Chapter Thirteen
Garrett sat at his kitchen island, the mug in his hand, though the coffee inside had long since gone lukewarm. His third cup.
Maybe his fourth. He had lost track somewhere around two in the morning. The clock over the stove read a little past six, barely dawn, but the night had stretched on forever, strung out with dead ends and unanswered questions.
From down the hall came the faint sound of water running.
Isla was in the shower. She had insisted on trying to clear her head, though Garrett doubted steam and soap would do much against the kind of exhaustion written across her face hours earlier.
They had both been up most of the night, combing through databases, digging for scraps, hoping for a lead that might tell them what had happened to Harris.
Or hell, what was happening at all.
The list of unknowns gnawed at him. They didn’t know who had gone after Trudy, or who had opened fire on them at Paula’s place.
They didn’t know who had wired that house with an incendiary device or why it had been torched just as they were closing in.
And they didn’t know who was lying in that burned-out doorway, though everything pointed to Leah.
The weight of it pressed down harder than the caffeine could ever lift. He stared into the dark swirl of coffee, frustration riding him, exhaustion a close second. Too many pieces, too many angles, and still no picture that made any damn sense.
He looked up when he heard the footsteps and saw Isla as she came into the kitchen. Her hair was damp from the shower, curling a little at the ends, and she carried her laptop tucked under her arm like it belonged there. She looked tired, same as him, but damn if she didn’t look incredible anyway.
“Coffee?” he asked, nudging his mug toward the pot. “Or cereal, if you’re feeling brave.”
She set her laptop on the island and flipped it open. “No cereal. I’ll save room for peanut butter and pickles later.”
He huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Romantic breakfast of champions.”
“Better than coffee and self-pity,” she muttered, shooting him a quick glance that sparked before she focused on her screen.
That spark sat heavy in his chest, threatening to pull his thoughts someplace they didn’t have time to go.
“Any updates while I was in the shower?” she asked, eyes on her laptop.
Garrett leaned his forearms on the counter. “No. Still no confirmed ID on the body. Raines hasn’t gotten through to Anais or Leah. Paula did answer her phone, but you already know that.”
She gave a small nod, lips pressed tight. And she knew he was still watching her, the air between them carrying more than caffeine and exhaustion.
Garrett watched her gulp down the coffee like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Isla set the mug down and said, “Trudy texted me right after I got out of the shower.”
That caught him off guard. His gut tightened, because nothing good usually came from messages at dawn. “Is she all right?”
“Yes.” Isla gave him a look meant to soothe, though he didn’t feel soothed. “She’s just restless. Wanted to know if the CSIs had cleared her house.”
Garrett exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction. “They have. But that doesn’t mean she’s going home. I doubt the doctor will release her for at least a few more days.”
“She won’t like that.”
“She’ll have to deal with it,” Garrett said, his tone flat but edged with concern. Trudy was tough, no doubt about that, but she had no business trying to push herself when someone had already tried to put her in the ground.
Garrett leaned back against the counter, coffee warming his hand. “We can drop by and see Trudy on our way to the interview with Randall,” he said. “Might calm her down some, let her know we’ve got eyes on things.”
Isla nodded absently, her focus on the laptop she’d carried in. The screen’s glow lit her face, highlighting the crease of concentration between her brows.
“What are you digging into now?” he asked.
She slid the laptop a little toward him, though she didn’t take her hands off the keys.
“I’m combing through state and county employment records.
It’s a data lake that merges payroll, licenses, and tax filings for registered caregivers, nannies, and household staff.
I narrowed it to anyone who worked within a twenty-mile radius of that property from about twenty-two years ago forward. ”
Garrett whistled low. “That’s casting a wide net.”
“It has to be,” she said, tapping at a new filter. “But so far, no exact hits. None of the names in the system ever listed that address as a place of employment. But if there’s a match, I’ll find it.”
He didn’t doubt that. If there was a thread to pull, Isla would yank until it unraveled.
Garrett scrolled through another set of grainy feeds, his jaw tight.
He’d backtracked traffic cams on the main roads near the burned house, cross-referencing times and plates, but nothing showed the Jag going in or out.
