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“I’d rather clean up little kid puke.”
Conrad grinned, but his expression quickly slipped. “Don’t worry, okay? If your police force is as solid as you always say it is, then what is there to be concerned about? Either they won’t find anything, or it’ll be a truth that needs to come out.”
“Why now?” Liam asked. “It’s been ten years.”
Conrad didn’t say anything.
“Talk.”
If they’d have been younger, he’d have made a jab about Liam not being his father. Instead, Conrad leaned his hips against the counter. “Mom went to Bob Davis. She wants Vanguard to look at the entire case again. She still doesn’t believe it happened exactly as the reports say.”
Liam squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She asked me not to.” Conrad squeezed his shoulder. “She knows how you feel.”
He’d been at the funeral. As the line of people filed past the coffin, he’d walked out a side door for some air and right into the middle of a conversation between two older cops. A heated conversation.
We both know he was dirty as sin.
He’d shoved at both of them and screamed for them to leave the funeral. Conrad and Rory had dragged him back inside and straightened him out before they went back to face mom.
It was the whole reason he’d joined the Benson Police Department. So he could walk in his father’s footsteps…
No matter where that led him.
EIGHT
Roxie held a tight leash on her frustration. “So you have zero records at all?”
The receptionist, who was not at fault and just trying to do her job at Hurstwhile Treatment Center, shook her head. All that perfectly curled blonde hair didn’t even move. “There was a cyberattack on the company. Some kind of ransomware a few years ago. It wiped out all our records, so I’m afraid everything from before wasn’t recovered. We had to start over and rebuild the system—and all the patient records.”
And the homeless guy had been seen here prior to that. “What about any staff that worked here and saw or treated him?”
“I’m sure you’re not asking me to break patient confidentiality.”
HIPAA rules applied until fifty years after a person’s death. Which was far too long to wait for answers. Maybe the next of kin—the niece, Turner—would allow them to access medical information. “No, I’m not. I’m simply trying to get an overview of how a place like this works.”
Hurstwhile had contracts with the VA to treat retired servicemen and servicewomen. They were pretty well known in the northwest, and being located just outside Benson but close to the freeway gave people easy access to the center.
Roxie watched the receptionist’s expression shutter. “I’ll let you get back to work. Here’s my card. If you or anyone you work with is available to provide my company with context for our investigation, we’d appreciate it.” She left the card on the counter, figuring it would get thrown away as soon as the automatic doors slid closed.
She stepped out into the late afternoon light. Nearly time to quit, but she’d so rarely worked jobs that had a nine-to-five aspect to them that she barely considered what a normal workday looked like.
Her car was across the lot because that was the only empty space she could find. Peter had opted to do more work online. It was a huge part of his skill set, and he’d wanted to get into the ME reports about the deaths that his brother thought were connected somehow.
Skin on the back of her neck prickled.
Roxie reached for the gun on her hip but didn’t slide it out. In someone’s crosshairs wasn’t a good place to be now, or anytime. In the Marines, she’d occasionally been a target someone tried to take out, but right now, she didn’t even have the guys she’d rolled out with to back her up.
After leaving the Marines, she’d ended up in a life she never wanted and shouldn’t have fallen into.
Now that life—that man—had her in his sights again.
She walked calmly to her car. When would he make his move? She checked the back seat and lay on the asphalt to look under the car. No assailant or device that might explode when she turned on the ignition. When nothing else happened, she started the car and pulled out. Every second of the drive, she checked her rearview, then the side mirrors.
Constant vigilance grew exhausting fast, so she headed home rather than back to the office. She could text Bob and tell him she’d knocked off when she got there.
The knot in her stomach tightened. She should eat something since she’d barely touched her lunch after all that happened at Backdraft, but there was no way she’d be able to keep it down.
