Dead Set (Aspen Falls Novel)

by Melissa Pearl

  And this time, he wasn’t sure Blaine was going to give him what he wanted, especially if he didn’t give him a hell of a good reason as to why he needed it.

  “Alaina got a text message from Noah today.”

  Blaine frowned. “What?”

  “It was a spoofed call,” Lucas explained. “Someone pretending to be him.”

  “I know what spoofing is.”

  “And there’s some other stuff that’s just a little off,” Lucas said.

  “Like what?”

  Lucas looked down at his hands. “The lock on Noah’s bedroom window was broken. There were footprints in the snow just outside his room. No one in the family goes into the side yard,” he said. “And there was grit on the inside window ledge. Salt and gravel from the snowplows, by the looks of it.” He reached into his pocket again and pulled out the baggie, set it on the desk.

  Blaine looked at it sitting next to the print samples.

  “So?” he finally said.

  “So I just want to see if something’s there,” Lucas said.

  Blaine shook his head. “I’ll tell you what’s there. A fat lot of nothing. The kid probably forgot his keys one day. Or maybe he snuck out at night. None of this proves jack shit.”

  “And the text?” Lucas prompted.

  Blaine hesitated. “Someone who wants to be an asshole,” he said with a shrug. “Alaina isn’t exactly everyone’s favorite person.”

  Lucas narrowed his eyes. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  And, more importantly, why was he not aware of this?

  “She’s tough,” Blaine said. “She has to be, considering her line of work.”

  “How do you know her line of work?” What Lucas really wanted to ask was How do you know her? And why didn’t I know her before all this?

  “It’s my job to know people in this town, Lucas. You know that. Word gets around.”

  Lucas swallowed. That had been his job, too. Before the stupid injury that had taken him out. He wondered if he’d ever inadvertently crossed paths with her. No, he was sure he hadn’t. He definitely would’ve remembered her.

  “Have you had any run-ins with her?” Lucas pressed. “Something that put her on your radar?”

  Blaine shook his head. “Nah, she’s completely clean. But I’ve heard talk with some of the local guys.”

  Lucas’s gut pinched tight. “What kind of talk?”

  “Just that she’s pissed off some people. Guys who don’t like answering to a woman.”

  Tough shit, Lucas thought. Her strength was one of the things he liked most about her. She wouldn’t let anyone walk over her, was adept at making decisions and taking charge. He found it heady. Intoxicating.

  He made a face. “That’s business stuff. This? This was personal.”

  “Sometimes people make things personal, Lucas. You should know that from all your years on the force.”

  Lucas bristled. Blaine had been a cop for what, four years? He didn’t need a lecture from this kid of a cop sitting across the desk.

  “So you won’t run them?” he asked.

  Blaine looked at him. “There’s no case,” he said. “There’s no reason to.”

  “A kid died,” Lucas said bitterly.

  “A kid committed suicide,” Blaine clarified.

  “And I’m telling you there might be more here,” Lucas barked. “What the hell is your problem with all of this? You don’t want to touch this case with a ten-foot pole.”

  Blaine’s eyes flashed. “I don’t have a problem with this case,” he bit off. “What I have a problem with is you pretending to be a cop when you’re not.”

  Lucas bolted out of his chair, his temper flaring.

  “You know what?” he said, his temple pounding, his heart thumping against his chest. “Fuck you.”

  He pivoted, his boots heavy on the tile floor as he made his way to the entrance.

  He didn’t look back at his friend, but he didn’t have to.

  One thing was absolutely certain.

  Blaine wasn’t coming after him.

  24

  Sunday, March 25th

  2:45pm

  Alaina’s hand was in the toilet when she heard a knock on her door.

  She dropped the scrub brush she was using to clean the toilet and quickly rinsed off her hands before hurrying toward the living room. Irritation flickered inside of her. She knew who was going to be on the other side…and she also knew he wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes.

  She opened the door and Rob Grimmer was on her doorstep, holding an envelope.

  With his free hand, he reached out and tipped his hat in greeting.

  “Got that paperwork you wanted,” he said gruffly.

  Alaina wished she were wearing shoes. Rob Grimmer was a large man, and she knew he looked at her as some slip of a girl infiltrating a man’s world. Her boots might’ve only given her an extra inch or so, but it would’ve visually cut down the height disparity between her and this giant hulk of a man.

  “You’re early,” she said, accepting the envelope.

  He smirked. “Never knew being early was a problem.”

  She ignored his comment and opened the envelope. It was the final bill for the work he had done, and she wanted both of them to sign off on it before she processed the invoice. She’d suggested doing it electronically, but Rob had dismissed that idea and had offered to drop it by instead. Alaina was home, so there was no real reason to tell him no.

  “Let me just get a pen and sign these,” she said. She thumbed through the papers. “Did you make two copies?”

  He frowned. “No. Why would I?”

  “One set for me and one set for you,” she said. She couldn’t believe this wasn’t common practice for him.

  He just stared at her. “I did not.”

