“Who is dead?”

  Savannah blinked. She swiped across her phone and then turned the screen so he could see. “How about you explain this first?”

  A black and white image depicted a brick wall and pavement. Savannah pressed ‘play.’ Emergency Exit. The door opened, and a man pushed his way out. Dark jeans and a black hoodie. It was pulled up over the man’s head, obscuring the face in darkness. He turned and Tate saw the emblem on the back.

  He knew who it was.

  “That’s your sweater,” she said. “On you. Coming out of the office of Kenney Aggerton last night. Around the time he was murdered.”

  “Ed Summers’s uncle?” That guy had terrorized good people in this town.

  “Yeah.” She shot him a pointed look. “Your friend, Ed Summers.”

  Yeah, he’d kind of made it seem like that. “To the extent it served my purpose. Which wasn’t much.”

  “Didn’t seem like that. Not considering I saw you with him multiple times.”

  “A few weeks ago,” he reminded her. “When he was making Conroy and Mia’s lives a nightmare.”

  “So you were doing it for the good of your friends?”

  Tate said, “My work is my business. I don’t ask about your cases.”

  “Ah, so it was a job.” She swiped the screen of her phone.

  “Yeah, jot that down.”

  “And you were working last night, when you visited Aggerton right before he died?”

  Tate put his hands on the back of his neck, elbows out to the sides. He wasn’t about to repeat himself. And he hadn’t lied.

  “How’d he die?” If she told him, he might be able to use the information to prove it wasn’t him.

  “Answer the question.” She stared him down like this was a contest. “Was your contact with Aggerton case related?”

  “You’re assuming that was me.” He motioned to the phone with one elbow. Her gaze strayed to his biceps, the outline of his muscle tight against the T-shirt he wore.

  She blew out a breath and looked at the ceiling.

  “My sweater was stolen from the backseat of my car recently.” He nearly smiled, mentally filing away that little glance at his arms. Watching her shift off her game was one of his favorite past times, more so when he was the one poking her off balance.

  Tate wasn’t going to lie to her. “Aggerton and I have had dealings before.”

  “So you knew him?”

  “In a business sense. It was mostly related to cases he had me work. Clients he wanted investigating, and information he wanted about people who worked for him. Or prospective employees.”

  “Anyone you can think of who might want him dead?”

  “Like me?” Tate shrugged. “I have no idea if anyone wanted him dead. Not like we were friends. It was an agreement between two people, a contract he signed and the money he paid me. Just business.”

  “What about an employee, former or prospective. Someone you dug up information on who might want payback?”

  He stood. “I can check my records. Let you know if I find anything. But the work I did for him was just basic background checks...looking for criminal history, pulling their credit.”

  “That’s it? We’re done here, and you’re dismissing me.”

  “I didn’t kill Aggerton.”

  Intellectually, he knew she wasn’t accusing him, and it wasn’t personal. That guy in the surveillance footage had been wearing his sweater, or at least owned the same one. Savannah was just doing her job. The one where she showed up only because of work, and only to fish for information.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Her phone buzzed. She glanced down, and then paled.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No.” She cleared her throat. “No. I have to go.” She practically sprinted for the door.

  Four

  Savannah entered the police station. “Where’s the chief?”

  The receptionist, Kaylee, looked up from her novel. “Out to lunch with Mia. You coming in?” When she nodded, Kaylee hit the buzzer.

  Savannah headed for her desk, where she dumped her things and sat. It was fine. Everything was fine.

  The adrenaline that had coursed through her body when she saw that notification on her phone was finally dissipating. The Google alert she’d set up—specific phrases pertinent to her past—had sent her a notification by email. It was letting her know someone had posted something that used those phrases. Usually it was just random stuff that didn’t actually relate specifically to her past. False alarms.

  For the first time in two years, the Google alert actually sent her something useful.

  Savannah bit the inside of her lips together. Everything is fine.

  “You okay?”

  Savannah yelped and spun in her chair. It was just Kaylee. “I’m fine. Thanks.” Her voice sounded breathy.

  The receptionist didn’t believe her. Not one bit. “Girl…”

  Savannah cut her off. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  Kaylee waltzed back to her counter stool, to the novel she had flipped face down. Beside her book were the remains of a chicken wrap.

  Across the other side of the room, Sergeant Basuto sat at his computer. If he was working, it was basically impossible to disturb him. The whole place would have to be on fire. Or under attack.

  Like it had been just weeks ago.

  She rubbed at her breastbone with the heel of her hand. Not a good memory, being hit point blank and thrown to the ground in the bathroom off the back hallway. A gunshot. The bruise had finally gone away two weeks ago.

  Mia, on the other hand, had been bitten by a poisoned dog, terrorized in the middle of the night, kidnapped, and then to cap it all off, suffered hearing loss from a close range gunshot. Savannah figured Mia had at least earned a lunch break with her boyfriend, who happened to be their boss. She’d seen and heard about worse impropriety during her time as a cop than Mia and Conroy’s eating together.

  Last Chance was a small town where everyone just had to know every little bit of detail about every little thing. Eventually she would get used to those small town ways of doing things.

