Teffinger’s nose.
89
DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16
FRIDAY NIGHT
When Aspen told Christina the news about Jacqueline Moore getting murdered, Christina hardly said anything and ordered another Margarita.
“I’m never going back to that firm,” Aspen said.
Christina studied her and said, “Me either.”
“It isn’t worth it,” Aspen added. “I’ll work at McDonald’s first.”
Christina drank half the glass in one long swallow.
Then she looked directly at Aspen.
“I got a few things I should tell you,” she said. “You asked me before if I was a spy. I said no. That was a lie.”
A knot twisted in Aspen’s stomach.
“What?”
“I’ve been feeding information to Blake Gray the whole time,” she said. “He wanted me to buddy-up to you, after you wouldn’t drop your investigation, so he’d know what you were up to.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “At first I thought it was just because he likes to know what’s going on in the firm. But now, with Jacqueline Moore dead, maybe there’s more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean, other than Rachel Ringer’s dead and now so is Jacqueline Moore. What I can tell you, though, is that everything you and I did and everything we learned, I told him about it.”
“That’s disturbing. I thought we were friends.”
“We are, but I owed him,” she added. “He kept me in the firm after I screwed up that case I told you about. Plus, he was pretty clear that he’d grease the skids to be sure I made partner when the time came.”
Aspen pondered it.
And sipped the drink.
Then she asked, “Do you think Blake fed all that information to Derek Bennett?”
Christina shrugged.
“I’d have to believe so. They’re pretty close.”
Aspen twisted the glass in her hand.
“So who put the note on my chair warning me that you were a spy?”
Christina didn’t know but said, “It wasn’t Blake, that’s for sure. The more I think about it, it might have been Jacqueline Moore. She was close to both Blake and Bennett and would have known that I was working as a spy. If Bennett was getting the information from Blake, he might have been thinking that you were getting too close for comfort and needed to be taken out. So maybe Jacqueline warned you that I was a spy so you won’t give me any more information. That way I couldn’t feed it to Blake, who in turn couldn’t feed it to Bennett. That way it would be less likely that Bennett would perceive you as a threat and would be less inclined to do something drastic.” She frowned. “That’s just a wild theory, though. I don’t have any proof one way or the other.”
A man and a woman climbed out of a booth and headed for the door. The man-who looked like an Indian- grabbed Christina’s arm as he passed and asked, “Where do I know you from?”
She looked at him.
A scar ran down the side of his face.
His hair was long and thick and black, pulled into a ponytail.
She’d never seen him before.
She would have remembered.
“I don’t know.”
“You look familiar,” he insisted.
“Sorry. I really don’t think I know you.”
He studied her, as if deciding whether she was lying, and then he looked at Aspen.
Longer than he should have.
And then walked away.
90
DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16
FRIDAY NIGHT
When Gretchen passed out back at the farmhouse, too drunk to even have sex, Draven’s thoughts turned to Davica Holland. He got dressed in all things black, parked on the other side of the open space, and then crept toward her house through a pitch-black night.
Before he knew it, he was in her back yard.
Then in the window well.
Prying open the window.
Listening for an alarm.
Hearing none.
Waiting there, nevertheless, for more than five minutes, just in case she had a silent alarm directly piped to a security company. When no cops came, he crept into the house.
He found her upstairs in the master bedroom.
Lying naked on top of the sheets.
Sound asleep.
He injected drugs into her ass and then held his hand over her mouth until she lost consciousness. Then he carried her naked body through the open space to the car, put her in the trunk, and headed for the cabin.
When they arrived, she was still unconscious. He tied her hands to the headboard and put a breathable gag in her mouth.
Then he pulled her legs up and stuck his dick in.
He pounded her hard.
He pounded her like the stud that he was.
He pounded her until he came like a madman.
He then tied her feet to the bed and wandered into the great room where he fell asleep on the couch.
An hour later he woke up and did it again.
Exactly the same, except this time she was awake, which made it a lot more fun.
91
DAY THIRTEEN-SEPTEMBER 17
SATURDAY-2:00 A.M.
Teffinger didn’t find a single thing belonging to Jacqueline Moore in Derek Bennett’s BMW, even though he searched it meticulously three times.
No bloody knife.
