Chapter 2 #2
Jenna was a librarian at Renegade Mountain Elementary School.
They’d met several years ago when both had volunteered to help with props and costumes at the local children’s theater.
They’d bonded over their shared love of coffee and books.
This year, Aubrey had recruited Jenna to assist with the Renegade Days festival costumes.
“Hello to you too.” A crash sounded, and some mumbling bled through the line.
“You okay?” Aubrey admired the passing scenery. The houses were becoming larger, and the green spaces increased the farther she drove away from the city. She loved getting out of the city, away from the noise, the summer heat.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘okay,’” Jenna said.
Aubrey frowned. “That doesn’t sound good. Where are you?”
Jenna sounded out of breath. “Ooh, I think I pulled a muscle. I thought you were supposed to help me get all these costumes out and labeled.”
“That was today?” A small smile tilted her lips. Aubrey loved the organizing, just not all the other stuff. She’d rather delegate, but she wanted to be there for Jenna.
“You know it was today.”
“And that’s why you’re my right-hand woman, keeping me on track.”
“You’re laying it on kind of thick, aren’t you? You totally forgot to take the morning off work. Hang on.” Muffled voices filtered through the speaker. “Okay, I’m back. As I was saying…”
“I’m sorry, and something has come up. I’m heading over to the judge’s house.” Aubrey braked at the red light.
A soft breeze floated through her open windows, and she lifted her hair off the back of her neck. Her face felt flushed. Despite what she’d told Liam, she wasn’t going to ask Jenna to drop what she was doing and come with her. Aubrey had been keeping herself safe for years.
“Mullinax is locked in as the sheriff in the reenactment, right?”
Aubrey hummed her response.
“Aubrey?” That sounded like the exact tone Jenna would use with her third graders if they were too loud in the library.
She licked her dry lips. “Yeah?”
“What’s wrong? You’ve kind of been off since the conversation at Bible study last week when we talked about favorite childhood memories.”
She should’ve deflected before now. “You are really nosy, you know that?”
Jenna laughed. “I know when something is bothering my bestie.”
“I don’t know if I should tell you…” Aubrey bit the inside of her cheek.
“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Jenna softened her tone, her voice barely audible above the hum of the tires. “You haven’t been your normal, cheerful self.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep.”
This short drive was turning out to be one of the longest of her life. Next week was the anniversary of her sister’s death. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel.
She pulled up to an intersection and sat as the opposing traffic moved through the streets, an almost ballet-like choreography. “I’m worried about my friend.”
Aubrey fought the tears that formed at the corners of her eyes. She swiped under them and glanced in the rearview mirror. Odd. That same black sedan had been behind her when she left the courthouse parking lot.
Goosebumps formed on her arms.
Ridiculous. She was safe. It’s nothing.
Aubrey cleared her throat. “I know, but I’d rather not talk about it.”
Jenna continued, “At first I thought maybe you just don’t have many happy childhood memories. But the more I think on it, the more I wonder if you experienced a traumatic event when you were young. And maybe you’re scared.”
Aubrey swallowed back all the fear. “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
Everything Jenna said was true. With every question, Jenna probed and pushed, picking at the fragile scabs that had formed over her heart.
“Honey…” Jenna’s voice softened. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I hope you know I’m here if you do.”
Aubrey’s breath caught and her vision dimmed around the edges. She’d kept her life carefully hidden, never revealing who she really was.
The car behind her honked, and her entire body jerked forward when she pressed the accelerator too hard. She had to focus on her breathing. Get this situation under control.
“Aubrey?”
“I’m still here.” She glanced down at the speedometer and backed off on the gas. One thing she didn’t need was a speeding ticket.
A bead of sweat trickled down her back, and she reached over to turn on the car’s AC. Sweet, blessed cool air washed over her skin, and she released all the breath in her lungs.
Aubrey forced a lightness into her voice. “It seems like you have me all figured out.”
“Maybe because we’ve been hanging out ever since you came to Renegade. I know you.”
“Hmm.” Surely if Jenna knew that associating with Aubrey potentially put her in danger from the man Aubrey had sent to prison, then she’d run away as fast as her legs would take her. “How so?”
“You love to help but won’t let anyone help you, which was why I was surprised you asked me to help with Renegade Days.”
The silence lengthened between them, like the mountain shadows at dusk.
