She’s really dead? Mr. Marshall said he was powerful sorry about it but that she was gone. Had been buried just today. I can’t come home right now. I will, but I’m out of the country. I’ll send my wife and family there to get things taken care of while I’m working on coming home. Thank you for getting her buried. Who’s caring for the children?
My family is right now. We didn’t want them to be put in the system. Not that they might not end up there anyway, but for now, they’re safe as hens’ eggs in a nest. He loved the way Mr. Marshall had spoken. You get yourself home here, and we’ll hold off as much as we can. The house and its contents are being locked up. The murder, it happened at the house, you see. The little ones, the other two girls, they’ve been knocked around too, but they’re going to be all right. I don’t suppose you know where your sister is, do you?
I’ll find her. Mr. Marshall told him that would be good. I’ll be home in a week or less if I can get enough strings pulled. I haven’t any idea if my sister will or not. She travels to a beat of her own drums.
Yes, while I don’t remember her much, I know all about someone doing their own thing. You let me know if I can help you with those there strings, James, and I’ll see how hard they need to be pulled. All right? He told him he’d be fine. You will be. I know it. I’ll see you when you arrive. And let me know when you figure out your wife and family. We’ll be putting them up, too, so you don’t have to worry about that.
After closing the connection, he sat there for a little while longer. Belinda was dead. Murdered by a man that all of them had hated. Now she had four children too, ones he’d never met in the first place. Looking up when a shadow fell over him, he saw Paige. Putting out her hand, he let her help him up from the ground. James started to tell her what he’d found out.
“Not here.” Nodding, he followed her through the town for what seemed like miles. When they happened upon a house just outside the city limits, the two of them went in, and he was startled at not only how lovely the little home was but that it was air-conditioned. Looking at Paige, he asked her what was going on. “This is one of my hidey holes. Might as well be comfy when the bad guys are after your ass. Don’t you think?”
“She’s gone.” When she nodded, he wondered who she had spoken to but didn’t ask. Paige, like him, had contacts all over the world. Knowing about a sister in bumfuck Ohio, would be an easy thing to check out. “I’m going home. After I speak to Sara, I’m going to follow her there to find out what happened. Butch Todd killed her.”
“He won’t be anything anyone has to worry about soon enough.” James didn’t bother asking her. It would do him no good and only serve to piss her off. “I can’t leave yet. I have two things going at once here, and I have to see them through. I don’t know what I’d do there anyway but to kill Butch. He’s going to die anyway, but that’s all I can offer you at the moment.”
“I understand.” He did understand, better than most did, about his sister. “I was going to call Sara. Perhaps she can get us there and back without any issues.”
When Paige left him standing there, he looked around the room. This was a room for a woman who didn’t kill for a living. It was soft—the earth tones of the room suited his sister well. When she returned with a handful of money, he asked her where she’d gotten it.
“My stash. I don’t get paid by check, as you know. I don’t have a bank account other than the one that is in town for Belinda to use when she needed it. So I just stash it here. Other places too, but it’s here when I need it.” He looked at the stack. There were ten bundles of one hundred dollar bills. “It’s a hundred grand. Just use it instead of your credit card. That way, no one will know where you’ve gone when you leave here.”
“I could buy my own plane if this is all real.” She didn’t take the bait, nor did she give him any shit when he asked her how he was supposed to get around with this much cash. “What is it, Paige? I’ve given you ample lead way into busting my chops, but you’ve not bitten.”
“The men that were sent to find you. They were sent by Harrison Parker.” James sat down hard but didn’t say anything. “She’s in the FBI now. I called to speak to someone in charge of the two idiots that were here, and they told me that would be Agent Marshall. It didn’t take me long to find out who she was.”
“Marshall? You mean she’s connected with the Marshall family of jags?” She only had to nod, and he felt blindsided once again. “How the hell did she get that gig? For that matter, how did we not know about this before? I thought we had enough tags on her to keep her in our sights forever?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I didn’t talk to her, but I could have. I should have, actually.” She looked at the doorway into a part of the house he couldn’t see into. “I will, as a matter of fact. But here. Where I know she can’t find me.”
He didn’t have to ask her what she meant. James knew Paige well enough to know that if she told you no one would find
