Chapter 16

16

Houma, Louisiana

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1:00 P.M.

CORA WATCHED PHIN AS VAL drove them to the site of the demolished Damper Building. Something was bothering Phin, but she didn't know what.

"What is it?" she asked as Val parked the SUV in front of a pet store. It was as close as they could get to the building.

"Nothing," he said.

Cora scowled. "Nothing always means something."

Val cut the engine and turned around. "You okay, Phin?"

His hand had sought out SodaPop and Cora wasn't sure Phin had even known it had done so.

"I might not be after I tell you," he muttered, then sighed. "Tell Burke to park his truck and get in the front seat."

"Okay," Val said warily. "I just texted him. Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

But his fingers splayed and flexed in poor SodaPop's coat. His touch was always gentle with the dog, but SodaPop knew he was upset. Her little whine hurt Cora's heart, because when the dog made that sound, it meant that Phin was close to an edge.

"You don't need to tell me."

Phin sighed. "Yeah, I probably do."

Burke opened the front passenger door and climbed in. "What's going on?"

Phin closed his eyes. "So…I was thinking about who restores paintings."

Cora waited for him to continue, but he didn't. Unable to stand his silence, she said, "People who work for museums."

Phin opened his eyes and they were filled with misery. "Or galleries."

Cora flinched, her eyes going wide with shock. Shock quickly became fury. " No. It isn't Patrick Napier. I didn't even know him when those damn letters started. You're wrong."

Phin didn't look away. "I hope I am."

Dammit. Damn him. "You can't be serious."

But he was.

Cora looked to Burke, only to find him wincing. "Burke?"

"I have to admit that I hadn't considered that, but Phin makes a good point."

Cora's heart was racing, and she was so angry. How dare they? "You're forgetting that he didn't know me then. He didn't know my father. He didn't know what color dress I wore on Christmas the year my father disappeared. This is insane ."

Burke looked at Phin. "She's got a point, too."

Phin sighed. "I'm sorry, Cora, and I hope I'm wrong. But how do you know that he didn't know your father?"

Cora's eyes burned and she shrank away from them, from their gazes full of pity and regret. Val too. Damn them all.

"He didn't even live in New Orleans back then," she shot back. "Tandy's parents moved to New Orleans when Tandy and I were in the third grade. I met Tandy first. She invited me to a slumber party at her house. Then I invited her to mine and we became best friends. Her father helped us—Mama and Grandmother. He fixed things. He made sure our roof didn't leak and that our faucets didn't drip. He was there when I needed a father. He took me and Tandy to all those father-daughter dinners. He is not the letter writer. He is not ." She blinked, the tears in her eyes streaking down her cheeks.

Which just made her even angrier.

She turned her face away, staring out the window, needing a moment to compose herself.

They're trying to help.

Cora knew the little voice in her mind was right. She was behaving like a child. But Harry and Patrick? No. No to both of them. Neither would hurt me. She couldn't believe that either of them would have hurt her father, either.

Patrick had never even met her father.

How do you know?

She swallowed a sob. Because she didn't know. She didn't know anything anymore. Her life was out of control, a train tearing down a mountain slope, jumping the tracks.

Phin's touch on her arm was tentative. Gone within a second. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I don't mean to upset you. But someone's after you, Cora, and I don't want anyone to hurt you. But especially not me. I don't want to hurt you."

Cora shuddered out the sob she'd been holding back. "I know," she whispered back. "Give me a second."

"Do you know where Tandy and her parents moved from?" Val asked, her tone…odd.

Like she already knew the answer and Cora wasn't going to like it. "Somewhere in Louisiana. I don't remember where." She wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her jacket and turned to face them. "Where, Val?"

"Thibodaux."

Cora shook her head. Thibodaux was only thirty minutes from Houma. "No."

Val nodded, sympathy in her blue eyes. "I just checked the property records for Lafourche Parish, just on a hunch. Just in case. Houma is in Terrebonne Parish, but Thibodaux is the parish seat of Lafourche. The property records show that Patrick Napier owned a home there until twenty-one years ago."

That made more sense. "Twenty- one years ago," Cora said triumphantly. "He didn't arrive in New Orleans until two and a half years after my father was killed. Two and a half years after I started getting the letters."

Val, Burke, and Phin shared a sober glance that made Cora's stomach clench.

"It's a coincidence," she insisted.

