Expired Cache

by Lisa Phillips

  “A brick wall, and a dumpster.”

  The biker bar? He’d just mentioned getting a splinter from the siding. Given how many people Stuart had likely killed in his career as an officer for the CIA, Dean had no idea where his mind was right now. He noted these details on his pad to remind him to look through the reports contained in Stuart’s file—the one they’d obtained by hacking into the Government’s database of covert action.

  “Tell me where you go next.” Landmarks may help him remember, given a lot of cities had unique locales particular to that location.

  “To the car.” Stuart pulled his blindfold off. “It was a rental.”

  Dean figured he likely needed to check behind the biker bar anyway. Stuart had been in possession of a gun last night. Could he have killed a man?

  Not something he wanted to deal with when it involved a friend. The last thing he wanted to believe was that Stuart, as a result of his trauma, had murdered a man in cold blood. But it was possible, which meant it needed to be followed up on.

  “A rental.”

  Stuart shrugged, shooting him a sardonic look. “Dude, it’s always a rental.”

  “I’d have thought the CIA had a garage of cars in each city.”

  “But the criminals would keep seeing the same car. You can’t keep thirty different cars just in case.” He stood, lifting his arms over his head. Then he bent to the left, and to the right, stretching his sides. “What’s for dinner?”

  Dean needed to go check behind the biker bar to assure himself there wasn’t a dead body back there. “You should just order a pizza.”

  “What? You’re going out? It’s barely lunchtime. I’m thinking crock-pot. Or baked mac and cheese with veggies and bacon. Something that requires forethought. And chopping.”

  Dean pushed out a breath and set the chairs back at the table. “I have a few things to do.”

  “Wouldn’t have anything to do with that librarian-looking woman you were with, would it?”

  “She was wearing workout clothes.”

  “Nah, not then. But that was a good trick she pulled. I have that voice-changer app, too.”

  “I know, you used it to pull a prank on all of us.”

  Stuart grinned, all traces of his earlier stress gone now. “Classic. When are the boys due back?”

  The four men they shared a huge house in the foothills with were off on an op. The six of them usually shared chores. When the team was away, Stuart and Dean had to split them between the two. And they had four full bathrooms.

  “Check your email. See if they’re headed home.”

  Stuart glanced over. “No contact?”

  “Client’s request.” Dean didn’t even know who the client was. Just that the team was on a high-priority security mission. They’d been gone two weeks already. “I’ll be back for whatever you’ve chopped up for dinner. Just text me.”

  “No problem, dear.”

  “It’s Dean, actually. But I could see how you’d be confused.” He pulled his coat on while Stuart busted a gut laughing, and then locked his notes in the file cabinet in his office.

  He drove toward the highway, and called Tate at the stop sign. With the phone on speaker in the cup holder, he listened to it ring as he pulled onto the blacktop and headed toward town.

  “Hey, Brother.”

  “Hey.” Dean didn’t get any more out before Tate cut in.

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Meet me at O’Dowd’s in ten minutes.”

  “Sure thing. Glock, or the shotgun with the Taser rounds I want to try out?”

  “You bought a shotgun and Taser rounds?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Don’t hit me by mistake.”

  Tate chuckled. “I could see how you might think I’d make a mistake, Mr. Navy SEAL. But don’t worry. I’ve been practicing.”

  The man was a former FBI agent according to town rumor, and currently a PI, dating Detective Wilcox at Last Chance Police Department. That made two new relationships for cops. Dean might’ve met a woman he was seriously attracted to, but that didn’t mean this would become a thing. Let alone a thing.

  He shook his head. “Don’t be late.” And then he hung up before Tate could say anything else.

  Dean had been taught to shoot who he was told. To breach the door in front of him, and save the lives he was sent in to save. He’d traded that in for the sake of helping people. Patching up injuries and working with Stuart to keep moving through his trauma. Stuart couldn’t afford to get stuck and, if he did, he wouldn’t get over it. All Stuart had to do was keep moving—probably the toughest thing for him to attempt right now.

  Tate would interrogate him, and then Dean would have to admit he pretty much had a thing for Ellie Ridgeman.

  Not that he’d ever see her again.

  Tate pulled in just as Dean climbed out the front seat of his car. “Around back.”

  Dean led the way.

  “You planning on telling me what this is, or you just need a witness to what you’re about to do?”

  “I’m just looking.” He saw the dumpster, and at the back corner of the building, he saw the rear was set up with picnic tables and a fire pit. “For that.”

  Tate moved to stand next to him. “Ah.”

  A man’s body lay on the ground, one leg across the fire pit. Jeans and a leather jacket. Curly red hair. Blood covered the front of his shirt.

  Tate sighed. “I’ll call Savannah.”

  Seven

  They’d driven as far as they could. Ellie’s sister now led the way up a mountain trail. Once in a while she saw a boot print in the dirt, one that caused a hitch in her breath that had nothing to do with how much her hip hurt.

  Back in New York, she walked every day and took a stretch and tone class every once in a while. Ellie wasn’t out of shape. It was just from hitting the ground the way she did yesterday, diving out of the way of that car. She saw another print. They couldn’t be one of her grandfather’s boot prints. He hadn’t been up this way in months, right? He’d been sick a while.

