Chapter 50
FIFTY
The water scalded Zoe’s skin, but she barely felt it. Not over the hum in her blood. That caffeine-buzzed, post-chaos electricity, still trapped in her limbs like a warning shot never fired. Her fingers twitched against the tiles, aching to do something, fix something, finish something.
It was the residual adrenaline still pounding from yesterday. Her phone had several messages from Simon wanting to talk about the shooting. He was delaying the inquiry until Amy had been found and she’d wrapped up this case.
An inquiry. Was she going to lie under oath about how she knew Viktor? Zoe hated lying. There was one lie she told the world and her sister—about Rachel. There was another lie about her dark thoughts and where she went to expel them. The lies kept piling up, making her queasy.
When she stepped out of the shower, she checked her phone. Gina had sent her a picture of her with the boys at the zoo.
Zoe gasped as she remembered Jeff’s last words. How the hell was she going to tell Gina anything about this? She knew nothing about this, had no idea who her father was. But how could she deny a dying man his last request?
She cleaned the fogged mirror and stared at her reflection. Viktor was dead—the man whose hands had taken her mother’s life. Surely now the hatred she carried around with her would finally disappear. The Emily that haunted her. But it wasn’t over.
Viktor was just the muscle. He worked for someone; he had been sent by that person. The man who’d ordered the hit. Had Viktor given him the key to the safety deposit box? She had to find out more about Viktor. It was the only way this would end.
It was a sulky morning, the light barely leaking through the clouds, when Zoe walked into the station.
“Have we heard anything from the nearby police stations?” Zoe asked. “Any sightings? Any tips?”
Lisa chewed on the end of a pen and shook her head. “ Nada . Ethan is leading a search party in the woods near the gas station where Amy was taken from. But—” Thunder clapped and instantly the heavens opened.
Zoe felt a flicker of annoyance. “How do you guys get anything done around here with this weather?”
Lisa shrugged. “It’s all I’ve ever known.” She gestured at the sheets of paper cluttering her desk. “I’m just going through Amy’s cell phone records right now. Her last call was to work to let them know that she was running late.”
Zoe dropped her shoulders. Her nerves were vibrating, an electric, jittery buzz crawling under her skin. Like the world was refusing to match the speed of her mind and will. She tapped a pen incessantly against her thigh.
“I just called the SEC.” Aiden marched up to her.
“Huh?”
“About David’s fraud to manipulate the stock price.” He paused. “What’s going on with you? You hightailed it home yesterday.”
If there was anything she knew about Aiden, it was that he was very good at breathing down her neck. “The federal prosecutor who sent me the letter died in a shootout. Because Viktor followed me.”
His jaw hung open. “What the fu?—?”
She grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him into a corner out of earshot. “I told you that Viktor was stalking me, right? I guess Darren gave him my message, so he decided to come after me himself.”
“And where is Viktor now?” Zoe looked down at her feet, and Aiden understood. “Shit. Sorry, Storm.”
“What do you mean?”
“The truth died with him, didn’t it? You would have preferred him alive, so that you could interrogate him.”
His words slammed into her with a force.
She did need Viktor alive. And he could have been.
But she had pulled the trigger anyway. It hadn’t been instinct.
It hadn’t been necessity. It had been rage.
Pure, blinding, volcanic rage. The kind that takes the wheel before you even realize you’ve let go.
She could’ve aimed anywhere else. Could’ve dropped him without ending him. But she didn’t.
She chose his head.
“What did that prosecutor say?” Aiden asked suddenly. “Why did he forward that riddle to you ?”
“I… don’t know.” The lie filled her mouth with a sour taste. “I literally got there and the shooting started.”
Aiden opened his mouth when there was an interruption.
“Is there anyone I can talk to?” a ragged, frustrated voice came out of nowhere. “I’m looking for someone,” the man said, his voice tight. “Annabelle. I was told she’s missing.”
Zoe raised a hand. “Over here.”
She didn’t recognize the young man with curly, wet hair, his duffel still slung over one shoulder, a rumpled travel jacket hanging open. He looked like he hadn’t slept in two days. His boots splish-splashed on the linoleum floor, leaving a trail of puddles that made Ethan pout.
Zoe stepped forward. “I’m Agent Zoe Storm and this is Dr. Aiden Wesley. We’re from the FBI.”