Then heard herself. Could it be?

"It has to be," she whispered.

Phin brushed his fingertips over her hand, a fleeting touch. "I want him to be uninvolved. I also want you to stay alive."

So did Cora. "I shouldn't be fighting you all. I wanted you to find out who was breaking into my house. And then to find out who shot Joy." Sudden hope gave her heavy heart some buoyancy. "But Patrick wasn't in town on Tuesday. He couldn't have been the one to shoot Joy."

"That's true," Phin said steadily.

Cora sighed again. "But you need to be sure. I need to be sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore."

"I understand," Val said. "I think we all do. Patrick is close to your heart. He's important in your life. We can be objective when you can't. Let us look into him and we'll see what comes up."

Cora nodded. "Okay." She wiped at her eyes again because they kept leaking. "Are we going to see this hole in the ground?"

The hole where her father had been buried.

The father she'd hated for twenty-three years. Hated and loved at the same time. Twenty-three years later, she still did.

"We are," Burke said. "But you don't have to go, Cora."

"Yeah, I do." She pulled herself together. "As angry as I am with the man for doing a dangerous job that got him murdered, I do want to pay my respects."

Phin got out of the car and jogged around to her side, SodaPop keeping close. Phin held out his hand and tugged her to her feet.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't be." She leaned up, gently patting his cheek. "You're right. We need to exclude him." She rested her head on his shoulder, able to breathe again when his arms came around her. His lips brushed the top of her head and she swallowed hard, tears threatening once again.

They would exclude Patrick. She was certain.

She pulled out of Phin's embrace and gripped his hand as they approached the area of the foundation where her father's body had been found. Val and Burke flanked them.

Burke, Val, and Phin were constantly looking around for threats.

Burke lifted the caution tape, gesturing for them to pass under. Cora held her breath as they edged up to the large hole in the ground. There were still pieces of broken concrete littering the ground.

And…

It was just a hole with some rocks at the bottom. Her father's resting place.

She should have been feeling something now. She knew she should have.

But until she found out who'd killed him and why, she didn't know what she should feel. Other than anger. That was still there, simmering in her gut.

"We had a good life," Cora said quietly. "At least I remember it being good. We lived with my grandmother, but that was just the way it was. We were family, sharing the big house. We didn't have a lot of money, but Mama said we were okay. Well, up until he disappeared. Then I remember Mama crying because she had bills to pay. Grandmother helped, but it wasn't like she was super rich. We held on to the house and Mama got her physical therapy certification. Things were better then."

"Tell me about the school you attended with Tandy," Phin said.

She clutched his hand gratefully. He was strength and goodness. She'd yelled at him and here he stood.

Supporting me.

They all supported her. Burke and Val, too.

"It was a private girls' school here in the Garden District. Kindergarten through twelfth grade."

"Fancy," Val said. "Sounds expensive. How did your mom afford it?"

"Grandmother paid for it. I was a legacy student. Both Grandmother and Mama attended. It was assumed that I would attend, too." She stared down into the hole, casting her mind back to that time. "But there was financial assistance. I remember that pretty vividly. The other girls could be vicious. I was glad when Nala and Louisa started, because they were scholarship students, too."

"Not Tandy?" Phin asked.

Cora shook her head. "Her daddy had the money to pay the full tuition."

"How did Nala and Louisa get the scholarships?" Phin asked. "You got yours because you were a legacy student, I assume. But Joy didn't go to a fancy school like that."

"No," Cora agreed. "She didn't. Joy's parents ran a corner grocery store."

"In Tremé," Burke said gruffly. "I knew them. Good people."

"Had to be good people," Cora said, still staring down into the hole. "They produced Joy, after all. Mama and Joy became friends after Joy got shot on the job, back in the day. Joy's husband had passed a long time before that. Joy came to my mother for physical therapy. Her sister would bring her, along with Joy's kids. The sister was the kids' babysitter, as I remember. So she had to bring them with her when she drove Joy to PT. Mama didn't have a babysitter, either. Grandmother watched us when she worked, but sometimes Grandmother had plans, so John Robert and I went to work with Mama. When Nala and Louisa started coming with their mother, we all became friends. My mother got scholarships for Nala and Louisa the following year. Their mother was a hero—a cop wounded in the call of duty, in service to the city. The school was happy to have her daughters attend."

"And you had fellow scholarship students to hang with," Phin said.

