Chapter Two
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The cold hit Griff harder on the way back inside. Or maybe it was the burn of anger under his skin that made the January air feel colder than it was. He kept his hand near his weapon, scanning the parking lot before stepping through the front door of the station.
Lily walked beside him, silent now, but he could feel the tension rolling off her. Her shoulders were squared, her pace steady, but he’d seen the way her hands shook when she’d taken an evidence bag from her pocket and dropped the note and photo into it. She was rattled. But then, she should be.
Inside, the heat slapped against Griff’s face, and their return had Mickey and Jacob look up from their desks.
“We’ve got a problem,” Griff said. “Someone slashed both tires on Lily’s SUV. They also left a message.”
Jacob straightened, his eyes darting to Lily.
She held up the sealed evidence bag, the note and photo pressed flat inside. “It was left under my wiper.”
Griff turned to the monitor near the back wall and began pulling up the external camera feed. “I’m checking the footage.”
Mickey leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “Probably just kids messing around. Trying to get a rise out of you.”
Griff didn’t look away from the screen. “You see the picture?” he asked.
“I saw it,” Mickey said. “Still. Teenagers do dumb stuff. Could’ve found that photo online and—”
“No.” Lily’s voice sharpened, just enough to cut him off. “That photo wasn’t in any public file. That angle wasn’t from the scene log. Whoever took it was there. This wasn’t a prank.”
Jacob kept his eyes on the screen, his jaw tight.
Griff clicked through the feed until he found the right window of time. The camera facing the front lot was grainy, but the footage showed a figure moving low and fast between vehicles.
“Pause it,” Lily said.
He froze the frame. The person was wearing a hoodie, face turned away, posture tight.
Mickey leaned in. “Still could be a kid.”
Griff said nothing. He wasn’t one to jump to conclusions, not without evidence. But this wasn’t mischief. The timing. The message. The photo. It was targeted. Someone didn’t want Lily looking into Bobby Ray Moore.
And now they were willing to threaten her to make sure she stopped.
Lily stepped away to her desk without a word, phone in hand. Griff watched her for half a second, noting the set of her jaw, the way she took a breath before making the call. Still in control, but he didn’t miss the undercurrent of tension in her movements.
He turned back to the monitor, scrubbing through the footage again. The figure was fast, crouched low, hood up. Not a single frame gave a clean look at the face.
Still, there were details.
He paused the video and took a screenshot, then opened the station’s internal system and started uploading the clip. A few quick keystrokes later, the footage was on its way to the lab team.
The new lab was small but sharp. When Griff’s Strike Force boss, Owen Striker, took over rebuilding Outlaw Ridge PD, he didn’t just throw in bodies.
Owen had brought the right people, the right tools.
That included a supply cabinet filled with the latest gear, including ops vests and jackets that were fully equipped to handle just about any police emergency or situation.
Even the software was better than what Griff had seen in most big-city departments.
He wasn’t expecting a miracle, but the techs might be able to pull enough from the footage to give them something to work with. Height. Gait. Build. Clothing brand, maybe.
Every detail helped.
Griff stared at the frozen image again. The figure moved like they knew what they were doing. Quick and precise, in and out. The message left behind wasn’t rage-fueled. It was deliberate.
He didn’t need a clear face to know what that meant.
Whoever had done this had watched Lily. Chosen the moment. Known exactly where to hit. This wasn’t just about scaring her. It was a warning.
And Griff had learned the hard way—warnings like that usually came before something worse.
Griff kept his eyes on the frozen image, letting it burn into his mind while Lily spoke quietly at her desk, filling Sheriff Hallie McQueen in on what had happened. Her voice was low and even, but every now and then, he caught the edge in it. She was holding herself steady. For now.
He turned to face Mickey and Jacob.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s set the kid theory aside. I’m not asking who could have done it—I want to know who’d be willing to go this far. Who had enough of a connection to the victim to take a photo of her dying?”
Neither deputy answered right away.
Griff stepped in closer, arms crossed. “The photo wasn’t from the official scene. Whoever took it was there. That’s not a guess. That’s someone who was close, someone involved.”
