Dark Secrets

by Savannah Kade

  It took a while to figure out where the lab was and to figure out how to ride the bus and get there. Grace was nervous about handing her samples over to someone else. Nate, it turned out, was hungry.

  “Sandwich?” He was pulling the contents out of the bag and beginning to assemble another sandwich for himself.

  Shrugging, Grace piled turkey onto a slice of bread, noting that it was still cold enough not to worry, and added cheese and a little mustard pack. She was halfway through when she told him. “I need to eat something different for lunch though. This is enough sandwiches.”

  “Yeah, I thought the same thing,” he said through bites. “But we should eat this while we have it. No fridge. I’m guessing we should toss what we don’t eat now.” True to his word, he loaded another sandwich as the first disappeared.

  They spent the day riding the bus to Denver and heading in to the lab. It was nerve-wracking to Grace to walk into the lab and stop at the desk and ask for special service. Grace usually had things lined up with a known contact at a lab; a cold-call wasn’t her style. It was worse because she was wearing clothes from the seventies that weren’t her own. Nate at least looked cool in his fedora.

  “May I help you?” The woman at the front desk didn’t act as though they were wearing borrowed clothes and that helped.

  “I’m here to see Reena Johnson…” She let it hang in the air, wondering if the request would be enough.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  With a lab tech? Grace had no idea, but she tried again. “I don’t, but please tell her my name is Grace Lee and I’m with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Please tell her Brad Layelle sent me.”

  The reference to GBI seemed to catch the woman’s attention and she at least picked up the phone and called the back. They waited for twenty minutes while the side door opened twice and Grace looked up, wondering if this was Reena Johnson or not. Grace had never met the woman nor seen a picture of her. So here she sat, in a commercial lab in Denver—in the lobby for once—waiting for a woman she didn’t know who didn’t know her. Neither time was Reena Johnson, once was a man, the second time a woman walked out the door to the lobby and right out the front without giving her and Nate a second glance.

  The third time the door opened, a young woman looked around and spotted them. “Are you Grace Lee?”

  “Yes.” She fought to maintain decorum and not jump up shouting. “And this is—" She stopped herself at the last moment. It was bad enough that she’d announced her own name in public. She shouldn’t announce Nate’s. Not here. Not where his precinct might use this lab and have connections back to his fellow Dark Falls officers. “Can we talk in your office? Or somewhere private?”

  She’d had plenty of time to think, but she and Nate hadn’t really been able to talk on the trip. Someone might have overheard them. In fact, Nate had insisted they enter the bus separately and not sit together. At least the bus had once again been nearly empty, but she’d spent the ride with her mind wandering to what she should do and how. Now she was here, and she still felt underprepared.

  Reena let them through the doors and down a long central hall. Grace recognized the sharp smells of several of the chemicals used to pull blood from stains or to reveal fingerprints or hidden or washed-out blood. She heard the hum and smelled the metal from the section of the lab that housed several mass spectrometers and MRIs. Though it was unfamiliar, it held the comforting scents of her own lab.

  “I share this office with several of the other lab rats.” Reena waved them into the small space with one high window along one of the walls. “Please, have a seat.”

  The gray, utilitarian desk and matching gunmetal shelf beside it took up most of the space, but Reena tucked herself behind the desk as Grace and Nate took the two guest chairs. They were as uncomfortable as they looked, and Grace guessed that Reena Johnson wasn’t used to receiving visitors much in her line of work.

  Settled finally, Nate looked to her and Grace realized he was expecting her to lead this part of their little investigation. Reena beat her to the punch. “What’s a GBI agent doing in Denver and why do you need my help?”

  “It’s an interesting story…” Grace started. “I’m a forensic consultant with the GBI—hence the badge—and with several other local and state forensic agencies as needed. I’m here because my brother, James Lee, died in Dark Falls a week ago. I’ll give you all the details if you want, but in the end his death was ruled a suicide and the case was closed. His body was examined and cremated before I even arrived in town.” She saw Reena’s eyebrows lift and knew the other woman questioned the odd speed of her brother’s case. “It was a murder. We have evidence.”

  Shit. She hadn’t introduced Nate. “This is Detective Ryder with the Dark Falls PD. He was originally assigned—" she cut herself off. That made Nate sound like a bad detective. She wouldn’t throw him under the bus. Luckily, he picked up the thread so she didn’t have to.

  “Our ME ruled the death a suicide and we didn’t dig deeper.” He sighed. “Grace came in and made us re-open the case and she was right to do that. We have some samples she’s gathered from the scene of the crime, but I’m not sure how we’re going to pay you to run them…” Grace heard his words trail off.

  “I’ll pay it,” she jumped in, assuring Reena that the work would be covered.

  “You can’t. You can’t use your credit cards and we don’t have enough cash,” Nate pointed out.

  Her shoulders slumped. She’d been thinking she couldn’t use her card in Dark Falls, but that was dumb. She couldn’t use it anywhere. Any ping would locate them. “I promise, I’ll pay it.”

  “Why isn’t Dark Falls PD covering this? It’s their case.” Reena didn’t miss a beat.

