Jagged

Nina was still dumping her stuff on her desk and shrugging off her stylish coat when he struck his knuckles on her open door.

“Come in,” she said, waving at him excitedly and tossing her coat on the back of her chair. “And if you could shut the door?”

He moved in and closed the door as she rounded the desk and slid her round ass up on the front of it.

“Okay,” she launched in. “I’d offer you coffee, water, a towel but seriously, this is too good not to share and do it fast. I’ll get you that stuff after.”

“Spill it,” Reece demanded, his breath still heavy and his heart thumping deep, the latter not having anything to do with his run.

They’d had no recent news except Nina being frustrated with Xavier Cinders’ attorney’s stonewalling. She’d explained that this would happen. Nina was gung ho, but they wouldn’t be. She also repeatedly told them this was a process that didn’t happen overnight.

Even so, it was wearing on Zara. She was keeping a brave face, but if something didn’t give soon, Reece worried that mask was going to crack.

“Right, well, it’s about what Pastor Williams said. Do you remember I told you I thought what he said was curious but intriguing?” she asked.

“I remember,” Reece agreed.

“I didn’t want to say anything to you because I really didn’t understand what he was saying and I wanted to understand it before I mentioned it. So, I know we’re on a budget but I still thought it worth the risk to talk to our investigator. She’s good. Really good. We don’t use her often, not enough business for that, but she’s excellent. So I hired her for this job, limiting her hours, and she found it. I just had an early lunch with her and she told me all about it.”

Nina stopped speaking and Reece’s patience started slipping.

“And?” he prompted.

Nina smiled huge, an expression that belied her next words.

“Xenia’s care for nine years cost a fortune.”

Reece shook his head. “Not followin’, Nina.”

She leaned toward him animatedly. “Xavier kept her on life support in a private facility for nine years. That requires more than tubes and machines but staff time and lots of other stuff. Did you ever think to wonder how he could afford that?”

“Try not to think about him at all,” he answered.

Although that was true, the man worked at an aeronautical factory a county over. He was union, blue collar but skilled labor, and had worked there decades so he made a whack. But not that big of a whack. So even though Reece didn’t think of him, that didn’t mean he didn’t wonder.

Leaning back, she nodded. “Well, couple that with Zander Cinders going to a school that cost fourteen thousand dollars a year. Then add the fact that Wilona Cinders works a part-time job. And she does that and still can seemingly financially handle the upbringing of a young boy and the mortgage on a four-bedroom house even though her husband cut ties as in cut ties. They bought that house to fill it with children and when she couldn’t give him any, he divorced her, moved to Alaska, and left her with a house they had some equity in but still had fifteen years of a mortgage on.”

Not much had been happening with the case but Nina knowing all this meant the woman had been seriously busy.

“Maybe you need to do the verbal arithmetic for me,” he suggested when she stopped talking again.

Instead of doing that, enjoying herself too much, Nina asked, “Has Zara ever talked about her grandfather Val Cinders?”

“He passed when she and her sister were teenagers. She liked him well enough, but bein’ a Cinders, only as much as he’d let her,” he replied.

She nodded, her eyes lighting further.

She was coming to the good stuff, thank fuck.

“Okay,” she continued. “Now, the Cinders being an old Gnaw Bone family, and I mean old, did you know that, before Val Cinders death, he sold huge tracks of land to Curtis Dodd? Land Dodd developed on. And that deal included Val Cinders getting a percentage of the profits off those developments.”

Reece felt his head jerk. “What?”

Curtis Dodd, who had been murdered a few years ago, was the town’s land magnate. He developed all over the county. Hell, you couldn’t drive through town without seeing his huge-ass, ostentatious house up the mountain, lording over it all. A house he built to do just that. A house that no one lived in now that his wife was in prison for conspiring to murder him.

Nina leaned in. “We’re talking millions.”

“And this makes you happy because…” he prompted.

“It makes me happy because Xenia and Zara Cinders were minors when Val Cinders died. That meant that the money he left to them, and when I say he left them money, he left them all of it, Reece”—Reece’s frame froze but his gut clenched as she went on—“was supposed to be held in trust for them. They were supposed to receive it when they reached thirty years of age. Xenia never reached that age and, therefore, her money should have gone to Zara or, alternately, Zander. But I’m guessing with all that’s happened to her in the past year, Zara never saw a dime. Which means Xavier stole it from her, used it to keep her sister alive against her wishes, and is using it to help his sister raise the son he also stole from Zara.”

Reece stood completely still and stared.

She wasn’t done.

“I have no idea why Val Cinders didn’t divvy it up between his kids, but he didn’t. Then again, word on the street is that they didn’t like him much and he returned the favor. And my investigator reports that will was ironclad. He wanted none of that money to go to Xavier, Dahlia, and Wilona, and he made certain that it wouldn’t. Apparently not a nice guy, he set his wife up with only a stipend to come off the interest of that money but that stopped when she passed. Bad blood runs in that family, it would seem.”

Reece remained silent.

Nina kept going.

“My investigator dredged this up and she also looked into Xavier’s finances. He isn’t even hiding it. He’s got all those funds, not in trust, held local, and he’s been accessing them almost since the girls inherited them. We haven’t figured out quite yet why that money never was put in a trust, though. That said, there is still a very large sum of money in those accounts. In fact, as my investigator sees it, there’s three million nine hundred and seventy-five thousand, two hundred and two dollars and sixty-seven cents.”

Reece said nothing and moved not an inch.

Nina continued, declaring enthusiastically as she clapped her hands in front of her, “We’ve got them!”

“She lost her home,” he replied, his voice low, dangerous.

Angry.

Nina’s smile faded.

“She lost her business,” Reece went on.

“Reece—”

“She lived in a shit, unsafe, studio apartment, sat on used furniture, had a crap TV, and worked for near- on-minimum wage to keep her shit together.”

“I—”

“He knew it. Everyone in town did.”

“He probably did, but—”

“That money was hers. That money was her sister’s. She could have approached the courts to release it and used it to raise her nephew.”

“That’s likely true. However—”

Reece leaned in and interrupted her, rumbling, “Bury that fucker.”

Definitely reading his words and tone, Nina jumped off the desk and, lifting a placating hand, tried again. “Reece—”