“You’re bad,” Brooks said. “But I love it.”

  “Hey, she insulted me more than once, then insulted you and your parents to my face,” Ivy said.

  “I know,” Brooks said. “I was standing right there.”

  Dahlia rolled her eyes. She’d heard the story there of what Gretchen had done, not realizing who Brooks was even though she was talking to Ivy about the Scarsdales as if they were close friends.

  “What did you tell her?” she asked Jasmine.

  “Not much. I got her to pay full price, thinking she’d get something juicy, then just said that yes, you had a boyfriend we’d all met and he was nice.”

  Dahlia laughed. “That had to kill her to not find out his name. She’d do a search on him for sure. I bet it’d come up who you are, right?”

  “Most likely,” he said.

  “Then she’d say she knew you,” Ivy said.

  “At least Gretchen doesn’t know anything else. Not how we met.”

  “Who cares anymore,” Jasmine said. “It’s in the past.”

  “Any news on that, Hugh?” Brooks asked.

  “No. I’m not really in the loop at this point. It’s not my case, just things we do when we are called in to check into information in our jurisdiction.”

  “You seriously haven’t reached out?” Dahlia asked.

  “Not recently,” he said. “I did earlier on, but you’re cleared and it takes time to build a case. Not everything works fast.”

  She nodded her head.

  “Some things work fast,” Ivy said. “Like my sisters getting knocked up.”

  “Not funny,” Dahlia said.

  “Yes,” Hugh said. “Yes, it was. Looks like it worked out for Jasmine. Why can’t it for you?”

  There was silence at the table to that statement, but the smile never left Hugh’s face.

  39

  THE RIGHT THING

  Hugh should have never said that things moved slowly and there wasn’t much to report on Shawn’s case when three days later he got a message when he was in the field to call the Chicago office and felt like he’d jinxed something.

  Here they’d had a great time at her coworker’s wedding. Dahlia enjoyed herself with her family and he got to hold her in his arms on the dance floor.

  There were maybe sixty people at the wedding if that. Heather didn’t have a large family, and Luke none at all, so the bulk of the attendees were coworkers.

  He remembered his wedding to Keri.

  It was an over-the-top bash that her father spared no expense on.

  The big princess gown with enough sparkles to light up a city. The six bridesmaids to his three groomsmen.

  He didn’t have a lot of close friends and those three in the wedding were people he’d met through Keri.

  Not even the guys he talked to anymore.

  He didn’t think they’d taken sides in the divorce. He’d spent enough time with some of Keri’s friends’ spouses to know many thought their wives were just as superficial as his. The difference was, he never voiced his opinion on it.

  He never would either.

  He sat at his desk and placed the call to the Chicago branch and his contact there.

  “Hugh,” Special Agent Cody French said. “Glad you could get back to me so quickly.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Shawn Stratton wants to make a plea deal.”

  “How is that possible?” he asked. “Does he have information on a bigger target? We know his sister was in on it. She was the one that was supposed to get the file rather than Dahlia.”

  “Well,” Cody said, “he’s changing his tune and insinuating that Dahlia was helping to set him up. That she could have put the file on her own computer even though we’ve told him we’ve got proof it was sent from his computer. Maybe she embedded it in a picture when they were together and asked him to send it. He is still claiming he never broke into her place.” He was casting all sorts of doubts on things but firmly stating he’d never been in Mystic.

  “Fuck no,” Hugh said. “He’s not going down that path. I cleared her. You cleared her. More than just us two. She was cleared before you even called me to ask her questions, and you know it. There is no way she’d do that. And why would she just pick a random picture and let it sit there for a year? It makes no sense.”

  “It doesn’t,” Cody said. “But we have to follow everything, you know that.”

  It was the last thing he wanted to deal with but had to be honest. “You do know I’ve got a personal relationship with Dahlia, correct?”

  “I do,” Cody said. “Which is why I’m doing this courtesy call now before it goes any further. Anything she can give us to stop this or use against him, we’d like to have that leverage.”

  “You saw what was on the file. It was account numbers for investments and bank accounts in multiple locations. Where he was moving money around. Dahlia said he was always working on and looking at investments and you admitted that he handled that for those clients.”

  “That’s right,” Cody said. “He was using their money to try to make his own money. That is what we’ve been able to figure out. He finally admitted to that. He’d gamble on a short trade, make his money, move that into his account and then invest his clients’ money. But he’s claiming he didn’t make a lot and he’s hinting most of it came from someone else. The thing is, most of the transactions, the big ones, were before she moved.”

  He ground his teeth. He’d noticed that too, but in his mind, he just figured in the past few years Shawn was using more of his own money. Or maybe he was worried he’d get caught with the personnel changes at his job as Dahlia had said Shawn was questioning her on Bob.

  “He’d been doing that long before he met Dahlia,” he said. “You’ve got the timeline and multiple witnesses as to the start and end of their relationship.”

