by Stella Bixby
“How many times did you almost die because of your involvement with these cases?”
“Twice,” I said.
“And both of those times, you were dealing with amateur murderers.”
“Are you saying the guy who killed Selena is a professional?”
“From the looks of things, yes.” Luke shoved his hands in his pockets. “And I don’t want to call home in a month and find out you were his next victim.”
“Why do you think Selena is dead? Maybe she’s just being held against her will.”
Luke looked torn like he needed to convince me to stay out of the investigation, but to do that, he’d have to give me more information.
“Finding a prosthetic arm and a shoe hardly qualifies as a reason to believe someone is dead,” I continued. “And there were absolutely no clues in the original case other than her being missing.”
“No clues that were public knowledge,” Luke said. “There were plenty of clues. They suggested not only was Selena murdered, but she was murdered brutally.”
“Do you think it was the husband?”
“No way to know,” Luke said, not meeting my eye.
That was a yes.
“What I know is that I don’t want to end up hearing you’ve disappeared in the same manner. And consider how shaken Shayla would be if she had to work her best friend’s murder case. It’s just not worth it.”
“But if he’s done it, isn’t it even more important that we—sorry—you,” I said when he gave me an irritated expression, “put this guy behind bars?”
“Just because we suspect someone of doing it—not that we suspect Jacob, but if we did, it doesn’t mean we’re right. And someone as powerful as Jacob Marquez likely wasn’t the one who got his hands dirty, so to speak.”
“You think someone did this for him?”
Luke shrugged.
“Cedric hates Jacob.”
“Now, you’re on a first-name basis with two of the suspects?” He rubbed a hand over the stubble growing on his chin. “Actually, three.”
“Three?”
“Desmond.”
“Desmond said he’d been cleared,” I said. “He had an alibi.”
“And he knows you have no way to confirm that. He knows the cops won’t talk to you. He knows you’re in just as much of a pickle as he is. If you think he’s not dangerous, you didn’t read the news stories from the initial investigation.”
He was right. I hadn’t really kept up with the story. “I hardly think that mouse of a man could have killed Selena and lived to tell the story.”
“Underestimating him because of his size is a rookie mistake. Sometimes the smallest people are the strongest and most dangerous.”
I didn’t respond.
“I love that you care enough to try to get justice for Selena. But there is an entire police department that wants justice too.”
“Does it, though? What if he paid them off?” I reached into my pocket and felt for the check. “He has enough money. His business almost went under during the initial investigation. I’m betting he’d do just about anything to keep his name clean.”
“Please, Rylie. I’m begging you. Stop.” Luke’s voice was pleading. “You’re going to get in over your head on this one. Nothing is as it seems. It’s like there are optical illusions all around us. Do you want to know why Detective Bryant is so worked up about this case?”
“Because he’s a—”
“Rylie.” Luke’s tone was the same one that my mother had when she heard me cuss.
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked out the window.
“He’s the one who had the case initially. He’s the one who followed all the clues only to turn up empty-handed.”
“I just want to help,” I said. “I wouldn’t be in the way.”
“I know you think that, but you don’t know how far-reaching your actions can be. Think of Shayla’s career. I’m established within the department. They couldn’t let me go because I was associated with you, but Shayla isn’t. They could fire her if they think she’s helping you.”
“I’d never ask her to do that.” Even though I had asked her for information that morning. I was a terrible friend. “I don’t want her to lose her job.”
“Then quit while you’re ahead. You haven’t done anything yet that could get either of you into trouble, have you?”
I thought about my conversations with Cedric and Jacob that morning. Of the check in my pocket. Of my interactions with Desmond. “I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
He seemed to think that was the final word about me working on the investigation. And I let him.
“I’m guessing you’re still angry that I’m leaving?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? You have a good life here, and you’re leaving to save money for a house?” I shook my head. “It makes no sense.”
“Saving money for a house is only one factor,” he said. “I need a change of scenery.”
“He needs to get away from me,” Nikki said as she walked into the office, Antonio following close behind. “Though this is the first time a guy has fled the country to escape my reaches.”
Luke opened his mouth as if he might say something, then snapped it shut.
My drama meter was about filled for the day. “What’s up, Nikki? Antonio?”
“I wanted to give you an update on the kids,” she said. “You know, the ones who are doing everything they possibly can to get both of us fired.”
“I think I’ll head out,” Luke said.
Nikki didn’t respond. She just stood there with her hands resting on her duty belt. Antonio kept his eyes glued to the floor.
“Okay, bye,” I said.
But Luke was too focused on Nikki to hear me. When he realized she wasn’t going to say anything, he let himself out of the office.
“That was mean,” I said.
“Me? I’m the mean one? He broke up with me to leave for two years.” She plopped down on the stool behind the counter. Antonio pulled out his phone, ignoring us. “If he thinks I’ll wait for him, he’s got another thing coming.”
