36. Audrey
AUDREY
It took me a minute to realize Graham was referring to me.
“You want to talk to me?”
“All of you,” he said. “But yeah, you too, wildcat.”
My cheeks heated with the nickname, given new meaning after what had happened between us all the night before.
I brought my beer over to the dining room table and stood there, waiting for Ridge and Holden.
I was starting to get nervous. What was this about?
“I ran a background on Dean,” Graham said, when Holden and Ridge were sitting at the table.
“A…background?”
Graham nodded. “A standard background check. Jobs, police records, you get the idea.”
I frowned. “Why would you do that?”
“Wanted to know what we were dealing with,” Graham said. “What you were dealing with.”
I bit my lip. “Okay.”
I couldn’t blame him. I was living on his property, and it was clear that Dean could be a problem.
“Didn’t find much but the three domestics, which I assume you knew about.”
I blinked. “I called the police once, but I dropped the charges. Are you saying Dean had other charges for domestic abuse?”
“Two of them,” Ridge said. “Before you were married.”
“I feel so stupid.” I should have done a background check on Dean before I married him.
“Why would you feel stupid?” Holden said. “A woman shouldn’t have to run a background check on a man who asks her to marry him, for fuck’s sake. Dean’s the one who should feel fucking stupid.”
“Was there anything else?” I asked Graham. “In the background?”
“Nope,” Graham said. “He was clean as a whistle otherwise.”
I took a deep breath, but it didn’t last long.
“So I asked my guy to dig deeper,” Graham said.
I bit my lip. “And?”
“And he looked into Ashcroft Distribution and found something weird, something that made me think about what Ella said.”
“About what…” I looked accusingly at Ridge. I hadn’t known he would tell Graham and Holden everything I’d told him.
“We’re just trying to help,” Ridge said.
I couldn’t be mad.
I returned my gaze to Graham. “What was the something weird? About Ashcroft Distribution?”
He opened his laptop and pulled up a map with a blue line radiating outward from Blackwell Falls to the rest of the country.
“These are the routes Ashcroft’s trucks take out of Blackwell Falls,” Graham said. “Mostly what you’d expect, leaving the Ashcroft warehouses, heading for highways and interstates ending up in suburbs, big cities, and ports. Except for this.”
He expanded the map until I saw that the blue line veered away from the highways and interstates just outside of Blackwell Falls.
“Where is that?” I asked, pointing at the screen. “That… detour.”
“That’s Harrison,” Ridge said. “Small town about sixty miles from here.”
“But… there’s no highway,” I said. “It must add an hour or more to the route of every truck that stops there.”
“Exactly,” Graham said. “You told Ridge that Ella saw a woman crying with Dean, a woman who wasn’t allowed to talk, and then you found a bunch of women’s clothing in a storage unit belonging to the company.”
“Yeah…”
“I think the subtext was clear,” Graham said. “You think Dean’s trafficking women through Ashcroft.”
I swallowed hard. Having someone say it out loud was different than thinking it.
“I don’t have proof.”
“Dean said he knew how to make girls disappear,” Holden said.
I glared at Ridge. “Is there anything you didn’t tell them?”
Ridge shrugged.
“So what are you saying?” I stared at the map. “You think Dean is using this place to hold the women he traffics?”
“I’m not saying anything,” Graham said. “Other than it’s unusual for a trucking company to send its trucks off the interstate into the middle of nowhere. Cost of gas, pay for the drivers…”
“Not good for the bottom line,” Holden added.
I thought about the woman in the blue dress by the bluebird.
The woman who wasn’t allowed to talk.
“Do we know what this place looks like?” I asked.
Graham shook his head. “Not yet, but that’s easy to remedy.”
He typed in the coordinates on the map and a minute later a grainy image came into view on the laptop: a dark asphalt road with trees on either side.
Ridge leaned in to take control of the laptop. “Let’s move around a little, see what we can see.”
He used the laptop’s track pad to manipulate our view of the area, and then, like magic, a steel warehouse came into view. illuminated by exterior lights, Bluebird Machinery painted right over a large mural of a faded bluebird.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“What do you see?” Graham asked.
“The bluebird.”
“What bluebird?”
I looked at Ridge. “I guess there was something you didn’t tell him after all.”
Ridge’s expression made it clear he had no idea what I was talking about.
“I told you when Ella saw the woman in the blue dress, she said the woman was “standing by the bluebird.””
Ridge shook his head. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, there’s our answer,” Holden said. “Dean took Ella to the warehouse, and that’s where she saw the woman in the blue dress who wasn’t allowed to talk.”
“Which means— ” Ridge started.
“We have to check out the warehouse,” I said.
Graham leveled his gaze at me. “Who’s the “we” in this equation?”
I stared right back at him. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to — in fact, you probably shouldn’t — but I sure as hell am going.”
Graham’s eyes flashed like chips of ice. “You’re sure as hell not.”
“Try and stop me.”
For a minute, I thought he might.
“She has every right,” Ridge said.
Graham tore his gaze from mine to stare bullets at Ridge. “Fucking traitor.”
“We can go now,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Afraid not,” Graham said, closing his laptop. “Holden and I are on our way out.”
“Your way out where?” The question was out of my mouth before I had time to consider it.
I had no right to ask how they spent their time.
“Cattle auction,” Holden said. “Two and a half hours from here. It starts early tomorrow morning, so we’re spending the night.”
“Ridge and I can go to the warehouse.” Now that I’d seen it, I was anxious to check it out, see if my suspicions about Dean were true.
But Ridge shut me down.
“Not a good idea to do this alone,” Ridge said.
“We’re not going to walk in to the place,” I said. “We’re just going to drive by, check it out.”
“That’s a no, wildcat.” Graham got to his feet. “We’ll go when Holden and I get back.”
“I have Ella this weekend.”
“Wednesday night then.” I was surprised Graham remembered my custody arrangement with Ella. “It’s waited this long, it can wait a few more days.”
I wanted to protest but he was already on his way to the front door.
He put on his jacket and reached for a duffel bag I hadn’t noticed on the floor.
Holden got to his feet and bent to kiss me, like he was my boyfriend.
“Sorry I won’t be here to keep you warm with Ridge,” he said. “Save some of that sugar for me, will you?”
My cheeks heated as he followed Graham to the door.
“Sweet dreams, doc,” Holden said, shutting the door behind him.
I crossed my arms over my chest, frustration expanding my chest like a balloon. “I can’t believe this.”
Then Ridge came up behind me, his hard body against my backside.
“Sorry about that, wildcat.” He rubbed my arms. “I’ll make it up to you while they’re gone. I promise.”