by Janie Crouch
“But that State Trooper saw her first.” Baby plopped back down in the chair. “And we weren’t together on Wednesday night. The only damned night for weeks we haven’t been together.”
Gavin leaned forward, propping his elbows on his desk. “I don’t like this, but I have to ask. Are you sure she didn’t do it? Money has been tight for her. Her life has been in an uproar for the past year. Maybe she panicked. Thought she could steal some equipment and sell it.”
Gavin paused, then stretched out his hand. “Or maybe she has some deeper issues, Baby. Mental issues. Maybe she has done all these things—the stuff in Boston, her house, and now this.”
Self-sabotage.
Jesus. Was this what she’d been talking about when she said that she did things to harm her future? That she was her own worst enemy?
As soon as the thought came to him, Baby dismissed it.
“No. She didn’t do it. Things aren’t great for her, but she didn’t do this.”
“Are you sure, Baby? I’m not certain you can see her clearly. Your feelings for her may have clouded your judgement.”
“No,” he said again. “My feelings for her are the reason for the clarity. She didn’t do this, Gavin. She didn’t vandalize her own house or office, and she didn’t steal anything here or in Boston.”
He knew her. Knew this was a fact.
Beyond that, he knew people. He had a lot of weaknesses, but reading people wasn’t one of them. And he’d read Quinn.
In so many ways, it was like their ages were reversed. Like she was the younger one just now starting to understand who she really was—growing into the woman she was meant to be without all the restrictions that had been placed around her for the past decade.
Finding herself. Finding her strength.
But it was like the universe didn’t want that to happen.
Baby stood and turned to look out the window onto Oak Creek’s main street.
No, not the universe.
Somebody didn’t want it to happen.
Looking at it from that lens, it all made sense. Not self-sabotage, just sabotage.
He turned back to Gavin. “I need you to come with me.”
Gavin immediately stood. “Where are we going.”
“We need to feed Quinn’s dog.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Honestly, I’m a little surprised Grizzly has been living here with Quinn,” Gavin said from inside Quinn’s house. “I thought that thing was a drifter to his bones.”
The dog in question was sitting out on the porch, not coming near them. Baby wasn’t surprised. The only time Grizzly tended to come close to Baby was when he was with Quinn.
“You’re a good judge of character, aren’t you, boy?”
Luckily, Quinn had given him a key last week. His heart ballooned when she had. Gavin followed him into the kitchen to get some dog food.
“Damn, what happened in here?” Gavin asked.
Evidence of the fire was all over the room. “She said her curtains caught fire when she left a candle burning on Wednesday night.”
“Wednesday night,” Gavin murmured.
Baby could almost see the cop wheels turning in his friend’s head.
“Did she call the fire department?”
“No,” Baby said, then took the dog food out to Grizzly where he still sat on the porch. The dog wasn’t interested in coming inside if Quinn wasn’t there. “She got it under control herself.”
“I see.”
“Gavin, I want to talk some stuff out. But I need you to work from the assumption that Quinn is innocent. I know that’s not your nature, and I certainly know it’s not your job, but I’m asking you to do it just the same.”
“Okay, she’s innocent. Tell me why.”
Gavin was taking this seriously. It was all Baby could ask for.
“Quinn thinks she’s self-sabotaging. I think someone else is doing the sabotaging.”
“Who?”
“Honestly, I haven’t gotten that far yet, but I’m convinced there’s someone behind all this.” He walked toward the burnt curtains. “I’m pretty sure it started back in Boston, but let’s focus on what has happened here first.”
Gavin nodded. “Okay, she was here for two weeks, and her house was vandalized. That’s some pretty shitty luck.”
“There was other stuff, too. Things that weren’t nearly as noticeable, but if you look at it all through a lens of her as a victim, then you start to see the pattern.”
“Like what?”
“Like two separate times that I know of, her banking system didn’t work. Like the fact that at both Harvard and at TSC, she had issues with her computer system and lost all the grades.”
His eyes narrowed as he thought of something else. “She wrecked her car. I don’t know if you know that. It was while you were over in the Middle East during that mess with Girl Riley. I towed Quinn’s car for her and brought it into the shop so I could take a look at it. I think her brake lines had been cut.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
Baby made a face. “Because it didn’t seem to make any sense that someone would do that to her. But now...”
Gavin studied him and was obviously still taking his points seriously.
“Somebody made sure you had that police report not long after she made it to town. Even you said that was weird.”
Gavin nodded. “Highly unusual.”
“She was accused of stealing at Harvard, but never actually charged because the footage they had resembled her but didn’t have enough detail to prove anything. How much are you willing to bet that whatever footage has been found at TSC ends up being the same sort of thing?”
“You think someone has manipulated the footage?”
“I would believe that a thousand times before I would believe that Quinn broke into a campus building to steal computer equipment. How the hell is she going to offload that?”
Gavin nodded. “And someone could have put her prints on the paint can that we found. Walking over to throw it away in Mr. Wallace’s trash can never quite made sense to me.”
