by Kilby Blades
First, he went for the texts. Nothing from Shea, but three from Delilah. Checking out the time stamps, the first of the three she sent had started the previous night and another two had been sent earlier that morning.
Did you go to Denver? Call me.
Are you up yet?
Check your voicemail. Now.
Before navigating to his voicemail, Dev opened the remaining text that had come in from Brody the previous night.
Picked up Don Jr. last night for drunk and disorderly. He’s sleeping it off in the drunk tank. We’ll hold him for questioning on other possible charges.
Brody’s text was all it took for the night before to come flying back. Don Jr. was a suspect in the case, an ID they’d only been able to make because of Shea’s recording. If Brody had picked him up, it meant he and Duff had reason to believe they’d be able to make some of the other charges stick. Dev thought of the town meeting at The Spoon and the notion their plan had worked.
But what about the test? a different part of his mind wanted to know. Because, now, he remembered that part, too. Recollection of that tidbit told him why he’d bothered to take the medicine. He’d called in a favor late last night to the tech they’d been working with down at the county lab on the mill investigations.
Anita had agreed to go in early—to pull the eliminating DNA from the crime scenes and to look at Dev’s DNA profile next to Don Jr.’s. She had confirmed that said comparison could verify siblinghood. She had further agreed to conduct said investigation and have the results to him by nine o’clock in the morning. The time display on the top of Dev’s clock read 9:03 AM.
Adrenaline cut through Dev’s grogginess and he was suddenly alert and sitting up in bed. Navigating to his voicemail, he found the one he was looking for. Ignoring Delilah’s for the moment, he thumbed it to open, which put it on auto-play. Buried memories of Maury Povich reading paternity results from a cue card flashed into his mind.
Hey Dev, it’s Anita. I pulled the results you were looking for. Like I said, since it doesn’t relate to the case, it’s unofficial. It won’t go on record and, don’t worry—these are only for you. With respect to Donovan Packard Jr., I found a 25% DNA match, which is consistent with three possible relationships: grandparents to grandchildren, uncles and aunts to nieces and nephews, and half-sibling to half-sibling.
Dev barely heard anything she said after that—he only vaguely registered that she invited him to call with any questions. He had believed Trudy, but with this final piece of vindication, he truly knew. John Hamren wasn’t his father not least of all because he had no known relationship to Josie Sherman outside of what his grandfather had told him. John Hamren wasn’t his father because Donovan Packard was.
It knocked Dev flat on his back—had him staring at his ceiling for half an hour—asking himself why his mother had never told. Why hadn’t she said anything after Eric died and there had been no one left to hurt? Why hadn’t she ever gone to him for financial help? There had been lean times and—seeing how Donovan Packard was Dev’s father and also a multimillionaire—why hadn’t she gone to him?
And his brother…(half-brother, some inner voice corrected)…Don Packard Jr. was a goddamned criminal who was trying to destroy this town. Dev had reflected many times before as he’d thought about his parentage that he would be eager to get to know any half-sibling he might uncover. Knowing Don Jr. was his blood only made him ashamed.
Dev didn’t realize he still had the phone in his hand until it buzzed, and just kept on buzzing and ringing. The screen revealed an incoming call from the ever-persistent Delilah. And, shit, what was he supposed to say to her? How was he supposed to broach the issue they both knew but had never talked about? How could he tell Delilah or anyone that his father was the notorious Donovan Packard?
“Delilah—”
“Thank God,” she cut right in, before demanding, “Where the fuck are you, Dev? Did you listen to my voicemail yet?”
“No, I—”
But she cut him off again. “You need to get your ass back from Denver. Shea’s ex is on his way into town.”
Shea’s ex?
“I’m not in Denver,” he said absently. “I’m at home. I just woke up…Wait, Shea’s ex?” he finally exclaimed, with alarm. “As in, Keenan?”
Before he had even finished asking the question, Dev was already out of bed.
