“Calder?”
Jared didn’t say hello, instead using my name as a question.
“Sorry to bug you on a Saturday, but I needed to talk to you real quick.”
“Let me walk inside,” he directed me, “I’m getting the oil changed in my car, and I was out here talking to Owen.”
Or more likely, Jared was talking and Owen Moss was listening. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d heard Owen talk. Ever. The first time we’d met, there had been an awkward handshake before Owen clearly forced a smile and walked away. There were rumors as to what led to the silence.
Shaw claimed it was social anxiety. Nash said Jared had saved him from a cult, and Locryn told me there was trafficking involved and Owen’s mother had traded him for drugs. I didn’t believe a word of any of it. But since I knew better than to delve into Jared’s private business—and Owen was definitely off-limits and under Jared’s protection—I had no hope of ever learning the truth. Again, with Jared being ex-CIA, the roadblocks to even inquiring were formidable.
Honestly, it wasn’t that important. I was much more a live-and-let-live kind of person, which meant I didn’t need to know why Owen was there, he was a good guy, and that was all I really cared about. What was cool about him was that Owen Moss was the mechanic who took care of not only our cars but our tech as well. He was the man responsible for getting us the best surveillance equipment, phones, laptops, and my freaky home alarm system, which I never had to turn on or off; it just knew, somehow, when I was home or when it was me coming through the door. I worried he had cameras in my place, but at the same time, I knew he didn’t care enough about me to put in that much effort. I felt the same about him. Truly, the only part I found interesting about Owen was that he fixed cars on the weekends.
“Okay,” Jared said briskly, returning my focus to him. “Tell me what’s up.”
“Is the car all right?” I teased him. “Is oil change code for mounting a flamethrower on the roof?”
“You’re funny,” Jared deadpanned, which made me smile, parked there on the side of the road. “And I would remind you that one small alteration does not give you, or any of the others, the right to give me crap about my vehicle.”
Vehicle. He made it sound so benign.
My boss drove a tricked-out Hummer H3 to work every day that I was certain he would be safe in if the zombie apocalypse ever hit. The last time it was “in the shop,” Jared came out with a grill on the front that looked more like a battering ram.
“Now, talk,” Jared ordered, and I understood he had better things to do with his Saturday than shoot the shit with me.
I cleared my throat, nervous suddenly, not wanting to tell Jared that maybe his friend, the friend of the sheriff, didn’t know what the real deal in the town was. “The file is wrong. I’m actually staying with Mr. Dodd, not Miss Cahill, and the kids are his, not hers.”
Jared was silent, and when it stretched out for more than a minute, I began to worry.
“Boss?”
“I know all that,” he said slowly, sounding unsure. “It seems like maybe you only skimmed something you should have read much more thoroughly. Take some time and read that file before you do anything else.”
He hung up, and if he was right, which he usually was, I had made a fool of myself in front of not only the client but my boss as well.
First there was my being late to work on Thursday, and now being uninformed on Saturday. Could I be a bigger fuckup?
Pulling over on the side of the road, then grabbing the file folder from the passenger seat, I flipped it open for the read I should have done the day I left Chicago. There, inside, I read all about Emery Dodd and his wife, Andrea, who suffered an aortic dissection three years prior. She’d had high blood pressure related to pregnancy after giving birth to their second child, but it was never considered life threatening, and the flaw in her heart had gone undetected. She died in her home one morning and was discovered by a friend who came by to return a casserole dish. Her family—husband and girls—had been devastated.
Andrea Dodd, born Andrea Darrow, had been the sole heir to the holding company that her great-grandfather had begun. She’d met Emery in graduate school, fell in love, and brought him back to Ursa with her. When she died, everything became his and, eventually, it would belong to their daughters. Darrow Holdings owned rangeland, acres and acres, which was used by ranchers for grazing cattle and sheep.