Page 3 of Maverick Detective Dad
Yes, because leaving a box with the victim’s bloody clothes was definitely contact. But why? And why draw her into it since she had no involvement whatsoever in Noah’s investigation?
She watched Grayson as he used his phone to take pictures of the box on her porch. Meanwhile, Everly tested out the dead woman’s name by repeating it aloud to see if it spurred any connections. It didn’t.
“So, what does Jill Ritter’s murder have to do with someone sending me a bloody box?” she pressed.
“That’s what I’m here to find out. I haven’t had the case long, and I need to learn everything I can about her and what’s going on.” He opened his mouth but stopped when a van turned into her driveway. “Bomb squad,” Noah explained.
Three men hurried out of the vehicle. Emphasis onhurried. One of them headed toward Grayson while another began to take out equipment. The third pulled on a blast suit made of heavy body armor. Obviously, he was assuming the worst, that they were dealing with explosives.
Again, Everly tried to rein in her too-fast breathing and heartbeat. Tried to rein in her fear as well, and while she watched the bomb squad spring into action, she tried to focus on the murdered woman, Jill Ritter. If the box on her porch had a connection to Jill, then there was likely also a connection to her. One that involved Noah and perhaps some past legal case.
Everly had most of her work files stored in a secure online account, and while she volleyed glances at the bomb squad, she used her phone to log into it. There was a search function so she typed in the woman’s name. And came up with nothing.
“Did Jill Ritter use any aliases in the past six years?” she asked.
“Not that I’ve found. She had a brother, a couple of exes and two kids who are now teenagers.” Noah rattled off those names, one by one, and Everly searched for each of them.
Still nothing.
She was about to ask for the names of anyone associated with the woman’s criminal past, but she stopped when the now fully armored bomb squad member approached her porch. He had a shield in one hand and a small device in the other.
“He’s got a portable scanner,” Noah said with his gaze fixed on the man. “It’ll x-ray the contents of the box to see if it’s safe.”
Grayson and the other two members of the squad moved back behind some shields while the one lumbered his way up the porch steps. Once he reached the box, he moved the scanner over it while he peered at the screen. Everly was too far away to see exactly what was on that screen, but several moments later the man gave a nod before he stepped back.
“All clear,” he shouted.
Everly automatically moved closer to the cruiser window, waiting to hear what was inside the box, but the man didn’t say anything about that. Instead, he lowered his shield and stepped aside when his comrades and Grayson moved in, going onto the porch with him. Since the four were now huddled around the box, Everly couldn’t tell what they were doing.
Shaking her head in frustration, she reached to open the cruiser door, but Noah put his hand over hers to stop her. “Wait,” he insisted, and the glance he made around the yard reminded her that while the box might be all clear, their surroundings might not be.
She looked down at Noah’s hand that was still over hers and silently cursed that his mere touch could trigger so many memories. Both really good ones, and really bad ones, too.
While he locked his gaze on hers, he drew back his hand. No cop’s poker face for him now, and in that instant she knew that she wasn’t the only one in a battle to forget they’d once ever been involved. But it was only for an instant before Noah pulled it all back in.
When she caught some movement from the corner of her eye, Everly’s attention snapped back to the window, and she saw Grayson approaching. He opened the door a couple of inches and peered in at them.
“No bloody clothing,” he said, looking at Noah. “There’s only an envelope. I’m leaving it in place so the CSIs can photograph it and process it. They’re on their way.”
“An envelope?” Everly questioned.
Grayson nodded and turned his phone so she could see the screen. “I took a picture of it. I don’t know if there’s anything inside the envelope, but there was a message handwritten on the outside.”
There was something in his tone, in his eyes, that had Everly bracing herself for the worst. Good thing, too, because she soon discovered that some bracing was definitely needed.
She saw the photo of the envelope. Saw the smears of blood on it. And the message that tightened every single muscle in her chest.
Everly, you’re next.
Chapter Two
Noah got two bottles of water from the break room vending machine and headed back toward Grayson’s office where Everly was waiting. Too bad he couldn’t give her a shot of something stronger, something to settle her almost certainly jangled nerves, but he doubted that settled nerves would happen for her anytime soon.
Everly, you’re next.
Considering that was almost certainly a threat from a killer, unsettled nerves were the least of her worries. Noah was hoping he could do something to help with that, which meant going back over all the details of Jill’s murder to see how, when and where it intersected with a Silver Creek lawyer.
Of course, Everly wasn’t just a lawyer, wasn’t just from Silver Creek. She’d been his high school girlfriend, and he needed to figure out if that played into this. It was possible someone wanted to use her to get back at him in some way, though he couldn’t imagine why they would have gone so far back into his past. He’d certainly been involved with other women since then. Plus, he had plenty of family and family connections.
