Chapter Three #2
Lily stepped inside and glanced around. The furniture was sturdy, nothing flashy. Everything had a purpose. Griff closed the door behind them and keyed in a code at the panel near the entry. Another layer of security, she figured.
“When are you heading back to Strike Force?” she asked, her voice steady even though her chest still felt hollow.
“Not sure yet,” he said. “Hallie wants to keep me around a little longer. Says I’ve got a skill set she doesn’t want to lose.”
“Skill set,” Lily repeated, giving him a sideways look. “You mean all that computer stuff you do when you think nobody’s watching?”
Griff made a quiet sound that might’ve been a laugh, or maybe just agreement. But he didn’t expand. Typical.
She didn’t push. Whatever he did for Strike Force, it went beyond typing fast and looking calm under pressure.
She’d seen the way he worked, methodical, calculated.
The kind of guy who could take a system apart without touching a wire.
Still, he’d stepped into Outlaw Ridge and made himself useful without ever making himself the center of anything.
Now here she was, standing in his house with everything she owned smoldering in a pile of ash. She didn’t know what came next. But at least she wasn’t standing there alone.
“Want something to eat?” he asked.
“No, I’m good,” Lily said. “But I wouldn’t mind some water.” Maybe that would get the taste of the smoke and stench out of her throat.
He nodded and headed into the kitchen anyway. The house had an open layout, so she stayed where she was, arms crossed, watching him move through the space with the same quiet efficiency he brought to everything else.
Cabinet door, glass, faucet. He didn’t make a sound, he didn’t have to.
When he came back, he handed her the water without a word. She took it, the glass cool against her palm.
“Thanks.” She sipped, the water grounding her more than she expected.
Her gaze drifted to the mantle over the fireplace. It was simple with natural wood, smooth and unvarnished, but the photos arranged along it caught her eye.
She stepped closer.
There were pictures of Griff and other military members in uniform. One in desert camo, another in black tactical gear with a Strike Force patch on the shoulder. In one, he was younger, standing beside three other soldiers, dust and exhaustion on all their faces, but something solid in their eyes.
“Adrenaline junkie much?” she asked, her voice lighter than she felt.
Griff’s mouth twitched. “Some days.”
Her eyes moved to the next photo. A couple, older, standing on the porch of a house with a bright blue door. The man had a big smile and the woman wore a sunhat. They looked like the kind of people who baked bread and waved to their neighbors.
She glanced back at Griff. “Your parents?”
He shook his head. “Foster parents. Roy and Nina Cavanaugh. Took me in when I was thirteen.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around the glass.
“Bobby Ray and you weren’t the only ones with shit parents,” he added.
She met his eyes.
“But they were good,” he said. “The Cavanaughs. Gave me a shot I didn’t think I’d ever get.”
Lily looked at the photo again, then back at Griff. There was something different in his voice when he talked about them. Steady, but with a thread of something almost like warmth.
The silence settled around them, not heavy, just still. Lily stood there, water in hand, eyes still on the photo of Griff’s foster parents, the flicker of firelight memory dancing behind her eyes.
And then it hit.
The weight of everything. The house. The heat. The flames. The photograph of Hannah. The threat. The loss.
It came crashing down like a wave, fast and breath-stealing.
She let out a low, raw sound, a groan pulled from someplace deep, and sat down hard on the edge of the couch, like her legs had finally remembered to give out. She pressed her elbows into her knees, the glass still clutched in one hand, her head bowed.
Griff didn’t hover. He didn’t fill the silence or offer empty words. He just sat beside her and gave her a moment to breathe. Or try to.
She drew in a shaky breath, then another. The sting in her throat wasn’t from smoke anymore.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low but direct.
“Who would start that fire?” he asked. “Who would slash your tires? Threaten your life? All to get you to stop working on Bobby Ray’s case.”
Lily didn’t answer right away. She stared at the floor, jaw tight. There was a list forming in her head. Names. Faces. Motives that hadn’t meant much hours ago but felt sharper now.
Who hated that case enough to burn her world down?
“I don’t know yet,” she said quietly.
Lily rubbed a hand across her forehead, pressing her palm against her temple like she could squeeze the answers out.
“Possibly Everett Langston,” she offered up several moments later.
“Maybe even his wife, Catherine. If the rumors about him and Hannah were true, and I manage to prove something, it could ruin their whole empire. But…” she exhaled slowly, “I just can’t see either of them personally slashing tires or setting fire to my house. That’s messy. Risky. Not their style.”