Jacob shifted, eyes flicking back to the monitor. “Everett Langston,” he said finally. “There were rumors. About him and Hannah. That it wasn’t just a crush, that it was a full-on thing. And if that’s true…”
Mickey shook his head, cutting him off. “Come on. Everett? You really see him creeping around in the dark with a knife and a note? Guy’s rich, owns half the businesses in town, wears tailored boots and keeps his hands cleaner than his damn Cadillac.”
Griff didn’t blink. “You don’t need to get your hands dirty to arrange something like this.”
Mickey opened his mouth, then hesitated.
“What about Catherine?” Griff added. “His wife.”
Mickey scoffed but it lacked conviction. “Same deal. Catherine Langston’s the kind of woman who throws charity galas and judges people for leaving weeds in their yard. She’s cold, yeah, but not the slash-your-tires kind.”
He paused, something shifting behind his eyes.
“But…” he said slowly, “if you’re looking at people close to the victim… Hannah had a younger sister. Margo.”
Griff narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”
“She was real quiet after everything went down. Barely spoke for months. Then she left town not long after Hannah’s murder. Think she was living with a cousin in Houston. But I heard she came back recently. Couple weeks ago, maybe.”
“Why?” Griff asked.
Mickey shrugged. “No clue. Just something I heard at the diner. Could be nothing.”
Griff nodded, storing the name. Margo Cole. Close enough to Hannah to be there that night. Close enough to carry that kind of grief for fifteen years. And maybe, just maybe, close enough to still want something buried.
Griff barely registered the last few words Mickey said. His focus shifted as Lily ended her call and stood, sliding her phone into her back pocket, her expression tight but composed.
“Hallie wants a full report on everything first thing in the morning,” Lily explained. “Photos, the note, the tire damage, the video footage. And she said that whoever did this?” Her eyes met Griff’s. “She wants them punished. Hard.”
Griff nodded once. He wanted the same damn thing. It ate away at him like acid to have Lily threatened because she was doing her job.
Lily exhaled, her shoulders dropping slightly. “I’ve only got one spare. Not enough to get me back on the road tonight.”
“Then I’ll drive you,” Griff insisted. “We’re on the same shift anyway. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
She hesitated. “You don’t have to—”
“I know,” he said, keeping his tone even. “But I will.”
He didn’t add what he was thinking. That he’d get a look at her property. Check for cameras, motion lights, locks. If someone was willing to damage her car and leave a photo like that, they could take it further. And Griff had seen what happened when good people ignored warning signs.
She studied him for a second, then nodded. “Thanks.”
They both moved toward the exit. Jacob stayed behind at the monitor, while Mickey mumbled something about printing out a report. Griff led the way, pushing open the glass door with one hand, the other resting near his weapon.
The cold was sharper this time.
They stepped into the dark parking lot, the wind slipping beneath Griff’s collar. Across the street, the Christmas lights still blinked against the dark, out of place and out of time.
He scanned the lot as they walked, eyes sweeping the shadows, corners, rooftops. No movement. No sound. But he didn’t trust the quiet anymore.
Not with someone like Lily in the crosshairs.
They got in his truck, and Griff started the engine, the low rumble filling the quiet between them as he pulled out of the lot.
He didn’t ask for directions. He didn’t need to.
He’d driven past Lily’s place more than a few times over the last few months.
A small house on the edge of town, tucked back behind a line of cedar trees with a porch that needed work.
He didn’t know why he’d noticed, just that he had.
They rolled through the heart of Outlaw Ridge, headlights sweeping over closed storefronts. The barbershop with the striped pole still spinning out of habit. The hardware store with half the letters in the sign burned out. The feed store where Lily had said Bobby Ray once worked.
A quiet town on the surface, holding a whole lot of secrets just underneath.
He drove by a squat, weathered house with peeling paint and a dead porch light, and from the corner of his eye, he noticed Lily shift. Just a slight, stiff pull of her shoulders, and the way she turned her face toward the window.
“You okay?” he asked, though he already had a pretty good guess.
She didn’t look at him. “That’s where I grew up,” she said, voice low.