I highly doubted he expected her to wait for him, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
“Two years is a long time,” I said. “But maybe this is for the best. A few weeks ago, you said he was boring you.”
She didn’t seem to appreciate the reminder. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about.” She glanced at Antonio, who seemed wholly unfazed by our conversation. And I couldn’t help but notice he looked like he’d been working out extra hard. His biceps bulged from beneath his long-sleeved uniform shirt.
“Earth to Rylie,” Nikki said.
Antonio looked up and caught me staring at him. I averted my eyes down to my hands.
“I came to tell you how you’re going to keep your job.” Nikki sounded exasperated.
“What would make you think I’m going to lose my job?” Had she been talking to Detective Bryant?
“Because you led ten tweenagers on a mountain lion hunt that led to a missing woman’s appendage.”
“When you say it like that it sounds pretty bad,” I said. “But I knew they weren’t mountain lion tracks. And the appendage was a prosthetic. It’s not like they found a mutilated corpse.”
Nikki held up a hand as if disgusted by my excuses. “Thankfully, none of that matters to the judge.”
My stomach soured.
“Even with all the parental objections, the judge recognized that the likelihood of another instance like this happening is slight. They’ll be back to complete their community service hours.”
“Seriously?” My voice came out whinier than a tweenager’s who’d just had their phone taken away. “There’s so much going on with the case right now.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with the community service group.” Nikki looked down at her perfectly manicured nails. “The trail is open.”
“If I may.” Antonio’s voice startled me.
“What I believe Rylie is trying to say is that she may be busy with the case.”
Nikki looked at him as if he had grown another head. “Rylie has been told to stay out of this case.”
Antonio shrugged and returned to looking out the window.
“You are staying out of it, right?”
When I didn’t immediately answer, Nikki threw her hands in the air. “If you want to be a cop, go be a cop.”
“I don’t want to be a cop,” I said.
Antonio grunted but didn’t turn around.
“I really don’t. But I think there’s more to this case than meets the eye. And I want justice for Selena.”
“You can be really stupid sometimes. You know that?” Nikki said. “Look, I don’t care what you do on your own time. But when you’re here, you’ll be supervising the kids. Got it?”
I mumbled an okay.
“Just don’t get yourself in trouble, going all rogue. You have no idea how much Luke did to protect you.” Nikki’s eyes misted over. “It drove me crazy.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”
“Easy for you to say. You have guys falling all over themselves to marry you.”
I glanced at Antonio, but he didn’t even flinch.
She didn’t know about the kiss between Antonio and me. Though she and I had become something like friends over the past few months, I still didn’t trust her completely.
“Guys are not falling all over themselves,” I said. “Trust me.”
“That ring you keep in your pocket begs to differ.”
A blush warmed my neck. Antonio’s gaze flickered to my hand.
“This is not about me,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I know it sucks that Luke is leaving. I’m sad too. But maybe there’s a reason for all of this. Maybe there’s a different guy who is better for you than Luke—a guy who you would have never met if Luke stayed.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Just be ready for those kids. And stay out of trouble.”
10
Desmond hadn’t texted me the entire day, and by the time I was heading home, I figured things had fallen through with the private investigator.
When I walked through the door of my apartment, I came face to face with an angry-looking Shayla.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Did Fizzy chew up your work boots again? I’m really sor—”
“Fizzy didn’t do anything wrong. You did.” I hadn’t heard her this angry in a long time.
“What do you mean I did?” Did she know about me talking to Desmond? Or Jacob and Cedric?
“You think I don’t know that you already knew about Luke the other night. Why didn’t you tell me? Prepare me so I didn’t make a huge fool of myself?”
“It wasn’t my story to tell,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I can’t believe he’s leaving. Just leaving. As if no one even matters.” Tears hung in the corners of her eyes.
“I know. I’m sad too.”
“If anyone can make him stay, you can.”
I laughed. “Me? Luke doesn’t care what I think.”
“You can’t honestly believe that. He still lo—”
The smoke alarm cut off her words.
“The cookies!” Shayla ran into the kitchen.
Smoke billowed from the oven as Shayla tried to pull the cookie tray out.
I yanked the fire extinguisher from the wall and aimed the hose at the oven.
“Are they on fire?” I shouted over the alarm.
“Not yet.” She threw the charred cookies into the sink and turned on the water. “I can’t believe I burned them.”
“Seriously, Shay, what’s going on?” I replaced the extinguisher, pulled out the broom, and started swatting at the air in front of the smoke alarm to get it to shut up.
“Nothing’s going on other than Luke is leaving, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I only found out an hour before you did.”
We were still shouting. My waving wasn’t helping in the slightest.
“Plus,” I continued. “You’ve been baking and cooking for weeks. There’s more to this than Luke leaving.”
“Maybe it’s that my best friend has gone rogue, my TO hates me, my mother thinks I’m a failure, and Seamus is going to propose.”
