“How do you know we’re going after Connor?” Reis asked without preamble, earning a gasp from his partner.
Rosa shrugged. “He’s the sort that likes to loudly and publicly bemoan his many woes, imagined or otherwise.”
Reis met her eyes, and she felt sure he would call her out on the half-truth, but he simply moved on. “Why are you so certain we are wrong?”
“Because Frank is an idiot and not the only one who says things out of turn.”
“Like Mark Fell?”
Rosa felt her stomach drop through her feet but managed to maintain her calm expression. “ No. Like Sheriff Hardy, who was complaining about the lack of finds meaning you two were likely to stay for a long time.”
Boone half chuckled, half cursed, and Reis leaned forwards. “Okay. That doesn’t tell me why you think we’re wrong.”
“Like I said, the man is an idiot. He would never be smart enough to kill one person without leaving any trace, let alone two.”
Reis’s gaze sharpened like a blade and seemed ready to carve the truth straight from her mind. “Two?”
Rosa stood, knowing she would lose her composure under that gaze. “You asked me once whether I believed that Grey was guilty of my father’s murder. I imagine you did it more to shake us than anything else, but I will answer you all the same. No. I never really have.”
Reis exchanged a veiled look with Boone, then took the step Rosa had been waiting for. “Why?”
She felt her lips lift in a half-smile. “Because after the shock had crashed through the town, Sheriff Hardy was heard complaining about the lack of good evidence. Then Grey, who had always kept to himself, started coming into town more, asking questions. Next thing, there’s evidence that starts turning up. A witness. It all snowballs, and Grey is arrested.”
“A witness.”
Rosa tilted her head to the side, thinking that as Grey was one of theirs, they’d surely know all about his downfall. “That’s what we were told.”
“I see. So you think history is repeating itself. You don’t just think that perhaps your friend, Dr. Fell, is more competent than his predecessor?”
Rosa smiled. “He’s definitely better, but that doesn’t mean the things being found aren’t planted to take down the wrong man.”
Reis rose slowly to his feet and took her in. “Thank you for bringing us your take on the case, Ms. Kay.”
She felt her eyes narrow fractionally. “If you don’t want another Grey on your hands, you’ll take my warning to heart.” At that, she left, hoping with every fiber of her being that they didn’t call her back. She knew her capability for spinning lies and truths together so seamlessly was at an end.
9
Four days had passed since Rosa Kay’s nighttime visit, and Agent Reis still wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing.
“Stop stressing about it,” Boone’s voice said from inside his earpiece.
Reis glanced around automatically, though he knew she had realized his agitation from his silence, not because she could see him. Since Rosa’s visit, he had been running a shadow op. Tapping into phones, CCTV, and anything else he could lay his hands on. Watching the movements of the Sheriff and his team, leaving Gaby to keep an eye on the Connor residence, filming every coming and going. He had done it on her word because the Rosa Kay that he met on arrival was not the one that had come to their house in the dead of night. Something had changed her, and he was convinced that it had something to do with the mystery of her sister’s flight.
“You think I’m right too, though?” he couldn’t help asking as he followed the Sheriff’s car at a crawl through town, making their way slowly to Frank Connor’s home.
“I think Rosa Kay knows a lot more than she’s saying. I think you’re right to test that out. Especially if it means not sending an innocent man to jail for murder.”
“And if it works, I will hopefully have earned Rosa Kay’s trust.”
Gaby snorted, and he winced, the sound abrasive in his ear. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that score, partner.”
“Come on. She’ll at least be willing to maybe try to tell me things again if she thinks I can act on them.”
“Maybe. I think it unlikely Rosa Kay will open up to you willingly. You’ve seen how everyone in this town treats us. We’re the enemy, the fabled, faceless FBI.” There was a long pause, then Gaby spoke again. “But there is one thing that makes me more willing to believe her words and leave her secrets alone for now.”
“What’s that?” Reis asked, hoping his partner had been driven by something more tangible than a gut feeling and a personality shift.
“She has every reason to hate Frank Connor. He’s slandered her mother for years, makes snide comments and gossips every time something bad happens, and always makes it out to be the Kays.”
“How’d you learn all that?”
Gaby laughed. “It is amazing what you will pick up just sitting in a diner.”
Reis shook his head. “So you believe her attempts to save him have to be because she knows something real, even if she isn’t sharing?”
“Yes. Why else would she keep him from getting a little karmic repayment?”
Reis frowned in thought. “Her mentioning Grey made me think that maybe she believes that it is the same killer.”
“Believes, or knows?”
Gaby’s words filled his blood with chips of ice. They reminded him that his own people were at a loss as to what was going on in this town and that whatever it was had already cost two FBI agents their lives.
When she spoke again, her voice was back to the sharp bark of an agent.
“I can see your
