Finn helped me wipe my tears from my face before I faced his family again.
Lane appeared surprised. “How do you know about the journal?”
Aspen grinned. “You didn’t think you were the only one working this case, did you?” She rolled her eyes. “Get to know me already, big brother.”
“I’m not your brother,” Lane muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Not yet!” Aspen sing-songed.
The sheriff released a world-weary sigh and looked at me. “I’m assuming this is your doing?”
I shrugged. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to have another set of eyes on this thing.”
“And, in the interest of full disclosure,” Finn started, turning away from me to look at his brother, “West and I have also been working on it too.”
“You fucking people,” Lane said under his breath, catching a stern look from Mama.
“You love us,” West grinned.
Lane raised a hand and folded his fingers over his palm in anout with itgesture.
“We received a…tip,” Finn started, cutting his eyes to me. I appreciated the discretion. There was no fucking way Lane would approve of what they’d been doing based on a dream I’d had.
“What kind of tip? Why didn’t the department receive this ‘tip’?”
“Don’t worry about the why of it all,” Finn said, waving a dismissive hand. “The point is, West and I have been doing some aerial recon of farmhouses and land in the area where someone may be keeping Lainey.”
“And?”
“And,” West stepped in, “we’ve managed to narrow it down to several properties. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
“Was this tip obtained illegally?” Lane asked.
“No,” Finn said quickly. “And it came from a reliable source.”
Lane raised his hands in surrender. “Fair enough. I want everything you have on my desk by the end of the day.”
“Fine.”
“Can we circle back to the journal now?” I asked.
“We’re still analyzing them,” Lane admitted. “Trying to create a timeline of the harassment by cross-checking texts she received with her journal entries.”
Aspen looked at me. “Has anything jumped out at you?”
I swallowed hard. “I, uh…I haven’t read them.”
“Why not?” Lane asked, a sharp edge to his tone that I didn’t appreciate.
Neither did Aspen. She cut him with a look that would’ve taken down lesser men. To me, she said, “It’s gotta be hard.”
All I could do was nod.
Facing my sister’s inner musings, looking at her handwriting and hearing her voice in my head as I read her words—I hadn’t been ready.
But maybe now was the time to bite the bullet.
Maybe I’d be able to tease something out of them the police hadn’t been able to.