  “So I was looking into hit and runs,” Jess began.

  Ellie glanced up from watching the ground in front of her—as everyone knows you are supposed to do while hiking—to her sister up ahead. Strawberry blonde hair worn loose, jeans that were frayed with slits in places high on her thighs that Ellie would never have the guts to reveal. But Jess didn’t care. She did what she wanted, living her life in a way her older sister didn’t always approve of. This was also something she didn’t care about.

  It occurred to Ellie just then that maybe Jess did care about her opinion but didn’t want to let Ellie know that. Maybe it hurt her feelings that her big sister didn’t approve of her choices.

  She huffed out another exhale, sounding like she was out of breath. This always happened when she hung out with her sister. Why did relationships have to be so complicated, anyway?

  “Are you okay?”

  “My hip hurts.” She held up her hands, too. Still bandaged from skidding on the asphalt.

  “We can stop if you want.”

  Ellie shook her head. “When we get there, I’ll sit down. How much farther is it anyway?”

  Jess chuckled. “He liked his space, didn’t he?”

  Ellie laughed as well. It sounded nice, but the stitch in her chest didn’t go anywhere. “Are we still on the safe side of the mountains?”

  “I think so.” Jess said, “Why would he build a cabin where it’s practically inaccessible? That doesn’t seem practical.”

  “I’ve just been thinking about it.” She tried to sound like she’d reached some intelligent conclusions already, which of course wasn’t true. “I was looking at the Founders’ Map in the coffee shop.”

  “And thinking about hiking all over, through all those uncharted and inaccessible non-trails.”

  “I’m not into extreme sports.”

  Jess chuckled. “Yes. I do know that.”

  “I was just curious.�
�

  “This is a mystery you can leave alone.” Jess quieted a second before she said, “If there’s a reason the Founders didn’t want us over there, we should just trust them. The last person I heard who took a wrong turn hunting, wound up getting torn apart by mountain lions.”

  “Huh.” Ellie swallowed. That was pretty gruesome.

  Still. Surely someone had explored it. Or even flown a drone over there with a GoPro attached to it. Some people saw it as a challenge to skirt the trespassing order that had been drilled into them since grade school.

  “Do you want to hear about hit and runs?” Jess started up the trail, this time walking by Ellie’s side. “I forget that not everyone wants to hear about cop stuff.”

  “It’s fine. But why would you look into hit-and-runs? Is there such a thing as a serial hit-and-runner…or something?”

  “Not as such.” Jess grinned. “Though, it’s not unheard of. Just not like a serial killer, you know?”

  Ellie swallowed. “Yes.”

  Jess eyed her. “I checked all the reports from the last few years. To see if the details of any of those incidents matched the vehicle in your hit-and-run. Also, the why of it, you know?”

  “Or the location.” Ellie pressed her lips together while she thought it through. “Could be there’s that one spot, and it’s just more prone to out-of-control cars. Or they’ve polled hit and run drivers for the best places to do some damage and get away with it.”

  “Wow. You sound like the city council crime stat report.”

  Ellie shrugged. “Just thinking it through.”

  “People do crazy stuff that makes no sense for a whole lot of reasons. How can that be boiled down into a pie chart?”

  “Quite easily actually.”

  “Agree to disagree. Especially if the person doing those calculations has never walked a beat.”

  Ellie let that go. Her grandfather had been a cop, now her sister. She knew how they felt about their brotherhood—which, by the way, had never made sense to her because Jess was a girl—and the code. She could never be a part of that. Because she wasn’t one of them and had no plan to be.

  Plus, she mostly thought that everyone considered their own situation to be unique. Everyone formed bonds with the people around them—whether they liked it or not. There was solidarity when others shared your life situation.

  After all, she’d found that with her group, hadn’t she? She just hadn’t stuck around long. What was the point in dredging up the past and laying it out so everyone else could feel your pain as it was reflected in their own pain? That hadn’t sounded like healing to her.

  Eventually she broke the silence. “So, did you find out anything about champagne-colored cars?”

  “No.” Jess pouted. A look Ellie had seen many times during elementary school. She’d been a much more mature middle schooler at the time. Jess said, “No champagne-colored cars have been used in any crimes around town in the last five years.”

  Wow, she’d gone that deep looking into it? Ellie said, “You know I’m fine, right?”

  Jess shot her a look.

  “What does that look mean?”

  “People aren’t fine. Literally no one is fine, even though we all tell each other that we are. We’re fine.”

  “I am, though.”

  Jess shook her head. “You’re probably the least fine person I’ve ever met.”

  “It was an accident. I’m a little sore, but no harm no foul. Right?”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  Ellie opened her mouth to ask her what she did mean then, if it wasn’t that, when Jess stopped. “Good gravy, it’s a trash heap.”

  Ellie looked at the dilapidated cabin in the middle of nowhere, tucked under the trees at the end of a gravel path not even wide enough for an ATV. “The entire roof is covered in pine needles.”