"I did. Tandy was kind of the odd one out. She had a mother and a father, at least back then. She had a nice house that wasn't always falling apart and in need of fixing. She had new clothes and we didn't." Cora's lips tipped up. "Nala and I discovered thrift stores when we were high school freshmen." She chanced a look up and found the three watching her.

Burke looked contemplative, Val encouraging.

Phin looked like he wanted to hug her. All warm and safe.

She leaned against his side, gratified when he dropped her hand and slid his arm around her waist.

"Thrift stores in the nice parts of town have some super nice clothes," Val said. "I used to shop at them when I was a teacher. Now I just wear jeans and combat boots."

She made them look good, too, Cora thought.

"It's true. The thrift stores in the Garden District were special. We found things that were nicer than Tandy's." Cora smirked at the memory. "Pretty soon, Tandy was going with us. We all still shop at the thrift stores."

"When did Tandy's mother pass?" Burke asked.

"When we were in college. Aneurysm. Just…happened. So we were all there for Tandy. She, Nala, and I were in the same year, all at Tulane. We made it through." Cora frowned, a new memory troubling her. "It was Tandy's mother who introduced us to thrift stores. She was a champion shopper. I'd forgotten about that."

"So Tandy's mom didn't always have money?" Val asked carefully.

"Not always. She said that she'd learned to stretch a dollar after she and Patrick got married, before they came to New Orleans. Then his gallery business started growing and she didn't need to anymore, but she kept shopping at thrift stores. She saved for rainy days. She left everything in her savings to Tandy. I never asked how much it was."

Phin squeezed her waist lightly. "But you know."

She looked up at him, her smile wobbly. He listened, truly listened. Picked up nuances other people didn't. "Yeah. The next year there was a scholarship fund established at St. Charles School for Girls in her mom's name. Two girls a year get to attend for free. Harry manages the fund."

"You were surrounded by incredible women," Val commented. "I'm glad."

"Me too." She shook her head. "Patrick can't be involved. He just can't be." She squared her shoulders, something she'd done a lot lately. "How will you exclude him?"

"Background checks to start," Burke said. "We'll look for motive. Unexplained income. Gaps in employment. That kind of thing." He turned to face the buildings across the street. "But while we're here, I want to find out if any of those stores were in business twenty-three years ago. Someone had to have seen something. And maybe there's an art restorer who knew this area back then. Someone who wasn't Patrick Napier."

It had to be someone else. It just had to be.

She started to turn from her father's resting place. "Let's go, then."

"Just a minute." Phin pulled something from his pocket, his expression sheepish. In his hand was a rose, its stem cut short, its thorns stripped away. "For your father's grave, if you want to."

Her heart squeezed so hard that it hurt. "Phin. Where did you get it?" Her grandmother's rosebushes had gone dormant months before.

He glanced at Val. "Val's sister is a florist. When we talked about coming out here, I texted her, and she brought it to Val while we were in the bank."

" That's what was in the bag," Val said. "I wanted to peek, but I didn't."

Cora's eyes filled. "Thank you. Am I allowed to throw it down there? Is it still a crime scene?"

"Police released it weeks ago," Burke said. "Go ahead. We can step back and give you space. We can't leave you alone, though."

"You don't have to step back. Please stay." She took a moment to consider her words, then held the rose over the hole, her tears spilling over. "I loved you, even as I hated you. I don't know why you did what you did. But if every client was in trouble like Alice VanPatten, I'll try to understand. I'm sorry you're gone. I'm sorry Mama died thinking you'd left her. And if you're still lurking around somewhere, a little help would be appreciated. My PIs can only do so much."

She dropped the rose into the hole, then drew a deep breath and wiped her face once more. She had to stop crying. Her face was getting chapped from the brisk wind.

"I'm ready to go. Let's go talk to shop owners and get some food that won't send me to the ER."

Phin carefully turned her, keeping his arm around her. She slid her arm around his waist and let him guide her across the concrete-riddled property, the others walking ahead.

She looked over her shoulder, glancing one more time at the hole. Her father's resting place. Rest, Dad. I hope you're happy, wherever you are.

She looked up at Phin and found him staring down at her with pain in his eyes. For me. She didn't want him to hurt for her, though. He'd hurt enough.

She slid her hand around his neck and pulled his head closer. "Blink once for yes."

