Chapter Five
DEX’S QUESTION HELD the cabin still.
For a moment, no one moved. Pine shade striped the warped floorboards. Dust drifted through the hard summer light near the side window. The old round table stood between us with his cuffs resting on the scratched wood, not on my wrists and not on Crystal’s.
Dex had put them there like a choice.
I didn’t trust choices from men who carried restraints on their belts.
Crystal stood behind me, close enough that her cardigan brushed my bare elbow. She was shaking. I felt it through that one small touch, and the way she tried to hide it made me want to turn around and carry her out.
Dex stayed between the table and the door, hands empty, eyes on me.
His black T-shirt stretched across his chest, and the old crucifix lay against it, catching a dull flash of light when he breathed.
His shoulders were the same, his stubble was the same, and his mouth had been against mine in the dark before he knew who I was.
Now he knew I was Jade.
My fingers curled against my palms. Crystal’s name had kept him one step away from me. Mine didn’t.
“Who made you desperate enough to become your sister?” Dex asked again.
Crystal’s fingers caught the back of my overshirt. “Jade, maybe we should tell him enough.”
“No,” I said, and kept my attention on Dex. “You should sit before you pass out.”
“I’m fine enough to stand.”
“You’re pale enough to haunt this cabin.”
Dex’s jaw shifted. “Crystal, sit down before your knees give out.”
It got under my skin how easily he used her name, like he owned the right to put it in the room. It got under deeper that he used mine differently.
Crystal’s hand slipped off my overshirt.
She eased into the chair nearest the table, careful and slow.
Her cream cardigan slid farther off one shoulder.
The pale blue tank beneath it was wrinkled from the night she hadn’t slept through.
Her hair had come loose from its clip, soft pale strands sticking to her damp temples.
I stayed standing in front of her.
Dex’s attention moved over the way I stood in front of her.
“You can stop blocking me,” he said.
“I can do a lot of things.”
“You’re going to run out of room.”
“Then you should back up.”
“I’m between you and the door for a reason.”
“Yes. You’re bossy.”
“No.” Dex glanced at the cuffs, then back at me. “I’m angry.”
My hands tightened around the chair back. The wood dug into my palms.
Crystal froze behind me.
I lifted my chin. “You seemed angry outside too.”
“I was furious outside. Right now, I’m angry and listening. Don’t waste that.”
“You want me grateful?”
“I want you honest.”
My palms pressed harder into the chair back.
I’d given him my body before my name. I’d given him heat, lies, and a stolen truck key from the pocket of jeans he’d left on the floor because he’d trusted sleep for one stupid hour.
Crystal leaned forward. “His name is Frank Dugan.”
My head turned. “Crystal.”
“No.” Her voice shook, but she kept her eyes on Dex. “He asked who made you desperate. Frank did.”
Dex’s attention moved to her. He didn’t step around me. He didn’t reach for the cuffs. He treated my sister like she was a woman sitting in a chair instead of a warrant with a pulse.
“Who’s Frank Dugan?” he asked.
“My boss,” Crystal said. “Owner of West Bench Property Services.”
Dex’s focus flicked back to me. “Your sister’s employer.”
“Look at you, reading context clues.”
Dex said my name in a voice that cut through the snark before I could sharpen it.
Crystal rubbed her palms over her bare knees.
The garden tattoo around her lower left leg shifted with the movement, the same flowers I carried on mine.
“West Bench manages rentals and vacant properties. Cabins, duplexes, a few small commercial spaces. I handled bookkeeping. Vendor payments, owner payouts, deposits, repairs, cleaning bills, lock changes, hauling.”
“Those records don’t usually get people framed for theft,” Dex said.
“They do when they don’t add up.”
The cabin creaked around us. Outside, wind moved through the pines, soft and dry. Somewhere under the sink, an old pipe ticked.
Crystal swallowed. “I found invoices from Pendleton Cleanout and Hauling that didn’t match the work orders.
Some were doubled. Some were emergency cleanouts at properties that hadn’t turned over.
Lock changes were paired with tenant deposits that were still sitting in the wrong account.
Owner payouts were short by the exact amount of repairs nobody could prove happened. ”
Dex’s face stayed hard, but his focus sharpened.
“What did you copy?” he asked.
“Statements,” Crystal said. “Invoices. Work orders. Deposit logs. A spreadsheet showing owner payouts before and after the charges. I didn’t know what all of it meant yet, but I knew enough to be scared.”
“Where is it?”
Crystal’s mouth opened.
I stepped closer to the table. “Not yet.”
Dex turned to me. “You’re still trying to control the room.”
“I’m doing a fantastic job, considering you’re the one standing by the door.”
