Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The quiet morning didn’t last.
Reid hadn’t expected it to. Quiet was usually a loan, not a gift, and after a dead man, a staged cup, and a kiss he could still feel whenever Holly came too close, he knew better than to trust a few minutes of sunlight at the dog park.
Still, for the length of Blue’s wild circuit around the grass and the drive back through Blackridge, Reid let himself pretend the world had narrowed to ordinary things.
A retired judge with muffin demands. A dog exhausted by joy.
Holly in the passenger seat, her hair coming loose from its ponytail, one hand resting near Blue’s muzzle when he leaned between the seats as if supervising Reid’s driving.
She’d told him he was under her skin. He was carrying that sentence like evidence too fragile to bag. He kept replaying the way she’d said it, not as an accusation exactly, and not as surrender. More like a confession she didn’t know where to put.
Reid understood that too well. Holly had been under his skin for years, a memory he’d told himself had dulled with time because calling it anything else made him the kind of fool he’d worked very hard not to be.
The kiss had proven otherwise.
The problem was that he had a job to do, and the woman he wanted was the woman in danger. Those two facts didn’t politely stand on opposite sides of the room. They kept colliding, harder and harder, until every instinct he owned pointed toward Holly.
Protect her. Tell her the truth. Don’t take more than she chooses to give.
Don’t leave.
Back at Sanctuary, Holly unlocked the rear door, and Blue shot inside first. He trotted into the back hall, satisfied and exhausted. Through the sliver Reid could see of the shop, sunlight lay across the empty tables, making the room look peaceful.
Holly paused, Blue’s leash in her hands, and looked at it too. Reid watched the pause travel through her body, not as fear, but as the effort of returning to a place that had been made strange without her permission.
She glanced back at him. “I need to restock a few things.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Which is when I restock a few things.”
He almost argued that he’d handle it so she could go upstairs and rest. He knew that would piss her off. “What can I do?”
Her expression softened in a way that made the question worth asking. “You can put clean mugs on the shelf and not reorganize them according to whatever military-court logic lives in your head.”
“Hey, it’s efficient.”
She rolled her eyes and escorted Blue upstairs.
He took the crate of mugs, and she returned without her jacket.
For twenty minutes, they moved through the shop together.
It shouldn’t have felt absurdly domestic, given the case hovering over them, but it did.
Holly filled sugar canisters, checked syrup bottles, and made a list on a yellow legal pad. Reid stocked mugs, napkins, and lids.
They didn’t talk about the kiss. They didn’t talk about the dog park conversation either, though Reid felt both between them every time Holly reached around him for a tin of tea or brushed past him to open a cabinet.
Avoidance usually irritated him. In court, silence could mean strategy, fear, ignorance, guilt, or all of the above, and he’d trained himself to press at it until it gave him something he could analyze.
With Holly, silence had texture. He wanted to push, to get her talking again, but that was the exact wrong tactic.
His phone vibrated while Holly was in the kitchen, turning on the oven. He pulled it from his pocket and read the message from Jasper twice, the muscles in his shoulders tightening before he could stop them.
Got something from the footage. Sending clips and a timeline. You’ll want coffee.
Holly saw him staring at the screen. “What is it?”
“I sent the security footage and information on Hoyt to our tech specialist at SPS. He says he has clips and a timeline for me to look at.”
She turned the oven off. “Upstairs or down here?”
Reid looked around the shop. Too many windows, too many sight lines from the street. “Upstairs.”
They hurried up the private stairwell and settled at the breakfast bar. Blue was sleeping in his bed, snoring loudly.
Reid opened his laptop and pulled up the shared file Jasper had sent. Holly stood beside him, one hand braced on the counter, her shoulder brushing his.
Jasper had organized folders by victim, timestamped clips from Sanctuary’s cameras, a spreadsheet of visits, dates, approximate arrival and departure times, visible interactions, and notes about background figures. There was also a short message at the top.
You sent enough footage to make me question every coffee shop I’ve ever entered. Watch Warren Ackles first.
Reid opened the clip. The footage showed the morning angle from the front camera, slightly distorted at the edges. Ackles stood near the pickup counter with a paper cup in hand. He was older, gray at the temples, wearing a worn canvas jacket. Holly leaned closer, her breathing quiet beside Reid.
“I remember him,” she said. “He came in several times and liked extra napkins.”
In the footage, Allen Davies entered from the front door.
Warren turned, and his face changed with recognition.
Allen crossed to him, clasped his shoulder, and bent his head close as they spoke.
Whatever they said was lost to the camera, but the body language was not.
These were not strangers exchanging polite small-town greetings.
Allen touched Warren’s arm again before moving to the counter.
Holly’s fingers tightened on the edge of the breakfast bar. “They knew each other.”
“Looks that way.”
Reid clicked to the next marked clip. Sharla Mapes sat near the side wall with a laptop bag at her feet and a folder open on the table.
The courthouse card group occupied the corner, Hank Toler in his usual seat.
After several minutes, Hank looked over, lifted a hand, and Sharla smiled.
She crossed to him, and the two spoke long enough for one of the other men at the table to pull out an empty chair.
Sharla didn’t sit, but she stayed, laughing once before she returned to her table.
“Hank knew her,” Holly said.
The next clips were less clear. Nell Truett came in twice, once during a quiet afternoon when Allen’s support group was gathering and once near closing on a Friday.
She didn’t interact with Allen in any obvious way, but she glanced toward him as if she knew who he was.
Hoyt’s clip from the previous morning showed exactly what Reid remembered: Hoyt at the counter, Holly holding herself polite and rigid, Reid stepping in, and the big man outside the patio gate.
Hopper Shaw didn’t speak to anyone in that clip. He watched.