“I know it seems far-fetched and a little ridiculous, but I think someone has been undermining her since the stuff started back at Harvard. Hell, even this morning. How many times do we have state troopers stopping by? Maybe once a year? But that Trooper just happened to be there today. And he happened to recognize Quinn sitting with me while her back was to him.” Baby raised an eyebrow. The more he talked this through, the more he was convinced he was right.
“Someone tipped him off.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Hell, Gavin, nobody could have as much bad luck as Quinn.”
Gavin walked over to study what was left of the curtains. He turned to look at something on the counter more closely. “You know, you didn’t argue that the fire was part of the sabotage.”
That sick feeling pulled at his gut again when he thought of how dangerous the situation could’ve been for Quinn if Grizzly hadn’t woken her up. “That, I do believe, just happened to be shit luck.”
Gavin reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a rubber glove. “Don’t touch anything. We need to get the crime scene techs in here again.”
“What? Why?”
Using the glove as a barrier, he reached down and picked up something small.
“What is that?” Baby asked.
“I was around explosives enough in Special Forces to recognize an incendiary device when I see one. This wasn’t a simple case of bad luck; someone set fire to the curtains with a timing device. See this plastic right here under where the curtains would hang?
Baby got close enough to see the small piece. “Yeah.”
“That’s what’s left over from a tiny vial of acid. Once it burned through the plastic and was exposed to air, it caught fire and sent the curtains up in flames. If someone didn’t know to look for this, the candle would be the prime suspect.”
“Shit, Gavin,” Baby breathe
d.
“I think you got your proof.”
Baby’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Kendrick was already talking before Baby got his entire greeting out. “You need to get over here.”
“Blaze, I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“I’m sure that middle of something has got to do with Quinn being arrested.”
“What do you know?”
“As soon as I heard about it, because of course everybody in this town is already talking about it, I started digging into it. They’re saying she broke into the computer lab at TSC.”
“I know. I’m about to call Riley so we can get a lawyer and get her out as soon as possible. She didn’t do it.”
Kendrick gave a high-pitched laugh. “Of course, she didn’t do it. Like she didn’t do any of those things she was accused of back at Harvard. Just get over here so I can show you. I’ve got to call Gavin and get him over here too.”
“Don’t bother. He’s here with me. We’ll be right there.”
Like Quinn, Kendrick Foster was a recent transplant to Oak Creek. He’d showed up with Gabriel Collingwood when his sister, Violet, had been kidnapped last year, and the Linear Tactical team had helped get her out. Like Gabe, Kendrick had never left.
Baby wasn’t exactly sure what the man did for a living, but he knew it had to do with the computers he was a near genius at.
The number of times Kendrick had saved everyone’s asses was starting to get pretty high. If something could be found on a computer, Kendrick was the one to do it.
Baby was the opposite of computer proficient. He had the system that he utilized in the garage that he understood pretty well, but anything else was basically Greek to him. It made the four monitors and two different keyboards set up in front of Kendrick even more intimidating.
By the time Baby and Gavin got to Kendrick’s place, he had footage pulled up from the supposed break-in at TSC.
“A security guard checked into the computer lab yesterday and found evidence of the break-in. The surveillance footage was sent to the police, but it wasn’t until early this morning that one of the deans suggested that Quinn tended to wear her hair like that all the time.”
Kendrick played the footage for them. The woman walking across the hall was the same rough build as Quinn. It was almost impossible to make out her features, but like Kendrick said, the most obvious thing about the perpetrator was her hair being pulled up in a severe bun at the top of her head. They watched as she jimmied open the door and disappeared into the computer lab. A couple minutes later, face still averted, she came back out with her arms full of laptops.
“I have to admit, it does look like her,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t think twice about naming that person Quinn.”
Baby turned to Kendrick. “Is there any way you can access the footage from Harvard where they accused her from stealing from the petty cash can?”
“Yeah, no problem. Give me a second.”
While Kendrick searched for what he needed, Baby and Gavin watched the TSC footage again.
Baby could see what Gavin meant. It did look like her.
But it wasn’t Quinn. And Baby wasn’t saying that on blind faith. He watched it again.
“Okay, got it.” Kendrick clicked a couple of buttons and a picture popped up on another screen. “This was last year at Dana-Palmer House on the Harvard campus, home of the comparative literature department.”
It was almost the exact same thing. There was no direct shot of her face, but the most prominent feature was once again a brunette bun, high and tight on top of a woman’s head. The camera caught her as she walked into an office and again when she came back out less than a minute later, stuffing something into her pocket as she went.
Gavin didn’t say anything this time, but he didn’t have to. It was the bun. Quinn wore it every damn day, whether she was waiting tables, teaching class, or out on a date. He could hardly ever get her to take it down.
And whoever had done this, was counting on the fact that no one would look much past that damned thing to see what else was in the footage.
“That’s not her.” Watching the second video made him more positive about it.
