“That’s my candy,” a little pirate yelled.

  “Finders keepers,” the alien yelled back, trying to shove the candy in his pocket.

  The pirate reached out and tried to take the candy out of the alien’s hand. “You took it out of my bucket. That’s stealing. I’m going to tell my dad!”

  Rilynne stepped toward them to break it up, but just as she reached them, the alien pushed the pirate into the street.

  Everything seemed to happen almost in slow motion. The little boy struggled to stay on his feet as bright lights engulfed him. Rilynne heard the tires screeching as she reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the way just as the car passed.

  “Are you okay,” she asked, dropping down to her knees next to him. She looked him up and down quickly, searching for any sign of injury.

  “Harper!” Joe yelled, running up to them. He picked the little boy up and wrapped his arms tightly around him. “Are you all right? What were you doing in the street? You know that you’re not allowed to get off of the sidewalk.”

  “It’s not my fault, daddy. He did it!” He yelled, pointing at the alien who was now running down the sidewalk. “He stole my candy out of my bucket and when I tried to get it back from him he pushed me into the street.”

  Joe put his son down and pulled Rilynne in for a hug. “Thank you so much,” he said, releasing her from the tight embrace. “I don’t know what to say. You saved my son’s life.”

  “I was just in the right place at the right time,” she said.

  After checking his son out again, Joe led him back to their house.

  Rilynne could still feel the adrenaline pumping when she walked through her front door. She dumped all of her candy into a bucket and sat it on the porch outside her door, then retreated to her bedroom.

  She paced around her room a few times before her body started to relax again. After walking into the kitchen and pouring herself a large glass of wine, she headed for her closet and started pulling boxes open.

  “If I were a box of hangers, where would I be?” she mumbled as she looked around the large walk-in closet. “Ah,” she said a few moments later as she spotted the box in the back corner.

  By the time she finished the last of her glass, she had managed to throw three empty boxes out onto the bathroom floor. “Not too bad for an hours work,” she said as she pulled herself off of the floor.

  She grabbed the boxes that went in her drawers, and moved them to her bedroom. She quickly unpacking them into their designated drawers, before pulling out a pair of pajamas and slipped into them.

  After locking the house, she climbed into bed and buried her face deep in her pillows. Upon taking a deep breath, the strong scent of peaches overtook her, sending a wave of heat coursing through her body. She let out a soft moan and closed her eyes. It had been a very eventful day.

  Chapter Nine

  It was still dark outside when Rilynne hopped out of bed. After trying for nearly half an hour to convince herself that she was not really awake yet, she decided she might as well get up. She spent several minutes trying to remember if she had left some dress pants in her locker at the station, and after coming to the conclusion that she had, she slid on her shoes and decided to jog to work.

  The cool air tickled her nose, but she did not mind. In a way, it seemed to calm her. Perhaps it was because she always associated cold weather with her mother. Amber never missed a chance to take Rilynne out in the snow to have snowball fights or make snowmen when she was young. Those were some of the best memories that Rilynne had from her childhood.

  It was still a little before eight when she stepped back out of the station after changing and headed toward the diner across the street. She grabbed her breakfast to go and was crossing back toward the station when she ran into Matthews as he climbed out of his car.

  “Morning,” he said. “How was your Halloween last night?”

  “I just put out a bowl of candy and worked on my unpacking. I didn’t feel much like having to answer the door every few minutes all night.”

  He chuckled as he pulled the station door open. “I can’t blame you there. Katy loves to go all out. She decorates the entire yard and sits out on the porch handing out candy, while I get to stay inside and watch the game.”

  “Detective Evans,” the officer at the front desk called out as she walked past. “These were just dropped off for you.” She held up a bouquet of two-dozen red tulips. Before Rilynne could tell her that she must have made a mistake, Matthews reached out and grabbed the card.

  “So,” he looked like a giddy schoolgirl. “Who’s Joe?”

  She tried to pull the card out of his fingers, but he jerked it away and flipped it open. “I cannot thank you enough for last night,” he read aloud. Matthews face lit up with a naughty smile. He opened his mouth to make what was sure to be a playful jab, but Rilynne quickly cut him off.

  “He’s my neighbor. I pulled his son out of the path of a speeding car last night,” she said firmly. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, walking toward the elevator.

  “Oh shut up,” she said, grabbing the heavy vase and following him. “There’s no possibility of you just letting this go, is there?”

  He shook his head animatedly. “Not a chance. So this Joe, is he cute?” He raised his voice high to sound like a cheerful girl. She reached out and pushed him into the wall of the elevator.

  “So,” he said when they walked into the office. “Do you know when we should be getting the journal pages back from the lab?”

  “Ben didn’t say,” she said, setting the vase down next to her computer. “I don’t imagine it’s going to take very long. He knows how important they are.”

  Matthews leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk. “Wilcome told me that the beach house had been trashed beyond just a normal break in. How bad was it?”

  “There were holes knocked in the walls, and nearly every piece of furniture was destroyed beyond repair. Even the mattress in the bedroom was cut almost completely in two. I don’t think there’s going to be much that can be salvaged.”

