Chapter 11
ELEVEN
“The hair doesn’t belong to Annabelle,” Zoe said, chewing her nail as she paced back and forth in the parking lot.
Aiden emptied his guts in a corner, retching loudly. “Get away from me, Storm.”
“And miss this chance of making you uncomfortable? Never,” she quipped although her focus was elsewhere.
“It’s not that. I think I ate something bad last night.” He winced, taking a deep breath. “Shouldn’t have had those burgers.”
Zoe suddenly became aware of his body, in particular how sculpted his shoulders were, capping a broad back that trimmed into a slim waist. Right now, he looked like the sort of person who would strip and face her in that underground ring she was addicted to, rather than the bookish type she had him down as.
He clearly spent a lot of time perfecting his body. Her mind wandered as she imagined him working out.
“You’re staring, Storm.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, a blush creeping up his cheeks.
She wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She cleared her throat and redirected the conversation.
“The hair isn’t Annabelle’s. Then why send it to us? Do you think it’s the killer’s?”
“Sent to you . Not to us. To you. You need to look at your old cases.”
“My old cases?”
“Someone you put away or someone you pissed. This is a challenge for you not just the FBI.”
“Yeah, it’s obvious. Don’t need a doctorate to figure that out.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she bit her tongue.
She didn’t know where the flash of irritation came from.
This wasn’t like her. She strived to be that ray of sunshine, stubbornly refusing to become too bogged down by the horrors she saw every day.
Her unyielding niceness wasn’t some moral high ground but a lifeboat.
Yet, clinging to the light was treading a thin line—one slight nudge would be all it took to slip into the abyss that lay on either side.
“I can look into any old cases that you worked on.” Aiden avoided her eyes. “It should be someone who wasn’t involved.”
She opened her mouth to say something, anything , but he walked past her to the car.
A part of her wondered if Aiden truly wanted to help with the case, or was he using this to dig into her past to solve the mystery of the attack on her?
As she headed back to the car, a blast of wind blew past her, making the shrubbery surrounding her rustle.
She whirled at the sound, her eyes frantically looking for the source of the sound.
A caustic feeling rose inside her, bleeding the colors from her surroundings. Someone was after her.
“I didn’t expect a house like this in Pineview Falls,” Zoe commented, standing in front of a tall house that was a mix of white stone and dark wood accents and guarded by wrought-iron gates.
The driveway was a smooth ribbon of dark stone, curving up to the front entrance flanked by two columns.
A balcony jutted out above the entrance from the second floor.
The front lawn was beautifully landscaped, with manicured hedges and sculpted topiaries.
“They moved here around twenty years ago. I was only a volunteer at the sheriff’s office back then,” Lisa told her, adjusting her belt buckle.
“So you know the family well?”
Lisa didn’t look at her. “It’s a small town, Agent Storm.” She pressed the bell on the wall and a security camera tilted in their direction. When Lisa announced herself, the gates unlocked and opened slowly.
“This isn’t creepy at all,” Zoe muttered but Lisa didn’t respond and stared straight ahead.
Zoe watched her from the corner of her eye as they walked up the driveway.
The air between them was thick with simmering tension.
Lisa was guarded, only talking when spoken to, her tone curt and impersonal. “Sheriff, I want to apologize.”
Lisa paused and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, I crossed a line in the woods. This is your jurisdiction and this case won’t be solved without you. I was just stressed.”
“Oh.” She blinked, surprised. “No, no, you don’t have to apologize. I get it. I just had a bad meeting with the mayor… nothing to do with you.”
Zoe didn’t press further despite her bubbling curiosity. “Do we have Annabelle’s phone and computer activity?”
“We pinged the carrier, and the cell tower triangulation puts her phone’s last known location fifty or so miles around her place of work.”
“We can’t narrow it down any further?”
“Not enough cell towers here, unlike big cities.” Lisa’s face was drawn. “I put out a hit on her credit cards. We’ll know if they’ve been used.”
As they waited for the main door to open, Lisa looked at her phone and sighed, her features tightening.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just my husband, Jim.” She put her phone away. “Never mind.”
Lisa looked permanently exhausted. Her skin was dull and sagged under her chin.
There were bags under her hollow eyes and her lips were shredded from being chewed on.
Her gaze wasn’t alert and piercing—it was exasperated.
The county didn’t have a high crime rate.
So what was making Lisa look perpetually worn out?
