by Dani Pettrey
Jayce swiped his finger across his nose.
Rissi held back a smile. It was working. She was getting to him.
“All right. We’ll take Erik’s word for it.” She grabbed her legal pad and got to her feet. “Hopefully he doesn’t throw you under the bus.”
She’d barely made it to the door when he cleared his throat.
“Wait.”
Pausing with her hand on the knob, she turned.
Jayce straightened. “Sit back down.”
She arched a brow.
He raked a hand through his blond hair. “Please.”
Retaking her seat, she set her legal pad in front of her once again and pulled a pen from her pocket.
Jayce released a stream of air. “I just learned what happened, and when I did, I FaceTimed Lisha, hoping it was just a nasty rumor.” He shook his head, looking down at his boots, then back at Rissi. “The truth was clear in her eyes.”
His hands balled into fists at his side. “I guess I should be thankful my laptop had enough juice to keep running after the lights went out, or I still wouldn’t know.” His jaw tightened. “But I got the truth straight from the whore’s mouth. She didn’t even try to deny it. Just started crying, saying she was sorry.” He pushed the soles of his shoes against the floor, shoving his chair back with a grating screech. “Pathetic.”
“You said you just learned what happened.”
Jayce’s brow furrowed. “Yeah?”
“Which means someone on board told you. Who was it?” And why had he waited until now?
“Someone on the crew.” He shrugged.
“And the name of this someone?” she pressed.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s between me and him.”
She pulled her badge from her pocket and flipped it open. “I’m a CGIS agent, and I am asking you a direct question.”
Jayce stood. “I know my rights and I don’t have to answer.”
“You’re right, but why the secrecy?”
“Because he asked me to keep it between us, and I gave him my word I would. And unlike Lisha, I keep my word.”
Why had the mystery man waited until just before the lights went out to tell Jayce about Erik and Lisha? It appeared strategic, but what was the play? To draw attention to Erik? They needed to figure out who this mystery man was. Because she had a sinking feeling someone on board was playing a very dangerous game, and they were all pawns in it.
As Mason exited the room next door, Erik trailing behind, Rissi whispered, “Any luck?”
Erik paused as they passed, giving Rissi a once-over and smirking at Mason.
Mason’s fists curled. If he weren’t a CGIS agent, he’d knock that smug smile right off Erik’s face.
He waited until Erik was out of earshot. “Not much,” he said beneath his breath. “How about you?”
“Jayce only said ‘someone’ on the crew told him about his fiancée and Erik.”
Mason paused midstep. “As in he wouldn’t say who it was?”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “Said he’d given the man his word.”
“Interesting.”
“Agreed. And so is the timing. Sounds like he was told only a matter of minutes before the power crashed.”
“So whoever told Jayce could very easily be the one who cut the power.”
“But to what end? To freak people out about the curse or something more sinister?”
“I’m thinking the latter.”
She sighed. “Unfortunately, so am I.”
FIFTY-NINE
After returning from the distress-call run, Brooke finished fastening her storm shutters in place, filled jugs of water, and placed flashlights throughout her home.
Dripping wet, she trudged upstairs. She’d be sopping up the floors after changing, but dry clothes definitely took priority.
She hung her wet clothes over the shower rod, grabbed a towel off the rack, and wrapped it snugly about her.
Drops of water from her clothing plopped off the tile floor in a rhythmic cascade. She placed a towel along the outer edge of the stall. The thick fabric absorbed the drops, but the plopping sound, now somewhat muffled, still echoed as she strode into her bedroom and changed into her favorite comfy jeans—stone-washed, smattered with well-worn holes, and frayed at the ankles. She pulled on an equally soft tee from the Garth Brooks concert she’d been elated to attend last summer in Florida.
She bounced down the steps to the main floor, the wooden boards creaking beneath her. She was anxious for Noah to return. He’d called to say he was just a few minutes out, and she’d been looking forward to seeing him ever since they’d parted.
As she reached the foyer, another creak sounded.
She frowned. Her foyer floorboards had never creaked before.
She climbed back to the first step and down onto the foyer.
Nothing.
Hmm. Must have been a fluke.
She headed for the kitchen, ready for something to eat and hoping to make it before the electricity most likely dropped.
She put a pot full of water on the burner and moved to grab the ingredients for pasta. Tomatoes and mozzarella cheese from the fridge, olive oil from the counter, basil from the small container on her windowsill, and lastly, she headed for the pantry to get garlic, onion, and angel hair pasta.
She opened the door to a man dressed in black.
Her throat constricted, choking her cry for help.
She bolted for the front door, dropping the ingredients along the way.
Rounding the edge of the couch, he clamped his hand on her hair.
Yanking backward, he pulled her onto the couch.
She kicked out, her bare foot colliding with his chin.
A grunted expletive flew from his mouth as she scrambled over the back of the couch and grasped the door handle.
Heavy footfalls sounded away from her as she swung the door open and screamed.
SIXTY
“Whoa!” Noah said as Brooke flailed back at his presence. “What’s wrong?”
