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Instead, he turned her toward the dining table and they took their usual spots. The table Aisling had crafted fit them all, with room for a couple more. A family table. Maybe not in the traditional way, but in the very best sense of the word.
Josie opened her sketchpad and carefully ripped out the pages she’d been working on. “These are the people who I remember seeing today who I’d never seen before. I wasn’t specifically looking for anyone, or at anyone, for that matter. Some of the details might be wrong.”
Most of the people around the table snorted out a laugh. Joe turned to Lia to explain. “Josie’s observational skills are top-notch. Better than almost anyone I’ve met, including those at this table who’ve been trained by the FBI and the military. Her sketches have put a lot of criminals behind bars, exactly where they belong.”
Nico reached for Josie’s hand and squeezed it. Joe knew everyone at the table would be thinking of how a recent serial killer had tried to take out Josie. And how she’d helped solve the case. This wasn’t the time or the place to explain it to Lia, but he’d give her the basics one day soon. He wanted her to know these people. To know their stories and his connections to them.
Lia gasped at the sketches when they were passed their way. “These are incredible. You’re amazingly talented, Josie. Wow.”
Josie smiled her thanks and then they started identifying what they knew about the people she’d drawn.
Josie had drawn nine people. They were able to eliminate three of them through connections to other people in town. Which left six people. Four men and two women. In two of the sketches, the person was mostly turned away. One man, one woman. Both wearing sweatshirt hoods pulled up over their heads.
They lined the sketches up in front of him and Lia.
After a few moments, Nico broke the silence. “Anything familiar about any of them?”
Lia shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I’m not very good with faces though.” As a surgeon, she’d rarely looked at faces. They’d always been covered with masks and respirators anyway. She’d have better luck identifying scars.
Joe tapped on three of the men. “There’s something familiar about these three, but I can’t place where I’ve seen them or if I know them.”
Nico nodded. “Do they belong together? Are they linked?”
Joe frowned and shook his head. “These two, maybe. This guy who we can’t fully see feels separate.”
Josie labeled the three drawings with X, Y, and Z. “That way the letters probably won’t make you associate the pictures with names. Okay, who remembers seeing any of these three today? What were they doing?”
Nico chuckled. “See. I think you need to dump the art thing and take over Midnight Security.” Josie laughed and rolled her eyes, but leaned over to kiss him. For a long time, Joe hadn’t thought Nico would ever settle down, or want to.
He and Joe had been the confirmed workaholics for a long time. Now Nico was happier than he’d ever been. And Joe wanted that. Wanted that badly with Lia. In order to have it, they had to figure out what was going on.
He pulled his attention back to the group. Tessa was taking notes on her phone while everyone spoke.
X had been working in the kitchen, helping take off the cupboard doors and sanding them down.
Y had mostly worked upstairs, scraping old paint off the woodwork and stripping wallpaper.
Z, the man who didn’t seem connected to the other two, had been working in several places. He’d helped take up a couple of rotten floorboards in the upstairs bathroom. He’d carried drywall pieces in from the outside stack to various rooms. And he’d been outside helping chip the paint off the siding.
Nothing incriminating in any of that. All the men had helped.
They passed the sketches around again and everyone studied them.
When Tessa looked up from her phone, she tapped Z. “I noticed this man today. Something about him felt off.”
She’d been through hell and then the witness security program. Her instincts for safety were finely honed. If something felt off, it probably was.
Flynn took her hand. “Do you remember what triggered the feeling?”
Tessa frowned and closed her eyes. “I was sitting on the stairs, sanding the bannister and the spindles. He walked up and down the stairs a few times. He was carrying pieces of wood down and he knocked into me almost every time. I don’t think he even noticed me there.”
Flynn frowned. “Anyone notice him being generally clumsy?”
No one had.
Sam spoke up. “I wonder if his attention was on someone else. He might have been watching Lia, looking for an opportunity to hurt her.”
Lia didn’t say a word, but her spine straightened.