“You don’t get to hold back the evidence location and ask me not to call this in.”
“I didn’t ask you not to call it in.”
Crystal’s voice came thin behind me. “I did.”
Neither of us answered.
She faced Dex with my face and none of my armor. My grip tightened on the chair.
“I made bail because my aunt’s friend knew someone who knew someone,” Crystal said.
“I was supposed to stay, hire an attorney, and be reasonable. Then someone broke into my apartment. It wasn’t the police.
It wasn’t anyone official. They went through my desk, my closet, the bathroom cabinet, everything.
They didn’t take jewelry or cash. They took the laptop bag I’d already emptied. ”
Dex’s hand flexed once at his side.
Crystal saw it. So did I.
“They were looking for the records,” she said.
“Did you see who?” Dex asked.
“No.”
“Did you report the break-in?”
“And say what? That someone searched my apartment after I was arrested for stealing money from the same place I’d copied records from?” Crystal pressed her fingers to her mouth, then lowered them. “I panicked. I called Jade.”
I felt Dex’s attention come back to me.
I didn’t turn.
Crystal went on. “She told me to get out. I said I couldn’t. She drove here anyway.”
Dex’s voice lowered. “And became you.”
“She bought me time,” Crystal said.
“No,” I said. “I made a choice. Don’t dress it up for me.”
Dex studied my face for one long second. “Fine. You made a choice. It put you in cuffs, in my truck, in Pine Shadow, and then behind the wheel of my pickup before dawn.”
Crystal’s head snapped toward me.
I kept my face still.
Dex noticed that too. His mouth tightened, but he didn’t hand Crystal the rest.
I was grateful for that and hated it.
“I left the truck where you could find it,” I said.
“That isn’t the part I’m stuck on,” Dex said.
My throat went hot.
Crystal’s attention moved between us, and she was too exhausted to miss what sat in the silence.
Crystal’s eyes flicked from him to me, and I felt the room narrow around everything she hadn’t heard.
Dex let it last half a breath, then pulled us back to the thing that could still hurt Crystal.
“Who else knew you copied the records?” he asked.
“No one. I don’t think.” Crystal gripped the edge of the chair. “Frank found out somehow. Maybe an access log. Maybe he saw a file was opened. I don’t know.”
“Where are the records now?”
I answered before she could. “A storage locker outside town.”
Dex’s eyes came to me.
This time, I let the answer stay in the room.
“Whose locker?” he asked.
“Crystal rented it after the break-in,” I said.
Crystal shook her head. “Under my name. I know that was stupid.”
“No,” Dex said. “It was traceable. There’s a difference.”
She blinked at him.
His face stayed hard, but his voice didn’t.
“Who has the key?” Dex asked.
Crystal reached under the neckline of her tank and pulled out a thin chain. A small brass key lay against her palm, warm from her skin. “I do.”
My stomach dropped.
“Crystal,” I said.
“What? He needs to know.”
“He didn’t need to know it was around your neck.”
Dex didn’t reach for it. He studied the key, Crystal’s hands, and then the window.
“Put it back under your shirt,” he said.
She obeyed too fast.
Dex saw my face. “I’m not taking it from her.”
“Good.”
“I also don’t want it visible from the window.”
I turned toward the glass.
The curtains were thin and faded, yellowed at the hems. Pine branches scraped against the outside wall. Morning light brightened the edges, and beyond that, the cabin road ran quiet through the trees.
Nobody stood there.
Nobody I could see.
Dex crossed to the window and shifted the curtain two inches with the back of one knuckle. He kept his shoulder out of the center of the glass while he checked the road, the porch, the trees, and the silver car tucked near the side.
His phone buzzed, and Crystal flinched as the screen lit in his hand with Annette’s name.
Crystal’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
I stepped toward him. “Don’t give them the cabin.”
“I’m not giving them the cabin.”
“You don’t know what I think you know.”
“I know I’m not giving them the cabin.”
He answered before I could argue again.
“Dex,” Annette said, loud enough in the quiet that I could hear her. “Your hour is up.”
“I’m still verifying.”
“You found an identity issue and then gave me silence. Give me something usable.”
“The packet has a material identification problem. The warrant target is making a frame-up claim with possible records to support it. I’m not requesting transport until I verify.”
Crystal closed her eyes.
I stared at Dex.
Annette went quiet long enough that the refrigerator hum filled the cabin.
“Are you safe?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Is Kemp injured?”
“No.”
“Do you need county?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you need Rudy?”
“No.”
“Do you have eyes on Kemp?”
Dex’s attention moved to Crystal.
She sat so still she barely breathed.
“I have eyes on the problem,” he said.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s the answer I can give you right now.”