Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Blackwood Estate Winery
Aubrey
Aubrey slept exactly forty-three minutes.
Not all at once.
Ten here. Twenty there. A few restless stretches spent staring at the ceiling of Bennett’s guest room while Moose snored across the doorway like a furry, one-hundred-and-twenty-pound barricade.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Burke’s face when he told her. By four-thirty, she gave up.
By five, she was dressed in black trousers, a white sleeveless blouse, and the closest thing to business clothes she had in the duffel Machelle had shipped before Aubrey's life in Pennsylvania had been boxed, labeled, and slid into storage.
Every time she pulled that blouse over her head she thought of Ashford. Of corner offices and glass conference rooms and the precise, ruthless comfort of knowing exactly what game everyone was playing.
Here, she didn’t even know the rules.
Bennett had left his truck keys on the kitchen island with a simple note. Take the truck. —B.
By five-fifteen, Moose had hopped into the passenger seat of Bennett's truck like he'd personally been assigned to her security detail. He'd watched her lace her shoes, followed her outside, and climbed in before she ever reached for the ignition.
She paused.
Walk away, Langford.
The winery sat beneath a blanket of blue mountain fog when she pulled into the employee lot. Blackwood felt quiet. No funeral guests. No lawyers. No deputies. No casseroles. Only rows of vines disappearing into mist.
Aubrey killed the engine and sat for a moment, her fingers curled around the steering wheel.
The memory of the note she'd stared at in the dark—Go back to Philadelphia—still weighed on her like a lead coat, heavy and suffocating.
Whoever had killed Mabel hadn't just left a corpse; they'd left an open door and the terrifying realization that she was standing in the draft.
If she let herself, she could almost imagine her old life: pre-dawn runs along the Schuylkill, back-to-back meetings, Ashford's skyline a wall of glass outside her office—a world where people schemed over bonuses and promotions, not wills and murder. Her heart gave a quick, traitorous twist.
If someone had murdered Mabel to protect something, then somewhere in Blackwood's records was the thing they were trying to hide.
People lied. Documents usually didn't. Numbers told stories if you knew how to read them. Contracts, invoices, balance sheets...they all left fingerprints.
She climbed out. Moose hopped down behind her, nails clicking softly against the gravel, and fell into step like a silent shadow.
She opened the winery doors and stepped into the cool oak-scented hush of the tasting room.
The place looked different before daylight.
Without staff moving behind the bar or guests clustering near the windows with glasses in hand, the barn felt almost sacred.
Black steel and glass, polished concrete, reclaimed wood.
Above it all, the mezzanine offices stood watch over the winery.
Mabel’s office still sat sealed at the center of the catwalk. Crime-scene tape stretched across the double glass doors, yellow and brutal against all that elegance.
Aubrey stopped at the foot of the stairs. For one terrible second she saw white Tyvek suits moving through Mabel’s bedroom. Saw cameras flashing over the four-poster bed. Saw Bennett’s hand closing around her wrist when her pulse had tried to bolt out of her skin.
Her breath hitched. Moose pressed his massive body against her leg. She put a hand in his ruff and forced herself to breathe.
“Not that office,” she whispered. “Not today.”
She climbed to the mezzanine and let herself into the small conference room beside Walter’s office. The motion lights clicked on overhead, spilling clean white light across the long table, the built-in cabinets, the wall monitor, and the sleek docking station.
Good. Sterile. Useful.
Safe.
She dropped her laptop bag onto the table and opened the winery’s accounting dashboard.
Shipping reports. Distribution agreements. Vendor contracts. Accounts receivable. Payroll. Purchase orders.
Three years of Blackwood’s financial history filled the screen.
Her shoulders eased a fraction. Columns and rows. Sums. Percentages. Here, at least, she knew the language. Here, she was not the girl who had come back to bury her aunt and found herself recast as the main character in a small-town murder.
She pulled her hair into a ponytail and reached for a legal pad.
She could not control Mabel’s death.
She could not control the fact that a killer might still be watching the estate.
She could not control Bennett McCrae sleeping thirty feet above her at the ridge house, wedding ring on his hand and shadows in his eyes, making her feel things she had no business feeling during an active homicide investigation.
But she could control this.
Columns. Clauses. Dates. Signatures. Money.
A soft knock sounded against the open doorframe.
Aubrey jumped.
Walter Grady stood there holding two steaming mugs of coffee. The old bookkeeper looked tired. “Well now,” he said gently. “I had a feeling I might find you here.”
