Page 9 of I'll Be There
Jed said nothing, just turned and leaned his shoulder against the window to consider Conner. “You’ve been silent for the last sixty miles. Is it the kid?”
It had taken them over an hour to get back on the road, negotiate the bottled traffic, clear Duluth, and finally escape to Highway 61, the last stretch to Deep Haven, some ninety miles farther up the road.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Jed said nothing.
“Fine. The crash—it’s like I saw Justin’s ghost, rising to haunt me.” He folded his arms, shook his head, as if he could jerk himself free. “Sorry.”
Jed lifted a shoulder. “We all have ghosts.”
Conner watched a family—three kids, a wife, husband—claim a table, their Happy Meals toppling over on their tray. “I guess it just doesn’t feel right to get married, move on without settling my brother’s score. Bringing his killer to justice.”
“Didn’t you say that even the NSA couldn’t nail down the killer?”
Conner’s mouth formed a tight line. “They weren’t me.”
Jed raised an eyebrow.
Conner met his gaze, didn’t blink.
“Just one hour with the file, a computer, and my brother’s cell phone. It’s all we have to go on—all the evidence was destroyed when they burned his body. But the NSA won’t letme near it.” Just one hour to do some ethical hacking, find the digital trail. “It’s like they don’t care.”
“You didn’t betray your brother by not finding his killer,” Jed said quietly.
Conner shot him a look, because that pretty much summed it up. “The NSA pointed the finger at someone he was working with, inside the cult. Someone named Blue. He disappeared around the same time Justin was killed. The NSA thinks he might be dead, too. My gut agrees. Justin was killed by someone in the terror organization he’d embedded. Maybe his cover was blown...but I have so many scenarios in my head, who knows. Believe me, I’ve spent too many nights dissecting the what-ifs.”
Reuben came up, holding a take-out bag. “Are we having a personal crisis over here?”
Conner frowned.
“Hey, I know what it looks like to stew over something,” Reuben said.
“Something like that.” Jed checked his slip against the number just called and left to pick up his food.
Pete took his place, holding two breakfast burritos, a Coke. “Not eating, Conner?”
“He’s busy freaking out,” Reuben said.
“I agree. Marriage. Yikes.”
“It’s not—” Conner started.
“He thinks he should shut one door before opening another,” Reuben said, cutting him off.
Pete frowned. “What door? You have an old girlfriend waiting in the wings?”
“Funny. No. Unfinished business,” Conner said.
Pete unwrapped one of his burritos. “Listen, let me tell you about unfinished business. You gotta deal with it or it’ll keep hounding you—”
“Nice, Pete. That’s exactly what he needs,” Reuben said. However, “But, yeah, he’s right.”
“No, he’s not,” Conner said. “Listen, there’s nothing I can do. I’ve made peace with that. This is just a random shadow. I just gotta learn to stop jumping every time it creeps up behind me. “
Jed returned with his bag of food.
“Let’s go,” Conner said, ignoring the roil of hunger.
