Bree was only half-listening at that point. Her mind was focused on the fact that she and Nick shared an eerily similar background. Was that why she’d felt such a strong and immediate connection with him? If nothing else, it explained how he’d been able to pinpoint her New York accent so accurately.
“What else were you able to find out?” she asked, interrupting Toni’s running chatter about classic but ill-fated love matches.
“Wait. You’re not freaking out. Why are you not freaking out? Oh my God. You slept with him, didn’t you?”
Yes, I did. Literally. In a hammock, in his arms.
But that wasn’t what Toni meant.
The denial died on Bree’s lips because while they hadn’t had sex, sex, they’d had some pretty fantastic alternative, mutually beneficial oral sex.
“You did!” When Bree remained silent, Toni huffed and added, “Fine. Be that way. You know you’re going to spill the sordid details eventually.”
She probably would under the combined influence of wine, a need to talk to someone, and Toni’s mad skills at ferreting out information. But not yet.
“Focus, woman. Did anything else unusual pop up in your research?”
“That’s not enough?” Toni grumbled under her breath and then said, “Nothing so far, but I’ve been rather busy myself.”
As if on cue, a deep male voice rumbled in the background.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Toni called out.
“You’re not alone.”
“No,” Toni admitted.
Shit. Bree had forgotten about Hunter’s homecoming. “I’m sorry. This can wait. Go back to ... whatever it was you were doing.”
“It’s okay,” Toni said, dropping her voice. “He’s recovering. He got back a few hours ago, and like I said, we’ve been busy. You’re still coming home tomorrow, right?”
“That’s the plan, but it’ll be the middle of the night your time, so I probably won’t see you until late in the day on Monday. Do me a favor? Send me what you’ve got so far. I’ll need something to keep me occupied while I’m trying not to think about flying.”
“No problem. Hey, are you sure you’re okay? You sound weird.”
“Yes, I’m just anxious about the trip,” Bree fibbed. She wasn’t okay, but she would be, just as soon as she made sense of everything. “You know how much I dislike flying. Tell Hunter I said hi, and I’ll see you soon, okay?”
Bree disconnected the call and then dialed the arson investigator’s number. She left a message with her name and number, and despite the late hour, she received a call back within minutes. After identifying herself and explaining the situation, the investigator agreed to look into it and get back to her.
That done, she pulled up Nick’s number next, rationalizing that the best way to get information was to go right to the source.
“What’s up?” Nick asked in a terse greeting, his voice holding none of the soft-spoken warmth she’d become accustomed to.
“It’s Bree. We need to talk.”
“It’s not really a good time.”
“Tomorrow morning then? Breakfast?”
“Sure. I’ll text you.”
The line disconnected.
She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it as a cold ball of disappointment formed in her stomach. What the hell?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cage
Cage set his phone to Silent mode and shoved it back into his pocket, ignoring the glares of the others. “Sorry. Continue.”
“Who was that?” Heff asked, amusement gleaming in his eyes. “Wouldn’t be the pretty reporter, craving more back-mountain therapy before returning to the big city now, would it?”
Cage wished it were, but his gut and some really cool digital monitoring software—another benefit to being friends with Ian Callaghan—told him it wasn’t. Someone had been looking into his family history. Based on the IP addresses, it wasn’t Bree but possibly the cousin she’d mentioned, who worked in research.
Those inquiries were one of the reasons they were having this impromptu meeting.
To Heff, he said, “Fuck off.”
“Doc paid Mr. O’Farrell a visit this morning,” Church continued, “and he gave us a promising lead for where Freed might have moved his stash.” Using the 3-D holographic map Cage had generated—created from a combination of ground-penetrating radar, private satellite images, and scanned-in blueprints from now-defunct mining companies—Church pointed to an undeveloped buffer area between the prepper compound property owned by Freed and Sanctuary property.
“That’s right in our own fucking backyard.”
Mad Dog didn’t know just how true that was.
“Everything south of here”—Church pointed to the lower property line of Sanctuary—“was owned by a small, private mining company that wanted to cash in on the rich veins of anthracite running through the area. Unfortunately, their timing sucked, and the company folded with the stock market crash of 1929. The mines were abandoned and all but forgotten until Darius Freed decided to buy the land for cheap and offer up the holes as a convenient dumping ground for big-city trash haulers.”
“Mobsters,” Heff murmured.
Cage shifted slightly. It wasn’t the first they’d heard of the shady deals the Freed family patriarch had tried to make. But they didn’t know the whole story.
“But Freed lost that land when the EPA got involved and put a stop to it, and your father or grandfather picked it up, right?” Doc asked Church.
“Yes, and no. Yes, Freed did have to sell off most of the land he’d bought to pay the fines. But that particular tract had already been sold.”
“Do we know who owns it?” Mad Dog asked.
Church paused.
It was Cage who answered, “I do. But it’ll belong to all of us soon.”
As one, they turned to him.
“Come again?” Mad Dog asked.
“One of those mobsters Darius Freed sold land to was