Mysterious and a little murky. Usually, silence between them was comforting.
The peaceful rest of two people who loved and trusted each other.
But right now, it seemed to foreshadow something.
A storm Aubrey wasn’t going to be able to hide from.
Aubrey cleared her throat. “I would argue the point, but I’m a little concerned about the judge.”
“I get it. Change of subject.” Jenna’s tone reflected hurt and betrayal.
“I’ll explain as much as I can later.” Aubrey hated keeping her friend out of the loop, but the less Jenna knew of her past, the better.
She glanced at the digital clock on her dash. “Look, I’m almost to the judge’s house. How about I grab some lunch for both of us on the way back and we can talk?”
“I could really go for a turkey Reuben from Schwartz’s Deli.”
“You got it.”
Traffic thinned the farther away from the city she traveled, the area greener, more densely populated with cottonwood, quaking aspen, chokecherry, and Rocky Mountain maple trees. She relaxed her grip on the steering wheel as she and Jenna went over the last few details about Renegade Days.
Aubrey hated to admit it, but her friend was close to the truth. Too close.
What if she showed Jenna even more of the real Aubrey?
But years in WITSEC kept her from revealing too much. She would always be in danger as long as Finn Donovan was alive.
She’d always figured people didn’t want to hear about her childhood trauma. She kept all those experiences buried deep, hoping no one would unearth them. But maybe, just maybe, they might like her and not look at her with pity.
Aubrey punched in the code to Stephen’s front gate. “I just pulled into the judge’s driveway.”
“Be careful.”
“I will. But stay on the line with me.” Aubrey exited her vehicle and walked up the front steps. She paused at the top. “That’s odd.”
“What is?”
Aubrey frowned and studied the front of the house, forgetting for a moment that Jenna was still on the phone. “The judge’s front door is open.”
“Maybe one of the staff forgot to close it.”
“Maybe.” Sure, he lived in a gated community, but the judge still locked his doors.
She pushed the door open with her foot and stood inside the cavernous foyer. She pulled the phone away from her ear. “Hello? Judge Mullinax? Stephen? Anybody home?”
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she whirled around and saw the chaos. The open drawers. The blood splatter on the walls and floor.
“Aubrey? What’s going on?”
“Someone ransacked the judge’s house.” Her voice was a strained whisper. Pictures had been ripped off the walls, curtains had been pulled off the rods, the material puddling in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the furniture was shredded.
And his housekeeper lay in a pool of blood.
Aubrey’s mouth went dry. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to bring you that sandwich.”
Ethan shoved his chair back and pinched the bridge of his nose. All the information he had gathered the past two weeks as he followed Roger Rousseau around Denver amounted to nothing but a pile of unrelated clues. He hadn’t caught Rousseau doing anything illegal. At least, not yet.
Even the guy he’d questioned, Rousseau’s associate, a man he’d identified as Draven Frost, didn’t have anything concrete.
It was all just hearsay. Nothing made sense no matter what angle he looked at it from.
The members of the syndicate were sneaky.
Every contact, each piece of evidence and information, was unrelated.
It was how they’d gone on unchecked for so long, infiltrating every part of this city.
And trying to pull it all apart was driving him absolutely nuts.
He studied the bug he and Adam had found in his office. There had to be some small detail, some seemingly inconsequential fact he was overlooking. He grabbed some tweezers, dropped the bug into an evidence bag, and locked it in his desk. He needed to send it off to forensics for testing.
He sat up, pulled the file closer. Perhaps…
The ping from an instant message popped up on his screen, and he groaned. Daniel Howard, the supervising deputy US marshal in the Renegade office.
Howard
Welcome back. Meet me in my office in 5.
Ethan
Will do.
Howard wasn’t typically big on pleasantries, so that wasn’t unusual. But a request like this was.
A shaft of sunlight streamed through the blinds, and the brownie he’d eaten earlier sat like a lump of gooey dough in his stomach.
Ethan hadn’t made time to develop friendships other than with his elderly neighbor, although maybe Aubrey could be an exception.
Only because she wouldn’t leave him alone, which was annoying, but man, he sure enjoyed sparring with her—heaven help him.
He shook his head. He had a job to do. He had to find out who was behind the Shadow Syndicate, end of story. He didn’t need to get involved or bring anyone into his sphere of influence.
People who got close to him ended up dead.