38. thirty-six
thirty-six
. . .
CREW
“What do you mean, Wyatt knows something?”
“She was fidgety,” Aspen provided.
“And she refused to look me in the eye. Telltale signs that someone is lying.”
I gaped at my brother. “Wyatt Saunders wouldn’t hurt a fly. You’re telling me you think she is responsible?”
“Of course not,” Lane assured me. “First of all, she’s not nearly old enough. But what I am saying is that she’s keeping something from me, and I intend to find out what it is.” He shifted to glance at Aspen in the rearview. “You feel anything in there other than Wyatt being shady?”
“No. In my gut, I don’t think Ward was the one who attacked me, but I’ve been wrong before.”
The end of that statement piqued my interest enough that I shifted around in my seat to look at her. “What do you mean?”
Her shoulders raised and lowered dramatically as she heaved a sigh, gnawing on her bottom lip, almost like she didn’t want to tell me.
“Is this about the Bullough story?” Lane asked.
Aspen nodded, giving into a shiver, like the name elicited memories she had no desire to revisit. “The story that cost me my career—and almost my life.”
Wisely, though I had a thousand things I wanted to say, questions I wanted to ask, Lane and I kept our mouths shut and let Aspen proceed at her own pace.
“Bullough Enterprises was a venture capitalist firm in Chicago. About six months before I left everything behind, I got an anonymous tip that they were skimming from their investors. According to my source, it wasn’t anything crazy at that point. A few hundred thousand here and there. But it had the makings of an elaborate Ponzi scheme. If I could prove it, that kind of story could make my career. I had aspirations outside of Chicago, you know? So I started digging.”
“What happened?” I pressed gently when she was silent for a few minutes.
“Turned out, the CEO had a number of vices. The bulk of his money went up his nose, down the drain at illegal poker games, or to high priced call girls. He found himself with some bad debts across the three extracurriculars and needed to raise money fast.”
“So he started stealing from his clients,” Lane supplied. I cut him a confused glance and he added, “I looked into Aspen. Read her articles.” He met her eyes in the mirror again. “You’re very talented.”
“Thank you.”
“So what happened?” I asked her. “Seems like you got the scoop.”
“I was also beaten within an inch of my life to drop it and forget everything I knew too.”
“Fucking hell, Aspen.”
This woman—she was stronger than even I knew.
“I was followed home from the office one day,” she continued, tone even and emotionless, like she couldn’t allow herself to get worked up. The detachment was necessary for the sake of her mental health, a tactic I understood well. “These two goons shoved their way into my apartment and beat the shit out of me. Four broken ribs, collapsed lung, severe concussion, bruises all over my body. I only survived because they left my phone. They let me call for help.” She lifted her hand to her forehead, trailing her pointer finger along the silvery scar that cut across the skin at her hairline “My souvenir.”
“But you wrote the story anyway.”
She nodded, swallowing hard. “My editor forced me to. He sat at my bedside while I recovered, typing the words I dictated to him when the pounding in my head became too much to stare at the screen any longer. He was fucking relentless, so leaving it all behind was pretty effortless. How could I keep working for a man who valued getting the story over my health?”
“You did the right thing,” Lane murmured. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I tried to drive you out of town when you got out of the hospital. Unlike that guy, I actually was looking out for your wellbeing.”
Aspen gave him a small smile. “I know. You’re not a total asshole.”
“Only kind of,” I teased.
The joking eased the somber mood in the cab of the SUV considerably, but still my mind spun. Aspen had been through so much, way more than I’d known about, and the fresh information only made me fall that much harder for her.
She was so fucking strong, so brave in the face of all she’d endured, never balking from the fight to find this killer despite the fact that she was one of his victims.
Aspen McKay was magnificent, and I was goddamn lucky to call her mine.
Silence blanketed the car as we all turned our attention inward. I replayed the interview, still having difficulty wrapping my mind around it all. Even considering Ward Saunders as a suspect was, to me, farfetched. I didn’t care if circumstances and fucking body type made him look good for it. I’d known that man and his family my entire life. Mrs. Saunders had been Owen and Trey’s teacher, then my, Lane, the twins, and Aria’s principal. She’d worked for the school for as long as I’d been alive.
Wyatt used to run around the ranch with us, she and Trey as thick as thieves, always getting up to mischief. Secretly, or maybe not so secretly, my entire family thought they’d end up together, married with a few babies by now. But they shocked the hell out of us by going their separate ways after high school. I knew they were still close, but we all had to accept—Mama most of all—that they were merely friends.
The point was, the family was as well respected in this town as any other. There was no fucking way Ward Saunders was responsible for hurting my girl and killing all those others.
“Uhh, Crew?” my brother asked, penetrating the haze of my swirling thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“Your phone, baby,” Aspen said from the backseat.
The incessant beeping of a security alarm registered then, and I slipped my phone out of my pocket to find the screen blazing red with alerts.
