hale Hastings Series Book Three)

After the Fall - (Hale Hastings Series Book Four)

The Emily Slate FBI Mystery Series

Free Prequel - Her Last Shot (Emily Slate Bonus Story)

His Perfect Crime - (Emily Slate Series Book One)

The Collection Girls - (Emily Slate Series Book Two)

Smoke and Ashes - (Emily Slate Series Book Three)

Her Final Words - (Emily Slate Series Book Four)

Can’t Miss Her - (Emily Slate Series Book Five)

The Lost Daughter - (Emily Slate Series Book Six)

The Secret Seven - (Emily Slate Series Book Seven)

A Liar’s Grave - (Emily Slate Series Book Eight)

Oh What Fun - (Emily Slate Holiday Special)

The Girl in the Wall - (Emily Slate Series Book Nine)

His Final Act - (Emily Slate Series Book Ten)

The Vanishing Eyes - (Emily Slate Series Book Eleven)

Edge of the Woods - (Emily Slate Series Book Twelve)

Ties That Bind - (Emily Slate Series Book Thirteen)

The Missing Bones - (Emily Slate Series Book Fourteen)

Blood in the Sand - (Emily Slate Series Book Fifteen)

The Passage - (Emily Slate Series Book Sixteen)

Fire in the Sky - (Emily Slate Series Book Seventeen)

The Killing Jar - (Emily Slate Series Book Eighteen)

A Deadly Promise - (Emily Slate Series Book Nineteen)

No More Chances - (Emily Slate Series Book Twenty)

At All Costs - (Emily Slate Series Book Twenty-One)

The Ivy Bishop Mystery Thriller Series

Free Prequel - Bishop’s Edge (Ivy Bishop Bonus Story)

Her Dark Secret - (Ivy Bishop Series Book One)

The Girl Without A Clue - (Ivy Bishop Series Book Two)

The Buried Faces - (Ivy Bishop Series Book Three)

Her Hidden Lies - (Ivy Bishop Series Book Four)

One Dark Night - (Ivy Bishop Series Book Five)

The Oak Creek Thriller Series

The Darkest Game - (Oak Creek Thriller Book One)

Never Strike Twice - (Oak Creek Thriller Book Two)

Standalones

The Forgotten Wife

About the Authors

Alex Sigmore writes gripping mystery thrillers with heart. Known for strong, complex female leads, Alex’s stories blend edge-of-your-seat suspense with emotional depth, exploring the costs of justice and the bonds that hold us together. Whether unraveling secrets in Her Dark Secret, tracking a killer across the New Mexico desert in The Passage, or going undercover in Blood in the Sand, Alex delivers stories where empathy is as sharp as the detective’s mind.

Each book stands alone but is part of a larger, multi-book arc, offering readers the satisfaction of a complete case and the thrill of an evolving mystery. The Emily Slate Mystery Thrillers and Ivy Bishop Investigations have become reader favorites, known for their layered characters, psychological twists, and immersive storytelling.

When not writing, Alex dreams of a quiet home in the hills of California with a view, a couple of rescue pugs, and a life full of books, travel, and good friends. But for now, it’s all about the next page-turning mystery.

Ash Mercer writes character driven mystery thrillers with a pug in her lap and a coffee in hand. She has a deep love of the Pacific Northwest, and spends her weekends hiking the trails and hunting down waterfalls.