Chapter 8 #2
She pulled a business card from the slim case in her pocket. “If you remember anything else, you call me.”
Finch nodded, eyes darting to the door. “Yeah, whatever. I didn’t do anything.”
She left him slumped on the couch, pulling the door shut behind her with a snap.
Outside, she sucked in a lungful of the clean mountain air. For a second, she just stood on the porch, staring at the sky and wishing she hadn’t wasted half her afternoon on a dead end.
Except it wasn’t a dead end. Not quite. The part about Craig Foster stuck in her head—the money, the sponsorship. He probably had a truck—just about everyone in rural Montana did—and she wondered if it was black.
Something to check into.
But first, she wanted to check Finch’s alibi, as flimsy as it was.
She crossed to the trailer next door. This one was in significantly better condition, with pumpkins and potted mums on the small porch and a menagerie of yard ornaments.
There was a metal chicken in a flowerpot by the door, and three ceramic frogs saluting from the step.
Miss Kay answered the knock promptly enough to tell Naomi the woman had been watching from her lace-covered windows the whole time.
She opened the door with a thud and peered through the screen, face pinched with suspicion and something like delight. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be mixed up with the likes of Taren Finch.”
Naomi wished she had her badge to show, but she’d left it behind when she left Missoula, knowing even then she didn’t plan on coming back when her leave was done. “Special Agent Lefthand, FBI.”
Miss Kay’s eyes widened, and her hand fluttered up to cover the sagging skin at her throat. “FBI? My goodness.”
“Just have a few questions about your neighbor.”
Miss Kay gave a little huff. “I was wondering when someone would finally come around,” she said, unhooking the screen and stepping onto the porch. She was barely five feet tall and had a helmet of white curls, eyes shrewd behind smudged glasses.
Naomi bit the inside of her cheek. “You keep a good eye on your neighbor, Miss Kay?”
A sniff. “I keep an eye on everything. If more people did, maybe girls like Leelee wouldn’t just… disappear.” She said the word with relish, like it was the best gossip she’d had in weeks.
“Tell me about Tuesday night. Did you see or hear anything unusual from Taren’s place?”
Miss Kay’s mouth pursed, but she was already eager.
“That boy’s never done a day of honest work.
He sits in there all night with his TV blaring.
Always some ball game or another. Tuesday, I called him at twelve thirty-one.
I remember because I’d just started a new Sudoku.
He didn’t pick up the first time. I had to call twice.
When he finally answered, he just grunted and hung up. Rude, but not unusual.”
Naomi scanned her notes. “You’re sure he was home?”
Miss Kay drew herself up a fraction. “I heard the game like it was being played in my own house. He never left. Not till he went to the corner store for beer the next morning, anyway.”
That tracked. Finch might be a mess, but he wasn’t a killer.
“Thanks,” Naomi said, her mind already spinning ahead. She had another name now. Craig Foster.
One more person to add to her suspect list.
A truck was waiting in her drive, black as midnight, paint eating every last bit of light. For a heartbeat, the sight of it flattened her breath. Big, newer model. Black. Tinted windows.
The exact description every woman had given about the truck that watched them from the dark.
Even after logic kicked in, even after she recognized the Valor Ridge decal on the side and the dog silhouette pressed to the backseat glass, her pulse wouldn’t slow.
She stared at the truck. What if the killer wasn’t some stranger lurking at the casino, but a man she’d just invited into her investigation?
Ghost leaned against the side of his truck, a cigar in one hand, the smoke curling up into the blue like he could erase her day with it.
He didn’t watch her with the lazy confidence of a guy who thought he owned the world.
No, Owen Booker watched her like a sniper sighting a mark through a rifle scope.
Hyper-focused, steel-eyed, not missing a damn thing.
A shiver zipped along her spine.
Pathetic. She’d worked bigger cases than this, squared off with men twice as dangerous as Ghost. But the way he stood there, lean and motionless and already knowing how she’d spent her afternoon, made her want to turn tail and drive right back down the mountain.
Nope. Not happening.
She squared her shoulders and climbed out of her car. Cinder leapt out of the truck’s passenger seat and put herself between them, tail flagging high, hackles up, like she was personally offended by Naomi’s existence.
The feeling was almost mutual.
“Decided waiting isn’t your thing, huh?” Ghost didn’t even bother to glance at her as he called his dog to his side.
Just pinched the tip of the cigar out, slid it into a slim case in his pocket, and exhaled a stream of smoke.
The scent curled around her, a mix of woodsmoke, whiskey, and something seductively dark that made her stomach tighten.
It was the kind of smell that stayed on your clothes—and under your skin.
She planted herself in front of him, arms folded. “I tried, but it felt like I was wasting time. Besides, Finch is harmless.”
His eyes went flat and hard. “Nobody is harmless.”
Especially not you, she almost shot back, but the words stuck at the last second.