Slowly he blinked, one side of his mouth lifting. He closed the distance between them, taking her mouth in the sweetest kiss. It was no peck, but a full lush kiss that had her brain turning off the rest of the world.

For a long, delicious moment, the only thing she thought about was his mouth on hers, his shoulders under her hands, his hands running up and down her back. It made her want more. More with Phin.

He was the first to pull away, his mouth wet and his eyes slightly dazed.

She knew she looked the same. "Thank you," she whispered.

He pressed a finger to her lips. "Don't thank me. Not for coming with you today or for holding your hand, but especially not for kissing you. It was my pleasure." He hesitated. "I hope it was yours, too."

She swallowed. "It was."

He relaxed. "Val's waving for us to get a move on."

Cora looked over her shoulder and, sure enough, Val's expression was a combination of affection, exasperation, and impatience. Hand in hand, she and Phin crossed the street, nearly bumping into Burke when he stopped abruptly in the crosswalk. He was staring at his phone, his jaw tight.

Panic rose in Cora's chest. "Is it Joy?"

Burke shook his head. "Let's go. Back to the SUV." He, Val, and Phin shepherded Cora back to the secure vehicle, no one saying another word until they were all safely inside.

"What's happened?" Cora demanded.

"It's not Joy," Burke said grimly. "It's your boss."

Dread was like a bucket of ice water poured over her head. "Minnie?" she whispered. "Is she all right?"

But from the look on Burke's face, she already knew the answer was no.

"She's dead," Burke said gently. "Clancy went to her house to check on her when she didn't show up to the library today. She was lying dead in her bed."

"Natural causes?" Cora managed to ask, her voice choked and shaking. Please?

"No," Burke said. "I'm sorry, Cora. Clancy believes she was suffocated with a pillow."

Cora's mouth opened but no words would come. Her throat was tight and she couldn't breathe. Phin's arm tightened around her shoulders protectively.

"We need to get you back to the city," Phin said. "Where you'll be safe."

"I'll follow you," Burke said to Val. "You and I can come back tomorrow to talk to the shopkeepers. For now, Cora's safety is the most important thing." He turned back to face Cora. "I'm so sorry."

"It was the driver of that Camry," Cora murmured. "Wasn't it?"

"It makes sense," Phin said, pressing a kiss to her temple. "We'll make sure he pays. I promise."

Cora could only nod. She was numb.

Minnie had cared about Cora. And it had gotten her killed. Who would be next? Who should she warn?

Who can I trust?

For now, only Burke's people. And Joy and her brood. And Tandy, of course.

And Patrick? Was Tandy's father still trustworthy?

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Cora had thought that seeing her father's grave would be the worst thing to happen to her today.

I'm sorry, Minnie. I'm so sorry.

Merrydale, Louisiana

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 4:00 P.M.

Merrydale Welcomes You.

Sage hoped so. Or at least he hoped that Merrydale would be generous with the answers to his questions.

The suburb north of Baton Rouge was full of nice, well-kept houses, but Sage was really interested in the high school. He hoped he'd gotten this right.

He was here in disguise. His personal cell phone was next to him in a Faraday bag, unreachable and untrackable. He was using his burner for all internet searches and GPS directions.

He checked the mirror on his car's visor to make sure that the dark wig was on securely. The heavy, dark eyeglass frames obscured a fair portion of his face. He didn't look like himself, which was the goal.

He slowed as he passed the high school, studying the sign on the side proclaiming the school's name.

Yes. He'd gotten it right.

Putting on his blinker, he turned into the parking lot, just to make sure. He pulled out his phone and found the photo he'd taken of the graduating girl his grandfather had hidden in his safe. He zoomed in on the lettering over the girl's right shoulder. Only the lower half of the school's name was visible, but the girl's cap and gown were in the school colors, so that had helped his search.

The photo was several years old, based on the graduation-year charm dangling from her cap's tassel. He at least knew she'd graduated in a year that started with 201 . He couldn't see the final number.

It was a decent place to start.

The letters in the photo lined up perfectly with the letters on the school—Merrydale High School. He was in the right place, at least.

He didn't yet know the name of the girl, but hopefully he soon would.

He'd googled the public library's location on his burner phone. He had no idea what he was walking into in this little town, so he wasn't going to leave a tech trail. The library was less than two blocks from the high school.

It closed soon. He hoped he'd find what he was looking for easily. Otherwise, he'd have to come back later and he wasn't sure he had time for that.