“I’m Ian Monroe. I’m Annabelle’s…” He raised his eyebrows. “Friend.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” Zoe guided him to a chair. The man was lanky, all long limbs, someone who’d never quite grown out of his teenage slouch. “You just arrived in town?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his duffel bag with a thud. “I took the first flight out from Houston after you guys called me and drove here from Seattle.” His eyes welled with tears. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Monroe. But Annabelle was killed,” Aiden said. “We’re investigating her death.”
“ What? ” He whimpered and covered his face with his hands. Zoe noticed that he didn’t wear a wedding band. But Annabelle did. “What the hell happened? Was it her husband?” His eyes flashed with fury.
“Trevor? Why would you think that?” she said.
“They were fighting a lot.”
“Did she tell you what they were fighting about?” Aiden asked.
“It was mostly work. Oh my God… Can I get some water?” He looked like he was in pain. Aiden slid a water in his direction. They watched him gulp it down. Zoe threw a glance at Aiden and he gave her a grim nod as if confirming that Ian’s grief looked genuine.
“Thanks.” He wiped his mouth. “Trevor was upset that she was working long hours, always on call, sometimes weekends too, when they had a young family. But the company was heading in a new direction. Announcing a video game. She kept telling him it was temporary but he shamed her for working.”
The profile Aiden had put together was potentially of a man who felt threatened or small by successful women.
Many thoughts flooded her at once—what if Trevor knew about Jackie through Annabelle?
What if Trevor felt less like a man having to take care of the family while Annabelle was the breadwinner?
“I think it was disgusting,” he added.
“So were you and Annabelle… having an affair?” Zoe asked.
“No, no.” His cheeks flushed. “I’m her ex-boyfriend but we were just friends. We grew up together.”
“Why did you break up?”
“I wanted to leave Pineview Falls.” His face was somber. “The fire incident was suffocating. I don’t know why she wanted to stay, so we eventually called it quits. But we stayed in touch here and there over the years.”
“And when was the last time you saw her or spoke with her?” Zoe asked.
“Just two weeks ago.” He sighed and ran a hand through his thick locks of hair. “We started talking a lot in the last couple of months actually. She was just going through this rough patch in her marriage and postpartum and this and that, so I was being there for her.”
Aiden frowned. “You talked on the phone or email?”
“Facebook.” No wonder Zoe hadn’t found any correspondence between them.
Social media records were notoriously difficult to obtain.
After being stressed at home and work, perhaps Annabelle was seeking comfort in an old friend, maybe even old feelings were resurfacing.
“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”
“We don’t know, Mr. Monroe,” Aiden said. “I was hoping you might have some useful information. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?”
“No!” He sounded incredulous. “Everyone loved her at work. That’s where we met.’
“You worked at Harrington Group?” Zoe leaned forward.
“Yeah, I used to. We worked in the same department. We built code to run logistics, warehouse tagging systems, optimization software for global warehouse systems, that kind of stuff. She switched out of geo-routing two years ago, I think, right around the time I changed jobs. But she’s a trooper, eh?
She stuck with that company and rose up the ranks. ”
“Code?” An idea sparked in her. She showed him a picture of the code INV-W7-D4-1553. “We found this at one of the crime scenes related to Annabelle’s murder. Does this mean anything to you?”
He glanced at it, blinking hard. “It’s been a while but it looks like internal warehouse codes. Except they don’t actually exist. We used fake codes in testing so we wouldn’t interfere with real shipments. Dummy values. The format matches, though.”
Why would Jackie have this on her? “Can you decode it?” she asked desperately.
“Sure…” He frowned. “Normally, our codes would only go up to, say, W5 or D3. But here, it’s W7 and D4?
It doesn’t match any actual warehouse. I think she repurposed our testing system to encode coordinates.
We set a base value of 40 for latitude and 118 for longitude.
Just to keep our test data separate from real-world numbers.
So W7 means add 7 to 40, which gives you 47 degrees north.
And D4 means add 4 to 118, landing you at 122 degrees west.” He looked up suddenly.
“When you combine that with the trailing numbers—1553—it refines the location to a very specific point.”
Aiden was already looking up the coordinates. His eyes locked on Zoe. “It’s an old storage facility.”