Chapter Six
Aiden ground his teeth together as the nurse stitched him up. Hell in a big assed handbasket, he hated stitches. Hated hospitals. Wasn’t a fan of pain either or needles being threaded into him.
But he especially wasn’t a fan of that gut-punched look in Lexa’s eyes.
A look that let him know she was blaming herself for him getting shot. She was no doubt mentally playing around with what if scenarios to try to figure out how she could have stopped it. As if all of this was on her. It wasn’t.
It was on the sonofabitch who’d set up that fire to cook-off those bullets.
Aiden was now making his mission in life to catch said sonofabitch and make him or her pay. Not because of his own injury. It was hardly more than a scratch. But because people could have been killed.
Including Lexa.
Including any damn body who just happened to be in the range of this attack.
Word had already gotten around about this latest incident. Of course, it had. And that was the reason he had “you ok?” texts from all three of his brothers, Shaw, Declan, and Hayes.
He had texts, too, from Owen who’d used a lot more words when he’d first asked for a status report, then a follow-up one about a half hour later to check on how things were going. And finally a third text to let Aiden know he wanted to see him when he was done in the ER.
Aiden was betting at least one or two of the texts Lexa had gotten in the past hour had been from Owen as well. Maybe to try to find out if Aiden had been bullshitting him about being okay. But there’d been no BS. This was a minor injury, period, that wouldn’t affect anything.
“Finished,” the nurse finally declared. According to her name tag, she was Sarah Jean Barlow, and she stepped back to check her work. The six stitches on his left bicep caused by a hot bullet ripping across his arm.
Aiden had been damn lucky. An inch or two over, and it could have hit something vital, including his heart.
“The doctor will be in soon to check you,” the nurse went on, gathering up her supplies. “Try not to get it wet or to do anything that’ll pop the stitches. I’ll see about getting you a script for pain meds—”
“Don’t want them,” Aiden was quick to say. He’d rather deal with the pain than a fuzzy brain caused by the meds.
Sarah Jean shrugged in a suit-yourself gesture and walked out of the treatment room, leaving Lexa and him there to stare at each other.
“I’m staying on the job,” Aiden decided to clarify. “This won’t affect my ability to do anything.” He hoped. At least it wasn’t his shooting arm, and that made this is a silver lining.
Lexa sighed, and he expected her to argue with him about that. She didn’t. “If I were in your shoes…your boots,” she amended, “I’d do the same thing.” She paused. “Someone tried to kill us again. Why?”
Ah, that was the million-dollar question. Too bad he was a piss poor answer that was just pure speculation.
“I could be a coincidence that we were in a wrong place, wrong time deal,” he offered up, “but I don’t buy that. As for why?” And now came the speculation. “Maybe to try to hamper the investigation. Maybe because this asshole thinks we know something that can put him or her in a cage.”
“Yes,” she muttered. “That was my theory, too. That, or else one of us pissed somebody off, and that person didn’t care if the other one of us becomes collateral damage.”
Aiden had gone there, too. “Pissed anybody off lately?” he came out and asked.
“Not that I know of. You?”
“Not that I know of,” he repeated. Their gazes stayed locked, and while he’d never thought he had mind-reading skills, he could practically feel what she was thinking. “But Mandie Trainor’s parents probably don’t think fondly of us.”
“No,” she agreed in a mutter.
Lexa groaned and scrubbed her hand over her face, and like him, she was no doubt fighting the flashbacks of that night. Of them rushing it to save Mandie.
And getting her killed in the process.
That hadn’t been their plan, of course. It’d been to save her after her ex-boyfriend had kidnapped her. But shitstorms could and did happen, and that night everything that could go wrong, did. The asshole boyfriend had set a fire, nearly burning them all alive, and even though Aiden and Lexa had managed to get out with Mandie, she’d died from the injuries the asshole had inflicted on her.
Lexa and he had been too late.
No way to fix that. No real way to live with it, either. And it was no doubt the same for Mandie’s parents. Which was the reason he’d brought up their name to Lexa.
“I did a quick check, and Mandie’s folks are out of the country,” Aiden admitted. “They’re on one of those package trips across the UK. I think if they’d decided to get revenge after all this time, they’d want to be around to see it.”
Besides, Mandie’s parents, Margaret and Greg, had never expressed their hatred for Lexa and him in any way. Just the hurt. The pain.
Which cut way deeper than any hatred could.
“So, if it’s not them, then this is almost certainly connected to Chloe. To Brady,” Lexa muttered.
Yep. And that meant they were back to the theory that someone wanted to dick around with the investigation. Or silence them because they might know something. The trouble with that was Aiden didn’t know squat.
Well, other than that part about Brady’s PTSD.
Brady or Wylie likely wouldn’t want that coming out if Brady was ever arrested for murder. But it seemed to Aiden there were other less messy and bloody ways to handle that.
So, he was back to muddling the investigation.
