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Her heart twisted in her chest.
Why were there four? There should only have been three.
Where had the other body been? She’d searched every inch of that warehouse looking for any sign of Olivia, and she hadn’t found anything she could use against Diaz, other than the three bodies in the barrels. And even that, without evidence he’d actually killed them, wasn’t enough to hand over to the police. Diaz could claim any one of his men had killed them and put them there, and one of his men would plead guilty on his behalf. Taking Diaz down required undisputable proof, which was hard to obtain when she was undercover. She could hardly pull out a video camera and start filming him, and she didn’t dare wear a wire or a recording device of any type. At least not until she found Olivia. Once she laid her to rest, she’d deal with Diaz.
But she had to stay alive to do that.
Her thoughts returned to the fourth barrel, but again she shook her head. Maybe the fourth barrel wasn’t related to the fourth body bag... there were more body bags coming out now. Maybe the barrel was going to be tested for narcotics.
That must be it, she decided. She’d searched that building multiple times whenever she could and there had only been three bodies.
Anna sighed heavily. At least they would go home to their families now. At least she hoped they would, assuming forensics could still identify them.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Part of her wanted to run—run away from Diaz and this life.
But she couldn’t do that.
She had to get answers first, then revenge.
Olivia had lefther—Anna—the note. She’d left it behind the flowers on their mother’s grave, a place only Anna would visit. Olivia had written Diaz Smith’s name, the wordCraven, and an eight-digit number. Anna found the laminated note two weeks after Olivia went missing and she’d been searching for answers every day since. She’d known who Diaz Smith was, but what she didn’t know was how Olivia had known him or what she’d gotten mixed up in. Nor did she know what Craven or the number meant. That note was for Anna though, and she owed it to Olivia to find out what had happened to her and where her body was.
No one was going to find Olivia if she didn’t. The police had proved that—Olivia’s case had been cold without a lead for years.
Anna owed her this, and she was not going to stop until she was done.
For the next hour, Anna counted the barrels as they wheeled them out. Thirty in total. She frowned again. There should only be twenty-nine barrels, but she couldn’t say for certain that another one hadn’t been delivered recently. It could’ve arrived with tonight’s shipment she’d known nothing about. That worried her—Anna should’ve known. She needed to get closer to Diaz; she needed more information if she was ever going to fulfill her plan. She mulled over this, strategizing what else she could do as she watched the last few trucks and sedans roll away until there was only one car left.
Eventually the agent emerged from the warehouse with one other man.
He ran one hand through his hair as he walked to the driver’s door, opened it, and slid in. His colleague—who looked more like one of Diaz’s guys than an FBI agent—slid into the passenger seat and her eyes followed the car as he drove away.
She sat in the tree for another hour, waiting to see if anyone would come back. But the only movement she saw was the tree branches swaying in the wind.
Anna’s eyelids grew heavy and her stomach grumbled.
Finally she deemed it safe to leave.
She climbed down the tree and dropped onto the dirt, landing softly on her feet, and then trekked through the woods to the main road.
It would be a long walk home, but the walk gave her time to think as she wove between the trees, keeping out of sight.
Anna ran through the events of this evening again—before the FBI arrived.
Had anyone been acting strange?
Had anyone asked a lot of questions over the past few days?
Had anyone been absent when they shouldn’t have been?
Nothing had seemed unusual, but she’d definitely missed something—and likely had for months.
Worry of what else she might have missed plagued her thoughts for the entire five-mile walk home.
She was shivering when her townhouse came into view. Her front door was visible when she heard footsteps behind her.
She swung around, reaching for her weapon.
