Chapter Seven
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Lily stood in front of the wall-mounted electronic board, arms folded as images and data shifted across the screen. The system synced with the laptop on the desk behind her, where Griff sat entering case notes and uploading scanned reports.
Each time he added a file, it appeared on the display. Photos, names, dates, a tangle of connections growing more complicated by the hour.
The cold case office was one of the most modern rooms in the station, updated with state-of-the-art tech courtesy of Strike Force.
The desk was clean-lined and functional, and the room itself had the kind of quiet that encouraged focus.
It was tucked away near Hallie’s office, mostly unused except for the county’s cold case deputy, who only worked a couple of days a month.
Now it was theirs. At least for this.
Griff leaned forward, typing quickly. On the screen, a digital map of Outlaw Ridge bloomed to life, red markers showing key locations—Hannah’s last known sighting, the creek where her body was found, Bobby Ray’s house, Everett’s businesses, and now the Langston Holdings parking lot.
It was almost noon, but neither of them had touched the sandwiches Griff had ordered in. The brown paper bags sat on a side table, forgotten.
Lily tapped the screen, enlarging the image of Hannah and Everett locked in that intimate moment. “Whatever secrets this town’s been keeping,” she said quietly, “they’re starting to rot through the surface.”
Lily tapped the tablet beside the laptop and added two new entries to the schedule grid on the digital board. Catherine Langston: 9:00 AM. Everett Langston: 10:30 AM. Both interviews marked in red, bolded against the pale background of open time slots.
She stared at them for a long moment, her frown deepening. “Tomorrow,” she muttered.
Griff didn’t look up from the laptop. “Lawyer’s schedule?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Or so he says.”
The Langstons’ attorney had returned her call within the hour, his tone perfectly polished and just evasive enough to make Lily want to slam the phone down.
He’d insisted the delay was necessary to accommodate his clients’ “very demanding and previously arranged business obligations.” But it didn’t feel like scheduling.
It felt like stalling.
She tapped the screen again and pulled up the digital case timeline. Tomorrow felt too far away. Too much could happen between now and then, but too much had already happened. A house fire, a shooting, threats. Someone was getting desperate.
And desperate people made mistakes.
Lily stepped back from the board and crossed her arms, eyes narrowing on the Langstons’ names like they might give something away if she stared hard enough.
“They’re buying time,” she said. “The question is, for what?”
Griff shifted in his chair, eyes still on the laptop. “Both Catherine and Everett could be behind the threats,” he said. “They’ve got a motive to shut this investigation down. But I don’t see Everett tossing those photos all over his own parking lot.”
Lily snorted softly. “Neither do I. Too messy. Too public.”
She glanced back at the image of the photo. Everett and Hannah in a moment that was impossible to explain away. She could almost hear Everett’s voice again, all bluster and denial. No, that hadn’t been his play. Not even close.
“But Catherine?” she added. “Maybe. It’s calculated. It’s a power move. Like she’s reminding him what she’s willing to do to keep control.”
Griff nodded, pulled up a file on his laptop, then turned the screen so she could see.
“This is from the deep background I ran. All of Everett’s businesses?
Funded by Catherine. Her trust, mostly. She’s bailed him out a few times over the last fifteen years.
Had to dip into the fund more than once to cover bad deals. ”
Lily remembered Catherine’s words in her office earlier. Everett is an investment. Cold. Strategic.
“Maybe she’s finally ready to cut that investment loose,” Lily said. “But why now? Why not after Hannah’s murder? That would’ve been the perfect time.”
Griff didn’t look away from the screen. “Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe Everett has something on her. Maybe she’s the one who killed Hannah, and he’s been holding it over her head ever since.”
The possibility sank in, slow and heavy.
It fit. The emotionless calm, the wealth, the power, the careful control. Catherine had the means and the motive. And if Everett knew she was the killer, that would explain the leash she’d kept on him all these years.
But it wasn’t the only theory.
Lily turned back toward the board, her gaze landing on Margo’s name.
“It fits,” she said. “But so does Margo. If she had a thing for Bobby Ray and he didn’t return it, if he wanted Hannah instead…”
“That could be motive,” Griff said. “Especially if Margo thought Hannah was in the way.”
Lily stared at the photos, her mind turning it all over. Two women. Both cold. Both controlled. Both tied to Hannah in very different ways.
But had one of them taken a photo of a dead girl and left it on Lily’s car?
Or had someone else done that?
