“So thank you. I know Juni and I are strangers, and you don’t have to do a thing for us.”
“Of course we do.” Arden reached across the table and grabbed Maren’s hand.
The speaker at the center of the table crackled.
“Elissa?” Gina asked. “Are you there?”
Elissa’s voice came through the speaker. “Yeah, I’m here. I can hear everyone. And just for the record, if someone mutes me again like last time?—”
“No one muted you,” Kyle said.
“You absolutely did. I was talking for a solid thirty seconds?—”
“Focus, Elissa,” Lach said.
Elissa sighed. “Focusing. But I’d like to remind you, Lach, you’re no longer in charge. Kyle and I are.”
Lach grinned as he looked at Gina. “They grow up so fast.”
“Don’teveraccuse me of growing up,” Elissa shot back.
Colin hid his smile.
Lach’s attention shifted back to Maren. “Elissa is our agency owner in Los Angeles. She’s very good at tracking things down.”
“That’s Lach’s polite way of saying I’m a hacker,” Elissa broke in.
Lachlan smirked. “Gina filled Elissa in on the overall details, lass, but maybe you could start from the beginning.”
Maren nodded once. “It was just an ordinary day. I went to pick up Juni and when we got home, my house was ransacked. So I got back in the car and called the police.”
Maren went on to describe a nightmare of a day. Maren’s voice stayed level through all of it.
“I was trying to sew up Juni’s teddy bear when my phone rang, but it was a private number,” she said. “I let it go to voicemail, but then I listened to it just in case it was a detective calling back.” She paused. She pressed her hands against the surface of the table. “It was a man who said that if I was listening to this message he was dead.” That was the only time Colin noticed her voice hitch slightly.
“He knew Juni’s name. He said he’d worked with Mira.”
“Mira?” Colin asked. He and Mac exchanged looks.
“My twin. Juni’s mom. She died in a hit and run before Juni was even out of diapers.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her smile was a quick reflex—there and gone. “Thank you. The man on the phone said…” She stopped and swallowed, then started again. “He said her death wasn’t an accident.”
Nobody moved. Even Gina stopped pacing. The room went very quiet.
“He told me to come here, to Watchdog,” she said. “To find Arden Volker. He told me not to trust anyone else.”
Colin watched her hands. Still steady.
She’s been carrying this alone since San Diego.
“Where’s the phone now?” Flint asked.
Maren winced. “I—got rid of it. In a dumpster outside the hotel in San Diego.” She looked at Flint and then at thespeakerphone in the center of the table. “I’m sorry. I got a burner instead. I thought—I watch a lot of crime shows and I thought they could track me through my phone, whoever it is.” She grimaced. “I’m an idiot. Will you still be able to trace the call from voicemail?”
“You are not an idiot.” Elissa’s voice was warm and direct and she sounded slightly amused. “You’re actually the opposite of an idiot. You did exactly the right thing.”