Or…
“We both thought we saw someone when we escaped from the fire,” Aiden reminded her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “And maybe he or she believes we saw more than we did. Like a face. Or some other distinguishing trait we could use to make an ID.”
That angle was possible. But there was another one that sprang to mind. “What if the killer wants to pile on the evidence against Brady?” Aiden threw out there. “What if this attack was meant to spur Owen into arresting him?”
She nodded and took a moment clearly processing that. “If so, that points back to Hudson.”
He didn’t get a chance to give Lexa his take on that because the examine room door opened, and Dr. Millie Lopez walked in. Aiden had already met her briefly when Lexa had rushed him into the ER. She’d been no-nonsense then and continued that demeanor now as she examined the stitches, covered it with a bandage and then listened to his heart.
“All right,” the doctor said, yanking the stethoscope from her ears. “You’re good to go.”
Aiden didn’t waste any time coming off the treatment table and heading to the door. He was anxious to get back to the station, and Lexa clearly was, too, because she fell in step beside him. Quick steps that slowed considerably though once they reached the ER doors.
They both looked out, checking for any kind of threat. Aiden didn’t see one, but that didn’t mean squat. After all, he hadn’t seen those bullets before they’d been cooked-off.
Still keeping watch, they went into the parking lot and got in Lexa’s car since she’d used it to get him to ER—after he’d insisted she not call an ambulance. Aiden scowled when he saw the blood on the seat, and he made a mental note to arrange to have the car detailed.
Lexa got behind the wheel and headed toward the exit. “I’ve been giving some thought to your full-throttle emersion,” she said, surprising him. “Uh, not we can’t keep our hands off each other full throttle,” she amended. “More like how it applies to, well, you getting shot. If someone is truly gunning for us, I’d rather you be close by so I can give backup and vice versa.”
Aiden smiled. Probably not the right reaction. But he rather liked the idea of them being joined at the hip. Not because of the heat, though that was a factor, but because of the vice versa . Yeah, he’d gotten shot this time, but if they had a killer after them, he didn’t want the asshole getting to Lexa.
“Close by,” he repeated. “I’m all for that. We leave work together, go in together. We stay together.”
He sort of held his breath on that last one, figuring she might nix it. She didn’t. “I have a spare room at my place here in town,” she said instead as she pulled into the parking lot of the police station. “That way, I can keep an eye on those stitches. Fifty bucks says you’ll pop one by tomorrow.”
“You’re betting on me busting my stitches?” he asked.
“It’s a sure thing,” she remarked, stepping out.
Aiden got out, too, his gaze sweeping around as hers did, and they didn’t dawdle as they made their way into the building.
He immediately spotted Owen, who was in his office but with the door wide open. And Owen saw them, too, because he motioned for them to join him.
“Status,” Owen said, looking at the bandage on Aiden’s arm.
“I’m good to go,” Aiden assured him.
Owen studied him for several moments as if trying to figure out if that was true. He must have decided it was because he shifted into the word mode. “I just got a call from the fire chief, and he confirmed that the bullets had been cooked-off. Three boxes of ammo and a fire triggered by a timer. The fire also destroyed the area around it so there are no visible footprints.”
“A timer,” Aiden repeated like profanity. Because it meant the device could have been set at any time. The attacker could have been long gone by the time the shots went off.
“We’re checking the security cameras around town,” Owen went on. “Maybe something will turn up.”
Aiden considered the location of the cams and wasn’t very hopeful one of them would have captured anything helpful. The attacker might not have taken one of the roads or even a vehicle to go in the direction of the manor. That area could be accessed on foot during the night.
“I’ve also been going over Hudson’s and Chloe’s phone records,” Owen went on, turning his laptop screen so they could see it. “All pretty standard stuff except for the one she sent to her brother.”
Yeah, that one. I’m so scared . I think I’ve made a bad mistake. I think he might try to kill me. Definitely not standard .
“I can’t see anything leading up to Chloe sending the text,” Owen explained. “But what I can see if that her calls and texts to Brady significantly decreased since that argument at the bar.”
“Maybe they hadn’t kissed and made up the way Brady claimed,” Lexa suggested. But then she sighed. “Of course, Brady could say they hadn’t been texting or calling as much since they’d been together.”
Brady could indeed claim that. And it might be the truth. But it put a knot in Aiden’s gut because this felt like one step closer to his friend being arrested for murder.
Owen looked at Aiden. “I saw you got the whole shebang backgrounds running on Chloe and Hudson.”
Aiden nodded and hiked his thumb in the direction of his own laptop at his desk in the bullpen. “I was about to check that.”
“Good,” Owen muttered. “Stick with that, and use my office if you want a bigger workspace. Also, feel free to observe the interviews. Right now, I have Callie and Shaw tapped for Hudson, and I’ll be taking Brady and Wylie. Separate, of course,” he added.
“When are Hudson and Wylie due in?” Aiden asked.
Owen checked the time. “Brady, any minute now. Hudson, in about twenty minutes. Wylie is due in about an hour and a half. I should be done with Brady by then.” His voice dropped off when there were sounds of voices in the reception area.