  “Don’t get up there and clean them off. They’re probably stopping up all the leaks.” Jess sighed. “I get the house, and this is what he leaves you?”

  Ellie touched her sister’s shoulder. “I don’t need the house.”

  Jess’s eyes widened. “Ah-ha! But you want the house.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t live here. I just think it’s worthless to tell you again that I don’t want it.” She paused. “I have no interest in it.”

  Jess narrowed her eyes. “Huh. I don’t get you.” She shook her head and strode to the cabin porch.

  Ellie studied it a few minutes more. A cabin. Her cabin. Did she want a cabin? It occurred to her that she could work here just as easily as she could work anywhere else in the world. Most everything she needed was online, or it was already packed and ready to ship wherever she wanted to go to take her sabbatical and write her next book. Though, this was very remote. Quiet and private for sure, but was there even internet up here?

  “Watch your step.”

  Ellie entered right behind her sister.

  “Whoa.”

  She practically shoved Jess aside to see the place. Thick blankets. Bare walls on which hung tack and bear traps. Western art. An animal skin, white with a brown line down the center. Wood furniture. A beat-up wood table and chairs. The kitchen looked like a nightmare from the forties and the whole place smelled like—

  “Mothballs.”

  Ellie nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  This was what her grandfather had given her, along with those cryptic words. But what was his truth? The story she needed to uncover. The secret she needed to finally reveal about him.

  Tears pricked her eyes. Hot tears that threatened to fall down her cheeks. He’d given her something to do, a mission that stirred every part of her.

  Jess turned. “Oh, no.” The empathy was clear in her tone. “I’m sorry. I’d be crying too if I got—” She waved her hand around. “—this as a gift. Shame you can’t send it back. What was he thinking?”

  “Jess.”

  “What?”

  “I love it.”

  Her sister stared, eyes wide. Completely silent. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again and said, “What do you—what?”

  Ellie tugged her sister to her and gave her a quick hug. Then she looked more at the living area. “I could stare at all this for hours. It’s like a museum.” She couldn’t help grinning at her sister. Then she spotted a loaded bookcase of battered books and practically squealed as she raced to look at the titles. “Smells like old man.”

  Jess shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips. “If you mean it’s a random collection of old stuff, then yes. Museum.” She lifted one brow.

  “I like it.”

  Rundown. In need of a little love. But that would come after she tackled the mammoth job of cataloging everything in here and figuring out where it had come from. Learning the history of each piece.

  Sure, a lot of it was probably junk. But if she didn’t go through it piece by piece, how could she be sure she would find whatever it was her grandfather had wanted her to find.

  “Uh-oh, you have that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  Jess said, “Like it’s Christmas morning and you got a brand…new…book.”

  Ellie laughed. “I do enjoy Christmas.” She looked around some more.

  The pang in her chest was still there, but different now. She wasn’t seeing someplace her grandfather had been and feeling the loss. She was hearing him speak loud and clear. He would talk to her through all of these things. His collection. His secrets, and his truth.

  “Well, at least going through all this old stuff might give you some inspiration for your book.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Wow.”

  Ellie said, “What?”

  “Christmas.” Jess added, “If you’re looking for inspiration, maybe sticking around isn’t an awful idea.”

  “I never thought it was awful.”

  “Sure, but it’s easier to run from your feelings when you’re going somewhere else. To h
ide. Which is basically all a sabbatical is. Hiding from your life, pretending to ‘write another book,’ or whatever.”

  “There’s a lot there in what you’re saying.” Ellie folded her arms. “I’m not sure where to start unpacking all your angst wrapped up in your words. So I’ll start with work. Are things not going well with you at the police department?”

  “This isn’t about me.” Jess lifted her hands, then let them fall back to her sides. “Just look around. Maybe you’ll find this secret quickly so we won’t have to be here until three weeks from now. There’s probably nothing in the fridge.”

  “Why don’t you go check if there’s coffee?” Ellie figured it didn’t matter that there wasn’t milk. She could drink it black, and Jess would probably deal with it for some caffeine right now.

  Jess pretty much stomped to the kitchen. There was only so much stomping that could be done effectively in tennis shoes. Heels or boots were always better for that. Ellie had found it made students and faculty all take notice when they could hear her coming down the hallway.

  She pushed her glasses up her nose and crouched in front of the tiny end table and the stack of books tucked under the drawer, in the shelf between the four legs.

  A few old classics and a leather-bound book—his journal. Her grandfather was the one who’d taught her to get those thoughts spinning around in her head down on paper. You’ve got to exorcise those things you can’t let go of. When she’d asked him what he needed to get out on paper, he’d confessed it bothered him that he couldn’t save everyone. She’d never thought of police work like that.

  As she glanced at her sister now, banging around in the kitchen with what looked like a camping coffee pot that Ellie would have no clue how to operate, it occurred to her that Jess might be dealing with the same thing.

  The icing on that cake? An unsolved crime involving her own sister.

  A tear rolled down Ellie’s face. She didn’t want to be the source of her sister’s spinning thoughts. Perhaps she should stick around for a while. Keep her company and make sure she was all right while Ellie did the research for her book. Here.