Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Now Harry was interested, and Riggs knew when he demanded of Rus, “Talk me through that.”
“Wasn’t here, but say this guy didn’t actually do it. Why would a man confess to a crime he didn’t commit, and set a fire that would destroy all evidence?”
“Taking the fall for someone else,” Harry answered.
“Someone he loves a whole fucking lot,” Rus replied. “This guy have kids?”
“He did. If I remember right, they were in Seattle,” Harry told him.
“How old were they?” Rus asked.
“No clue. I wasn’t in the department when that happened,” Harry shared.
“The old sheriff do due diligence?” Rus pushed.
“Again, I wasn’t on the force then, but I could guess, and my guess would be a good one that would be a big fat no,” Harry answered.
“So maybe it was someone else,” Cade put in. “Someone else who’s still around.”
“Shit,” Harry muttered.
“So maybe we pull the case file?” Rus suggested. “Just to have a look for curiosity’s sake.”
Harry nodded.
“Why are you opening this can of worms, Doc?” Cade asked Riggs.
Riggs looked to him.
“There’s this shit, and there’s also the mess of both Whitaker brothers’ estates,” Riggs said. “There’s also Lincoln doing seven years’ time, only to get out and then kill himself. Why would he wait to do that? Why would he do it at all? Why are the estates such a mess? And we all know there’s no such thing as ghosts, but not everyone who’s ever tried to stay on that land got creeped into believing a ghost story. Shit’s been going down. Real shit. The kind that runs people off. This tells me, fifteen years, someone has worked hard to keep people away from that cabin, my house, and the whole lake.”
“You have any incidents occur while you’ve been there?” Rus asked.
Riggs turned to him. “One, no. Two, I’m known as a man you don’t mess with. Three, I’m known as a man who doesn’t believe that ghost story shit. And four, I’m out of that house more than I’m in it.”
“So, someone could need the place clear because they’re looking for something they haven’t been able to find, or they know something is there they don’t want someone to find,” Harry deduced. “Someone who might have killed two people and got away with it.”
“That was what I thought,” Riggs said.
“You remember any of this?” Harry asked Cade as Riggs felt his phone vibrate against his ass with a call.
He pulled it out as Cade answered, “Heard about it, but I didn’t live here then.”
“You got time to go over that file with me and Rus?” Harry asked Cade as Riggs checked his phone and saw it was Nadia.
Immediately, and without a word, he got up, walked across the room and took the call.
“Hey. What’s up?” he asked.
His stomach dropped when he heard the panic in her voice as she said, “I’m in my car at your house, but you’re not here.”
“Why are you at my house?” he asked, and he felt the room go wired at the vein of urgency that snaked through his words.
“Because I went into town to experience that Aromacobana place, got back, and someone had broken into the cabin.”
He put his hand over the phone and announced, “Someone has broken into Nadia’s place.”
He didn’t wait to watch Harry, Rus and Bohannan finish bolting from their chairs.
He was hoofing it to his truck.
“On my way,” he told her.
“Thanks, Riggs,” she whispered, still sounding freaked.
“Be there soon, honey.”
“Okay.”
He disengaged, angled into his truck, and hauled ass to his house.
FIFTEEN
Desi and Lucy
Riggs
This time, it was Riggs skidding to a halt in the gravel of his drive next to Nadia’s green Range Rover.
And he felt two things as he knifed out of his truck, his eyes glued to her as she jumped from her SUV still in an obvious panic.
The first was a weight crush his chest.
The second was his head fixing to explode.
He rounded the hood of his truck with long strides but only got halfway across before she crashed into him.
She threw her arms around him and held tight.
He wrapped his around her but used one hand to stroke her hair while he murmured, “It’s okay, honey. You’re all right.”
She tipped her head back, her face pale under her honey tan. “Aromacobana’ s coffee is really good, and I treated myself to a salted caramel cookie, and it was delicious.”
“Good to hear, though I know that already. Just not real sure why you’re sharing it with me right now,” he noted cautiously.
She pulled from his arms, fisted a hand and smacked it into her other palm before she shouted, “Because I like it here at the same time someone is fucking with me!”
He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her say any form of the word fuck.
Yeah, his head felt ready to explode.
“I was with Harry when you phoned,” he told her. “He hit me up on the way here and told me they were en route to the cabin. He’s gonna call when they know it’s clear, and we’ll head over there together.”