  “Well,” Nate sighed, and Grace knew what was coming. “That’s because we’re still having to investigate this case on our own.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time they left, Nate was about eighty percent certain that Reena Johnson wasn’t going to turn them in. And that was only because she’d called Brad Layelle and confirmed his relationship with Grace.

  Though their strangely out-of-date clothing helped support their story, Reena Johnson had still eyed them warily. The promise of paying her later—maybe from the Dark Falls PD account, maybe from their own accounts—hadn’t really won her over. Nate understood; she was accountable for her time on the equipment and in the office. Though it was a private lab that sometimes did for-fun genetics tests, they also were often involved in serious legal cases for government agencies. She could lose her job. Then again, what Nate hadn’t wanted to point out in front of Grace was the possibility that the lab scientist would be paid out of their life insurance accounts.

  He was pretty confident that Reena Johnson would check the samples for Grace and wait for her payment. But if someone asked what she was doing? She might spill everything. It was a chance he and Grace were betting on as they headed out the front door of the office into chilly air.

  She turned to him and asked, “Where to next?”

  He looked up into the sky at the gray clouds rolling in. “I don’t even know.” But that wasn’t good enough. “We need a place for the night. We need it to be away from here, somewhere new.”

  “Somewhere that takes our cash, so nowhere nice.”

  He hated that for her, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. “How about a nice dinner? If we hit a place along the way, we can sit for a bit and hopefully relax.”

  “You think we can relax in Denver?”

  He didn’t. He’d have to get them something better than what they had. “Probably not. Give me a minute.”

  He turned away with his new burner phone, calling Masuka on his private line. He didn’t dare call Zaragosa, even from the burner phone. “Hey, Masuka. I need a car.” He listened to the reply, then made the task about fifty times harder. “I’m in Denver.”

  After he hung up, he turned to Grace, not wanting to tell her he might be
able to get them a car. He wouldn’t want her to be disappointed if they wound up back on the bus. “How about we find somewhere decent to eat?”

  She lifted the corner of her collar and quirked a smile. “We can go to a diner.”

  He grinned back. Shitty situation, but he wasn’t hating it as much as he might have. He didn’t even have a smartphone to look up somewhere good to go. He looked around, checking out the streets and thinking. “I know a fantastic breakfast place. And we can just make it before they close at three. We had sandwiches for breakfast, so we can have pancakes for lunch, right?”

  Grace agreed with a smile that hit him in his gut.

  How long was he going to go on feeling that? Was she going to stay with him? Should he consider moving to Georgia? They needed detectives, too, he thought. Then he thought he was batshit crazy for thinking like that. “Come on. It’s this way.”

  Nate watched as Grace dug into a seriously beautiful and interesting version of eggs Benedict. For himself, he’d gotten a “flight” of pancakes, trying out several varieties and struggling to decide which one he liked best. But he’d been here before, he’d known it would all be good. Grace, on the other hand, was wearing expressions that looked like a kid on Christmas morning or made him think about the things they could have done the other night had he not stopped them. He wouldn’t next time. She was right. She was an adult and she could choose her own regrets. Nate did not intend to be one of them.

  For a moment, as he watched her eat with gusto, he felt his heart squeeze in fear. What was he doing, thinking about her like this? He wasn’t the type to fall hard or fast. He dealt in logic. He dealt in facts. He dealt with people on their worst days. Grace was defying all of it. So did his heart roll because she was unusual? Or did it roll because he’d stumbled onto something he would have to hold on to, and hold on tight?

  Nate couldn’t say for sure, but he had a sneaking suspicion it was the latter. Grace had come in and hit him upside the head, metaphorically speaking. He was still hearing the ringing in his ears and wondering what he would feel or think when the little birdies and stars circling his brain disappeared.

  Maybe because they couldn’t talk about the case, Nate had struck up conversations about everything and anything in the meantime. They looked and sounded like a couple on a date, and he intended to take advantage of it. They shared favorite movies and tv shows over their breakfast, and as they walked out, she discussed the technology she was working on.

  “I’m looking for a way to statistically measure bite marks.”

  As an officer, he understood that people bit each other far more often than the average person would believe. He also understood that cases had been turned over when bite mark evidence was removed from the record. Bundy would have been released had he not already died in prison. It was a sobering thought. “I heard they couldn’t measure them…”

  “Well, that’s the thing. A forensic scientist can go into court and say, ‘I think this man’s teeth match that bite mark!’ and another forensic scientist—often also an odontologist—will say ‘I think it doesn’t.’ But the new science is showing that even the best scientists mismatch them too many times. We just aren’t as good as we thought we were.”

  “We?” he asked, looking at her face as her expression turned from excited to pensive.

  “I was an expert witness on some of those cases. Only a few, and I don’t think my evidence was ever the nail in the coffin, but I was reviewing my findings and deciding if I should push for appeals on any of those cases when the news about Jimmy came in.”

  They’d walked another block and he had an idea where they were going. He just didn’t want to tell her yet in case it was a dead end. There was an appeal to the fact that she trusted him. “So tell me about the measurement system.”