“What do you mean, Seamus is going to propose?” I yelled.
“He asked me to go to Ireland with him. There’s only one reason he’d ask me to go to Ireland.”
“To meet his family?” I was now beating the actual smoke alarm with the broom.
“And to propose.” She stared down at the charred remains of the cookies.
“Is that really so bad?”
“I can’t get married. I’m too young to get married. And then he’ll want kids and I’ll have to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom and get fat again and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Slow down. No one said anything about kids and being a stay-at-home mom, right? I’m sure that’s not what Seamus wants.”
“His mom stayed home with him.”
“That doesn’t mean he wants the same from his wife.”
Shayla paled at the word wife.
“Denver Fire, we’re coming in,” a voice shouted from the door.
Three firefighters in full bunker gear, air tanks, and masks barged into the kitchen, holding a hose and a fire extinguisher.
“Don’t spray,” I shouted. “There’s no fire. Just a stupid alarm that doesn’t know when to shut up.”
Eli Hudson—Quarterback for the Denver Broncos and our landlord’s son—walked in behind the firefighters. “What happened?” He asked.
A tiny brunette in a Broncos hoodie and jeans stood next to him with her hands on her hips.
“I was trying to make cookies,” Shayla said.
The alarm still blared. My head was starting to pound.
“I’ll call the alarm company and tell them to shut it off,” Eli said. He left the room, but the woman stayed behind, evaluating the situation.
Within minutes, the alarm quit, and the room went eerily silent though my ears still buzzed.
“Thank you for coming,” Shayla said to the firefighters as they left.
“And you are?” I asked the woman.
“Logan Labrec.” She held out a tiny hand and shook mine with more gusto than most men. “Eli’s girlfriend.”
She was not what I’d expect him to choose as a girlfriend. The man was absolutely gorgeous, and this woman was—well—ordinary. Plain. She couldn’t have been any taller than five foot two and probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she wore no makeup at all.
“That’s the reaction I usually get,” she said with a laugh.
I realized both Shayla and I had been overtly sizing her up.
“She’s more than she seems,” Eli said, walking back in and slipping an arm behind her back. She barely came up to his armpit. “This girl’s going places. She could have easily been the first professional female quarterback, but she’d rather be a sportscaster.”
Logan smiled up at him. “And I’m doing it without anyone’s help.”
“That’s great,” Shayla said. She hadn’t ever been that taken by Eli since she wasn’t a huge football fan. “I’d offer you a cookie, but I burned them all. I think I have some cake left from the other night though. And I can put on a pot of coffee.”
Eli shrugged, and Logan smiled. “Sure, we’ll stay.”
As they made their way to the kitchen talking about Logan’s career in broadcasting, my phone vibrated. The screen showed Desmond’s name.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, but Shayla wasn’t paying me any attention. “Hello?” I said into the phone.
“I need your help. He’s trying to kill me.” Desmond was out of breath, fear coursing through his words.
“Who’s trying to kill you?” My pulse quickened. Why would he call me? Wh
y not the police? “The private investigator?”
“Not the P.I. Jacob. He’s in his SUV. He keeps ramming into my car.”
A loud bang came from the other end of the line.
Desmond screamed.
“You need to call the police,” I said. “Desmond?”
“I’m here,” he finally said, his voice weaker than before. “The police don’t care about me. They won’t help. Jacob will just pay to have this pushed under the rug too. Whatever happens, please do not call the police.”
“Where are you?” I asked, not making any promises.
“I’m outside the gate to Shadow Trail.”
“Why are you there?”
“I was going to text you so we could meet,” he said. “I had something I needed to show—oh God, he’s getting out of his car.”
“Drive away,” I whisper yelled.
“I can’t the airbag’s deployed.”
“Then get out and run.”
On the other end, I heard a car door open and shut, and Desmond’s breaths coming faster and harder.
He was running.
I should have ended the call and dialed 9-1-1.
The sound of chain-link came through the line as if he was climbing the fence. But the eight-foot chain-link fence was topped with circles of barbed wire. He’d never get over it.
“Desmond, don’t climb the fence,” I said. “Run.”
Desmond didn’t respond. There was no way he could climb the fence and hold a phone. He had to have put it down.
Silence fell over the line for what seemed like forever before a single gunshot rang out, leaving me temporarily deaf in one ear.
11
I pushed my phone up to my good ear, trying desperately to hear something.
Anything.
“Desmond?” I whispered, knowing he wouldn’t respond.
It was as if the line had gone dead. I disconnected the call and typed in nine, one, and then stopped.
What if Desmond was right. What if I told them he was there and then Jacob paid to have it all brushed under the rug? He’d begged me not to call the police.
I had to get out there to see if I could help. Maybe the gunshot had missed him. Or maybe Desmond got the gun away from Jacob.