Page 98 of Taken Away

Not all at once.

Ten here. Twenty there. A few restless stretches spent staring at the ceiling of Bennett’s guest room while Moose snored across the doorway like a furry, one-hundred-and-twenty-pound barricade.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Burke’s face when he told her. By four-thirty, she gave up.

By five, she was dressed in black trousers, a white sleeveless blouse, and the closest thing to business clothes she had in the duffel Machelle had shipped before Aubrey's life in Pennsylvania had been boxed, labeled, and slid into storage.

Every time she pulled that blouse over her head she thought of Ashford. Of corner offices and glass conference rooms and the precise, ruthless comfort of knowing exactly what game everyone was playing.

Here, she didn’t even know the rules.

Bennett had left his truck keys on the kitchen island with a simple note. Take the truck. —B.

By five-fifteen, Moose had hopped into the passenger seat of Bennett's truck like he'd personally been assigned to her security detail. He'd watched her lace her shoes, followed her outside, and climbed in before she ever reached for the ignition.

She paused.

Walk away, Langford.

The winery sat beneath a blanket of blue mountain fog when she pulled into the employee lot. Blackwood felt quiet. No funeral guests. No lawyers. No deputies. No casseroles. Only rows of vines disappearing into mist.

Aubrey killed the engine and sat for a moment, her fingers curled around the steering wheel. The memory of the note she'd stared at in the dark—Go back to Philadelphia—still weighed on her like a lead coat, heavy and suffocating. Whoever had killed Mabel hadn't just left a corpse; they'd left an open door and the terrifying realization that she was standing in the draft.

If she let herself, she could almost imagine her old life: pre-dawn runs along the Schuylkill, back-to-back meetings, Ashford's skyline a wall of glass outside her office—a world where people schemed over bonuses and promotions, not wills and murder. Her heart gave a quick, traitorous twist.

If someone had murdered Mabel to protect something, then somewhere in Blackwood's records was the thing they were trying to hide.

People lied. Documents usually didn't. Numbers told stories if you knew how to read them. Contracts, invoices, balance sheets...they all left fingerprints.

She climbed out. Moose hopped down behind her, nails clicking softly against the gravel, and fell into step like a silent shadow.

She opened the winery doors and stepped into the cool oak-scented hush of the tasting room. The place looked different before daylight. Without staff moving behind the bar or guests clustering near the windows with glasses in hand, the barn felt almost sacred. Black steel and glass, polished concrete, reclaimed wood. Above it all, the mezzanine offices stood watch over the winery.

Mabel’s office still sat sealed at the center of the catwalk. Crime-scene tape stretched across the double glass doors, yellow and brutal against all that elegance.

Aubrey stopped at the foot of the stairs. For one terrible second she saw white Tyvek suits moving through Mabel’s bedroom. Saw cameras flashing over the four-poster bed. Saw Bennett’s hand closing around her wrist when her pulse had tried to bolt out of her skin.

Her breath hitched. Moose pressed his massive body against her leg. She put a hand in his ruff and forced herself to breathe.

“Not that office,” she whispered. “Not today.”

She climbed to the mezzanine and let herself into the small conference room beside Walter’s office. The motion lights clicked on overhead, spilling clean white light across the long table, the built-in cabinets, the wall monitor, and the sleek docking station.

Good. Sterile. Useful.

Safe.

She dropped her laptop bag onto the table and opened the winery’s accounting dashboard.

Shipping reports. Distribution agreements. Vendor contracts. Accounts receivable. Payroll. Purchase orders.

Three years of Blackwood’s financial history filled the screen.

Her shoulders eased a fraction. Columns and rows. Sums. Percentages. Here, at least, she knew the language. Here, she was not the girl who had come back to bury her aunt and found herself recast as the main character in a small-town murder.

She pulled her hair into a ponytail and reached for a legal pad.

She could not control Mabel’s death.