  “That’s right,” Cody said. “But I don’t want this guy to say she became embedded in it as deeply as him because he wants to give names to lessen his sentence.”

  “I’ll go talk to her now. I’ll bring Grant with me to question her. I’ll make sure her attorney is with her. I’m not sure what I can get you. Do you think he’s really going to try to say she was part of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Cody said. “I’m hearing whispers. And those whispers are going back to the file being sent to her and on her computer. They are putting doubt out there and that is one thing lawyers just love.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

  He hung the phone up and went over to see if Grant was around. He wasn’t so he sent him a text and was told he’d be returning in two hours.

  The next call was to Dahlia. He hated doing this. He didn’t need her worked up or concerned over this.

  “Hello,” she said. “You never call me. What is wrong?”

  “I just got off the phone with the Chicago office. We need to ask you a few more questions. Grant is going to do it, but I’ll be there. For obvious reasons it can’t be me. I need you to call Thomas and see if he’s available.”

  “Why?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t say,” he said. He turned to see Mitch standing there. He’d emailed his superior what he was doing and Mitch was quick to come out and stand witness to the call.

  “Can’t or won’t?” she asked.

  “I can’t. It’s better for the chain of command that I not get involved. Just get Thomas and let us know when. Dahlia, I’m not going to let anything happen. You know that, right?”

  He could tell by her breathing she was nervous. Probably upset too. “I know.”

  “Call me when Thomas can meet,” he said and hung up.

  “That was hard,” Mitch said. “But you know the right thing to do.”

  “I do,” he said. “She’s not part of this.”

  “You believe that, so do I.”

  “I know it,” he said. “It has nothing to do with believing it. We’ve done a thorough search of her finances.”

  He’d never told Dahlia that. Not to the extent of what they’d looked for.

  But the truth was, they did a search of Shawn’s too and didn’t find what they were looking for until they got the file off of Dahlia’s computer.

  No, that wasn’t right. There were clues to Shawn’s activities. Though he was hiding most of the money, there was enough money moving at times in his own accounts that raised suspicion. Not enough for flags unless someone was doing a deep dive.

  Nothing at all came up in Dahlia’s history other than some conservative investments.

  “Which doesn’t mean anything,” Mitch said. “She has family out of the country. We don’t know if she’d ever wired them money. Has she ever commented on it?”

  “No,” he said. “But if you saw her parents and how they live, there is no way they are hoarding money. I’m sure they’ve got a nest egg but not millions that are flowing in large quantities.”

  “It wasn’t all large quantities,” Mitch said.

  He knew that. A lot of the money moved around was under ten thousand. Not enough to raise too many eyebrows, it’s just it was starting to happen too frequently.

  Then once a quarter larger amounts. In Shawn’s account it was the money he made from the investments he was doing in his name with his client’s money. His explanation was that it was faster to do it that way. Or he was holding onto it for the right time to get in.

  His employers were quick to say that was a fireable offense and no one in their right mind used that logic.

  To him, it was Shawn getting cocky and greedy and thinking that he’d never get caught.

  Not that Dahlia would ever do anything like this, but she wasn’t cocky, she wasn’t greedy and she sure the hell wasn’t sloppy.

  “Do I need to remove myself from this?” he asked.

  “I know it’s the last thing you want to do. But right now, she’s not being accused of anything. They are asking you to see if there is anything else she can provide.”

  “Something is telling me this guy is looking to bring anyone down with him that he can,” he said.

  “And it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mitch said.

  It took four hours for them to all meet at Thomas’s office. He hated that he couldn’t see or talk to Dahlia before that. She’d texted him twice and he ignored them. It was for the best to make sure they could have nothing thrown out in court.

  “My client has willingly made herself available for questioning again,” Thomas said. “What is this about?”

  Hugh looked at Grant who had been brought in months ago on the case should this happen. No one expected that it would.

  “There are whispers that Shawn is looking for a plea deal. In order for him to ask that, he has to give us something. Something big.”

  “Okay,” Dahlia said. “I’m not sure what that has to do with me.”

  “Do they believe he is going to give some kind of false information on Dahlia?” Thomas asked. Thomas knew right away where this was going.

  Dahlia snapped her head to look at Hugh and he reached for her hand to hold it.

  “It could happen,” Grant said. “We don’t know.”

  “You cleared me though,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to hide. You said you looked into my finances. I’ve given you everything.”

  “Devil’s advocate could say you gave them what you wanted them to see,” Thomas said. “The same reason why they couldn’t find Shawn’s investment trail and transactions until they found that file on your computer.”

  “I didn’t even know it was there,” she argued.

  “We know,” Grant said. Grant moved his laptop over. “Is there anything you think could jar any memory or action? Any trip he’d taken while you were together? Any comments he made to you that seemed off? Sometimes looking at pictures of his place might help.”

  She pulled the laptop closer with the pictures up and just started to scan them closely. “I don’t know. We never did much. He never had any money. I told you that. I paid for most things.”