Lily’s eyes drifted from the red-marked interview slots back to the board, landing on the photo of Rhett Hale.
Grizzled, smirking in that way that made her want to roll her eyes even in a still image. But now he was also the victim of a shooting. Or at least claimed to be.
“You hear anything from patrol or the lab about the shot?” she asked.
Griff shifted back to his laptop, fingers moving across the keys. A few seconds passed before he gave a clipped shake of his head.
“No. No visual confirmation. No witnesses. A few people reported hearing something, but they all chalked it up to a backfire.”
Lily gave a small nod. “That’s what I thought it was too.”
She couldn’t blame them. A single loud crack in the middle of town wasn’t uncommon. A blown muffler. A truck with bad timing. A firework left over from Christmas. It wouldn’t have raised alarms.
“Let’s say someone did shoot him,” she said, turning toward Griff. “Where would they have been?”
He tapped the touchscreen. The map of Outlaw Ridge expanded, and a highlighted section glowed on the screen. A small building across from the station.
“Ice cream shop,” he said. “Closed for the season. There’s a staircase in the back that leads up to the roof. No cameras. No line of sight from the main street. No one would’ve been back there at that time.”
Lily narrowed her eyes at the screen, trying to picture it. Someone crouched behind the parapet, lining up the shot. Cold air. Steady hands. Then a quick escape down the stairs and gone before anyone noticed.
She swallowed and tried to imagine each of their suspects up there—Margo, Catherine, Everett—with a rifle or handgun aimed at Rhett.
Catherine? No. She didn’t seem the type to pull a trigger herself. Not when she could hire someone to do it cleanly, quietly.
But Margo?
Lily hesitated.
Maybe.
She’d been shaken during their meeting, but underneath that tension was something bitter. Something unhinged.
Everett?
She could see the rage. The ego. But not the stealth. Not the follow-through.
Griff broke the silence. “Could’ve been a hired gun.”
She turned to him. He was still focused on the map, his expression unreadable.
“If someone didn’t want to get their hands dirty,” he added, “and they had the money to make it happen…”
Lily nodded slowly. “Catherine has the money,” she said. “Everett has the motive. And Margo—”
“She might have both,” Griff finished.
Lily let out a low, frustrated sigh and leaned a hip against the edge of the desk, arms folding across her chest.
“I keep coming back to that damn photo, of Hannah dying,” she muttered. “If the idea is to stop us from digging into the case, then why leave it on my SUV? Why show me something that makes it clear Bobby Ray might not have done it?”
She looked over at the image on the board, the one from the evidence bag, grainy but undeniable. Hannah’s lifeless body. The angle of the shot. The timing. Someone had been there.
It wasn’t just a threat. It was proof. Of something.
“Like you said, maybe it was meant to rattle you,” Griff offered, not looking up from the screen. “To scare you just enough to make you drop it, but not enough to draw attention.”
She frowned. “Or it’s bait. A message that says, You want the truth? It’s worse than you think.”
“Could also be arrogance,” Griff said. “Some people don’t just want to cover their tracks. They want to play games. They want to watch us try to figure it out while they stay one step ahead.”
Lily exhaled slowly as she turned back to the evidence board, eyes sweeping over the photos again—Everett, Catherine, Rhett, and now Margo. Their faces hovered like ghosts in a case that refused to stay buried.
Behind her, Griff spoke, his voice steady. “Let’s play what if.”
She glanced over her shoulder.
He stepped closer, arms folded across his chest, his focus locked on the board like he was seeing it from a new angle.
“Everett, Catherine, and Rhett—they’ve all shown signs they want this case to stay dead.
One of them, or someone working for them, could’ve slashed your tires. Could’ve left that note.”
“Sure,” she said, slowly, “but then why leave the photo?”
Griff nodded. “What if someone else saw what was happening? Saw that you were being threatened. And they slipped the photo in with the note. Like a message inside the message.”
Lily straightened, brows pulling together. “You’re saying two factions.”
“Yeah,” he said. “One trying to stop you. One trying to lead you.”
She let the idea settle, turning it over in her mind. It made a strange kind of sense. The contradictions—the threats, the arson, and the photo—they’d been bothering her from the start. And it explained the tug-of-war feel she couldn’t shake.
“I can’t dismiss that,” she admitted. “Someone could be using the chaos to steer the investigation. Quietly. Indirectly. Maybe Margo. She was rattled, but… I’m not sure it was guilt.”