Griff’s eyes stayed on the road. “Rough place?”
“Rough people,” she said. “I don’t usually take this route.”
He didn’t push. Just said, “Sorry.”
She let out a short breath. “Old baggage. Nothing worth unpacking.”
He didn’t answer right away. His hands tightened slightly on the wheel, and for a second, the truck and the cold and Lily faded. And something else came back sharp and clear.
Hell.
One of those damn flashbacks. A face. Young. Laughing, then gone. Not murdered with a tire iron. Killed in action. In the dirt and heat, a breath stolen mid-sentence. A mistake someone tried to bury with a report.
Griff had learned that day not to take what people told him at face value. Not orders. Not blame. Not truth wrapped in official language.
He blinked once and pushed the memory back where it belonged.
“I understand baggage,” he said finally.
Lily glanced over, curious but not prying.
The road curved gently as they left the last stretch of shops behind and dipped into darker country roads. Only the headlights lit the way now, twin beams cutting through the thick black.
Lily shifted in her seat, arms crossed loosely, eyes forward. “You’re not going to ask me to back off the Bobby Ray case, are you?” she asked.
Griff kept his hands steady on the wheel. “No,” he said. “I’m not backing off it either.”
She turned her head slightly. “I wasn’t fishing for backup.”
“You’ve got it anyway,” he assured her. “No fishing required.”
He glanced over at her, caught the way she was watching him out of the corner of her eye.
“I get pissed when some chicken-shit coward hides in the dark and tries to scare someone into silence,” he said. “That’s not justice. That’s control.”
Her lips tugged into a smile, small and real. But it didn’t last. It faded as quickly as it came, replaced by something heavier. The kind of look someone wore when they’d been carrying a weight for too long, and someone else had finally offered to lift it.
They turned down the last stretch of road toward Lily’s house, the headlights catching the low wooden fence and the edge of a mailbox leaning at a slight angle. Trees loomed on either side, and beyond them, a quiet kind of dark settled in.
Inside the cab, Lily was quiet for a few beats. Then she spoke.
“It probably seems like I’m obsessed with Bobby Ray’s case,” she said.
Griff didn’t answer right away. He could hear the weight in her voice as if this had been sitting on her chest for a while, and she was finally letting a piece of it out.
“I had a lot in common with him,” she went on. “People saw him as trouble from the start. Same way they saw me. He had a mom who was an addict. My parents were alcoholics. Mine just knew how to fake it better.”
Griff glanced over. She wasn’t looking at him.
Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead, her voice even.
Controlled. But he’d heard enough around the station.
Talk that wasn’t meant to reach her ears.
That she’d been neglected on good days. Flat-out abused on the others.
Left to fend for herself most of the time.
Yeah, he figured it had a lot to do with why she became a cop. When you grew up in chaos, sometimes all you want is to make sure someone else doesn’t have to.
“You think Bobby Ray got a raw deal because of that?” he asked.
“Sure,” she verified, with zero hesitation. “You’ve seen the file. That evidence was strong. Not clean, not perfect, but strong. But even if they didn’t have it? He would’ve been convicted.”
“Because of who he was.”
“Because of who they thought he was,” she said quietly. “Because he came from nothing. Because he kept to himself. Because the town already made up its mind before they sat down in that courtroom.”
Griff didn’t say anything right away. But he knew she was right.
In a place like Outlaw Ridge, people carried labels like scars. And once a label stuck, it didn’t matter what the facts said. Some people saw cases. Lily saw people.
That was the difference.
The road curved ahead, the trees thinning as Griff eased the truck around the bend. He knew the shape of her place well enough by now. Low roofline, weathered siding, a porch light she never remembered to replace. But tonight, the silhouette was all wrong.
Too much light.
Too much movement.
Then, they saw it.
Flames licked up from the side of the house, orange and wild against the black sky. Fire was already eating through the porch, climbing fast toward the roof. Smoke poured up in thick waves, glowing in the headlights.
Griff slammed the brakes. Lily’s breath caught beside him, sharp and full of disbelief.
Her house was burning.
And someone had made damn sure she’d see it happen.
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