Either the cameras had missed it, or the driver had taken backroads that weren’t monitored.
He muttered a curse and shoved a hand through his hair. “This is like digging for bones in a desert.”
Across the table, Isla’s fingers slowed on the keys. She looked at him, head tilted, eyes sparking with that mix of determination and dry humor he knew too well. “We need a revival. Something to reset.”
He grunted. “Coffee number five isn’t cutting it?”
“Nope. I’m thinking of something more effective. Exercise.” Her lips curved into a small smile, sly at the edges. “Or we could juggle pickles and spoons. Might clear our heads.”
Despite himself, Garrett snorted. “Pickle-juggling. That’s your plan to solve twenty-two years of lies and cover-ups?”
“It would distract us,” she said lightly, but her gaze lingered on his, charged.
The air thickened. His pulse shifted gears, and he leaned back just slightly, but his eyes stayed locked on hers.
“There are other distractions,” he heard himself say.
Yeah, he was playing with fire, and he might as well fight a big rock and hit himself over the head. He knew that was an invitation. A bad one. One that would lead to stuff they shouldn’t be doing if they wanted to keep their focus on work. Hell, maybe pickle juggling was the answer.
Or not.
Her smile faded into something sharper, needier. The silence stretched, neither of them moving until he pushed away from his laptop and stood.
She didn’t flinch when he stepped closer. Didn’t break eye contact. And when he bent his head, she met him halfway, their mouths colliding in a kiss that was nothing like distraction. It was heat and memory and something that had waited too long to burn.
Garrett lost himself in the taste of her, in the way Isla’s mouth answered his with the same urgency that had been building between them for years.
He hauled her against him, chest to chest, feeling the press of her body through thin layers of clothes.
Her hands skimmed over him with a mix of caution and hunger, careful of his injured arm but not enough to slow the storm rising between them.
The kiss deepened, hotter, reckless. He felt her tremble against him, felt his own restraint slipping. His hand slid between them, cupping her breast, and his thumb flicked across her nipple. She gasped into his mouth, and the sound nearly undid him.
The world narrowed to heat, to the way her body fit his, to the long-denied want roaring to life.
His pulse hammered, his muscles tightening with the need to have her, to take them both over that edge.
He pressed her harder against him, the kiss raging deeper, and his knees bent, ready to pull her down to the floor with him, to lose himself completely.
That was when the truth slammed into him.
If he didn’t stop now, he wouldn’t stop at all. Not here, not like this. With a ragged breath, he tore his mouth from hers, pressing his forehead to hers, fighting for control while every nerve in his body shouted to keep going.
Garrett was still reining himself in, every muscle taut with the effort of pulling back from Isla, when his phone cut through the silence. The ring jarred against the heat still running in his blood. His body cursed the interruption, but his head knew better. Maybe it was the lifeline he needed.
He fished the phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen. “It’s Raines,” he told Isla, and he answered the call on speaker.
The sheriff wasted no time. “We got confirmation. Dental records came through. The body in that house was Leah.”
The words hit heavy, not with shock, but with the weight of inevitability. Garrett felt Isla stiffen against him, her breath catching. She muttered something low, raw, and then went still, staring at the table as if trying to piece the fragments together.
Garrett scrubbed a hand over his jaw, his thoughts spinning. They had figured it was her, but confirmation brought no relief. Only more knots.
Why the hell had Leah been there? Was she Marion Cole, hiding behind that alias all these years? Was that house where she had taken Harris after the abduction? Or had someone lured her there, knowing the fire would erase every trace of evidence?
His mind flashed back to the shadow of movement in the backyard, just before the fireball swallowed the place whole. Had someone killed Leah and fled? Or had there been something else happening behind those flames, something they were still blind to?
Beside him, Isla whispered, “God.”
Her voice carried the same question he couldn’t shake. If Leah was gone, what did that mean for Harris? And who the hell was still out there, pulling strings in the dark?
“There was blunt force trauma to Leah’s skull,” Raines went on. “Could be from the collapse in the fire, could be before. The ME will sort that out, but right now it’s too soon to call.”
Garrett felt his gut tighten. Too many damn possibilities. Too many ways the truth could slip through their fingers.