  “Which he might use if he decides to see if he can get you implicated,” Grant said.

  “I paid for dinners and the movies,” she said. “Not trips. This is crazy.”

  Hugh wanted to say something, anything, but he knew he shouldn’t.

  “Keep looking at the pictures,” Thomas said. “Is there anything you see that might bring up a memory of something? You’re good at details. Focus on them. Not the whole picture, zoom in and look around.”

  That was what he wanted to say but hadn’t.

  Dahlia started to do that and by the fifth picture, she gasped.

  “What?” he asked.

  Grant tapped the table in front of him to not talk. He wanted to tell the younger agent to shut the fuck up but knew not to.

  “What do you see?” Grant asked.

  “Right there on the dresser. That necklace. It’s a woman’s necklace. I didn’t wear a lot of jewelry. He always complained it got in the way and he didn’t care for it on women. I assumed it’s because he was too cheap to ever buy any. I just can’t get a good enough look at it.”

  “Why is it important?” Thomas asked.

  “Because you’re looking for some kind of proof that he’s lying. What if that is something he took from our apartment? Someone broke in and he claims it’s not him, but it doesn’t fit. Brooks said it never did. All these things never added up from the break-in. I don’t know. Maybe I’m grasping, but there wasn’t jewelry in his place when we dated, let alone just sitting on a dresser like that. That’s odd and that is what you told me to look for.”

  “Rose might be able to see if it’s one of her pieces,” Thomas said. “That might help, but it’s so far away and now looks blurry when you zoom in.”

  “They seized everything in his apartment,” Grant said. “Then they took pictures for evidence. A lot of things were released to him, but my guess is there has to be another picture somewhere.”

  “Call and ask for it,” Hugh said to Grant. “Right now. See if they can find it and send it.”

  Grant pulled his phone out, got Cody on the phone and explained what they were looking for. He said he’d get back to him if they found anything.

  “I just don’t see anything else,” she said. “Why won’t this end? I didn’t do anything.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “No one thinks you did.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Then why am I here being treated like a criminal?”

  40

  NOT LETTING HER GO

  Dahlia now understood what Hugh meant about nightmares never leaving you.

  That was exactly what was happening right now.

  Years from now this was going to haunt her like a memory from childhood. One that she couldn’t laugh about no matter how much she tried though.

  “You’re not being treated that way,” Thomas said. “Right?”

  “No,” Grant said. “You’ve cooperated with us from the start and still are.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way,” she said. “It’s like I told Hugh the first time I met him. I can’t prove my innocence as easily as you are trying to prove my guilt.”

  She didn’t know what else she could say or do for them to believe her.

  She knew Hugh believed her. She was positive Thomas did and probably even Grant.

  But they were only doing their job.

  This wasn’t like one act of a crime and she had an alibi. This was over years and though it began before she even knew Shawn, her relationship with him, added to her knowledge and career, made her a suspect. Unless he admitted she had nothing to do with it, it might never make a difference.

  “We are being told to just look for anything to strengthen their case,” Grant said. “No one wants him to walk, but too many times these things happen.”

  “Yeah. The victims never get remembered,” she said. “That money that he embezzled, or used for his own gain, everyone thinks because no one got hurt physically it doesn’t make a difference. They don’t think about the business owners and all their hard work. Or the employees who might lose their jobs because of his actions. How about me and what I’ve had to go through? Or my sister when our house was broken into, if this is related and I know you all think it is. Nothing is a victimless crime.”

  “No,” Thomas said. “It’s not. And maybe that is something we need to look at. You can sue for defamation if he tries to pull you into this.”

  She was shaking her head. “What good does that do anyone? I’m not out for money. It’s not about money. The damage is done.” She stood. “I’m going to get sick.”

  She went to run out and Hugh stood up. She heard Grant tell him to stay and Hugh’s loud deep voice say, “Fuck that. She’s not a suspect and you know it. I’m not letting her go.”

  She was in the bathroom with the door swinging shut as she barely made it to the toilet and started to vomit up her lunch.

  Hugh was next to her holding her hair. What man did that? Not many.

  She was crying by time she got to the dry heaves. Then she stood up and turned. Hugh, having let go of her hair, was wetting a paper towel to hand her.

  She wiped her mouth and face and then put it on her neck to cool off.

  “You shouldn’t be in here with me without a witness.”

  “Dahlia. I’m not letting you be alone. Didn’t you just hear me shout that to the whole office?”

  “I’m pretty sure the building next door heard it,” she said.

  She turned the faucet on and cupped her hands to fill with water and drink. All she did was swish her mouth out and spit.

  “That’s right. And I’ll say it again.”

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble with your job. Or jeopardize this case. I don’t want that more than anything.”

  “At this moment, I only care about you,” he said.

  He had her in his arms. It occurred to her that the whole time Hugh was with Keri he was accused by his ex of putting his job first.