The Survivors Club

taken half of everything.

Her little girl, Aurora, was shy at first. They sat on a couple of sofas, and Aurora warmed up quickly, showing her dance steps and eventually building up to running around them shrieking, and alternately crawling onto Tess’s lap.

“I’d like to ask you about your brother, Chad.”

“Isn’t that a little soon?”

“Soon?”

Brayden played with her hair clip, kept poking stray strands of hair into her chignon or whatever it was. “My brother Chad was a really good guy. A sweetheart. That’s all you need to know.”

Something off, here. Brayden sounded defiant. She’d said “was” a good guy. Tess summoned up the photo of the artist sketch on her phone. “Do you recognize him?”

Brayden stared open-mouthed at the sketch. Then she started to whimper. “He just died,” Brayden said. “Can’t you leave it alone for a little while?”

Then Aurora chimed in. She clung to her mother and started to wail.

Tess was shocked. That was why Chad’s phone was disconnected. “When did this happen?”

“I don’t think I should talk to you—it’s personal.”

“Brayden, the sketch I showed you links him to a homicide in Orange County,” Tess lied. It merely linked him to an animal that might have been used in one. But Tess needed the upper hand now.

“What do you want from me? I don’t care and I think you should go and leave us alone. We just had a long airplane ride and Aurora’s having nightmares and she’s breaking out! She has pimples! She’s sick to her stomach and it isn’t fair, so why are you here? You’re harassing us and it’s just plain mean and I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry, excuse me, but you should come back tomorrow or maybe go harass Michael because I don’t know anything and my daughter’s stomach needs to be settled!”

The kid was shrieking. Brayden kept on talking, none of it making sense. Just a barrage of words, throwing them at Tess like weapons. At first Tess thought the woman really was in shock, but it soon occurred to her that Brayden was able to avoid specifics by babbling. Her voice was so low even as she said paranoid and angry things, and Aurora’s voice was so loud. It was like trying to listen to a babbling stream under a band saw.

It occurred to Tess that they were a good team. Brayden was stonewalling her. Brayden babbling and Aurora crying: a one-two punch.

Fracturing Tess’s concentration. “Can you tell me how Chad died?”

“Why are you such a ghoul? Why do you care? He’s dead, not that you or anyone else cares anything about him.” She paused. “All right, Miss Ghoul. You want to know? Somebody murdered him! Someone killed my brother.”

“Can you tell me—”

She looked into Tess’s eyes. “I don’t know anything, except that somebody killed him. He was just going surfing, he was just a harmless adult kid, and somebody just throttled him and left him out there like they’d throw away a Dixie cup—like so much trash!”

Tess waited for the crying to subside. Either Brayden was suffering from histrionic personality disorder, or she was using the drama to stave off questions. And the daughter took her cues from the mother.

Tess held out the sketch again. “Is this Chad?”

Brayden stopped sobbing and looked. “It doesn’t even look like him. But he wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. If you think he’s involved in anything bad like that, you’re barking up the wrong tree, and I’m not saying anything more.”

“Bad like what?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “You’re with the police. You wouldn’t be showing me his picture if you were planning to give him the Surfer Dude of the Year Award.”

“Do you know Steve Barkman?”

“Who?”

Tess showed her a photo of Steve Barkman.

“No. Who’s he?”

“You don’t know who he is?”

“I might have heard the name. But I don’t know where. Why are you torturing me like this? I just lost my brother.”

“So you never met this man?”

“No.”

Tess reminded herself Brayden was a lawyer. And apparently a damn good one.

“Do you know a man named Alec Sheppard?”

“Another one? Who are all these people? No I don’t know him!”

“Alec Sheppard. Are you sure you’ve never heard that name? Maybe when you were in Atlanta?”

Brayden McConnell looked at her as if she were nuts. “Atlanta. Next I suppose you’re going to say I live on the North Pole. You come in here asking me all this crap when I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Well here’s something I want to know. If you’re going to keep asking me stuff, why don’t you tell me what it’s all about? And why don’t you use your pull with Laguna Beach PD to get some answers?” Brayden pulled her daughter onto her lap and held her as if she were afraid Tess would grab her any minute.

Tess knew when she was being sandbagged.

Time to give up—for now. Tess stood. “Thank you for your time.”

“No problem.”

Seriously?

Tess was relieved when the door closed behind her—and glad to get out from under.

Score one for Brayden DeKoven McConnell and her daughter, Aurora.

Lawyers of the year.

Tess positioned herself about seven homes up the street, backing the SUV into a driveway and killing her lights. A large palo verde tree partially screened her. There was only one way out of the neighborhood.

She waited.

A half hour went by. She did not hear a garage door roll up. She did not see taillights back out. No car came by. Another hour. Same thing. She waited another half hour. Nobody drove into the neighborhood.

Brayden wasn’t going anywhere. She had not been spooked.

Tess started up the engine, put the car in gear, and headed down out of Tucson to the freeway toward home.

She felt as if she’d been put through the wringer. She had a bad feeling about Brayden. Not just that she was good at barrage tactics, but because there was one moment when Tess sensed something besides just good tactics.

Tess had kept her eyes on Brayden’s face every moment. She was distracted by the little girl, she had a hard time following the line of bullshit Brayden was handing her, but she never once took her eyes away from that sweet face and those big little-girl eyes.

And there was one moment when the mask slipped.

Some well-turned phrase, maybe. She’d seen it—raw triumph.

As if Brayden, behind her sweet little-girl exterior, behind the shocked and grieving sister, was playing her.

CHAPTER 34

Lying prone—in the same position he’d taken on the hill above George Hanley’s final resting place on the day