Griff nodded once. “You said they’re the kind of people who don’t get their hands dirty.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned back slightly. “What about Hannah’s sister? Margo. You mentioned her name earlier.”
Lily’s gaze drifted toward the far wall, unfocused. “Margo’s… complicated. I’m not sure she could do something like this, but I don’t really know her.”
Griff’s forehead bunched up as he no doubt processed that. “Is there anyone else in Hannah’s family who might’ve wanted to shut you up?”
She shook her head. “No. Parents are both gone. Her dad died a year before the murder. Her mom passed away a few months ago. It’s just Margo now.”
“And?”
Lily hesitated. “She and Hannah were only a year apart. Real close in age, but not close in the way people like to pretend siblings are. They had this kind of fire between them. Always competing. Hannah was the pretty one. Homecoming queen. Everyone knew her name.”
“And Margo?” he pressed.
“Margo was the smart one. Quiet, intense. Valedictorian. Always in the library or the science lab. But she hated being in Hannah’s shadow. I remember hearing them argue. They used to fight loud enough that the neighbors could hear.”
“Jealousy?”
“Resentment,” Lily said. “Of what Hannah got. Of how people looked at her. I think part of Margo wanted to be seen the same way, but she never was.”
Griff didn’t speak right away. He didn’t have to. The possibility hung there between them, taking shape.
“She left town right after the murder,” Lily added.
“But she’s back now,” Griff said.
Lily nodded. “Yeah. And that feels like more than a coincidence.”
The glass in her hand had gone warm, forgotten.
If someone was willing to kill to keep the past buried, Margo Cole was starting to look like someone who might have a shovel.
Lily leaned back into the couch, the cushions too soft beneath her. She stared at the ceiling for a long beat.
“There’s someone else I want to talk to,” Lily said, flipping through the case file in her head. “The lead detective on the original case. Rhett Hale.”
Griff looked up from his screen, attention sharpening. “He still around?”
“Yeah. Lives just outside town. Not on the force anymore. He got pushed into early retirement about five years back. Officially it was for ‘health issues,’” she said, adding air quotes.
“Unofficially, he rubbed too many people the wrong way. Loud. Aggressive. Didn’t play well with others. Definitely didn’t play politics.”
Griff leaned back in his chair. Listening.
“Back in high school, he was a football star,” she continued. “Big name. Super jock. One of those guys everyone thought would end up running the place someday. By the time Hannah was murdered, he was in his mid-thirties. And he had a reputation.”
“For what?” Griff asked.
Lily shot him a dry look. “Being a smooth talker with no off switch. Rumor was he hit on the mayor’s wife. And most of the women in town, if we’re being honest.”
Griff raised a brow.
“He even tried a line on me once,” Lily said, shaking her head. “I’d just finished the academy. He cornered me outside a training exercise and said something about needing help with his ‘handcuff technique.’”
Griff gave a quiet snort.
Lily muttered, “I should’ve cuffed him to a parking meter and walked away.”
She saw him trying to bite back a laugh. “You think he was so busy smooth-talking that he botched the case?”
“I don’t know,” Lily said. “But if there was pressure to close it quickly, I can see him going along with it. Or maybe he saw something and kept quiet. Either way, he’s worth talking to.”
She set the glass on the coffee table and rubbed her hands together, more to give them something to do than for warmth.
“But here’s what I don’t get,” she said. “If someone wanted to warn me off… why leave me that photo of Hannah? It doesn’t just scare me. It points to someone else. Someone who was actually there when she died. That photo didn’t come from the case file. So why show me that?”
Griff was quiet for a moment. “If Bobby Ray wasn’t the killer… maybe the real one left the photo. To rattle you. To push you back.”
Lily frowned. “Why not just stay hidden?”
“Fear,” he said. “Fear of what you might find. That photo, maybe it was a misstep. Maybe it was meant to shock you into stopping.”
She let that sit for a second. “You think someone close to Bobby Ray could’ve had the photo? Could’ve been helping him all along?”
Griff’s eyes stayed on hers. “Could be. Someone who believed in him. Someone who had access, or found something after.”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t think of anyone. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t someone. He was quiet. Didn’t have a lot of friends. But maybe someone was watching from the sidelines.”
She looked back toward the mantle, toward the photos of Griff’s past, of people who had stepped in when others didn’t.