Page 156 of Fire Fight
“None of your dad’s work vehicles are missing, are they?” Lane asked her.
“Not that I’m aware of, but Dad would know better.”
“You haven’t looped him in?”
“I didn’t want to worry him.”
“Wy,” Trey said softly. “I hate to break it to you, but…there’sa lotto worry about. And we need to know if he can provide any information you haven’t been able to.”
She nodded as though Trey’s words made perfect sense. I supposed, to her, from the mouth of her best friend, they did. The blow was softened because he cared about her, and he knew how badly this was hurting her.
“I’ll go call him,” she said, rising from her stool and waving her phone around.
When she disappeared, Lane shot West a look, and he slipped out after her.
“There has to be something we’re missing,” Finn said, leaning over Trey’s shoulder to study the monitors. They displayed a dizzying amount of information, from camera feeds and building schematics to open documents and a large photograph of who I assumed was Kelly Saunders.
“Holy shit.”
“Aspen?” Lane asked when I didn’t elaborate.
“I’ve seen her before. Quite a few times. She was…they were there that night.”
“Gonna need more than that.”
Wild horses couldn’t have dragged my gaze away from that screen, away from the face of the woman who I knew deep in my bones had tried to kill me and spent the better part of the last few months tormenting me.
“She and Wyatt were at the Swallow the night I was abducted,” I said numbly. “I bumped into her. That’s how I ended up wearing my beer. They disappeared into the crowd, and I left notlong after. I was almost to my car in the parking lot when I was taken.”
“When else?” Lane prompted.
“The day I picked up Black Betty from impound, when I found that note under the windshield. I had a bit of a breakdown right there in the middle of their neighborhood.” I glanced up at Lane. “I recognized it that day we went to interview Ward. She was out walking the dog and stopped to check on me. I thought…”
I shook my head. I thought she was a kind citizen making sure I was okay and keeping her neighborhood free of any creeps. After all, I’d been a stranger around here back then.
“It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
“Did you see her anymore after that?”
“The day on the street when I got that email about someone watching me. She and Wyatt were coming out of the diner.”
“I remember that,” a voice said from the doorway, and we turned to find Wyatt and West had returned. “She was so distracted by something on her phone. We stood in the middle of the sidewalk for like five minutes while I tried to nudge her toward the car.”
Before I could blink, Wyatt approached me, wrapping her tall frame around my much smaller one and pulling me into a hug. I stiffened slightly against the uninvited contact, but eventually relaxed and slipped my arms around her waist. I figured she needed it more than I did. I’d had plenty of time to come to terms with what happened to me. Giving a face to my attacker didn’t change the work I’d done to restore my mental health since then—work only accomplished with the help of Crew.
But I felt for Wyatt, whose nightmare was only beginning.
“I am so fucking sorry, Aspen,” she murmured. “If I had known?—”
I cut her off by pulling away, shaking my head. “There’snothing you could’ve done. She fooled everyone, including her own family. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Though tears continued to track down her pretty face, she nodded once.
“Did you get in touch with your dad?” Lane asked.
“I did. He said all the company vehicles are accounted for.” The sheriff cursed, but Wyatt continued. “He did, however, remind me that when my grandma passed, she left Mom a cabin out in the woods. We stopped going there when I was younger, so we both assumed she’d sold it. But…”
“But what if she hadn’t,” I finished, grinning, and Trey’s fingers were already going to town on his keyboard.
