AN HOUR LATER,Rose was standing between the bed she had slept in, the man she had slept with in it, and the sheriff of Seven Roads. It was a triangle she hadn’t thought she’d ever be a part of but there she was, not only in it but excited to be there.
Simply because she had finally found a piece to the bizarre puzzle to finally make the last week less bizarre.
Price, settled in the corner, looking half-dead as he clung to his coffee cup, was the opposite of enthused. According to a quick chat with Liam he was ending a shift of helping Darius. When he had heard Rose wanted to talk about a possible lead, he had decided to end his night with the news.
Looking at him now, she wondered how badshemust have looked the night before. Just thinking about it was nothing compared to how she had woken up. She had been more attached to James than a koala to a tree.
What was worse?
James hadn’t at all seemed fazed.
In fact, he had joked.
The situation would have been more mortifying if her shower hadn’t dislodged a memory. One that she was more than excited to share now.
“The big thing that has been bothering me so muchabout everything that has happened in the last week is how absolutely unnecessary Damon’s attacks have been,” she started, once all their attention was back on her. “A bomb in and of itself is a big, big thing and usually fits a particular pattern or has some kind of reason behind it. With Damon, though? He has no history of being remotely involved in explosions or using them to act out his anger. And you said that the bomb maker even confirmed he was hired for this one bomb?”
She asked the question to Price, but the sheriff answered for him.
“Yeah, the maker said he accepts small jobs and the FBI agent working the case had a file full of two jobs he’d done before for clients. All he had on Damon was a one-time meeting and two messages found from a burner phone.”
Rose nodded.
“Then there’s the gunmen who showed up at the garage,” she went on. “Four of them hired completely separate from the bomb maker but with the job to follow my car.”
“And, according to their snitch, they were supposed to watch you and only act if something happened to your car,” Liam added. “Then, when they did act, they were told to shoot to kill.”
Rose snapped her fingers.
“Which makes no sense,” she jumped in. “It’s like Damon wants to kill me but make it unnecessarily difficult for himself. Then there was the man last night.”
A shiver tried to run itself down Rose’s back. She suppressed it but knew James was watching her do it.As she spoke he moved to her side to lean against the chest of drawers she was standing in front of.
“Darius said you found out who he is, right?”
It was Price who nodded now.
“Duncan Danvers,” he said. “Last known to live an hour from here and on probation for assault and battery. He’s not…the brightest of the bunch but he also refused to say a word until a lawyer got to him.”
“And as far as we know, none of the gunmen, the bomb maker, or Danvers are connected,” Liam said. “Other than the gunmen and the bomb maker being contacted by Damon at one point.”
Rose hadn’t recognized the attacker in James’s house or his name. Which helped make her point even more.
“So, let’s just say for argument’s sake that this Duncan guy was also hired by Damon to take me out… He could have done it several times over if he’d simply brought a weapon.” Out of her peripheral vision Rose saw James tense. She knew he still felt guilty for her being attacked in his home, but it wasn’t his fault. None of this was. “Instead, this Duncan guy specifically said he had never drowned someone before, like he had waited patiently for me to get into the bathroom before coming in. Doesn’t all of this sound ridiculous?”
The men around her agreed.
“Some peopleareridiculous,” Price offered. “Maybe Damon likes being flashy in his supposed acts of revenge. It’s not like we haven’t run into other dramatic perps who did a whole lot when doing a little would have gotten the job done.”
“And normally I would agree but this morning I remembered a conversation I had about the video of megoing viral after the bus situation.” Rose pictured the reporter at the hospital, cast on his arm and anger in his gaze. “He said I was acting like some kind of action hero…because that’s what some people called me. An action hero.”
Rose handed her phone over to Liam. She had an article already up on the screen.
“More specifically this one article that went viral along with the video of me.”
Liam started to read the article without being asked to. When he got to the part she wanted him to see, his eyes widened.
“Okay, stop leaving me in suspense,” Price said from the corner. “Don’t leave me hanging. What does it say?”
