CHAPTER 14 #2
Something moves across her face at that.
A complicated mix of pride and grief and fury.
“That sounds like him,” she says softly.
“He was so kind and compassionate.” She sits up a little straighter, as if struck by a memory.
“And I just remembered… about a month ago he showed up here on a Saturday. Unannounced, which wasn’t like him.
He always called ahead. He had his car loaded up with boxes.
Said he was decluttering his apartment, trying to get rid of stuff he didn’t need anymore, and asked if he could stick some things in my storage shed out back. ”
I keep my expression neutral even as my pulse picks up. “Did he say what was in them?”
“Just old stuff.” She shakes her head faintly. “Books. Clothes. Items he said he didn’t have room for anymore. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. He stayed for dinner, played with the kids for a couple of hours, and then left.”
“Are the boxes still there?” I ask carefully.
“Yes,” she says. “I haven’t touched them. I keep meaning to go through them but I—” She stops. “I just haven’t been able to.”
I lean forward slightly. “Marissa, would you allow me to look through them?”
She studies me for a long moment. I let her take the time she needs, not pushing, not filling the silence with reassurances she hasn’t asked for.
Finally she stands. “Come on,” she says.
I follow her to a storage shed that sits in the back corner of the yard behind a wooden gate, a compact structure with a corrugated metal roof and lopsided door. Inside, the air smells of cedar and dust. Garden tools lean against one wall. Plastic bins of holiday decorations stack along the other.
And along the back wall, six cardboard boxes sit stacked in two columns of three, each one labeled in black marker.
Clothes. Books. Kitchen stuff. Old files. Random. Books 2.
Marissa crosses her arms against the morning chill. “Help yourself,” she says quietly.
I start at the top and work down methodically, the way I’ve learned to work through anything that might contain details I’m not expecting.
The first box is exactly what the label says—folded shirts, a couple of sweaters, a pair of boots wrapped in a plastic bag.
The second is books, paperbacks and a few hardcovers, nothing tucked between pages, nothing hidden in the spines.
The third box is labeled Old Files.
I open it carefully to find manila folders holding old tax returns, utility bills and the kind of administrative papers that serve no purpose but you’re loath to throw them away just in case. I lift them out in stacks, setting them on top of the second box, working my way down.
And there, near the bottom, beneath a manila folder thick with old receipts, is a black-covered, spiral-bound notebook. I lift it out and open the cover.
The first page is dense with handwriting—cramped, careful script filling the lines from edge to edge with dates running down the left margin in a column. An obvious log of some sort.
I turn the page to scan and then halfway down the right side is a column of names with most crossed through in single deliberate lines. My eyes land on one that has my breath hitching.
Tessa Ward—Emerald City Herald.
Not crossed out. Circled.
My throat tightens as I stare at the list for a moment, taking in the other names above and below mine as I realize it’s other journalists from various outlets. Some are crossed through with a single line, some with two, one with a question mark beside it.
This was Erik’s list of reporters he vetted, deciding who to trust with information that cost him everything.
And he chose me.
I turn more pages slowly. Dates. Names I don’t recognize yet.
Dollar amounts. Abbreviations that mean nothing to me right now but might mean everything to Josie.
The notebook is dense with information, weeks or months of careful documentation recorded by a man who knew he was building a case and might not survive to see it to its end.
I close the notebook and look up at Marissa, who watches me from the doorway of the shed with her arms still crossed and her face carefully composed.
“Can I take this?” I ask.
She looks at it for a long moment before nodding. “If it helps you finish what he started,” she says quietly, “then yes.”
“Thank you, Marissa. I’ll keep you updated.”
I don’t run back to the car but it’s a very urgent trot. Cole sees me coming before I reach the curb and through the windshield, I see his posture shift—the small forward lean, the way his eyes drop to the notebook in my hand and then come back up to my face, reading the expression there.
I get in and pull the door shut.
“What is that?” he asks.
I set the notebook on the console between us.
“Erik hid it in her storage shed about a month before he died. He told her he was decluttering. I only scanned it briefly, but it looks like his original notes when he was building a case file. Dates, names, dollar amounts. There’s enough in here to keep Josie busy. ”
Cole picks it up carefully, opens the cover, scans the first page without touching anything he doesn’t need to.
“Your name’s in there,” he says.
“Circled,” I confirm. “He vetted a dozen reporters before he chose me.”
Cole’s expression shifts to one of anger. I know what he’s wondering why that bastard had to choose me. It has led me to danger and Cole can’t abide that.
I don’t point out to him that we wouldn’t have reconnected if it hadn’t been for this.
“He trusted you with his life,” Cole says quietly.
“Yes,” I say. “And I intend to make sure that it wasn’t in vain.”
Cole holds my gaze for one long beat, and in it I see a look I haven’t seen from him before—not worry, not fear, not the old frustration that used to live behind his eyes when my job came up.
Something closer to faith.
He starts the engine. “We’ve got another lead I’m going to chase down.”
“What’s that?” I ask as we pull away from the curb.
“Kynan dug up an old connection we have to SAPG. An agent who worked for a time at the Jameson Vegas office now apparently works there. I’m going to meet him tonight for a beer.”
“Oh, wow.” I look out the window as my mind reels. I turn back to him. “I’ll go too.”
“Yeah… not going to happen,” he says with a droll side-eye.
“But—”
“No buts. You’re not going.”
I suck in air through my nostrils and blow it out slowly. “May I ask why? This is my story after all.”
Cole gives me a long look before turning back to watch the road. “Tessa… there’s a very good chance this SAPG was involved in the arson and an equally good chance they killed Erik and broke into your home. I’m not putting you near them. So just let it go, okay?”
I know he’s right, but it still rankles me that I have to be sidelined.
“Okay?” he prods.
“Fine,” I huff, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Fine?” he asks, and I hear a tinge of amusement.
“Fine,” I snap.
Cole chuckles and then shocks me to my core when his hand drifts over to take mine. He drags it back to rest on the center console, his left still on the wheel.
And he holds my hand, the way he used to whenever we drove somewhere together.
I’m not sure what it means. Yes, we crossed the line into a sexual relationship, but this is a level of intimacy that speaks only to the heart.
I don’t pull away. It feels too good.