Chapter 11: The Last Place to Hide
I told Ruiz about Wade’s slip, the dockworker’s account, and the covered load. I told her what I knew and stopped there. None of it proved what Wade was carrying.
“We have officers trying to keep sight of the pickup without pushing him,” she said. “You stay where you are, Emily. Don’t go looking for it.”
“I won’t.”
The call ended, leaving me outside the house with the family noise pressing through the walls. From inside came Ryan’s voice, loud and wounded, as if volume could turn his version of events into the only one.
My phone rang again. Frank Bell.
“Somebody’s been trying to get into the property account,” he said. “There were requests to erase the camera history.”
My grip tightened on the phone. “Did they get in?”
“No. The exported records are safe. I have copies stored off the account.” He paused. “But the camera vendor locked the live feed after the attempted deletion. They won’t restore it while Ruiz is documenting the tampering.”
The house had gone blind. Someone had reached for the evidence and failed—but only because Frank had saved it first.
“Did the system identify who tried?”
“No. It logged an administrator account, not a person.” His voice hardened. “I wanted you to know before you heard it from anyone else.”
“Thank you. Keep everything you have.”
“I will.”
I drove to the diner near the marina, choosing a booth where I could see the parking lot. I didn’t want to sit in the house while Ryan worked the room, turning every silence into agreement. I didn’t want to follow Wade, either. There were people whose job it was to find him, and my anger didn’t make me qualified to do it.
I ordered coffee and left it untouched. Every time a truck passed the window, my eyes went to it.
Jessica came in alone. She stopped when she saw me, one hand still on the door, then walked over.
“I needed to get out of there,” she said.
She slid into the booth across from me. Her face looked pinched with exhaustion, but she didn’t ask me to tell her it would be all right. I was grateful for that. I didn’t know how to offer comfort without sanding away the truth.
“Ruiz called you?” I asked.
“No.” She looked down at her hands. “Ryan’s been talking to everyone. I couldn’t listen to another person tell me what you meant.”
“Then what did you come to say?”
Her lips parted, but before she could answer, a shadow crossed the window.
Ryan stood outside the diner.
Jessica went still. He opened the door and looked straight at her.
“Come outside,” he said.
She glanced at me. I didn’t tell her what to do. I couldn’t make that choice for her, and I wouldn’t pretend her earlier choices had been made for her, either.
Jessica slid out of the booth. I followed far enough to reach the doorway.
Ryan had moved beside her car, blocking the narrow space between the building and the driver’s door. His voice was low, but the cold air carried it.
“You need to call Ruiz and tell her you got confused.”
Jessica held her phone against her chest. “I wasn’t confused.”
“You told her things you don’t understand.”
“I know what I told her.”
“You took the money,” he said. “You knew what it was for. Do you want the whole family hearing about that?”
Jessica’s face drained of color.
I stepped outside. “That’s enough.”
Ryan turned toward me. The hurt expression he’d worn for the relatives was gone. What remained was anger, stripped clean of its audience.
“This is between my wife and me.”
“It stopped being private when you asked her to lie to an officer.”
“I’m asking her to fix what you’ve done.”
I looked at Jessica. Her eyes were fixed on the pavement, and her fingers had curled around the edge of her phone so tightly her knuckles blanched. I felt the old impulse to step between them, to solve the problem before it reached her.
I held still. Helping her didn’t mean taking her choices away.
“Jessica,” I said quietly. “You don’t have to answer him here.”
Ryan gave a short, humorless laugh. “There she goes, pretending she’s the only one who gets to decide what happens.”
Jessica lifted her head. “Stop.”
For a moment, he seemed surprised. Then he looked at the phone in her hand.
“You’re going to make this worse for all of us.”
A car rolled slowly past the diner, headlights washing over us. Ryan flinched at the movement, then reached for Jessica’s keys, which she’d set on the ledge beside the driver’s door.
She snatched them up first.
“Give them to me,” he said.
“No.”
His gaze slid toward the diner windows. People were watching now. Ryan’s jaw worked, then he lowered his voice again, almost gentle.
“Jess. We’re leaving.”
She didn’t move.
He stepped closer. Jessica backed into the door, her shoulders striking the glass. Her eyes flicked toward me, and for one brief second I saw the sister who used to come to me when she was afraid—not the sister who had let strangers into my home, not the one who had taken the rental money, but the person beneath all the damage.
I moved toward them.
Ryan grabbed the keys from her hand.
“Ryan,” I said.
He looked at me over his shoulder. “Stay out of this.”
Then he unlocked Jessica’s car and climbed behind the wheel. The engine started. He pulled away before she could reach the handle.
Jessica stood under the diner’s yellow sign, one hand pressed to the place where the keys had been. I was close enough to touch her, but I didn’t. She stared down the road after the shrinking taillights.
My phone rang.
May you like
Jessica answered it with shaking hands, though I was standing only a few feet away.
“Emily,” she whispered. Her voice broke. “He took my keys. He’s driving toward the old boathouse.”
