33. Cash
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cash
When I don’t find Haven anywhere at the fair, and I can’t get her on the phone, I hop in the truck and drive to her apartment. It’s dark and locked up tight. The house is so still, I don’t think anyone is inside. Not Haven, not her landlady upstairs.
I go back to the fairgrounds and park right up front, in a spot vacated by an early departure.
As I stalk back through the gates, my eyes fall on the New Harvest table.
Meghan and Kaitlyn Pelley are standing behind the table. Fuck it, time to make some people uncomfortable.
I stop in front of them. “Have you seen Haven Bingham go past?” I don’t expect the teenager to go as white as a ghost. I zero in on her. “What is it?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“Did you see her?”
“No— not here.” She stumbles and says too much.
“Where?”
Her mother interrupts before Kaitlyn can say any more. “Excuse me, why are you grilling my daughter?”
“Because she knows something.” I don’t care how rude or rough that sounds. “Don’t you, Kaitlyn?”
She hunches her shoulders in, her gaze dropping to the table.
To a notebook.
I follow her eyes, and before she can grab it, I reach over and snatch it.
The paper inside is fucking familiar.
So is the handwriting.
And the pages are filled with observations and gossip about Haven.
“What’s this?” I raise my voice. “What the fuck is this?”
“Sir!”
“Ma’am, your daughter is obsessed with my girlfriend. Obsessed.” I shove the pages under her nose. “Do you teach her to call other women sluts? To stalk their every movement?”
“I— We never—” She takes the book, her hands shaking. “Kaitlyn, what did you do?”
“Everything all right here, folks?”
I groan and do a quarter turn to give Jasper Fucking Lane a grim nod. “Yep.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.” He adjusts his hat. “Heard yelling.”
“Last I checked, yelling isn’t against the law.”
“Stalking is.”
Ah, he heard that. I lower my voice. “Look, I don’t want to make a scene and ruin my brother’s wedding day, but I don’t know where Haven is. I went to her house and she’s not there. She left the baking tent maybe thirty minutes ago, and she hasn’t been seen since. Except maybe by Kaitlyn here.”
Jasper nods. “Right. Ma’am, I need your daughter to tell us what she knows.”
“That’s where I saw her. At the bakery tent.” Kaitlyn crosses her arms over her chest. “She recognized the notebook just like you did. She wanted to talk to me over there.” She jerks her thumb behind the tent. “But I didn’t want to talk to her so I told…”
“Who?” I growl.
Meghan Pelley glances over her shoulder. “Did you tell Pastor Martin?”
I’m already on the move. Jasper follows me, Meghan Pelley behind him.
There’s a dark, shaded picnic area between the tents and the parking lot. No sign of Haven or Jeb Martin.
But under one of the picnic tables, lighting up like a distress beacon, is Haven’s phone.
I pick it up, fury pulsing through my veins.
Jasper turns to Meghan. “Do you know where Jeb might be now?”
She worries her bottom lip. “He drove the van.” She gestures to an empty parking spot in front of us. “It was right here. He took some cardboard boxes back to it. That was the last time I saw him.”
“Get your daughter. I need to know what she said to him.” Jasper pinches the bridge of his nose. “What do you know, Cash?”
“Haven’s been getting harassing emails at work.
She deleted the first few. If you talk to her supervisor, you’ll find out she put in a request for them to be restored from the servers.
I don’t think that’s happened yet. And then it escalated to handwritten notes from the Pelley brat.
We didn’t know who was sending them, or what the motivation was. ”
“Harassing messages? Not threats?”
I don’t trust this man. But Haven hasn’t done anything wrong here, except for the church break-in, and I’m definitely not tell him about that. And given where we’ve ended up, that is looking more and more justified in my opinion. “Pointed critique of her romantic choices.”
I pull up the notes on my phone and show him.
He hands me a card. “Text me those.”
“It was Kaitlyn who wrote those. That notebook is a clear match.”
“And what’s her relationship with Jeb, then?” He’s writing furiously in his notebook.
“She’s a fucking kid.” I rock back on my heels. “Ah, fuck.”
He lifts his head. “What?”
“I don’t know.” I wipe my mouth as Meghan Pelley drags her daughter to stand in front of us. “You go to bible study with Martin?”
“Y-yes.”
“You ever alone with him?”
“Jesus, Cash,” Jasper mutters. “Let me ask the questions.”
“Then fucking ask them.”
“Kaitlyn, I understand you left some messages for Haven. Did anyone else know about those notes?”
“No.”
“Did you send her emails, too?”
She screws up her face and looks at her mother.
“Tell them.”
‘Y-yes.”
“Did Pastor Martin know about them?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“But tonight, you told him?”
“N-no. I just told him that Haven was trying to talk to me. That she was mad and she scared me.” Her chin goes up. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. He said he’d handle it.”
He said he’d handle it.
“Handle it how?” Jasper asks, very quietly.
She blinks. The first crack of real uncertainty. “He just… said not to worry about it.”
“What did you think he meant by that?”
“That he would talk to her.” There’s a flash of something like jealousy. “He knows her real well.”
“Did he seem upset?”
A longer pause this time. “...Maybe.”
I interrupt. “And what did you think about that? That he didn’t want you to talk to her?”
Her eyes narrow. “He was just protecting me. He’s a nice man.”
I turn to Jasper. I don’t care that she can hear me.
“That’s what Haven thought when she was Kaitlyn’s age, too.
She learned better over time. Now he’s backed up against a wall.
She’s tough, Jasper. So smart. She’d put it together and say it to his face.
And if he felt like he didn’t have any other option, he’d take her to cover up his shameful secret.
I know it’s thin, but I know men like him.
Thanks to you, I’ve spent more time than I’d like with them.
I’ve stared Martin in the eye and seen his possessive jealousy. He’s a real threat to her.”
Kaitlyn angrily interrupts me. “Why are you assuming he’s taken her? If they’re gone, it’s because she’s a slut. She’d go with him willingly. She did it before.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” I snarl.
Meghan gasps.
“Don’t act shocked, lady. Did you tell her that? How much of her ideas about who Haven is and what she’s done come from you?”
“You’re the one who closes your garage in the middle of the day to do God only knows.”
“You’re the one whose daughter is being groomed by a youth pastor right under your nose.”
Meghan opens her mouth. Closes it.
“Say something else, I fucking dare you.”
That shuts her up. I turn to Jasper. “I swear to fucking God, Haven didn’t go willingly with Jeb. If they’re together, it’s by force. An unhinged reaction to a situation spiralling out of control.”
He hands Meghan a card. “Call me if you think of anything else.” Then he pushes me away from them before I can tell them more of what I think about their judgmental bullshit. “Let’s go to the station. I know you want to find her. I’ll get you the help you need.”