“I’m doing more than questioning it.”She met his eyes with a directness that made his chest go tight.“I’m going to find every piece of evidence in that office.And I’m going to bring it to you.”
He held her gaze.“Bonnie.This is a dangerous idea.If Lucas suspects?—”
“Lucas doesn’t suspect anything.He thinks I’m his loyal lapdog.He’s convinced I shredded those documents.”She added, “I shredded a bunch of blank copier paper instead of the stuff in the envelope.He heard the shredder with his own ears.Trust me.He thinks he’s in the clear.”
She stared at him in determination.He stared back in doubt.
Eventually, he said, “Okay.Partners?”
She exhaled.It was the sound of a woman who had been holding her breath for a very long time.
“Partners,” she agreed.
They spent the next hour building a plan.
Gray laid out everything he and Cooper still needed.The insurance report was the priority.It would document what the insurance company’s independent fire investigator had found and what he’d reported to his bosses.It would make for an interesting comparison with what the state fire investigator Lex Jansick had seen and reported.Cooper hoped it would show what Jansick had been paid to leave out, assuming Jansick was the recipient of the set of emails from Lucas after the fire.
Beyond that, they needed any correspondence between Lucas and the county building inspector that they suspected of having been paid off.Gray ticked off a list of other documents: property records, financial statements, anything that would help build a timeline of the barn’s construction and the inspection process.
Bonnie took notes in a spiral notebook she’d brought with her.Gray privately wondered if her kids had picked up the habit of making notes from her or the other way around.Either way, it was a fun family tradition.
She numbered each item the way she numbered everything because even in the midst of her world collapsing, Bonnie was going to be organized about it.
He watched her write and felt a surge of admiration so fierce it surprised him.
This woman had just learned her boss had likely murdered her husband.That the job she’d relied on for four years was part of the cover-up.That the gratitude she’d felt every day since the fire had been cultivated and exploited.That her loyalty—the thing she’d clung to hardest, the penance she’d performed for a guilt she carried in secret—had been used as the final layer of a murderer’s insurance.
And here she was, making a numbered list of evidence to find.
He didn’t know how to tell her what he saw when he looked at her.He wasn’t good with words that involved feelings.But what he saw in Bonnie’s face right now was courage.The quiet, unglamorous kind.The kind that showed up with a spiral notebook and a plan because falling apart wasn’t an option when you had two kids and a town to run.
“One more thing,” he said.
She looked up from her notes.“What?”
“None of this can change how you behave at work.You can’t tip him off.If you suddenly start acting differently—nervous, distracted, cold toward him—he may notice.”
She snorted.“Lucas is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid.He would notice in a heartbeat.”
“Can you do it?”he asked.“Sit across from him every day, knowing what you know, and not let it show?”
“I’ve been sitting across from people and not letting things show for four years,” she said.“I’m very good at it.”
There it was again.An oblique reference to the Brent secret.And again, he let it go.She would tell him when she was ready.He was a patient man.
“You should go back to the office,” he said.“Before your lunch break runs long enough for anyone to notice.”
She stood and slid the notebook into her bag.Zipped her coat.Paused at the doorway.
“Gray?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for showing me the truth.Even though it was terrible.Thank you for not trying to protect me from it.”
He met her gaze and held it.“You deserve the truth.You’ve always deserved it.”
She held his gaze for a beat longer.Then she turned and walked through the engine bay, her footsteps echoing off the clean concrete floor he’d swept and scrubbed and polished because finishing things and maintaining things was the opposite of what his father had done.
