Page 103 of Cole

They dispersed slowly, and I watched them go. I didn’t want to go back to my dorm to worry alone. I needed to be here to hear what was happening.

“Does he have legal representation?” I asked Gage.

Gage nodded. “One of our old-timers’ daughters is a criminal defense attorney. She’s already at the station.”

“Good. So, now all we have to do is make her job easy. We have two options. Find Cole an alibi, which sounds unlikely…” I trailed off.

“Or?”

“Figure out who really killed Grant Elwick, and why.”

thirty-five

ISABELLE

Hours later, as dawn stained the horizon, I was back at The Clutch, exhausted and just as empty-handed as before. I’d picked my laptop up and stopped by the hospital, the cab company, and the police station. I couldn’t get any information about Cole, unsurprisingly. They wouldn’t even confirm he was there.

I also couldn’t get any information on Grant. The guy had lived some of the time in New York. He also had a country house outside Hade Harbor, somewhere remote. He was hard to pin down.

And now, he was dead.

I still couldn’t reconcile that idea. It sounded absurd.

I let myself into Cole’s office, with Gage’s blessing, and sat in his chair.

“She’s the Pres’ old lady. She can go wherever she wants.”

After years of having no kind of power whatsoever, it was weird as hell to be respected by anyone, never mind a whole MC of tough-as-nail bikers. Apparently, I was even trusted in Cole’s office, alone. Just being in here reminded me of the night we’d first crossed the line together. Not that much time had passed, and yet, it felt like a lifetime.

I looked over his neat piles of papers. He was so organized, but then, I already knew that. His cabin was neat and tidy. Everything had its place. He was quite the businessman, I’d gathered. You’d have to be to keep so many things running seamlessly. His real estate investments, the bar, the auto shop.

I picked up an invoice sitting on top of his inbox. Who would take all of this over?

No one. He’s getting out. He’ll be out soon, I told myself firmly.

I closed my eyes against the sudden flood of panic I felt about him being in jail. I had to focus. All day, I’d just been reacting, rushing from one thing to another. I hadn’t taken time to be still and use my brain.

I had to think about what I knew for sure. Someone had leaked that article, intending to frame me, or expose the MC, or maybe both. That person had insider knowledge.

Cole was aware that someone had tried to disrupt his business last week. A mole in the MC. Were they involved in this?

And then there was Grant. Did he have enemies? What if his murder was totally unrelated? A memory nagged at me, half forgotten. Hade Harbor Main Street and running into Grant weeks ago. He’d been shifty somehow, coming out of an alley, followed after a moment by a guy in a Harbor Hounds cut.

I opened my eyes and blinked. Had Grant known the mole? Whose voice had that been on the recording? I opened my laptop and clicked over to the recording app. I’d already checked it. There had been a few more recordings picked up, but nothing where the mole plotted to frame Cole for murder, so probably nothing helpful.

Regardless, I listened again. The latest ones were from yesterday. They were odd ones. One seemed to be the muffled sound of someone shouting, followed by the sound of the door opening and closing. It was really short. Then there was another short one a few hours later. Again, a muffled voice, and a knock, then the door. That one was long. A low murmur of background voices kept the recording alive, but clearly wasn’t going on in the same room, given how faraway they sounded. I clicked around in it but didn’t hear any voices. I pressed play, determined to listen to the entire recording.

The recording was grainy, the silence punctuated with a slight rustle now and again. What could it be? I already knew that the device was lost somewhere in the bedroom behind the bar. A low mutter seemed to keep it recording just when it might have stopped.

I sat up straighter when the sound of the door opening came again.

“Cole?” A voice, young and soft, followed by the sound of the door closing.

I checked the time stamp of the recording. It was right in the unaccounted-for zone in the afternoon. Whose voice had that been? Finn’s. It had to be Finn’s.

I hurried out of the office and bumped into Maddox. Neither of Cole’s best friends had left the place since he was arrested.

“I need to speak to Finn. Can you get him down here?” I asked him.