“Yeah,” I said, voice steadier than I expected it to be. “Just packing it in for the day.”
He flicked his wrist to check the time but wisely didn’t comment further. I knew it was too early to be leaving. Hopefully he chalked it up to exhaustion and assumed it would take me some time to settle into my pre-gunshot hours.
Though I wanted to keep the department out of the mess my past self had created as much as possible, I felt compelled to ask him about the package, so I withdrew it from my bag and waved it at him.
“Did you put this on my desk?”
I studied him for any hint of a reaction, a tic of his lips or twitch of his eye, but his expression remained the same.
“Nope,” he said. “Why, what is it?”
“Just sheriff stuff,” I said quickly, hoping that’d stop further questioning.
Johns raised a brow but didn’t push it. “Okay then. See you tomorrow?”
“Yep, see you then.”
I’d wanted to ask Bertie if she’d dropped it in my office, but she wasn’t at her desk when I emerged into the lobby, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.
I needed a way to pull as much information as I could on the case and Ryan’s known associates. At home, I didn’t have access to all the same programs as I did at the office, but the last thing I wanted was to draw attention to what I was doing. I also had zero desire to drag any of my deputies into it.
Addie also floated through my mind as a possibility, but besides the fact that we weren’t exactly on speaking terms, she was also a fed—sworn to uphold the duties of her office which would certainly include turning in a murderer if she put the pieces together.
The fewer people who knew about this, the better.
Luckily for me, I knew someone who could get me exactly what I needed a hell of a lot faster than even law enforcement could.
Someone who would take my secret to the grave.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I made a call.
“I need your help.”
“Okay…” Trey said slowly. “Sounds serious.”
“It is,” I admitted. “You busy?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“Great, see you soon.”
With my mind wandering, the drive to Trey’s passed quickly.
Each of us boys owned a parcel of ranch land, gifted to us when we came of a certain age. We were flung across the property, Finn and West closest to the big house, Crew the farthest away. Trey and I lived somewhere in the middle, and as no one else was allowed to build on this land but us, he was also my closest neighbor.
His house was an ugly, modern monstrosity that looked like three glass-sided rectangles stacked in a staggered pattern atop each other. We’d been giving him shit about it for years, begging him to bulldoze it and build something that wasn’t such a fucking eyesore. But apparently, he liked it, and considering he conducted ninety-nine percent of his business from within its walls, tearing it down and rebuilding wasn’t really an option.
Once the gates out front opened, I pulled into the drive. Before I got out, the garage door slid open, and I shook my head at the strangeness of my brother’s ability to control everything on this property from the comfort of his control room. When I stepped into the garage, the door began to close behind me, and the security panel next to the interior door flashed green, telling me it was unlocked.
Trey’s “bat cave,” as we called it, was right off the garage. The large room was filled with an entire wall of monitors and allkinds of other techy shit I’d never learned the names or purposes for.
All I knew was my brother was damn good at what he did, and his talents had helped us out of sticky situations more than once.
I found him in his control room, fingers speeding over the keys, doing who the fuck knew what. As a security expert, he had an impressive client list, not limited to Dusk Valley residents and businesses, but expanding across the Pacific Northwest.
I sat next to him, and he waited for me to speak, knowing I would eventually crack under the strain of the silence.
Finally, I said, “Not here,” and got up to head for the kitchen.