Aiden turned to see Brady, who was right on time, being sent through the metal detector. And he wasn’t alone. Gillian Petty with him.
“Interesting,” Lexa said. “He didn’t bring a lawyer with him.”
No, he hadn’t. Was that because Brady didn’t realize just how close he was to being charged? Or maybe he had thought he could defend himself? Either way, that wasn’t a good move on his part.
“I don’t think he voluntarily brought Gillian with him either,” Aiden pointed out after seeing the annoyed look Brady shot at Gillian.
Gillian was muttering something to Brady so maybe she didn’t see the expression, but it was obvious to Aiden that Brady didn’t want her there. Obvious, too, that Gillian was going away since she went through the metal detector behind him.
“Hayes and Jemma are at Brady’s place now with the CSIs, carrying through on the search warrant,” Owen said, moving toward his office door. “If anything pops on that while Brady is in interview, they’ll let me know.”
Owen went into the bullpen, greeting Brady and motioning for him to follow him. “We’ll be in interview room two today.”
“Can I be with Brady for that?” Gillian asked. “He’s obviously shaken to the core.”
“No,” Owen and Brady said in unison.
Gillian flinched a little, and then quickly regained her composure. “All right, I’ll wait here for you,” she said to Brady. “But I wish you’d consider having your dad with you.”
“No need,” Brady insisted, and he headed toward the interview room with Owen.
“Brady really is shaken,” Gillian muttered, not addressing anyone in particular. “I need to do something to help him. I have to find out why this is happening.” She kept her attention pinned to Brady until he was out of sight, and then she glanced around, spotted a chair just off reception and went there.
Since Aiden didn’t want to say anything that Gillian might overhear, he grabbed his laptop, and Lexa and he went into Owen’s office, shutting the door behind them. He dragged over a chair so Lexa and he could sit side by side as he went through the…well, lake of data.
“Good grief,” she muttered. “There’s a lot.”
“Yeah, there usually is. People don’t know what kind of cyber footprints they leave.”
And in this case, there were well over a thousand footprints for each of them. Posts and mentions on social media. Uploaded info to employment sites. Newspaper articles. With that much data, he had to look for something that stood out.
“Hudson and Chloe were adopted out of foster care when Chloe was six and Hudson was four,” he read.
And it seemed as if they’d had a fairly normal life with their adoptive parents before they died in a boating accident when Chloe was twenty. Before that though, Chloe and Hudson had lived in an upper middle-class neighborhood. Good schools. No hints of trouble.
“Chloe was popular in high school,” Lexa pointed out.
She was. There were hundreds of posts, photos, and mentions of her being in various clubs and receiving academic honors. Hudson had some, too, but it was nowhere close to Chloe’s numbers.
“Their bio-mother, Silby Wight, was killed in a car crash nine months ago,” Aiden said when he came across something else. “I don’t recall Chloe ever mentioning that.”
“Neither do I,” Lexa agreed. “But it’s possible she wasn’t that close to her.”
“True.” And he did a side search on Silby to see what came up.
Plenty.
Aged forty-six at the time of her death, which meant she would have only been seventeen when Chloe was born. No record of her ever being married or of the father of her children. But there were other records.
Bad ones.
The woman had multiple arrests for both drug possession and DUI, and one arrest had landed her in jail for a two-year sentence. That was when her kids had ended up in foster care. Had Silby then willingly allowed them to be adopted? Or had she fought it? Aiden plugged in another search to see if anything came up on that, but it was a bust.
“Chloe met Brady and moved to Outlaw Ridge only a couple of months after her bio-mom’s death,” Lexa said. She paused, shook her head. “Something about that feels…off.”
“It does.” He had paused, too, while he continued to run the search on Silby. “But I don’t see any indications that Chloe was involved in other relationships that got serious fast. So, maybe love at first sight?”
Their gazes met then, and, damn it, that blasted heat did a number on him. Apparently, it did one on her two.
“This isn’t love at first sight,” Lexa insisted. “It’s attraction.”
Yep, it was. A damn strong one. So strong that Aiden had to force his eyes off her and back onto the laptop. Thankfully, something popped up on the screen that snagged his attention and got his mind off love and lust with Lexa.
The police report on Silby’s death.
Both Lexa and he moved in for a closer look. “Hell,” he growled. “Silby was killed by a drunk driver. A seventeen-year-old boy named Miles Bennett.”
Aiden kept reading, going through the hits that pulled up Miles’s arrest. Then, the plea deal that had gotten Miles probation and community service but not one day of actual jail time.
“Miles’ parents have money,” Lexa said, motioning to that on the screen. An estimated wealth of three million. Like him, she continued to read the summary of the plea deal.
“Shit,” they said in unison when something popped right out at them.
The name of Miles’ lawyer. The attorney who’d orchestrated the plea deal that had gotten him off.
Brady’s father, Wylie.