  “That’s alright,” she said. “I have a printer with a copy function here.” She hesitated. The wind was whipping outside, and the cold air was barreling directly into her house. She couldn’t make him stand outside while she signed the papers and then waited for her cranky printer to decide to spring to life.

  “Why don’t you come in?” she said. “It’s chilly outside.”

  He said nothing, but stepped into the entryway. Alaina closed the door behind him.

  He surveyed the living room with a critical eye. “This one of your flips?”

  Alaina nodded. “First one.”

  “It’s nice.” He said this almost grudgingly, and Alaina turned away from him so he wouldn’t see her roll her eyes.

  She found a pen on the kitchen counter and quickly scrawled her name on the appropriate signature line. Then she walked it over to the printer, which was tucked into a nook between the kitchen and living room, and hit the Start button to power it up.

  Nothing happened.

  She cursed under her breath and then checked the connections. Sometimes they shook loose from the ports, but everything was snug. She crouched down and unplugged the power cord, then re-plugged it into the wall outlet.

  “Problems?” Rob asked from his position by the door.

  “Just my printer deciding to act up.”

  She didn’t ask for his help, but he headed in her direction, and she noticed he didn’t bother taking off his boots. They left a trail of wet prints on the floor, and she felt the irritation building inside of her again. She’d just swept and mopped that morning.

  Rob tried the power button.

  Nothing happened.

  He checked the cords.

  And they were fine.

  “I’ve already done all that,” she said, with as much pleasantness as she could muster. Admittedly, it wasn’t much.

  “Looks like it’s dead,” he announced.

  Alaina tried the power cord again, yanking it out and then reinserting it into the outlet. Suddenly, the printer whirred and the display panel lit up.

  She gave Rob a triumphant smile. “Or not.”

  His expression remained impassive, and insi
de, she felt like gloating.

  She made the copy of the final bill and handed one set of papers to Rob.

  “There you go,” she said. “I’ll get this processed and in the mail to you this week.”

  “You don’t want to cut a check right now?” he asked. “Seeing as I’m here? Save you a stamp.”

  “True,” she said, “but I use a software program to generate payments. I’ll probably do it first thing in the morning.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She cocked her head. “Unless you’re telling me you need the payment right now? If that’s the case, I can certainly get on the computer and take care of it now.”

  Rob looked offended. “I don’t need your payment,” he said quickly, anger flashing in his eyes. “This project is a drop in the bucket for my company. I did this as a favor to you.”

  She wasn’t prepared for the chastising he was giving her, or the aggressive defensiveness he was displaying.

  She held a hand up. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll do it tomorrow, then.”

  His expression was still dark, and a sense of unease gripped Alaina. She’d clearly triggered something within him, and all she wanted right now was for him to leave. She didn’t feel threatened—after all, they moved in the same circles in the construction contracting world, and it would only hurt him if he behaved horribly to her—but she just didn’t like his exaggerated reaction to her simple comment.

  He folded up the papers Alaina had given him and stuffed them in his coat pocket. “Guess I’ll be going, then.”

  He headed toward the front door, then stopped. His gaze was on the coffee table.

  “You got yourself two phones?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  Rob pointed to the table. “You got two phones. You keep one for business and one for personal use or something?”

  Alaina shook her head. “No.”

  He just stood there, and she knew he was waiting for her to elaborate.

  “One of them belongs to my brother,” she said shortly.

  His eyebrows lifted. “Your brother? The one who…” He bit off the rest of what he’d been about to say.

  She looked him squarely in the eye. “Yes. The one who died.”

  He glanced at the floor and said nothing.

  She marched to the door and swung it open. “Thanks again for dropping off the final paperwork,” she said. “You should see a check from me by mid-week.”

  He muttered a goodbye, and she resisted the urge to slam the door as he showed himself out.

  She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding, and beads of sweat had sprouted on her forehead.

  It wasn’t a reaction to Rob. He’d gotten under her skin, but she could handle him.

  It was the subject he’d brought up on his way out.

  Noah’s phone.

  She’d busied herself all day, diving into household chores and work projects in a desperate attempt to keep herself occupied so she wouldn’t focus on what was in her possession.

  Her brother’s unlocked phone.

  She knew what that phone represented. With it unlocked, she had access to all of her brother’s social media accounts. His email. His photos. His contacts.

  And she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been tempted to go through every last icon displayed on his home screen. She’d wanted to. Desperately. She’d wanted to search everything, to look for clues as to who Noah had been and what he’d been going through and who had been important in his life.

  But she knew that doing so would be a complete violation of his privacy. She knew some people might think this was a ridiculous way to think. Noah was dead. Did privacy matter to a dead person? Did anything matter?

  She knew how she would feel…if she were able to feel anything after she died. She knew she would want her privacy protected. She wouldn’t want anyone going through her personal belongings. Her journals, if she’d kept any. Her photos. Her emails.