“How do you know?” Gavin asked.
Baby didn’t mind the question. “Don’t look at her hair. Look at her body.”
Kendrick played the footage of both again.
“I’m sorry, man,” Gavin shook his head. “Whatever it is you see, I don’t see it.”
“Look at the shoulders. Look at the way she’s walking. Just look closer.”
Kendrick played it again. “Looks pretty normal to me.”
“Exactly. Quinn is never that relaxed. Trust me when I say I’ve seen her at her most relaxed, and she’s still more stiff than whoever it is walking in that footage. She never slouches like that. That’s not her.”
Gavin sighed. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I don’t know if that’s going to stand up in a court of law.”
Kendrick spun in his chair to face them. “You think someone is framing Quinn? Who?”
“My bet is her ex-husband,” Baby said. “I know for fact he took money that rightfully belonged to her, and maybe wanted her completely discredited. I think he’s manipulated her bank and her computer, at both Harvard and here.”
Kendrick spun back around. “That would be someone with some pretty savvy computer skills—to hack into two different university systems, not to mention financial systems.”
“Peter Prichard? Do you think he’s capable of something like that?”
“If so, I’ll find out. I need a little time.”
“Check out his girlfriend too. I don’t remember her name, but she’d have a lot to gain from Quinn being out of the picture.”
“Look for someone who might be capable of manipulating law enforcement’s communication between states,” Gavin added. “And if you can, keep an ear out for any chatter about Wyoming law enforcement systems being on the fritz today.”
Kendrick’s fingers were already moving a mile a minute. They didn’t stop even when he spoke. “Someone who can hack all three of those systems... I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but someone with those skills ought to have better things to do, good or bad, then to mess with one college professor’s life.”
Kendrick’s fingers stopped their movement on the keyboard at the same time he stopped talking.
“What?” Baby asked.
“Give me a second. I just thought of something.”
Kendrick switched to the other keyboard and began typing even faster, if that was possible.
“I need to make some calls,” Gavin said. “Get back into the office, let my colleagues in Reddington City know that there’s something weird going on. It probably won’t be enough to get them to release Quinn altogether, but it will change their entire attitude about her.”
Gavin headed toward the door.
“Thanks for hearing me out, Redwood.” Using Gavin’s codename seemed even more appropriate now–the man could be stubborn, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t listen to reason.
“We’re going to get your girl home, Baby. What you do with her then is up to you.”
With a wink, his friend was gone.
Baby kept out of Kendrick’s way to allow him to work. He tried to reach Boy Riley again, but it went to voicemail. They were seeing doctors all weekend, so Baby wasn’t surprised. His next call was to Clifford Reed, the lawyer. Baby spoke quietly, explaining the situation to the man. He wasn’t a criminal attorney, but he gave Baby the contact info of someone who practiced in Reddington City.
He was about to call when Kendrick’s curse had him rushing over to the desk. “What?”
“You’re not going to like this, but I don’t think Peter the Prick is behind Quinn’s troubles.”
“Why?”
“I’m waiting for some details to run, and I was examining the video footage closer. That bun,” he pointed to the picture of the would-be Quinn on the screen, �
�is Quinn’s actual hair. This video has been manipulated, but very cleverly. The person is real, the hair is the only thing that has been rendered. If you hadn’t been talking about the difference in the real Quinn’s body language and the one here, I wouldn’t have thought to look at it. Whoever did this is highly skilled.”
“More highly skilled than Peter Pritchard?”
Kendrick shrugged. “Unless he’s been spending all his time—and I mean all of it—developing various computer hacking and graphic skills, then definitely more talented than him.”
“Could he have paid someone?”
Kendrick clicked on another screen. “I’m not finding anything in his financials that would suggest it. It would cost quite a bit to have something like this done. Between messing with Quinn’s bank, her academic systems, and manipulating the footage? It would probably cost less to hire a hitman to take her out.”
“I know you’re helping, Blaze, so I will not throw you on the ground and start punching you right now.”
Kendrick grimaced. “Sorry, man. I just meant—”
“I understand. You meant that this is a lot of trouble to go through to get back at someone, especially an ex-wife who you’ve had relatively few fights with.”
“Exactly. Why continue once you’ve run her out of Harvard and almost all academic circles? Seems like overkill.”
Baby picked up his phone again. “Let’s work on getting her out of wherever they’re holding her, then we can figure out who’s behind this. I’ve got the number of a lawyer.”
Kendrick nodded and Baby was about to call when his phone buzzed in his hand. He didn’t have any names programmed into his phone since numbers were no problem for him. He had nearly everyone’s memorized and answered Gavin’s call on the first ring.
“Gavin. I’m just about to call a lawyer in Reddington City. I couldn’t get in touch with Riley, so I thought—”
“There’s no need. They’re releasing her.”
Relief poured over Baby. “They are? Why? They figured out something with the footage?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. The system is fucked up again, but this time it’s in our favor, so let’s take it.”