“Sheriff Gray.” A slim man with bushy eyebrows and hair cropped along the sides opened the door. “What brings you here?”
“David.” Lisa nodded. “This is Agent Zoe Storm from the FBI.”
David’s lips parted. “FBI?” He offered his hand. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, we need to talk. May we come inside?” Zoe said.
“Of course, of course.” He led them into the vast foyer with a crystal chandelier hanging from an impossibly high ceiling.
A sweeping staircase curved upward, paired with arched windows.
Zoe grimaced at her muddy shoes leaving tracks on the polished marble.
The house reminded her of the lavish houses in Texas she used to see when she lived there briefly as a child.
She would walk back home on sweltering hot summer days through the neighborhood where lawns managed to look like glossy green carpets and people were dignified and careless with money.
A little taste of the good life before she returned home to find Rachel struggling to prepare a meal.
“What’s g-going on?” David’s voice reeled her back from the memory.
“Do you know Annabelle Stevens?” Lisa asked.
David shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yes, yes. She works for us.”
“She was killed. The FBI is here to help us out.”
His eyes widened and he blinked repeatedly. “Jesus… killed ? I-I-I don’t know what to think.”
“She never returned home from work two days ago,” Zoe said.
“I’m sorry to hear that but I don’t keep tabs on my employees in my position,” David scoffed and crossed his arms. “I don’t even know if she came into work. I only met her once a week for a meeting.”
“So you wouldn’t know if she had any problems with anyone at work or anything like that?
” Zoe said. There was something about David that was off.
Beads of sweat glistened atop his upper lip.
His face twitched oddly. And he kept fidgeting.
Either he was hiding something or he was nervous about talking to them.
“You should ask HR about that. I have no idea.”
“Her husband told me and my partn— colleague that Annabelle was stressed because of work. Some project she was on…”
David licked his lips. “Well, yes. She’s very talented, so she was one of the few minds on the project. This project could be big for the company. It’s taking a toll on everyone involved.”
“And what is the project?” Lisa asked.
“I can’t talk about it. We’ve all signed NDAs. It’s top-secret. But it has nothing to do with whatever happened to her.”
Zoe didn’t think it did. “We couldn’t find her laptop at home.”
“Oh, that’s company property. We are in data storage. Due to the nature of our work, we don’t allow employees to take computers home.”
“Are they allowed to use it for personal correspondence?” Lisa asked.
“No, but many of them do. It’s hard to stop them. Social media websites are blocked but there’s always email…”
“Then we’ll need to take a look,” Zoe said.
He let out a shaky laugh. “That won’t be possible. It contains confidential information—our product specs, demos, contracts, everything.”
“We aren’t interested in that. We are looking for any correspondence that Annabelle may have had.”
“I’m sorry but we can’t take the risk. Millions are at stake.” His eyes were clouded with panic.
“Come on, David,” Lisa chimed in with a friendly tone. “You have my word. We don’t care about that. We’ll just retrieve Annabelle’s private communications and give the laptop back to you.”
David brushed past them, deeper into the house. “I’m sorry, Lisa. Nothing comes before the company.”
Zoe followed while Lisa continued to urge David. “Mr. Harrington, if you don’t cooperate, then we’ll have to get a court order.”
“Then do that.” He wiped his lips, his eyes shifty. “Now, please. I’m a busy man.”
The temperature in the room suddenly plummeted.
Lisa frowned in surprise as David busied himself in the kitchen, his face set hard in stone.
But Zoe didn’t miss the tremor in his hand as he poured himself a drink.
After he gulped it down in one swig, Lisa gestured to Zoe to head out, perturbed by David’s lack of cooperation.
But Zoe wasn’t. She knew that when the choice was between money and justice, money always prevailed. If proxy wars were still being fought in different corners of this world for money, then no one was going to care about some Annabelle Stevens in a small town like Pineview Falls.
“Court order,” Zoe mouthed at Lisa, who nodded grimly.
They turned on their heels to leave when Zoe noticed a large picture above the fireplace of a young girl in her teens with reddish brown hair falling on her forehead and braces pulling together crowded front teeth.
“Who is that?” Zoe asked.
David followed her gaze and his face fell but his eyes flashed with hatred. “The shadow that follows me everywhere.”With that, he disappeared into a den.
Zoe was turning his words over when Lisa’s phone chirped again. She checked it and her breath hitched. “We just got a hit on Annabelle’s credit card.”