  But it was a bigger struggle, a bigger fight for her. Because she was coming at it from a different perspective. She had been the person he had tried to turn to when he was alive, and she’d never found the time for him. So why should she get carte blanche now, to hunt through every nook and cranny of Noah’s life when she had shown no interest when he’d asked for her presence?

  She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She just needed to keep busy, to not think about it. Part of her was tempted to just take the phone to Lucas and ask him to hold onto it. Maybe at some point they would need to look through some of the info that might be hiding on that phone, but she didn’t trust herself. She knew if she looked at one thing right now, it would lead to a dozen, and then a dozen more. She’d go through it greedily, hungrily…and then she would feel like complete and total shit afterward.

  She already harbored so much guilt and felt so completely responsible for what had happened to Noah. She didn’t think she could handle much more.

  And that was probably the real thing that kept her from picking up that phone.

  Self-preservation.

  She glanced at it from across the room. And, like magic, the screen lit up.

  Alaina’s breath hitched in her throat and the roaring began to build in her ears.

  The screen went dark and she held her breath. Maybe she’d imagined it. But then a minute later, with her back still pressed against the door, frozen in place, the screen lit up again.

  She took a shaky step toward the coffee table. Her field of vision narrowed, the periphery blurring so it seemed as though she was walking in a tunnel, her only focus the small electronic device on that table.

  With shaking hands, she picked it up and the screen lit up from the movement.

  A text.

  From Noah.

  STOP LOOKING

  She dropped the phone and it clattered to the table. Her hand flew to her mouth and her stomach convulsed.

  What the hell was going on?

  Her gaze shot to the living room window, the one that faced the street. She’d opened the curtains to let the sunshine in, and she hurried toward it, wondering if someone was watching her from outside. Was someone sending these messages as some kind of sick prank? Did they know she had the phone in her possession? But how? And who would do such a thing?

  She kept coming back to the same conclusion, the one that made no sense, the one that for some reason terrified her the most.

  The conclusion that it was Noah, somehow communicating with her from the dead.

  She drew in a shaky breath.

  “You are being ridiculous,” she told herself.

  But she didn’t believe it, even though she spoke the words out loud.

  There was no other explanation.

  She didn’t believe in spirits or ghosts, but she believed in this: her brother was communicating with her.

  And it was scaring the shit out of her.

  She willed her breathing to slow down, trying to get her heart rate back to normal. But the thought kept coming back to her, kept inciting new bouts of panic. Her eyes filled with tears, and the short punchy breaths she was taking increased. She felt like she was about to hyperventilate.

  She didn’t think—she couldn’t.

  She reacted.

  She reached for the phone—her phone—and called the one person she knew could calm her down, could bring her back to some semblance of normalcy.

  Lucas.

  25

  Sunday, March 25th

  3:35pm

  She looked like death.

  That was Lucas’s first thought when Alaina answered the door.

  Her call had been hard to decipher. She was crying, he knew that, and just kept saying over and over, “The phone. Another text. I need you.”

  He’d been stewing over the conversation he’d had with Blaine that morning when she called. Every time he thought the anger was abating, a fresh wave washed over him. He’d spent the better part of the last hour bouncing a tennis ball
against one of the basement walls, slamming it as hard as he could to work out his frustration.

  All that had dissipated after Alaina’s phone call. She’d sounded distressed, and his anger turned almost immediately to worry. He’d grabbed his keys, shoved his feet into his boots and was in front of her door less than ten minutes after hanging up the phone. And he was happy as hell there hadn’t been an AFPD cruiser on the route he’d taken to her house, because he absolutely would’ve been pulled over for speeding.

  The phone was in her hand. Noah’s phone. He glanced at it, his pulse quickening when he saw the text in all caps. He placed his hand on Alaina’s arm and guided her to the couch. She dropped onto one of the cushions and he followed suit.

  “This isn’t coming from Noah,” he said, his voice soft but firm.

  She nodded, but he could tell she didn’t believe him.

  “You understand that, right?” he said, his eyes locked on hers.

  She looked so small, so vulnerable. Her eyes were huge, her mouth pinched tight, her complexion wan. This sudden urge to protect her overwhelmed him. He wanted to throw his arms around her, to hug her and whisper in her ear that everything was going to be alright. He would protect her, keep her safe.

  But he kept his heroic sentiments in check, figuring calm logic and a gentle hand on her shoulder were probably a better move.

  “Someone is messing with you,” he continued, trying to keep his own emotions under control. “I don’t know who, but I’m going to find out.”

  He knew the fastest way to get the messages to stop was to discontinue Noah’s cell service. It was obvious why no one had done it yet—it was one of those menial tasks that always fell to the back burner, especially in cases involving a sudden, unexpected death. And because there were precious few accounts that Noah had as a teenager, he was sure it was just something no one had thought about. If the phone service was a family plan, Alaina’s parents might not act for weeks. For months. Neither Lucas nor Alaina would have the ability to shut down that phone line—only the account owner, in this case probably Alan Dans, could do that—but he could gently suggest it to Barbara, or have Alaina mention it the next time she was there.