“He . . .” She spun around and froze.
Noah pulled his gun and stepped in front of her.
“Where?” he asked, shielding her with his body, his gaze darting about until it landed on the open back door, rain spewing in, slickening the floor.
Brooke’s gaze shifted to the back door. “He must have . . .”
Noah rushed into the kitchen. Grabbing a flashlight off the counter, he shone it across her backyard.
No one.
“Whoever it was, he’s gone.”
Brooke’s shoulders dropped, her tense stance softening.
He called the local police to canvas the area again as he shut and locked the back door, then moved to do the same with the front one. He took time to clear her home just in case and made sure it was locked up tight before he sat with her on the couch.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Adrenaline burned through his taut limbs as she relayed the events up to his arrival.
“Was he wearing gloves?”
Her face scrunched. “I . . . don’t know. Sorry.”
He rested a hand on her arm, trying to reassure her she was safe. “I’ll have Emmy come out and run the place in case he didn’t.”
She nodded as he placed the call.
“Hey, Em, could you and Logan come over to Brooke’s house? She just walked in on an intruder.” One who was still on the loose.
Rissi and Mason stood on the deck as the sun peeked through the clouds. The storm had thankfully shifted course, passing quickly over them and around Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. Word was only the outer bands hit home, and the damage to their town was minimal. Rissi and Mason made their way up to the control room and found Ed, Adam, and Bob talking over coffee.
Thankfully, the food poisoning had passed just as quickly as the storm, but they’d saved a sealed container of the food in the fridge for Emmy to test upon their return to shore.
; According to Bob, all Textra’s helicopters had been deemed safe by the NTSB and were en route. After all that crew two had endured, they were swapping rotations—with extra pay for any crew one members willing to return early.
Mason was more than ready to be off the platform, and surely Rissi felt the same.
After all she’d been through, she deserved some rest.
“What?” she said, narrowing her eyes as she caught him staring.
“Just thinking.” How much I love you.
“Just thinking?” she said.
He smiled. “Yep.”
The whoosh of copter blades whooshed through the air, cutting off their short moment in time.
Mason indicated for Rissi to go ahead. With Lucas, Jayce, and Erik in custody, they loaded up the suspects along with Chase’s body.
All the remaining men were anxious to get off the “tin can,” as several put it, but two more birds were on the way. For now, Mason had never heard a sweeter sound than the whirring of blades as they lifted up above the helipad and out over the open sea.
He looked back one last time as Dauntless faded into the distance. Wilmington had only been home for little more than a week now, but he’d never felt happier to be home as he did when they touched down at Textra Oil’s helicopter airport.
He couldn’t wait to continue interrogating Erik, Jayce, and Lucas, but this time at the station. Being in its interrogation room always seemed to prompt previously reluctant suspects to talk.
When finished, he longed for nothing more but to take Rissi home and tell her how deeply he loved her. Over and over again.
Mason escorted Jayce off the copter as Rissi escorted Erik. Hadley met them to take Chase’s body, his dive gear, and the vial of his blood. Noah and Logan were there to drive them back to the station. To keep office tensions as settled as they could be, given the circumstance with Lucas, Noah would be handling that part of the investigation going forward.
Mason had just reached the car and was about to settle Jayce into the back seat when a woman about Rissi’s height of five-seven, but far curvier, rushed forward. Her bright pink dress flapped about her legs as she headed straight for Jayce.
Jayce stiffened. “What are you doing here, Lisha?”
“I came to make sure you were okay. I saw on the news that there had been two deaths on Dauntless, and they were rotating you off the rig early. I was so worried about you.” She rested her hand on his arm, hot-pink painted nails gleaming in the sun. “Are you okay?”
His jaw tightened. “I will be when you leave.”
“Snookums.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“I told you we’re done. You slept with Erik. What’d you expect? I’d just take you back?”
“Erik was a mistake.”
“You got that right.” Jayce climbed in the back seat and indicated with a lift of his chin for Mason to close the door. They pulled out of the lot, leaving a crying Lisha standing there.
SIXTY-ONE
The team waited to begin interrogations until Emmy tested the food they’d brought back and discovered it was laced with arsenic. Thankfully not enough to kill anyone. Now the pivotal question was who had done it. They had suspected Erik retaliated for Jayce spreading the word about Erik’s extreme dislike for Chase, but something had shifted when Rissi had spoken with Jayce. Something niggled at her to the point she was betting Jayce had been the one to poison the food. He’d gotten sick from it, but as Mason said, not even close to the extent of everyone else. Why would he poison himself? Perhaps he’d taken a few bites as a way to cover his tracks. Maybe it was a brilliant move on his part, setting Erik up for something he did.
Emmy continued to process evidence while Rissi entered the interrogation room where Jayce sat nursing a Coke.
Mason was interrogating Erik, and Noah headed in with Lucas. Thankfully, Caleb was out on a call—for now, at least.
She could handle herself with jerks like Erik, but Rissi was thankful Mason had chosen to question him. The guy rubbed her the wrong way.