Jasper had marked Hopper in two other files as well. In the Warren footage, Hopper passed the front window minutes after Allen and Warren spoke. In the Sharla footage, he sat outside on the patio, mostly obscured by glare and the edge of an umbrella, but present.
Holly leaned away from the laptop and rubbed both hands over her arms. “He was there.”
“He was.”
“Allen knew Warren, Hank knew Sharla, and Hopper is hovering around the edges. What does it mean?”
“It’s not clear yet,” Reid said.
He could tell she was trying to follow where his mind had gone. He was trying to follow it himself.
Hoyt had been rude to Holly, and after he turned up dead, that rudeness had felt like a trigger. A man had disrespected Sanctuary’s owner, and hours later he’d been murdered with her cup in his mouth. It was a simple story, which made it seductive.
But Nell hadn’t been rude. From everything Holly had said, Nell had been gentle, lonely maybe, the kind of customer who took her cocoa to the window and read library books with sticky tabs.
Warren Ackles and Sharla Mapes had not been flagged because they insulted Holly.
They hadn’t disrupted the shop. They’d simply been there.
Hoyt’s behavior might have made him stand out, but it didn’t mean it had made him a target.
“What are you thinking?” Holly asked.
He tapped the counter, ideas circling his brain. When working on a case, he always used a trial board to organize timelines, names, evidence, and the ugly spaces between them. He didn’t have one here, only a mental one. “That we may be looking at the wrong starting point.”
“Sanctuary?”
“Sanctuary may be where the killer found them again, not why they were chosen.”
Holly’s face went pale in a way he hated. “Again?”
Reid clicked back to Jasper’s spreadsheet and sorted by visible interactions. Allen. Hank. Hopper. Support group. Card group. Courthouse retirees. The old case Linc had described hovered at the edge of his thoughts, not as accusation, but as structure.
Allen Davies. Evidence excluded. A victim’s family denied the verdict they wanted. Jurors who never heard what they should have heard. Linc’s ruling. Allen leaving prosecution. A wound where the law was concerned.
He opened a browser and started with public docket summaries. “Your shop brings in half the town. Regulars, groups, courthouse people, even victims and jurors. If several victims shared a past connection, Sanctuary could’ve made them visible in the same place.”
“What kind of past connection?”
“A court case, a trial, a witness list. Possibly victim services. Anything that put them near the same people years ago.”
Holly’s voice lowered. “Allen.”
“Or Hank or someone from the courthouse. Someone attached to a case who started seeing familiar faces in your shop.” Reid kept typing, following the thread before it had time to break.
“You’re thinking about what Linc said about Allen’s case.”
“I’m thinking Allen recognized me because of Granddad, and Warren may have known Allen. Sharla knew Hank. Hopper appears near more than one victim, and Hopper’s in Allen’s support group. Those are connections, but not conclusions.”
Holly was quiet beside him, and he appreciated the effort it cost her not to defend anyone.
He searched Allen Davies with Linc’s name, narrowing by county, then by the years before Linc retired.
Public summaries surfaced slowly: old articles, docket entries, archived county bulletins, election-season commentary that mentioned notable rulings from Judge Lincoln Fleming’s final years.
Reid skimmed past civil disputes, drug cases, burglaries, an arson appeal, and a domestic assault that had gone nowhere useful.
Then a case name caught him.
State v. Calvin Dodge.
His fingers stilled over the keyboard.
Holly leaned closer. “What?”
Reid opened the docket summary. “Prosecutor Allen Davies. Presiding Judge Lincoln Fleming.”
“What was the charge?”
“Aggravated assault initially, later amended after the victim died.” Reid read quickly, the legal language arranging itself into a story that matched too much of what Linc had told them.
Suppression motion granted in part. Key physical evidence excluded.
Defendant’s custodial statement suppressed.
Jury trial proceeded. Not guilty verdict. Filed in Linc’s last year on the bench.
Holly’s breath caught. “That’s the case.”
“Looks like it.”
“Who was the victim?”
Reid scrolled.
Victim: Emma Shaw.
Holly’s hand landed on his forearm. “Shaw. Hopper’s last name is Shaw.”
Reid was already sending the case number to Jasper.
Need full archive packet on State v. Calvin Dodge. Jury list, witness list, victim family, anything attached. Get Claire’s authorization if needed.
Jasper replied quickly enough that he’d either been waiting or already inside the archive.
On it.
Holly didn’t let go of Reid’s arm. Reid knew it could take minutes or hours, depending on whether Claire needed to request access through the clerk. He drummed his fingers on the counter again, impatience eating at him.
The next message appeared two minutes later.
It was a scanned PDF from the county archive with poor contrast. It was slightly crooked and marked with a clerk’s stamp in the upper corner.
Reid enlarged the first page and read the case caption.
State of Montana v. Calvin Dodge. Victim Emma Shaw.
Prosecutor Allen Davies. Presiding Judge Lincoln Fleming.
He scrolled past the verdict form with his jaw tight.
Not guilty.
The next page was labeled Seated Jury.
Reid read the names once, then again, slower, refusing to let his mind jump ahead of what his eyes confirmed.
Warren Ackles.
Sharla Mapes.
Nell Truett.
Hoyt Sullivan.
Holly’s fingers tightened on his arm until her nails dug through his sleeve. “They were jurors,” she whispered.
Reid kept reading the list, all twelve names suddenly rearranging the case into something deeper than Sanctuary, the loyalty card, and the cup in Hoyt Sullivan’s mouth. These people hadn’t been chosen because they’d walked into Holly’s shop.
They’d walked into Holly’s shop and become visible to someone who remembered what they’d done in a courtroom years ago.
And it looked like that someone was Hopper Shaw.