Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“But Agent Moses told her she was confused.” Macy rolls her eyes. “Since there was GHB in her system, the lead field agent of his unit agreed with him.”
My back molars are already being gnawed to nubs, but they’re wholly obliterated when Grayson confesses, “We tried to put her back in a handful of times to see if she could identify him again, but we never got close.”
“We?” I ask, sure as fuck not letting him pin any of this shit on me.
Henley is a victim. She should have never been a part of the operation to secure the man who murdered her mother.
“The bureau,” Grayson answers, like he can’t spot my fisted hands and tight jaw. “When Agent Moses’s erroneous mistakes were unearthed, I had Henley transferred to our division.”
“She was only meant to be placed into witness protection,” Macy assures me. “But when details emerged of a similar sanction to the one Beau operates in Miami forming here—”
“You asked her to go under again?” I interrupt.
“Not me,” Macy fires back, as disgusted as I am at the possibility of Henley being so poorly mishandled. “I told them it was a bad idea, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”
“For just reasons,” Marshal Levalley mutters, angering her more. “But enough of the small talk. I’m not here for he said she said.” He shifts his eyes to me. They’re as murky as the blood circulating in my veins. “Either give up her location or take the fall for her murders.”
I laugh at his belief Henley is capable of murder.
He nips it in the bud quick smart. “Whoever removed all traces of your involvement digitally forgot that DNA is the slam dunk of every case.” He slaps down a photo of a boot imprint bruise on the chest of one of the victims before a soil sample report. “Soil-borne pathogenic organisms are distinct in this region. It isn’t hard to pinpoint where you’ve been. Then there’s this.” A second report. This time, it is the DNA results for a nail scraping. “Your boot, her blood.”
“My alleged boot imprint, and an alleged DNA sample for an unidentified female.” I eat my words when Marshal Levalley pulls across the sheet hiding the sampler’s details. “She is in witness protection! You can’t put her name on an official document.” Bile burns my throat for the second time when another horrifying fact smacks into me. “Tell me you weren’t so stupid to write her up as a suspect?”
Grayson reacts to the guilt in Marshal Levalley’s eyes before I can. “You fucking idiot. I’ll have your badge for this.”
“Her DNA was found on a victim,” he defends. “She—”
I barge Grayson out of the way so I can glare into the eyes of the man who just signed Henley’s death certificate. “Because he dug his fat fingers into her arm too deeply when he was forcefully walking her out of Aeros against her will after most likely spiking her drink.” I shake him so hard his brain rattles against his skull. “You just gave away a witness’s details to someone so knowledgeable of law enforcement he’s killed several agents’ partners and not left a shred of evidence!” Terror rains down on me. “He could have her details now.”
I want to punch him. I want to distribute some of the fear tearing me in two to him, but getting to Henley and Lucy before the man who killed my wife far outweighs my wish for revenge.
“If you walk out that door, it could be seen as an admission of guilt,” Marshal Levalley warns as I race through it.
I sprint down the hallway so fast I barely register Agent Macy calling in a possible incident at my residence for the second time in her career.
27
HENLEY
I drop the pen Lucy gifted Brodie on Father’s Day last year when an annoying trill breaks the silence. I’ve been sitting in Brodie’s office for the past twenty minutes, striving to work up the courage to tell him about our connection. I don’t want him to think I sought him out.
My father’s inability to let go of the details surrounding the cases was the final nail in his coffin. I didn’t want to go down the same route, so I acted as if my parents were still alive while I forged a new life in Florida. Amelia could have made me anyone, but since Henley was my mother’s middle name, I kept it while rotating my surnames to fit the situation.
For the first few months of my new life, I was of Finnish descent.
I could only pull off Italian for about a week.
Henley Seabourn was founded solely because of Lucy’s true nanny’s identity.
Hillary was peeved as hell when I met her at the train station with a hundred apologies from the nanny agency. I told her there was a huge mistake and that she was meant to be nannying for a couple on the West Coast.