Jayce looked up at her, impatience furrowed on his brow. “Are we really going to keep dragging this out? I don’t know who killed Chase.”
She pulled out the chair with a squeak as the metal legs scraped the floor. She sat and laid the yellow legal pad on the table, dropping the pen on top of it. Come on, gut, be right. Let’s see what kind of reaction I get. She looked Jayce dead in the eye. “Let’s talk arsenic.”
His face slackened.
Bingo. She’d been right. “Why’d you do it?” she asked, getting straight to the point, hoping the sound of utter confidence in her voice would get him to confess.
Jayce shrugged. “Erik deserved it.”
“So you contaminated the sloppy joes to get back at Erik for . . .”
“Sleeping with my fiancée.”
His story wasn’t fitting together. He’d said he’d heard about his fiancée and Erik just before the lights went off, but the food poisoning had occurred hours prior. She decided to hold off on pointing that out for the moment.
“And you were going to let him take the fall?” she said.
“Again, he deserved it.” The tension in his voice heightened.
“What about the rest of the crew who ate it and got sick?” She inadvertently rubbed her still-sore stomach.
Jayce shrugged. “Collateral damage.”
“You’ll be charged.”
“Charged?” Panic broke on his face.
“Yep. It’ll be up to the DA to decide on the severity of your crime.”
“Crime? It just made a few people sick.”
“More than a few, and poisoning food could easily be construed as attempted murder.”
He rocked back in his seat. “Murder?” All color drained from his face. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“But you know who did?” She kept pressing, her gut telling her she was on the right trail.
“It was just a little arsenic. Not enough to do anything like that.”
“Like I said, that’ll be up to the DA to decide.”
“Whoa.” He shook his hands out. “This is getting way out of hand.”
She leaned forward, her arms resting on the table. “I can put in a good word for you. . . .”
He swallowed, his chest rapidly rising and falling.
“Jayce, look at me.” She needed to rein his focus back in.
His darting gaze settled on her.
“If you knew Erik slept with Lisha when you poisoned the food, why the big show like you just found out in the generator room?”
Jayce stiffened.
Now they were getting somewhere.
“I . . . uh . . .”
She leaned forward, propping her weight on her elbows. “You help me, I help you.”
Jayce’s leg bounced. “He said I had to keep it between us.”
“Who?”
He shook his head.
“So he knew about the food poisoning?” She’d keep it general for now. Discover what this “he” did.
Jayce nodded. “Yeah, he gave me the stuff.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He said Erik needed to pay.”
Which was most likely a cover to distract her and Mason from doing their jobs, but thankfully Mason hadn’t eaten the poisoned hamburger, and it had saved him hours of being sick.
“Why confront Erik in the generator room, as if you’d just found out?”
“He told me to.”
Another distraction, but to what purpose? She took a sharp inhale as the pieces started to fit into place. He needed the cover of darkness to try to dispose of evidence. He no doubt slipped out during the blackout and rigged the wiring in the medical bay to catch fire when the electricity came back on. She started sifting through the faces in her mind. “Did this man tell you why he needed the blackout, why he started the fire?”
“No . . .” Jayce stared at his feet.
“You’re lying.”
Jayce’s tongue pushed
up under his top lip, bulging it out.
“Jayce. Another man is dead.”
“Not a good one.”
“That doesn’t make it okay to kill him.” Surely if this mystery man needed to dispose of evidence, there was more to Chase’s death than a stingray accident.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Then, who did?”
He swallowed.
“If you don’t talk, you’re our top suspect.”
Perspiration rolled down the sides of Jayce’s cheeks. “It was Ed.”
Her jaw slackened. “Ed?”
He nodded.
“Ed killed Chase?” Disbelief rattled through her.
Jayce shrugged. “I don’t know for sure that he killed Chase, but he’s the one who had me poison the food and cause the distraction.”
“Why would Ed want to kill Chase?” Ed had been nothing but helpful. Surely Chase hadn’t gone after Ed’s wife.
Jayce’s fingers clutched his Coke can. “Chase was dating someone Ed cared about.”
“Who?” She anxiously awaited the answer, her mind racing, trying to put what Jayce said together into something that made sense.
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Jayce said, his gaze darting about the room.
“A man’s dead,” she said again, not bothering to keep the frustration from her tone. “If you aren’t going to help me . . .” She grabbed her legal pad and pen and stood. “I’ll go call the DA.”
“No. Don’t. Please,” Jayce said.
She retook her seat.
He exhaled, rubbing his hands along his thighs. “Chase was dating Ed’s daughter behind her dad’s back.”
She hadn’t even known Ed had a daughter. She’d only seen a picture of him and his wife in his bunk room. No one, not even Ed, mentioned a daughter while they were on Dauntless.
Was Jayce just trying to cover his butt? Was he throwing Ed under the bus? “Who else knew about Chase and Ed’s daughter?”
“No one that I know of. I’m guessing they were very secretive because Chase knew Ed would kill him if he found out. Kasey was just out of high school.”
Eww. Chase was pushing twenty-seven.
“How do you know, then?”