  Eventually.

  She’d have to get used to it. There was no chance of going home, and she had no interest in leaving here only to settle somewhere else. Starting her life all over again. For the second time.

  Her mother had passed years ago. Her father…well, he didn’t even warrant another thought. It wasn’t like she would be making contact with him.

  Last Chance County was her home now. It would be forever—or until her safe place crumbled into dust and she had to run again.

  Her thoughts strayed back to her Google Alert and the news it brought. Kind of like a rubber band stretched so far there was nothing it could do but snap back.

  The district attorney in New Orleans had been killed. Gunned down in the street outside a restaurant. A tragedy. A senseless, meaningless murder.

  Except that she knew the reason. That was why she’d driven here to the office—because she had a pile of cases to work. She couldn’t access any information from her work computer. Not without someone noting it. Same for phone calls made from her work cell. If she went home, she would be tempted to drown in all the gory news and her mental state would go down like the DA did. Never to get back up again.

  Just work, don’t think about it.

  Savannah wasn’t in witness protection, but the way she lived wasn’t far from that life. And now the one person who knew everything she’d been before, and everything that had happened to her, was dead.

  Murdered.

  Not tortured for information. Just gunned down and killed.

  “You seriously don’t look all right.”

  Kaylee’s voice sailed over to her from where she was sitting. Savannah kept her head down and gritted her teeth, “I’m fine, Kaylee.”

  “Detective.”

  She looked up at the man who stood in front of her. “What do you want, Ted?”

  The younger man, barely mid-twenties, stood by her desk. He was their resident technological expert. Dark hair, shaved close on one side and hung like a curtain over his right eye. He flicked his head so it swung behind his ear, but immediately fell back where it had been before. “You should apologize to Kaylee. That wasn’t nice.”

  Savannah wanted to say something about his sensibilities. She bit those words back.

  Frustration and fear weren’t fuel for taking her powerlessness out on others. Her father had done that. And she’d sworn to herself. Sworn. She would never do that; she would never become him.

  Savannah shut her eyes, took a few long breaths and tried to quickly process the tragic death of someone she knew and cared about.

  “Did something happen?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. The kid might dress and act like no one should get close, but Savannah knew something about pain that resided under the surface. About not letting people get close. Self-preservation.

  “If it did—” She glanced at Kaylee. “—that wouldn’t be an excuse to take out my bad mood on you.” She looked back at Ted. “Either of you.”

  “Thanks, hon.” Kaylee gave her a small smile and then put away her book, lunch break over.

  “Don’t let me be a jerk, Kay.”

  She didn’t look over. “Don’t call me ‘Kay’.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Savannah smiled.

  Ted gave her a tiny nod.

  “Whatcha need, Ted?”

  He slid into Mia’s seat behind the desk that faced Savannah’s. It had been unoccupied until a few weeks ago.

  “Tired of solitary?”

  He always sat there when he had something she needed to go over with him. Or when he was bored of sitting alone in his closet-sized office.

  Ted tossed a flash drive over to her.

  She inserted it in the USB port. “What am I looking at?”

  “The contents of Kenny Aggerton’s files, photos, web search history, and video library.”

  The way he’d said that was telling. She glanced at him. “Yikes?”

  “Mega yikes.”

  She nodded. No one would want to sit by themselves after watching questionable footage. She also would’ve sought out a colleague or friend.

  “Jess isn’t on today?”

  The skin around his eyes shifted. It was an interesting tell, usually reserved for when he was irritated. Officer Ridgeman had recently lost her grandfather, the former chief. But that wasn’t what this was about. There was something he wasn’t saying.

  They were both the same age and single. They worked together, but Savannah had thought that maybe they should expand their relationship a bit. Not that she would meddle in their love lives. That would be weird. But she could see them together. That shouldn’t be a problem, since the chief was dating his lieutenant.

  So, what was bothering Ted?

  Savannah decided to put him out of his misery. “You should play poker. Or get into undercover work.” She interlocked her fingers, elbows to the desk. “Or undercover poker.”

  He flicked his hair back with his hand this time. It didn’t stay. “Sure. In all my free time.”

  “Recommendations on where to start with all this?” she asked. “Aside from just searching ‘Tate Hudson’ and going from there.”

  He almost smiled. She could see he wanted to. He said, “Not much in there about Tate, if anything. There is, however, a file I labeled ‘hate mail’ which is exactly what it sounds like.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You really think Tate is the one who did this?”

  Savannah shrugged. “Not really.” Before she could jump too far too fast, she stopped and thought about what she wanted to say. “It’s his sweater in the surveillance. Whoever it is, they were there around the time of the murder. Given we can’t see their face, it really could be someone else. Someone with the same sweater and the same build.”

  Ted made a face.

  “Yeah.”

  The fact was, Tate had been in the house with Ed Summers when she’d shown up to ask about a suspect—a very dangerous killer who’d come after Mia. Seeing him, of all people, walk out onto that porch with a known local criminal, a man they were trying to take down, had made quite the impression. And not a good one. She just couldn’t forget that. The sudden rush of surprise. Feeling like he’d duped them all, and she’d fallen for it. Suckered in because of her feelings for him.

