Tainted Evidence (Evidence Series Book 10)

by Rachel Grant

  Both men were at large, and with her firm identification along with the footage from building security, their faces were likely plastered all over the news right now as wanted men.

  Hence the tub.

  Part of her wanted to turn on the TV or check the internet. But the rest of her knew that would only be a rabbit hole. She knew how these things went. The first comments would be supportive. There would be retweets and likes and shares and hashtags like #JusticeforMaddie. And then the White Patriots and Voigt Forum would launch their bots, and the questions would start. She’d be blamed. Then she’d be called a liar. Then they’d claim a false flag, and before long, #JusticeforPeyton would be trending.

  After that, the rape and death threats would roll in.

  She’d already deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts and locked her Facebook, deleting all but her family and closest real-life friends from her profile. She’d have deleted Facebook altogether, but there were a few professional groups she was in that she needed to keep access to. She could see what she wanted on Twitter without a login.

  After cinching down social media, she’d made a call to her boss and had spoken with Rhys, Sienna’s husband. She begged him not to worry Sienna with the news—they had a sweet, beautiful, preemie newborn to take care of—but suggested either they pull the company website down for a few days or get rid of the contact information, as Aubrey Sisters Heritage Preservation was bound to face attacks from the alt-right.

  Rhys had been kind and understanding—he was an assistant US attorney and knew the connection between criminal investigations and social media fallout—and said he’d take care of it. He’d suggested she take a few days off from work, but she didn’t want to. Troy Kocher was part of this. She’d seen him talking to her abductor in the rally videos. It felt like taking time off was letting those bastards win.

  They’d already stolen her home from her. Her sense of safety. It wouldn’t be right to let them take her job too.

  For that reason, in the late afternoon, Chase would take her to the Kocher Mansion to reexamine the bones and artifacts she’d planned to review yesterday. She needed to look at the basket and red-stained bones. But she had hours to kill before then. Chase needed to be here at the hotel, guarding her and Ava, while Josh was at the gym, running the final training. When Josh returned, Chase could take her to the mansion.

  She did not look forward to seeing Troy Kocher. She had no doubt he would be among the first to call her abduction a false flag.

  Her hands and feet were prunes when she pulled the plug on the tub, slightly more relaxed than when she’d gotten in, but still something of a mess. Chase had taken her to the police station for the early morning interview, which was a relief because she wasn’t mentally prepared to face Josh yet.

  She didn’t know if she wanted to beg him for sex again or tell him to get lost, so it was best to avoid him altogether.

  She’d barely slept the night before, wishing he’d been there to hold her, as they’d done after the terrifying news about Tricia Rooks followed by the assault with tear gas.

  Trina had told her Tricia was back in the US, in a hospital in the DC area. She’d had at least one surgery since her return and remained in a medically induced coma. But still, her prognosis was good, her body healing.

  Maddie had been heartened by the news and instantly wanted to call Josh and tell him how happy she was. And then she’d wanted to rip her hair out for being so pathetic.

  She’d called him a yo-yo. What did that make her?

  She toweled dry, then wrapped herself in the fuzzy hotel robe. She could get used to this life of room service and freshly laundered robes. But her days of luxury were almost at an end. Chase told her Josh was working on finding a safe house for the four of them, and when he did, she’d have to move out of the hotel. Raptor wouldn’t continue to pay her hotel bill if she refused to move to the safe house, but she couldn’t see how she could live with Josh and Ava.

  Maybe Chase would agree to be her new bodyguard. The boyfriend ruse was no longer necessary. She could find a new house. Her landlord wouldn’t argue if she broke her lease given that she was a liability as a tenant now.

  But then that could make it hard to find a new place to live.

  How did her life get so messed up? Where had she gone wrong? She ate her vegetables and exercised. She donated to charities and did work that was meaningful to herself and others. And still, somehow, everything had gone topsy-turvy.

  Was it because of her job?

  Was it because of Josh?

  Did it have something to do with C-IV? Or was it because of her brother?

  She went to the minibar and checked the contents. There was a decent chilled pinot gris for only twice what it was worth. She closed her eyes and considered her bank account. With all the other unplanned expenses, could she afford this indulgence?

  She sighed. Not really.

  She closed the bar and reached for the overpriced bottle of fizzy water in the fridge. At least she could afford that.