  He groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’ll see if some of the guys can get together so we can go get it cleaned out for Jane. Has she been told about it yet?”

  “Not that I know of, but I don’t imagine that Wilcome will wait long,” she said. “And let me know when you plan on going out there. Believe it or not, I’m actually very skilled at hanging drywall.”

  He raised his eyebrow and smiled. “Actually, I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

  “My mom taught me,” she said proudly. “Actually with the exception of plumbing and electric, I can pretty much build a house. As long as I have help with the heavy lifting, of course.”

  Matthews was laughing when Wilcome walked in, Ben just behind him.

  “Were you able to pull any useful trace off of the pages?” she asked as she stood and leaned against her desk.

  “No, there wasn’t any trace found on them at all,” he trailed off as his eyes settled on the flowers sitting just behind her, then down to the card laying open on the desk just below them. “The, um…” he stammered as his knuckled dragged carelessly across his chin. “The pages are clear and ready for you to read them.” He handed them to Wilcome, his eyes still trained on the vase. “Excuse me,” he said, walking abruptly out of the room. Wilcome shifted his eyes from Ben to the flowers, then to Rilynne.

  All of the air left her lungs and she felt as though she had been punched hard in the stomach. She was about to go after him when Wilcome put his hand on her shoulder. His all-knowing eyes said that he understood but to let it go.

  “Let me know what you find off of these,” he said, handing her the pages.

  Matthews turned his chair around to face her desk as she sat down. “Okay, so what was the rest of that sentence? Tell me he listed names.” He sounded almost desperate.

  “Let’s see,” she said. She pulled out the journal, flipped it to the last page, and held up the loose pages. “The ring leaders have to be-” she read from the bottom of the last attached page before moving to the top of the torn out ones. “-choosing houses that are occupied just to build fear within the community. If they’re not stopped soon, I fear they‘ll evolve again and begin killing.” Matthews sighed as he rubbed his hands on his face.

  “There has to be something in there that’s worth something,” he said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of tearing them out. You keep reading while I go get us some coffee.”

  Rilynne looked down at her breakfast, which sat untouched. She still felt sick after Ben’s reaction to the flowers and the card that was sure to have given him the wrong idea, and she had lost the desire to eat it. She tossed it into the trash and picked up the pages, hoping they would take her mind off of her worries. She had just finished the last page when Matthews walked back in.

  “Ok,” she said, setting them down and taking the coffee out of his hand. “He said that he had managed to arrange a meeting with the men running the crew in an attempt get moved up to the second level. He also mentions a warehouse across town that he thought that they were delivering all of the stolen goods to right after the home invasions. If he was able to identify the top guys, and knew where the second level guys would be, he really was on the verge of blowing this whole thing open.”

  “Did he say if anything turned up at the warehouse?”

  “No,” she replied as she took a sip of her coffee. “His last entry was two days before he was killed. I’m guessing he hid the pages in case something went wrong with the meeting or when he checked out the warehouse. That way we would know where to start looking once we found them.”

  “Does it say when the meeting was scheduled?” he asked.

  Rilynne took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. “The day that he was killed.”

  He groaned loudly. “We should let his sergeant know about the warehouse so they can have it checked out. I don’t suppose he gave an address for it?” Rilynne shook her head. “He didn’t have any ideas about who the other players could be?”

  “No. Ben made a good point yesterday, though,” she said as she jumped out of her seat and walked into the conference room, Matthews right behind her. “With the account cleaned out twice, they wouldn’t have put someone in charge of making the deposits that they didn’t completely trust.”

  Matthews folded his arms and leaned against the table, waiting quietly for her to continue.

  “I think that we need to look into him closer,” she pointed to the picture on the board. “If they trusted him enough to handle all of the money, he has to have a significant connection to the them.”

  “It’s a place to start,” he said, pushing off of the wall. “I’ll pull up everything we know about him and all known associates.”

  Rilynne sat in the room for over an hour staring at the board before finally getting up. She walked out of the conference room, but instead of taking the seat at her desk, she decided to make a quick run to the diner across the street, having now decided that it was a bad idea to skip breakfast. With any luck, Matthews would be able to put names to the men running the show, and they could begin to track them down. If so, this would be her last chance for hours to be able to grab something to eat. After picking up lunch for both her and Matthews, she headed back into the office.

  “We may have something here,” Matthews said when she found him in the conference room. “James Peterson has two brothers, well, half-brothers. Neither of his brothers have a record, but I looked into their finances and found something interesting. They don’t appear to be employed, but both drive expensive cars and they share a house nicer than the one I own.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’ll be enough for a warrant,” she said as she tossed him his sandwich. “But we can put a tail on them. It’s about time for them to hit another house, so they’ll be meeting with the second level guys to set it up. If we can follow the trail, we could catch them in the act and use the second level guys to pin down the Peterson brothers.”

  “I’ll get it set up.” Rilynne couldn’t help but notice the optimistic look in his eye as he hurried toward the door.