“Yes, Keenan.” Delilah’s voice was impatient. “That conversation she recorded with Don Jr. yesterday? It let Keenan know where she was. Now that he does, he’s coming here, to look for her.”
Dev pressed the screen to take it from standard mode to speaker, then turned the volume up so he could talk to Delilah as he dressed. “She told me he wasn’t dangerous,” he said irritably as he took off his t-shirt and boxer briefs and threw them in the direction of the hamper. He would put on fresh ones, but there was no time for a shower today.
“Look—I don’t know the whole story,” Delilah admitted. “And, either way, it’s hers to tell. I will give you the only information you really need to know: Keenan is arriving this morning from New York. And Shea’s attorney told her it will help her case to be able to show the lengths he’ll go to, to find her—especially if he makes contact with her. They’re separated but they’re still not divorced.”
That sounded a hell of a lot like stalking to Dev, but he understood the legal pieces. And if they weren’t divorced, a few more things made sense. Shea’s lawyer was right about how the law worked. You couldn’t nab anyone for bad intentions—you couldn’t get anyone until they did something. Shea wouldn’t have been hiding here unless she had believed that Keenan would.
“Well, why the hell did she talk to Don Jr. if she thought he could bring Keenan calling?”
Dev had thought about that piece of it before. Shea had said weeks before that she hadn’t recognized Don Jr. and Dev had believed her. She had also said that Don Jr. once said he recognized her. There had to have been a moment when she could’ve kept denying it—when she could’ve walked away to protect herself and keep her distance.
“You idiot,” Delilah half-shouted. “She put herself in danger for you.”
Dev was halfway down the road of thinking through what that meant when Delilah’s voice cut into his consciousness again.
“Grovel for forgiveness later, Dev. But, right now, I need you to get to The Spoon. We put together a plan.”
Dev was driving too fast by 40 miles an hour. He really didn’t care. Nothing between hell or earth could stop him from heading off Keenan West. He’d already called the FAA asking to be notified of all air traffic coming through the helipad on Elk Mountain. There were no scheduled flights for the rest of the day.
Still, the flight logs said he’d missed two flights late that morning, both with the place of origin listed as New York. The sole passenger of the last one that had landed was reported to have left the premises three minutes before Dev’s call. With Don Jr. and his people coming in and out of town, knowing which chopper Keenan had been on was anybody’s guess. Intercepting whoever had just left the heliport gave him a fifty-fifty shot.
“Come on,” he urged no one out loud.
He had it going for him that the way between the helipad and town was only one long road. That meant, even if Keenan had stepped outside to a chauffeured race car with Mario Andretti behind the wheel, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of having made it to town.
Dev had called down to dispatch—gotten a call in to all the local taxi companies and done recon on whether there had been any calls for pickup. They’d also been notified that a person who was wanted for questioning might be looking for a ride.
If he even called a taxi, Dev thought grimly, thinking of Uber and Lyft and all the ride sharing services people used nowadays. In a town as remote as Sapling, it wasn’t easy—but not impossible, either—to get a car. It had also occurred to him that Keenan might not have helicoptered in at all. For all Dev knew, Keenan had flown to Denver the nigh
t before and had already arrived by car.
You need to slow down.
A voice in his head spoke sternly to him as he whipped around a turn entirely too fast. He’d at least had the presence of mind to go by the station and take a marked car. All the better to pull this asshole over. The police cruiser may have looked like a Chevy Tahoe on the outside, but it was pretty souped up. It had a 5.3-liter V8 and 355 horses under the hood. Even a boat as heavy as that could track it up the hill and make all the hairpin turns.
Dev’s finger flipped the switch for the sirens the second the car came into view. He couldn’t see the driver, let alone determine whether the driver fit a description, not that he knew what Keenan’s description was. Google searches for Keenan Summers had yielded nothing. For now, Dev was going on pure instinct and the power of his badge to stop and question anyone he wanted.