It felt like time was running out.

His grandfather's behavior today had been weird. Alan had texted him to hurry to meet him, said that he needed him. But the old man hadn't said more than ten words the whole two hours Sage had sat in his office—mainly hello and goodbye. There hadn't been much more than that.

However there had been several times when Alan had looked like he'd wanted to say something. To command something.

It had put Sage on edge. He'd gotten out of there as quickly as he'd been able to and got the distinct impression that Alan had been all too happy to see him go.

Weird. That Alan's behavior was so upside-down was not a good sign.

It gave urgency to his mission. Sage wanted to find out who the girl was and what she had to do with Cora Winslow. He wanted to know why the combination to Alan's safe had been one day earlier than the day Jack Elliot had been buried in concrete.

He hoped the library would have the answers he sought.

Ironic, him going to another library. At least this time he'd had the presence of mind to disguise his face.

He didn't want to have to kill another librarian.

That would suck.

He walked into the library and approached the librarian's desk with what he hoped was a shy smile.

"Excuse me, ma'am." He laid his drawl on thick. "I'm doing some research into my family tree. My granddad went to school around here and I was hoping you had some old yearbooks I could look through."

The woman smiled up at him. She had a pretty smile. If Sage had met her at a club, he'd have taken her back to his hotel in a heartbeat.

"We have some," she said. "What years were you looking at?"

This might work or it might not. He hoped that the library kept all the yearbooks in the same place, including the more recent ones.

"I'm not entirely certain. He died recently and we found conflicting information on his age. Home birth, y'know. Paperwork got messed up by the country doctor."

She rose and began walking toward one of the stacks. "I hear that sometimes. Let me show you where we keep them." She looked over her shoulder. "You can't check them out. They have to stay here in the library."

"I won't ask, ma'am. I promise."

"All right, then." They crossed the library, coming to a little room with glass walls. "Here they are."

Oh great. She'd be watching him.

He smiled nonetheless. "Thank you, ma'am. I'd best get busy." He let himself into the room and did a walk around the shelves, checking first to see if they had any cameras installed.

They did not appear to, which was lucky for him.

He took a second turn around to see what materials they kept on the shelves. They had a few yearbooks from the fifties and sixties and he chose those. Luckily, they had all the yearbooks from the 2010s. He grabbed them all and put them on the table with the old books.

He'd think of an excuse if she asked why he was looking at the recent ones.

He opened all the older books and made a show of examining the pages, all while checking to see what the librarian was doing. Every so often she looked up at him, but he thought she was checking him out rather than monitoring his activity.

Eventually she answered the phone and turned to her computer monitor. Finally. Sage grabbed the earliest of the recent yearbooks, then paused, thinking. He didn't have enough time to thoroughly check each yearbook.

This had to do with Cora Winslow. It had something to do with the date of Jack Elliot's death. If his hunch was right, if the girl in the photo was twenty-three now, she'd have graduated five years before. So he chose the book that was five years old and flipped to the senior class pictures.

He paged through the photos, looking for the girl.

Nothing in the A s or B s.

He found her in the C s. There she was, smiling for the camera. She looked fresh and innocent and his chest clenched as he was once again hit with a wave of déjà vu. He knew her, even though he'd never met her before.

And now he had a name. Ashley Caulfield.

The quote by her name made him smile. It was a line from the song "It's Not Easy Being Green," the quote assigned to "Kermit the Frog."

Then his smile faded as he let himself think of that photo in his grandfather's safe. Of all the photos capturing this girl's growing up.

Sage felt like he'd opened Pandora's box and this girl had popped out. He'd never be able to stuff her back in.

He knew she existed now.

He knew she was important. He just didn't know why.

He snapped a photo of Ashley's senior picture and quickly put the recent yearbooks away. He resettled in his chair, opening the old books. He'd planned to do this anyway, just to let the librarian believe his quest was a serious one.

Now he had another agenda. He wanted to find more Caulfields.

He checked the C s in every one of the old books, perusing not only the senior photos but those belonging to the underclassmen as well. The years represented were too spotty. If he only checked the senior sections, he might miss out on whoever it was he was looking for.

He finally found a single Caulfield. Timothy Caulfield had attended Merrydale High back in the midsixties. That would make him in his early seventies by now.

Was he related to Ashley? How? A grandfather, perhaps?