She shrugged instead. “Finch couldn’t put a plan together if you gave him instructions and a coloring book. He’s pathetic, but he’s not a killer.”
Ghost’s gaze cut through her, slicing right past the bravado. “Losers get desperate. Desperate gets ugly fast.”
“Not this one.” Naomi forced herself to steady. “He was home, drunk, TV blasting. Neighbor backs it up.” She tipped her chin at the drive. “You want to double-check, feel free, but he’s a dead end.”
He didn’t answer. The way he looked at her was like he was cataloguing her mood, her stance, maybe even her pulse, for all she knew. Bastard probably found a way to weaponize oxygen.
Cinder hovered at his knee, ears pinned and eyes narrowed. Her lips peeled back in a vaguely threatening snarl.
The dog was just as friendly as her owner, and Naomi resisted the urge to bare her own teeth in response.
“So why the attitude?” she pressed. “Upset I didn’t sit here twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing until you showed?”
“Upset you lied,” he said, cool as refrigerated steel. “You told me you’d wait.”
“I had a hunch. I followed it and it paid off.”
Ghost’s gaze swept her, as if checking for bruises or blood or some other sign of disaster. “You always gamble on instinct?”
“Only when I know I’m right.”
“One of these days, you won’t be.” He said it so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard the note of worry, or if she’d imagined it.
Naomi rolled her shoulders, hoping he hadn’t clocked the shiver that zipped through her at the warning. “Maybe. But today isn’t that day. If you want to bust my balls about it, get in line behind every boss, boyfriend, and bureaucrat I’ve ever worked with.”
Ghost just looked at her. When they first met at Nessie’s Place the other day, she’d thought his eyes were cold. Now, up close, she could see the storm in them, moody as a winter sky.
Finally, he exhaled slowly and looked past her toward the woods, like he needed to recalibrate his entire internal GPS before he lost his temper. “All right. Give me the rundown.”
She did, rapid-fire. The texts, the breakup, the mention of Craig Foster. The fact that Finch was more scared than scary, and way too lazy to orchestrate anything complicated.
Ghost listened, eyes narrowed, taking it all in.
“Craig Foster,” he repeated.
Something in his voice was off, and her skin prickled. She cocked her head, watching him. He’d gone still, the way some predators did right before they lunged.
She crossed her arms. “Yeah. You know him?”
“His name came up in conjunction with Bailee Cooper’s murder this summer. She worked for him.”
She nodded. She was aware of Bailee Cooper, a pretty white girl whose murder sent the town into a tailspin this past summer.
No surprise there.
The whole damn town had tripped over itself to care when it was a pretty white girl.
Candlelight vigils, press conferences, a sheriff’s department that suddenly found the budget for round-the-clock overtime.
Posters in every storefront. And now? Four Indigenous women gone, barely a whisper outside of a few pissed-off relatives and the same handful of advocates who never gave up.
She swallowed back the old bitterness. “But we know for sure Craig Foster didn’t kill her.”
Bailee’s killer had been caught early this summer after trying to burn down Nessie’s Place. He now sat in prison awaiting trial, charged with second-degree murder for Bailee, and arson and attempted murder for attacking Nessie.
“Yeah,” Ghost said after a beat, “but I don’t like that his name keeps coming up in conjunction with missing and murdered girls.”
“Because you don’t like coincidences.”
He didn’t reply.
God, talking to the man was like butting heads with a locked vault. There was never a hint which way he’d break, and every word you pried out of him felt like it cost him something he didn’t want to give.
She waited, watching his face for even the smallest crack. Nothing. Just that flat, beautiful, deadpan stare.
She huffed and turned away, intending to go inside and forget about him. She made it to her front door before he said mildly, “You got plans tonight?”
She reined in the dumb flutter in her chest and swung back to face him. “Why?”
“I’m going to the casino.”
She stared at him for a handful of heartbeats. His expression still gave her nothing. What would it take to crack that armor? A crowbar? A blowtorch? All of the above, probably.
But it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the time or patience to waste on the puzzle of Ghost’s emotional constipation.
“Are you inviting me?”
“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have asked,” he said flatly.
She considered him, weighing her options. The casino was her next stop anyway. She’d planned to go tomorrow, talk to Leelee’s manager, see if she could get access to security footage. But tonight would work too. And having Ghost along might actually be useful.
“Fine. Give me fifteen minutes to change.” She had to get the stink of Taren Finch’s house off her. She couldn’t stand it anymore.
She turned and unlocked her door, feeling Ghost’s eyes on her back as she stepped inside. She felt his gaze lingering like a caress, and she closed the door with more force than necessary, needing to break the connection.
She leaned against the door for a moment, letting out a slow breath. She’d faced down serial killers and corrupt officials with less internal chaos than one conversation with Ghost stirred up.
What was it about that man that got under her skin?