  She settled on the bed with the bottle of water and wished she had her cell phone. The police had recovered it last night. The theory was Karl Hoffman had planned to enter her hotel room and leave it inside to thwart suspicion that she was missing, or possibly leave it in her car in the hotel parking garage. But cameras monitored every garage entrance, and he hadn’t been able to get her room number before the hotel was swarmed with police, so he’d ditched it in the bushes and bolted.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t left her room key tucked in the little pouch with the room number, and the phone app that unlocked the room didn’t store the number. The police believed at some point between her being drugged but before they left the city, the brothers had met up and they’d unlocked her phone with her fingerprint and then run a program that prevented it from locking again, because there was no way to change the fingerprint without a passcode.

  The only items missing from her purse were her house and car keys, her hotel key card, and Josh’s cell phone. It was possible they’d planned to ditch her phone at her house if Karl couldn’t get to her car or hotel room, but once he saw the police, he must have panicked and known her house would also be monitored and the phone in his possession was being tracked, so he chucked it and disappeared.

  Police were searching the forest surrounding the old logging road for signs that Peyton Hoffman had some sort of destination in mind—that he wasn’t just taking her deep into the woods to kill her.

  That was a chilling thought. What if the motive had been nothing more elaborate than murder? He’d spoken of a boss and orders, but that didn’t mean they wanted her anything other than dead.

  Would Josh have been no-show at the rally if Maddie had been murdered?

  She knew he’d gone on fighting when he’d lost a teammate on an op, but…this wasn’t combat.

  There was another avenue she needed to explore, and she’d spoken with the police about it this morning. Would her brother halt his campaign if something happened to her?

  She had no clue.

  The police only knew White Patriots were involved because Josh had discovered she was missing within twenty minutes of her being hauled from the building. If the phone had been planted, it could have been hours. With her phone unlocked, they could’ve read the exchange with Chase and known about her plans to go to the Kocher Mansion. They could have sent a text to Chase canceling the trip, and twenty-four hours could have passed before anyone knew she was gone. The search for her would have started with the hotel, not Nielsen Tower.

  In that scenario, who would the abduction have been pinned on? A group backing her brother’s campaign, or the incumbent senator who was the opposing candidate?

  Any rando who felt she had it coming because she’d been photographed with C-IV and Josh?

  Was it possible Troy Kocher believed taking her out would mean the artifacts and human remains would go to the museum and not be repatriated? But Oliver Shields was a curator with a deg
ree. He knew better. But he’d also asked for a valuation of the collection, and he knew better than that too. Then again he would also know how to obscure the provenience of artifacts, so if he altered her initial inventory, and she was unable to dispute it, a number of items in the collection could quietly disappear and no one would be the wiser.

  Her thoughts had chased all her bath-time serenity away, and now she was getting a headache. She rubbed her temples and reached for her phone…which was where this whole thought nightmare had started. The phone was now evidence. She might get it back. Someday.

  Last night, Josh promised to get her a replacement, but none had been delivered yet. She studied her laptop. She could download desktop versions of apps so she could access her books. There was a podcast series on the rise of white supremacy movements in the US she’d started listening to last week. It was difficult listening, but it wasn’t like she could enjoy something on the fun side right now.

  She settled on her bed, wishing she had her earbuds, but her purse was also evidence now. Peyton Hoffman had gone through her stuff, touched her credit cards. It all had to be processed. She’d spent an hour canceling cards and resetting autopayments—again—this morning.

  She hit Play on the podcast and got up to pace the room as she listened to a woman and a man discuss the factors that led not just to white supremacist beliefs, but what made them form groups to take violent action.

  Ten minutes in, there was a knock on the door. She tapped the Pause button and padded softly to the door to gaze through the peephole. Her heart clenched at seeing a very nervous Ava through the fish-eye lens.

  She closed her eyes, not sure if she had the mental capacity to deal with Ava right now, but she’d promised herself that when the girl was ready to talk, she’d be ready to listen.

  Unless Ava was about to spew more lies, showing up at her door took a lot of courage. Maddie couldn’t throw that effort away. She suspected Ava had a more difficult childhood than even Josh knew. Part of her even thought he’d done the right thing for Ava in showing he trusted her, that the girl needed that kind of blind faith from him.

  It had just hurt so damn much that he couldn’t also have reached out to Maddie and said he recognized the lie but would wait the girl out.

  Maddie flipped back the bar that prevented the door from opening even with a key, then unlatched the dead bolt. She opened the door to admit Ava, and, without a word, she placed the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the hallway knob before closing the door.