  Her expression bloomed as she started describing her idea, and he had a sudden epiphany. It didn’t matter if this was a soulmate kind of thing. She was amazing and he’d better hold on tight. His concern shouldn’t be how he felt about her, but how to convince her to feel that about him. She saw a problem, investigated her mistakes and tried to own them, and she was inventing new techniques to make the science work better. She was out of his league, but he was going to give it his best anyway.

  They walked a few blocks down to an old-style theater and he pulled her into the parking lot. He’d gotten a text from Masuka’s sister this time—they weren’t taking any chances with any of them contacting him too much—with a location and a plate number. Someone that Mari or Masuka trusted in the Denver PD had left them a car. He found the plate and pointed. “We have a car.”

  She lit up again and he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his own lips in response. Pulling the key from under the footwell mat, he held it up, but right then her phone rang and she answered it. His heart jumped. Had she just pinged them?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Though the burner phone didn’t have any contact info in it, Grace recognized the number. “Brad!”

  She saw Nate frown out of the corner of his eye but ignored it.

  “How are you doing? I was calling to be sure you’re still alive.”

  “And kicking,” she replied, leaving out the part about having ghosted out of town and wearing other people’s clothes and not using credit cards. But Brad might have figured that out already.

  “The burner phone thing is scaring me.” His tone changed from relief at her voice to one that let her know he was worried.

  “Well, it’s not ideal, but I have police protection.” She grinned at Nate, not ready for the explosion from the other end of the line.

  “Police protection! What in the holy hell have you gotten yourself into?” Brad practically screeched it.

  Shit. She’d let that cat out of the bag, and spent a few minutes explaining the situation. Nate was looking at her like she was yelling it into a crowd, but she wasn’t. There was no one else in the parking lot despite the number of cars. The films must be between showings. She was keeping her voice down, and this was Brad. The very fact that she and Nate were kind of on the run made it all spill out. Nate had anchors—people who knew where he was and that he was safe. She needed one, too.

  “Okay, so you’re fine, really?” Once she’d assured Brad that she was, he asked, “What’s his name? This guy you’re running around with?”

  “Nathan Samuel Ryder.” She saw Nate’s eyebrows pop up. So she knew his full name? Who didn’t use Google? It had been easy to find.

  “I’m checking him out,” her friend announced even though she laughed.

  “I already did, remember?”

  “Yeah, but that was before you were using burner phones and running around Denver in disguise.” He did have a point, but he was a lab geek like her, not a tech guy. Brad knew that, too. “I’m getting Katie on it this time. She can dig better than either of us.”

  That she could, and Brad would feel better, like he was helping. So Grace let him. Nate ushered her into the car while she was on the phone and he pulled out. She had no clue where they were going but figured Nate knew the area far better than she did. By the time she hung up with Brad, they were on a freeway again.

  “Please tell me that was not your regular phone,” was all Nate said, his tone flat.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then who has the number of your burner phone?” He sounded demanding, and she tried to brush it off, but her nerve didn’t let her do it.

  “Brad, my lab partner back in Georgia. Someone checking up on me so I don’t die in Denver and no one know it until my body is identified.” She was biting at the words, getting angrier as she went.

  Seeming to sense her irritation, Nate nodded and added, “I’m sorry.”

  It took all the wind out of her sails. “It’s my burner phone. I didn’t use my regular phone. I did give Brad the number since even my parents don’t have it.”

  She heard him sigh as he took an exit changing from one freeway to another. She wasn’t keepi
ng track of where they were going, which was a mistake. Still, Grace couldn’t muster any real concern about it. “I didn’t even think about them. They must be going crazy with Jimmy passing and now you disappearing on them.”

  “Brad has been doing what he can, and they know I came out to investigate.” She looked out the window not liking the dark mood brought on by a topic she couldn’t change. Grace watched as he passed several exits and she asked, “Where are we headed tonight?”

  “Fort Collins. The opposite direction from how we came. This time it’s only just over an hour, so not like this morning’s bus ride.” He went on to explain how he’d conjured up a car. That despite the new ride and the complete upgrade in mobility, they’d still be staying at a motel that would take cash.

  Grace nodded. “After the last borrowed house blew up, I’d feel incredibly responsible if we got anyone else in that kind of trouble.” She sighed. “I can honestly say I had no idea that could even happen. Next time, I won’t be able to live with that. And at least no one lived at the old house. I’m praying Masuka had the place insured and I’m trying to figure out how to pay it off.”

  “We pay it off, and the lab, by solving this case,” Nate told her. “At that point, it all becomes Dark Falls’ jurisdiction and these basics will be covered that way. If we don’t solve it….”

  She didn’t like the way his voice trailed off. Only able to assume that would mean they were dead, she redirected the conversation. Back to more stable ground. “What exactly is the case we are solving now?”

  “Why Jimmy was murdered.” He said it as though it was obvious.

  “Thank you.”

  “For?” This time he looked over at her, a frown knitting his brows as though he truly had no idea why she would thank him.