  “Detective Evans?” A petite girl in a lab coat passed Matthews on his way out of the conference room. “I was asked to bring this to you. It’s the results from the DNA test that was run on the skin pulled from under Shane Villarreal’s fingernails.” She reached out almost nervously and handed Rilynne the report.

  “I haven’t seen you around here before,” Rilynne stated as she took the papers. “Are you new?”

  “My name’s Scarlett. I’m the new intern,” she said with what a thick-as-syrup accent. “I was at a conference that Mr. Davis spoke at last year, and when I heard that I would have the opportunity to work with him, I couldn’t pass it up. I want to learn from the best. Besides, he’s so…” she trailed off as if she knew she was saying too much. Rilynne couldn’t help but notice that her cheeks were slightly pinker than they had been seconds before. “But he asked me to deliver this to you personally. There was not a match found for the DNA in the system, but it was from a male. Is there anything else that you need?”

  “No, thank you.” Rilynne watched the girl scamper quickly out of the room, her blonde ponytail swinging side to side as she went. The fact that Ben had sent an intern to deliver the report only seemed to make her more discomforted. In the entire time she had worked with him, he had never allowed anyone to deliver the results for something he had been working on.

  “The skin under his nails was from a man,” she said to Matthews as she walked back into the office and dropped into her desk chair. “There’s no match in the criminal database, but we do have a good sample for comparison when we need it.”

  Matthews took a bite of his sandwich and motioned toward the door. “Who was that?”

  “That’s the new intern working in the lab,” she said almost snidely. “Ben sent her down to deliver the results.”

  He raised his eyebrow, looking puzzled. “Really? Ben doesn’t send anyone with his reports,” he said. “He usually likes to explain them himself. You know how he feels about some of the people working up there. And an intern?”

  Rilynne shrugged as she started at the tulips on her desk.

  “I’m sure he was just really busy,” Matthews said in what sounded to be an attempt to reassure her. “Everyone’s always more on edge when it’s a case involving one of our own. And with him handling all of the evidence himself, it doesn’t leave much time for making personal deliveries.”

  Rilynne just nodded as she finished her lunch. “She seems like an ambitious little intern,” she said. “She said that she took the job because she wanted to work with the best. Although, it could have also had something to do with the fact that she appears to be a little infatuated with Ben.”

  “Eh,” he said casually. “She’s too young for him. She looks what, twenty-one or twenty-two?”

  She smiled at his obvious attempt to put her at ease. “She is pretty cute, though.”

  “I guess.” He shrugged. “You know, if you like that peppy, innocent, school girl look. Personally, I like a girl with a gun who could take down a full-grown man if she needed to.”

  Rilynne let out a laugh, nearly choking on her sandwich. “Is Katy one of those girls?”

  “You better believe it!” he exclaimed. “Katy owns more guns than I do, and I when a thug tried to mug her last year, he ended up in the emergency room with two fractured ribs and a busted nose while she walked away with a single bruise on her arm.” He sat up straight in his chair, beaming with pride. “That’s my girl.”

  After dropping the wrapper for her sandwich in the trash, Rilynne sifted through the information Matthews had found on the Peterson brothers. “How long is it going to take before a tail can be put on the Peterson brothers?”

  “I spoke with Shane’s sergeant, and he said that they should be able to get it set up within the hour,” he replied.

  “Good,” she said, examining the pages. “We need to find out as much as we can about them, and see if we can find out who they’ve been working with. Do they have any family, other than the one brother?”

  Matthews dropped the rest of his lunch in the trash and reached for his keyboard. “No,” he answered a few minutes later. “Both parents are deceased, and it doesn’t look like they have any other family in the area.”

  “Did they grow up here?” she asked.

  “Yes. They were both born here, and it looks like they stayed until at least after high school.”

  “Maybe someone they went to school with will be able to tell us something about them,” she thought aloud. “Or perhaps a teacher. It has only been what, three years since the younger of the two graduated. It could be worth looking into.”

  Matthews stood up. “I know the principle there. She should be able to tell us if they were particularly close with any of the staff. Skinner,” he called out across the room. “Can you and Jerkins look into the finances of these two men? See if they have any property other than the house, as well as any unusual purchases they’ve made that would be considered beyond their means.”

  *

  Addison Valley High School was located in the center of town. Despite having ventured to most parts of Addison Valley, this was the first time that she had seen the school. It was large, looking more like a small university than the high schools she was used to seeing.

  “There was a fire three years ago, and the entire school had to be rebuilt,” Matthews said after she let out an involuntary ‘wow’. “Luckily it happened over the summer when the school was for the most part empty. Some kids thought it would be fun to sneak in, and someone left some candles burning in the auditorium. After the curtain caught fire, it spread pretty fast from there. By the time the kids got out and called for help, nearly half of the building was ablaze.”

  The principle, Linsy Carnes, was waiting for them when they walked into the office. “Todd, it’s so great to see you. It’s been far too long,” she said as she embraced him warmly. “How’s Katy doing?”