Before I could make sense of them, it rang with an incoming call from Trey.
“You good?” he asked when I answered.
“We’re just leaving the Saunders’. What the fuck is going on?”
“Looks like the system was breached. I’m headed over there right now.”
“We’ll meet you there,” I said, then hung up. To Lane, I added, “Lights and sirens, Sheriff. Let’s go.”
Lane didn’t have to be told twice.
We skidded to a stop in my gravel drive next to Trey’s truck a short while later, and I pushed out of the SUV into a cloud of dust, leaving my brother and Aspen behind. The front door was open, the keypad for the security system bleating on the wall.
“Trey?” I called.
“Office!”
Fuck. That couldn’t be good.
I was proved right a moment later when I entered the room to find it in complete disarray. The murder wall had been destroyed, torn corners of pages clinging uselessly to the tacks. My computer was a heap of twisted metal, glass, and wires on the floor, smashed irreparably.
A gasp behind me had me turning to Aspen, who stood in the doorway with her hand covering her mouth, eyes wide. Lane hovered behind her, jaw clenched as his eyes swept the space.
“Everyone out,” he barked.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“It’s a crime scene now, baby bro,” Trey said with a hand on my shoulder, steering me from the room. Lane was already on his radio, calling deputies and CSI as he stomped back outside. A minute later, he returned with yellow crime scene tape, barricading the door to the office with a few strips before ushering us all back to the driveway. Then he placed another across the front door.
Trey’s vehicle was outfitted with a mobile command center, and I stood next to him, hand cradling Aspen’s, as he tapped away on his laptop, pulling up the feed from the cameras on my property.
“See anything?” I asked.
He pressed a few more keys then angled the screen toward me.
I watched the playback from the camera mounted on a tree in the yard. For several moments, everything was still. Then, a figure entered the frame. They were cloaked head to toe in black, their face obscured by a mask. An oversized coat with the hood pulled up hid their body type, making it impossible to determine anything about them.
They strolled right up to my front door like they owned the place, fiddled with the handle until it popped open, and disappeared inside. Less than five minutes later, they returned, the sheaf of papers they’d stolen from my office clasped in their gloved hands, and disappeared from view.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“We don’t have cameras inside,” he reminded me. “And the footage from the ones mounted to the exterior of the house and garage don’t catch anything else of use. This guy is a fucking ghost.” Then he grinned. “The good news is, it’s not Ward.”
“Fuck!” I screamed, yanking my hand from Aspen’s and shoving my hands through my hair, tugging until sharp pain bloomed on my scalp.
A hand settled against my spine briefly before Aspen’s touch snaked around, coming to rest against my stomach as she pressed her face into my back. I calmed, if only a fraction.
“Guess it’s a good thing we’re moving to the ranch for the foreseeable future,” she said quietly into my skin.
I let out a chuckle, more tension easing from my shoulders as I did, then spun to embrace her properly.
“Guess so.”
Lane let us in the house long enough to pack a few bags of necessities, and by the time we loaded into my truck to head for the ranch, my property was crawling with cops.
Deciding I needed the fresh air and freedom of the backroads, I eased us onto the two-track that cut across ranch land instead of around it, rolling the windows down as we bumped along. Riley Green crooned softly from the speakers, the sun was shining, and my girl was at my side. Despite the fact that the comfort and safety of my home had been violated, I was living the dream.
“I can’t believe this is all ranch land,” Aspen said, her hand out the window, riding the wind.
“It’s the largest privately owned acreage in the state,” I admitted.
She looked at me then. “What do you do with it all?”
“Not much, honestly. There are grazing pastures for the dairy cows, fields of soybeans Mama uses for the self-care products she sells, hay we harvest for the cattle and horses. Otherwise, it’s untamed wilderness. We’ve got herds of wild horses, buffalo and bison, moose, deer, and all sorts of other wild animals.”
“So why haven’t you sold any of the land off?”
“Because the only people rich enough to purchase the kind of acreage we’d even consider parting with are developers who want to grade the land and build on it. My brothers and I refuse to let that happen in our lifetimes. Consider it a…privately owned wildlife sanctuary.”
Aspen nodded. “Fair enough.”
As we continued our trek, I pointed out places that had been scenes of mischief in my and my siblings’ youth. The place where I’d gotten in the accident that ultimately led to my addiction. The stretch of river that Aria had fallen into once before she could swim and nearly drowned before we caught her at the next bend. The field that still had a bonfire pit scorched in the center from all the parties we’d held out there over the years.
“Your souls are woven into the fabric of this land,” Aspen said, a soft smile on her lips. “Your roots are planted so deep there’s no you without the land, and vice versa. It’s a beautiful thing.”
She said it like someone who didn’t have a connection of her own to any place that truly mattered to her, so I reached over the center console and placed my hand on her thigh, squeezing gently.
“You can put down roots right alongside mine, little phoenix.”