Page 32 of Outlaw Ridge: Griff
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 beenthere.
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,andthe 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.”
“Maybe not,” Griff said. “But it did feel like something.”
Lily nodded, her pulse quickening.
If two people, or twosides, were playing this game, then she wasn’t just chasing a killer.
She was walking a line between them. And one wrong step could get her killed.
Lily’s phone buzzed on the table beside the laptop. She glanced down, expecting another update from the lab or a ping from Hallie. Instead, the sender was the Outlaw Ridge Fire Department. Her heart gave a hard, unsteady thud as she read the message.
The site of your house has been cleared. You’re free to take a look around, see if anything’s salvageable.