  No. Whatever Tate had done, she was going to find the evidence. If he deserved prison, then she would do her job. It was that simple.

  Ted sat quietly. “There’s more on Aggerton.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “Poison in the whiskey bottle.”

  “He was stabbed.”

  “Aggerton was also being poisoned.”

  She felt her eyebrows rise. “We know that already?” She hadn’t heard that they’d gotten any of the lab results back.

  “I figured it out the moment I smelled it, though the lab will confirm. Someone put poison in his drink, just a small amount. Probably figured he would ingest it slowly, get sick, and then die.”

  “Wow. The smell?”

  He shrugged.

  “You’ve smelled poison before?”

  “Enough to recognize it under the regular whiskey musk. Don’t even know why I checked it, except that we were bagging everything for fingerprints. One of those glass containers, with the fancy stopper you know?”

  She nodded.

  “I figured I’d get a whiff of what the good stuff smells like.” He started to smile, then his eyes flared. “Don’t tell Dean about the whiskey. And don’t tell him about the poison.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t sure which he seemed to think was worse. “It didn’t affect you, right?”

  “No.” He coughed. “No way. Tell Dean that, too.”

  Sure, since he didn’t even know about the whiskey or the poison to begin with, she should also tell Ted’s brother he wasn’t affected by either. She looked at him cross eyed. That made perfect sense. His brother Dean was a former Navy SEAL and the unofficial local emergency medical tech. She’d gathered that he was overprotective of his younger sibling, but it sure seemed like this was more than that.

  Alcohol and poison. Why did the two things immediately raise red flags with Ted and why did he want to keep it from Dean?

  Savannah reined her thoughts back to the case. “Poison and a stabbing? What, was it taking too long?”

  “That, or he had multiple people after him.”

  “At least two,” she said. “One who tries to slowly poison him, the other who, in a rage, stabs him multiple times.”

  “Why a rage?” Ted tipped his head to the side.

  “A gun can kill a person easy enough,” she said. “You bring one to the meeting and pull the trigger. Bang, they’re dead. It’s done. With a knife you’ve got to know what you’re doing, or it’s just a hand, stabbing at them over and over and—”

  Ted swallowed. “I get it.”

  Savannah shrugged one shoulder. “People who want maximum carnage in order to get maximum satisfaction out of it? Aside from the obvious allure of an explosion, which is hard if you know nothing about bombs, a knife really is the best choice. Especially if you’re angry enough.”

  “Wow.” He didn’t exactly look impressed. More like ready to be sick.

  “Guess I’ll start with the hate mail.”

  He seemed pleased she made that choice. Savannah caught the edge of something. “You okay?”

  He pushed back the chair and stood, shoving that swatch of hair back. “Yep. Gotta get back to work.”

  Ted headed for the hallway that led to his office and the bathroom where she’d been shot. Savannah shuddered in her chair. She’d been wearing a vest that day but had gotten knocked unconscious from the force of the bullet slamming into her. Tate had been shot in the vest that same week, as had Conroy.

  It wasn’t like she was special. But, she’d thought that maybe it would gain them solidarity of some sort. Apparently not.

  She still had yet to go down that hall since the shooting. She only used the front door now.

  Halfway through her reading of the hate mail, Conroy and Mia headed back in. He shot her a two fingered wave, looking pretty happy with himself after their lunch date. Savannah stood up, done wading through the mire of hate mail for the time being. She grabbed her weapon in its holster from her top drawer and slid it onto her belt.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  Savannah said, “You’re clocking back in?”

  Mia narrowed her eyes. “I texted you. You said you didn’t want me to get you a sandwich to go.”

  “I didn’t.” Savannah pulled on her favorite red coat. She had a picture on her clean phone back at home. Her mother, wearing one that looked almost exactly like it. “We have work to do.”

  They didn’t say anything during their short walk out the building and into the station parking lot. Savannah drove.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To talk to the wife.” She typed the address onto her dash screen.

  Mia looked at the GPS, then said, “No. Freelander is always backed up this time of day. We should take Benton.” She canceled the directions. “I’ll tell you where to go.”

  Savannah turned where Mia directed her, keeping her frustration to herself.

  They found the house number. A two-story that looked at least three thousand square feet, even though Aggerton and his wife had no kids or pets to help fill the monstrosity.

  Savannah spotted the wife. “Well, look at that.”

  Standing in the driveway, Aggerton’s wife lifted a suitcase and shoved it into the back of a luxury SUV.

  “Making a run for it, probably.” Mia grasped the handle.

  Savannah got out, and together they walked up Mrs. Aggerton’s driveway. “Somewhere to be?”

  Bernice Aggerton yelped and spun around. She wore wide-leg, pink pants, a tent-like white blouse that draped over her, and enough gold to pay Savannah’s rent for six months. With four-inch platform heels, she split the difference between Savannah’s height and Mia’s.

  “Don’t got no time for no cops.”

  “Like I said.” Savannah planted a hand on her hip. “Somewhere to be?”