I can feel the nerves pouring off of her, and if I can’t calm her down, I worry this conversation is going to go very poorly.
“Of course. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay down here?” my sister asks, her gaze shifting from me to the table they’re sitting at, then back to me.
“Nah. Head upstairs. Do me a favor, though, call the team and have them on standby should this go sideways.”
“Consider it done.” Anastasia reaches over and squeezes Tessa’s hand gently. “You know where to find me.” With one final glance at the corner table, she heads toward the back and up the stairs.
“You ready?” I ask Tessa.
“No. But let’s go anyway.”
I rest my hand on her lower back and guide her toward the table. The contact is as much for me as it is for her. We take our seats, and I cross my arms. “So the FBI is investigating self-defense these days? That’s new.”
“I’m not here for you,” he says, then shifts his attention to Tessa. “I’m here for you.”
“Me? What about? I didn’t kill anyone!”
“That’s to be determined.” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a photograph, then slides it on the table between us. “Do you recognize them?”
Tessa leans in and studies the photographs. A petite blonde woman smiles out of the image as she stands beside a dark-haired man with dark eyes and a wide smile of his own. I don’t recognize them, and based on the look Tessa is giving, she doesn’t either.
“No.”
“No?” Jack confirms.
“No. I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
“Start talking, Weathers,” I snap. My patience is already wearing thin, thanks to Brenda springing this on me like a perfectly orchestrated trap, but until I start getting some real answers, I’m feeling rather volatile.
“You’re looking at Karver and Alara Benson. The owners of Southeast Environmental Commission.”
Tessa shakes her head. “No. I met Karver and Alara; this is not them.” She slides the photo back.
“Dental, fingerprints, and DNA sampling confirm that these are the Bensons.”
Tessa’s quiet a moment. “Dental? Why would you need—” She pales. “They’re dead?”
Jack nods.
“What exactly are you accusing Tessa of?” I ask, unease crawling up the back of my neck.
“Nothing yet. Their bodies were discovered in a remote campsite outside of Denver. They’d been dead three and a half months.”
“Three and a half months?” Tessa chokes out. “I was hired three months ago.”
“If that’s true, then my best guess is that whoever hired you was pretending to be them. But I need to know exactly what they looked like and what they said.”
“If that’s true? Surely you’re not accusing her of a double homicide.”
“You don’t even know this woman,” Brenda says.
Anger surges to the surface, and I have to actively fight against exploding right here at this table. Somehow, I don’t think Anastasia would appreciate it if I flipped her pretty café table.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Tessa insists.
“But you did change your name. Multiple times,” Brenda says. The way she watches me tells me that she’d been hoping I wasn’t aware of it.
“That doesn’t equal murder. Tessa was trying to hide from an abusive family situation.”