Aubrey glanced at the clock on the wall. “Five forty-two.”
Walter smiled faintly and crossed the room. “Mabel always said morning started when worry quit letting you sleep.”
He set one mug beside her laptop.
Coffee. Two sweeteners. A splash of cream. Exactly how she’d been drinking it.
The realization tugged unexpectedly at something tender in her chest. Someone had noticed. Not that she was here, but how she took her coffee. Mabel had noticed things like that. Bennett did too, in his own infuriating, precise way.
She pushed that thought away.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Walter lowered himself into the chair opposite her with a careful sigh. Moose immediately lumbered over and laid his giant head on Walter’s knee.
“Well, hello to you too, old man.” Walter scratched behind Moose’s ears, his expression softening. “You’re taking good care of her, aren’t you?”
Moose’s tail thumped once beneath the table.
“He followed me,” Aubrey said.
“Course he did.” Walter glanced toward the sealed office down the hall. “He knows who belongs to Mabel now.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Belongs. The idea sat uncomfortably close to the bone. She’d spent ten years crafting a life where she didn’t belong to anyone.
And yet here she was. Back on this mountain. In Mabel’s world. Drinking Mabel’s coffee order from a man who’d probably known her since she was young and dangerous and invincible.
Aubrey looked back at the laptop before her face could give anything away.
“I need to understand the business.”
Walter nodded. “Then you came to the right place.”
“I need contracts. Distribution history. Vendor agreements. Anything Mabel was reviewing in the last six months.”
For a beat, Walter didn’t move. Then he smiled, sad and fond.
“That sounds like her too.”
Aubrey stilled. “What does?”
“Looking for answers in a file cabinet at dawn.” He patted Moose once more and pushed slowly to his feet. “Your aunt trusted paper. Said people could rewrite stories, but records were stubborn.”
“She was right.”
“Usually was.” Walter’s eyes drifted briefly toward Mabel’s office. “Whether folks liked it or not.”
He disappeared into his office and returned with a rolling cart stacked with binders, folders, and three narrow archival boxes.
“Distribution is blue,” he said, setting one box near her elbow. “Vendor agreements are green. Land and equipment leases are brown. Mabel color-coded like a woman preparing for war.”
Despite herself, Aubrey smiled. “That tracks.”
Walter’s mouth softened. “She would’ve liked hearing you say that.”
Aubrey opened the first blue binder.
Mercer Distribution — Current Agreement.
She paused. The letters swam for a second, resolving into the image of Vanessa’s perfectly polished smile at The Overlook. The press of her perfume in Aubrey’s kitchen. The way Bennett had looked at Vanessa like someone remembering a different, easier life.
“Vanessa’s company?” Aubrey asked, aware of the cool edge in her own voice and not loving it.
“Her family’s company,” Walter corrected gently. “Vanessa runs the western accounts now. Her father still holds controlling interest, far as I know.”
“Was Mabel happy with them?”
Walter settled back into the chair with his own mug. “Mabel was happy with very little. But Mercer got the wine into restaurants that wouldn’t have taken our calls ten years ago.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” Walter said quietly. “I suppose it wasn’t.”
Aubrey looked up. He gave a small shrug.
“Mabel thought Vanessa was sharp. She thought Mercer was useful. She also said useful people had a way of becoming expensive once they knew you needed them.”
Aubrey’s gaze dropped back to the binder.
Now that sounded like Mabel.
For the next hour, she worked in silence.
Walter didn’t hover. He didn’t interrupt. He simply sat across from her, reviewing payroll reports while she moved through contract amendments, rate schedules, shipping summaries, and quarterly casing reports.
At first, the documents looked exactly the way she expected. Clean. Professional. Aggressive, but not unusual.
Then the pattern started.
Fuel surcharge increase. Regional handling fee increase. Premium restaurant placement fee increase. Temperature-controlled transport adjustment. Marketing co-op contribution.
Individually, nothing obscene.
Collectively—
Aubrey frowned and pulled the prior year. Then the year before. Then the one before that.
Same structure. Same language. Same slow tightening of the vise.
Her pen stopped moving.
“Walter.”
He looked up over his glasses. “Hmm?”
“How long has Blackwood been exclusive with Mercer?”
“Exclusive?” he repeated, a little too slowly.
“Yes. For regional distribution.”
Walter leaned back. “I’d have to check.”