Dev took his time approaching the car, fully assessing the situation. It was an obscure Audi model that he hadn’t ever seen on the road. It had vanity plates that said “KNDRK1”. That made the chance slim it was a rental car, but this guy also wasn’t local. Dev had never seen the guy—or the car—before.
He would’ve remembered this man. For one, there weren’t that many Black people in Sapling. And, this guy in particular had something about him. Some sort of gravitas despite the fact that he just been pulled over by the law. He didn’t look nervous, but he wasn’t stupid either. By the time Dev approached him, his window had long-since been rolled down.
The man’s license was sitting on the console above the steering wheel and his hands were laid out on the wheel itself. He smiled as he looked at Dev and asked, “Is there a problem, officer?”
“License and registration, please.” Dev commanded with authority, knowing full well both items had already been laid out. The man moved his hand slowly, grabbed the items, then held his hand out to give them to Dev, who took them blindly before glaring at the man for a long moment and snatching them out of his hand.
To be honest, he didn’t seem at all like her type. I mean, the guy didn’t even have a beard and Dev happened to know that Shea really liked his. He didn’t look like he would care about hiking or morning buns are any of the other things that she really liked.
“Sir, are you aware of how fast you were going?”
Instead of answering in earnest, the guy had the nerve to raise his eyebrow and asked, “Are you?”
Before Dev could threaten to arrest him faster than he could say “insubordination”, his gaze fixed upon the last name he was expecting to see.
“Kendrick?” He felt a frown crease the lines of his own face.
This wasn’t Keenan’s name. Not only that—Dev recognized it as the name of the guy who owned Shea’s house.
“Do you know Shea Summers?”
“That depends. Will telling you I know her get me out of a ticket?”
Kendrick said it in a way that told Dev he was still messing with him. Risky move. Dev respected that. And, if he was being honest with himself, he deserved it. He was being a colossal dick. He pulled the guy over for no reason—or, at least he’d pulled him over only because he’d been convinced the driver could be Keenan. Now that he knew it wasn’t, Dev didn’t quite know what to do.
“When a police officer asks you something, do you always answer with a question?”
Kendrick smiled. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I know you own her house. What do you want with Shea?”
“Oh, I didn’t come to talk to Shea. I came to talk to her ex.” Dev studied Kendrick carefully. For someone who just showed up, he seemed to have a lot figured out.
“Where is he?” Dev practically growled. If this guy knew Keenan was coming, what else did he know?
“She said he would find her. And I trust Shea.”
“Is this guy dangerous?” Dev asked for what felt like the umpteenth time.
“She told him to leave her alone. He didn’t. That’s enough for me.”
Dev couldn’t be sure about this guy’s intentions with Shea. Nobody just took a helicopter halfway across the country for someone he only considered to be a friend. But he was renting her house in a strange town thousands of miles away from home. Maybe he felt responsible for her. He wouldn’t pretend the thought of this guy being special to Shea didn’t eat at his gut with jealousy. But their sense of purpose was shared.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Dev said it irritably.
“Good.” Kendrick nodded. “Now…can you help me find Shea?”
“Come in the cruiser,” Dev nearly barked.
He wanted to keep this Kendrick character where he could see him. He still didn’t trust the man and didn’t want him off on his own trip.
“I’ll take my own car.” Kendrick’s voice was resolute. And, really, what could Dev do about it? Kendrick had done nothing wrong and wasn’t under arrest.
“Can you keep up?” Dev asked instead of arguing. “I’m gonna turn on the siren, it’s all gonna go pretty fast.”
Kendrick turned on his engine a second after he pocketed his license. As his window rolled smoothly shut, he just laughed.
36
The Ex
Shea
“You ready for this?” Kendrick asked.
Shea still couldn’t believe he was here—could barely believe anything that had transpired over the past twelve hours. When Delilah had knocked on her door the night before with a hug and a bottle of Bailey’s, Shea wouldn’t have believed anyone who told her that, by midnight, they’d have cooked up a badass plan.
