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“After you decided not to call me,” she said slowly, forcing her anger down, “what did you do?”
“I looked for her laptop. It wasn’t there. Someone took it.”
Like they took Tommy’s. And Grant’s. And Jenna’s. They were trying to destroy any evidence outside of their control. And they didn’t care who they killed to do it.
“When I couldn’t find her laptop,” Grant said, “I went down to the garage and searched her car. It wasn’t there. Then I left.”
That could have taken ten minutes. But the fact that Grant had the wherewithal to look for Madeline’s laptop after finding her dead body wouldn’t go over too well with the authorities.
“And then?”
“I drove around for an hour, maybe two,” said Grant, “before I ended up at Franklin’s. Confronted him.”
“I talked to him. He said you were half-crazy. He’s building it up to seem like he cares about you, he’s your best friend, but yes, you may have killed Madeline. Shit.”
She could see it all now. It would be hard for Franklin to get away with it because of what she knew...which was why someone came after her last night.
Damn damn damn!
“Franklin denied having Maddie killed, but I didn’t believe him. Then he said I should have expected it fromthem. He didn’t say their name but I knew he was talking about BioRise and Brock Marsh. Maddie and I were the dangerous loose ends, after all.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this Wednesday?” Regan snapped. “You’ve been avoiding me since I came to town, and you knew what was going on! I told you I was looking into Tommy’s death—you had answers.”
“I didn’t know anything for certain.”
“Bullshit. I said don’t lie to me!”
He didn’t say anything for a second, then said, “I didn’t want to believe what Tom told me, and he didn’t have proof, but there was a lot of circumstantial evidence. Then I found the bug. I didn’t know what the hell to do, and Maddie was scared and angry. She talked me out of meeting you for dinner, but I should have gone. If I had been stronger, she’d still be alive.”
“How could Madeline talk you out of telling the truth? Tommy waskilledby the same people who killed our son! You had to have known you were in trouble—and in danger. Only the truth will keep you alive.”
She couldn’t believe Grant would ever be hesitant when he possessed information about their son’s needless death.
“Maddie helped Franklin on some of these questionable cases,” he said. “She was afraid of being disbarred. She pulled the accounting files and could have been arrested.”
“Chase wasmurdered!” Regan didn’t mean to shout, but that her ex-husband could be so easily manipulated into indecision was beyond her.
“Maddie was going to come with me on Thursday, to talk to you. She was scared, but she was also right in that we didn’t have any hard evidence of anything. And I didn’t, even then, believe that Franklin was involved.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“Always so certain of everything, aren’t you? I went to her condo to pick her up, she was dead. Stabbed in the back. I was supposed to be there at six thirty but was late. She was already dead!”
So he’d said. She glared at her ex-husband. She’d married him, slept with him, had a child with him.
“You’re not the man I thought you were,” she said.
Her insult made him cringe, but she didn’t care about his fragile ego. She was angry and deeply sad.
“You should have come to me,” she said evenly. She rose, walked to the kitchen, poured more coffee.
Think, Regan.
She had to figure out how she could expose the truth about Franklin Archer and BioRise. How she could make it stick. Brock Marsh were enforcers, they did the dirty work, but they weren’t ultimately the ones calling the shots.
She had a headache. They had all the pieces, but to prove anything—to gather the evidence that they needed for prosecution—they had to build a case. Physical evidence, witness statements, hard proof. That took time. And one by one, BioRise and Brock Marsh were killing off witnesses. Covering their tracks. Hiding—destroying—evidence. Soon, there would be no evidence and no one left to tell the truth.
They’d get away with everything.