It could be. His own grandfather was in his late sixties, and Sage was only two years older than Ashley.

He snapped a photo of Timothy Caulfield and closed the yearbook. He made a show of standing and stretching, noting that the librarian was following his every movement again. He flexed a little, just to give her a show.

If her mind was on his body, she wouldn't be thinking about his face.

He put the yearbooks away and sauntered back out to the main room. "Thank you, ma'am. I put everything back the way I found it."

"Thank you. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No, ma'am, but thank you anyway."

She tilted her head. "I noticed you taking a few photos. Why, if I might ask, if you didn't find what you were looking for?"

Fucking librarians. Always asking questions. Luckily, he'd prepared for this.

"I found a name I recognized from one of my granddad's stories. I figured I'd take the photo back to my grandmother and see if she recognized him."

"Oh, okay." This seemed to satisfy her.

He really hoped it did. He really didn't want to kill another librarian.

He got back to his car, buzzing with anticipation. He had one more thing he needed to check. On his burner phone, he pulled up the background check service he used.

Ashley Caulfield , he typed.

Nothing. She might have been too young to have any online presence, although that she had no social media seemed odd. Sage couldn't use himself as a comparison. He had dozens of pages on the internet dedicated solely to him.

He changed his search to Timothy Caulfield . He had a presence, thankfully.

And he owned a home not too far away. Had lived there for thirty years, which meant the man had been there twenty-three years ago.

Sage set a course for the Caulfield home, not certain of what he'd do once he got there. It wasn't a long drive. Nothing in Merrydale seemed far away from anything else.

The GPS on his burner phone took him to a neighborhood off the beaten path, each of the lots at least five acres. Timothy Caulfield's house sat a distance off the main road but was still visible.

Sage pulled over to the side of the road and opened his backpack. He had an old-fashioned paper map that he used to fool passersby into thinking he'd stopped to check his position.

No one had ever confronted him while he'd been parked, but there was always a first time for everything.

After unfolding the map—which would be useless if he was confronted, as it was a map of Gulfport, Mississippi—Sage took his binoculars from his backpack and used them to study the Caulfield home.

The house was a single-story ranch type with a green door. The lawn was well maintained and the flower beds had been freshly mulched.

His breath caught. There she was.

Ashley Caulfield ran around the corner of the house, from the backyard to the front. She was laughing, her face filled with joy. On her heels was a barking collie with a beautiful coat. Ashley held a ball high off the ground, and the dog was jumping for it.

She threw the ball hard and the dog gave chase. Ashley sat on an old tree stump, lifting her face to the sky.

Sage couldn't look away. On some level he knew her, even though he was certain they'd never met.

It was that damn dimple. Just like mine.

He became aware that he'd been sitting too long. He was lucky no one had come along, demanding to know what he was doing there.

He drove away, nearly reaching the interstate when his burner phone dinged with a text.

No one had this number, so it had to be a forwarded message. His personal cell phone was still in the Faraday bag, but it was synced to his laptop at home. All messages that came through to the laptop would be forwarded to his burner. He could return any messages using a spoofing service to make it appear that they'd come from his personal phone.

He'd been using this method to hide from his grandfather for years. Of course it had been for naught since Alan had hired a PI to follow him.

Irritated at the thought of his privacy being so invaded, he pulled over to look at the text. It was from his grandfather.

Because of course it was.

Where are you?

Sage considered his answer. If the man was still having him followed, the PI was really good because Sage hadn't seen evidence of a tail.

Visiting friends in Gulfport , he replied. His grandfather knew he'd visited the Gulfport clubs, thanks to the PI. His grandfather was going to assume he was off getting defiled or something.

I need you here. In New Orleans. Now.

Sorry. I'm off the clock until tomorrow morning , Sage added, wondering what Alan would say to that.

There was no reply for so long that Sage had put his phone away and was about to pull back onto the little two-lane road that fed into the interstate, but his phone dinged again.

Report to my office at 9 am. Sharp.

Irritation rising, Sage typed back, Sir, yes sir! He hit send before he could rein in his attitude.

Watch the attitude, boy. Tomorrow. 9 am. Do not be late.

"Asshole," Sage muttered, tossing the phone onto the center console.

He wondered if Alan would finally get to the point. He wondered if tomorrow would be another two-hour staring session where Alan said less than ten words.

He wondered what Ashley Caulfield had to do with Cora Winslow.