Shea sat on the patio at The Big Spoon, at the middlemost table next to the edge—the one with the best view of the lake. It was a table for four, though she and Kendrick sat closest to the railing. Butters had a chew bone and a bowl of water and sat happily beneath Shea’s chair.
“Ready to be rid of him once and for all,” Shea answered, trying to focus on Kendrick rather than checking her phone or looking at the door every five seconds. It was nice to see his face and it tickled her to see him in his mountain getup. He wore Sutros instead of Allbirds and a plaid shirt and light sweater combo instead of a t-shirt and hoodie, but he still looked like your standard brogrammer.
Trudy had been shown a photo of Keenan and would text Shea when he came in. As they’d hatched their plan to control the exact circumstances under which Shea would confront him, they’d debated how to know where he would show up, and when. Shea still wasn’t sure how it had resolved itself. All she knew was that Kendrick had hacked into something or other to confirm that Keenan was the passenger on the other helicopter. She couldn’t be sure whether Don Jr.—and his phone—both being in police custody had anything to do with where Keenan might show up. She didn’t know and she wasn’t going to ask.
“It’s gonna work,” Kendrick promised, clearly trying to get her talking and to calm her nerves—a solid plan seeing as how it would behoove Shea to look surprised. “You know I know how to get under his skin.”
Shea did know how Keenan felt about Kendrick. Still…. “I just wish that he’d have left me alone. It’s sad that it’s come to this.”
“Everyone is here for you. You’re gonna walk out of here with what you need.”
“Believe me, I’m grateful for that,” Shea said with a little pout. “But Is it too much to ask for a normal divorce?”
Kendrick looked around to all the other diners on the patio, sitting at their tables with plates of food in front of them, speaking in hushed tones. “Are you even serious right now? This is way, way better than normal.”
Kendrick went back to looking at his menu and Shea went back to pretending to look at hers. Not five seconds later, her phone buzzed. It was from Trudy, using the code phrase she’d promised she would. Shea couldn’t help but smile when she read it:
The asshole has landed.
Kendrick raised an eyebrow in question. When Shea nodded, he picked up his phone and thumbed around on his screen. The plan was for him to
record the conversation. Looking past him and over his shoulder, Shea was reassured by the vision of Delilah’s spiky unicorn tips. She sat at the next table with her back to Kendrick’s. In her moment of panic and anticipation, Shea locked eyes with Delilah’s companion. Sitting across from his sister and looking straight at Shea was Dev.
God, I missed his face.
She’d thought it every time she laid her eyes on him. What they’d done half an hour before in the kitchen could hardly be considered talking. They’d been in the same space as their crack team of henchmen had talked through the plan: Trudy would make sure Keenan saw Shea, then Shea would bait Keenan into doing what he did, and Shea’s friends would be firsthand witnesses. There had been no hugs or fraught hellos or even awkward waves between Dev and Shea—just a few suspicious glances at Kendrick, and Dev’s utter insistence that he sit at the table adjacent with a clear line of sight to Shea.
“Elle.” The hairs on the back of Shea’s neck stood up. “Finally. We meet again.”
It didn’t matter that she had prepared for this moment. Shea still froze at the sound of his voice. When her eyes finally rose to give him the once-over, she found that Keenan West was exactly as he had always been: chiseled and beautiful with a look on his face like he’d never had a care in the world and he still didn’t.
“Keenan?” Kendrick’s face registered subtle alarm. He was proving to be a far better actor than Shea. He looked at her, as if for explanation. It would throw a red herring and convince Keenan he had the upper hand. “What are you doing here?”
“I came here to see my wife.” Keenan’s fake smile remained plastered on his face, though icicles chilled his voice. He looked back at Shea. “A lot of people are looking for you, Peaches.”
Shea said nothing in response at first—just studied his face to detect the hint of a change. She had wondered these many weeks whether the Keenan who pled to her through their lawyers was a changed man who had learned something or the same old dog, up to the same old tricks.