Page 19 of Risk Everything

That was fine. She didn’t really want to be face-to-face with Jared anyway. Not because she was afraid of him, but because she wasn’t sure she could stop herself from punching him in the jaw—and that would just make Stobbart giddy with all the harassment suits he could file. So she stayed behind Tanner.

Jared and Stobbart left without another word.

Tanner immediately turned around and yanked her to his chest. “Are you sure you’re all right? Did he hurt you?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Do you really think he doesn’t know where Marilyn is?”

“I don’t know. She’s not announcing where she is, but she’s not hiding it either. Jared is smart. It’s a good way of professing his innocence without overtly drawing attention to it. But it’s possible he doesn’t know, I guess.”

“What exactly is going on here?” Parnam asked, studying them.

Bree pulled away and they both turned back to Parnam. “Nothing has changed,” Tanner said. “We’re still trying to make sure Jared Ellis is not able to get anywhere near his wife, whom he assaulted bad enough to put into the hospital a few months ago.”

Parnam nodded, then looked at Bree. “But you know his wife? I thought you worked for Grand County?”

“She’s an independent contractor,” Tanner said. Bree just nodded.

Parnam raised an eyebrow. “Fine. I don’t want to get caught in the middle of anything. Somebody my age can’t be trying to look for a new job in this economy.”

Tanner nodded. “You’re not going to get caught in the middle of anything. Bree is definitely a computer expert. If there’s any chance Jared Ellis is manipulating his tracking monitor, she’s going to find it.”

“He’s not,” she said.

Tanner looked at her, lips in a thin line. “You’re sure? You were able to check everything you needed to? They didn’t stop you by showing up?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “They actually helped by showing up. I’m not an electronics expert, but I was able to figure out the workings of the anklet pretty easily. It’s transmitting exactly the way it’s supposed to. All backup systems and GPS tracking are online and calibrated correctly. It wasn’t Jared who started the fire.”

Tanner let out a low curse. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”

“Trust me, I wanted it to be him. I tried damn near everything I could think of. If he’s manipulating that monitoring system, he’s smarter than me.”

Tanner turned to her and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Then he’s not manipulating the system. Because he’s definitely not smarter than you.”

“If Jared isn’t behind the fire, then who is?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out.”

Chapter Eight

The image of Jared Ellis’s hands on Bree was enough to send fire through Tanner’s gut all the way back to Risk Peak. It had taken every ounce of control he possessed not to punch Ellis in the face, damn the consequences.

But that would’ve been a mistake that might have gotten the entire trial thrown out and made Jared a free man. Oscar Stobbart would’ve liked nothing better.

Bree was quiet on the way home. At first, he’d been worried that she’d been hurt and wasn’t telling anyone, but she’d assured him that wasn’t it, in a tight, almost distant voice. Bree wasn’t a cranky or irritable person. If she was short with him, it was because that brilliant mind of hers was focusing intently on something else.

Most people could multitask, or at least hold a conversation with other people while thinking about something else. Not Bree. When she was focused on something, inconsequential things—like talking to people—got lost for her.

So while she was still trying to figure out how Jared might circumvent the monitoring system, Tanner knew better than to interrupt her thought process.

“I don’t know how he could’ve done it,” she finally whispered as they pulled up to the New Journeys building. “He might have paid someone else to start the fire, but I don’t think there’s any way he did it himself. I’m sorry.”

Tanner reached over and cupped her cheek. “Don’t be sorry. Eliminating a suspect is also helpful. It means we don’t waste our time looking in that direction anymore.”

“If he or anyone else tries to hack the ankle monitor, I’ve put stopgaps in place to notify me. Unless he’s got someone smarter than me, there’s no way he’s going to get to Marilyn without us knowing.”

He kissed her. “He doesn’t have anyone smarter than you. I’m sure of it. So now we focus on finding who started the fire if it wasn’t Jared.”

He left her at New Journeys and spent the rest of the day attempting to do that and not getting very far. He and Ronnie were back to looking into the significant others of the residents of New Journeys and scouring over the fire inspector’s report. Neither the timing mechanism nor the detonator matched any particulars of the fire department’s list of known arsonists, so that was a dead end too.