  “Is this a bad time?” Ava asked, waving her hand at Maddie’s robe.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t feel like getting dressed. The robe is…comforting.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ava said abruptly.

  Maddie held her gaze. When the girl said nothing more, she said, “For…?”

  Ava closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “Uncle Josh said I had to apologize to you, and he said I really have to mean it with all my heart. And the thing is, I do. I have since I found out you were doxed too…”

  “When was that?”

  “Thursday, when we saw you in the lobby.”

  Maddie felt a twinge of pain, but gave the girl a faint smile. “So you haven’t felt sorry since Sunday?”

  Ava’s eyes popped open. “Would you rather I lied about that?”

  “I suppose not. But also, I do have feelings, and your honesty stings because deep down, in spite of what you did, I kind of thought you’d started to like me.”

  More tears poured down the girl’s face and they were genuine. “I did! But—but Uncle Josh is all I have.”

  Maddie nodded toward the couch. “C’mon. I’ll order us some tea.”

  Ava settled on the couch while Maddie called room service, paying a premium for extra-fast delivery. She then grabbed yoga pants and a jog bra tank from the dresser and changed in the bathroom. Being naked under the robe might be comfortable when she was alone, but it wasn’t the right attire for tea with Ava.

  Ava’s head was down, thumbs on her phone when Maddie stepped out of the bathroom. Knowing they’d be interrupted by room service, Maddie didn’t want to begin now. She stepped to the window. She had a corner room with a view of the Willamette River and the riverfront park. The nearest bridge that spanned the river had been built over a hundred years ago, probably constructed with Nielsen Steel.

  With the exception of her college years, she’d lived in the Portland area her whole life. She loved the crazy, weird vibe the city had cultivated, the nude bikers and hippies that had never faded away as the rest of the country moved through the decades.

  With the exception of her work with tribes, however, she’d been largely blind to the racist underbelly of her hometown until the White Patriot rallies began. She knew Oregon’s racist history, of course. There had been laws passed to prevent Black settlers from moving to the territory, while “sundown towns”—communities that made it known nonwhites had to be outside the town before sunset or they’d face dire consequences—were established west of the Cascades after statehood.

  At the same time, east of the Cascades was like a different country. Not the lush green of the west, but desert plateau. Dry and wide-open spaces. Oregon-trail wagon-wheel ruts remained visible in the ground. Settlers had arrived in their wagons and taken native land. Then the government sliced and diced it into a checkerboard and stole indigenous children from their families and forced them to go to boarding schools hundreds—even thousands—of miles away. At the same time, the Kochers and Nielsens were cutting down trees and extracting the iron ore from the ground, taking the bounty from land indigenous people had lived on for thousands of years.

  Tomorrow, the park that ran along the riverfront just feet from the hotel would be filled with White Patriots. She’d be able to watch from this very window, as Arthur, Josh, and Chase would be down below with upwards of seventy volunteers in an effort to wrest this city from its racist foundation.

  One rally couldn’t bring about the end of a hundred-and seventy-five-year history of systemic racism on this one patch of American soil, but at least the counterprotesters could make their statement. She wanted to join the volunteers and do her part, but understood why being there would not help the cause.

  There was a knock on the door, and her shoulders tensed. Intermission was over. It was time to talk to Ava.

  She’d ordered the high tea service, complete with finger sandwiches and petit fours. Maddie had never had high tea before and figured why not? The server rolled the table into the room and positioned it in front of the couch. The table was covered in a white tablecloth, and in the center was a delicate, flowery, gilded ceramic teapot and two matching gold-rimmed cups. And naturally, since they were in the heart of the Rose City, there was a small vase on the table with a perfect salmon-colored rose.

  The table was picture perfect, the kind of setting one would expect for royalty wearing elaborate fascinators, and now Maddie wished she’d taken more than her jewelry from the hatbox in her closet at home.

  The server lifted the silver cover from the sandwiches and cakes, and Ava let out a gasp when she saw the small, pink-frosted treats. Then she started to cry.

  Shit.

  The server cocked his head to ask if he should pour the tea. Maddie gave a quick shake of her head and walked him to the door. She quickly signed the check, adding extra to the already included tip, then locked the door behind him.

  She returned to the couch and poured two cups of tea before asking gently, “What’s wrong?”

  “For my eighth birthday, my mom took me and Marcus to high tea. I loved the little cakes so much. My mom gave me an American Girl Doll at the tea, and she had her own cake. But later at school, Missy Fisher said my doll was a cheap fake from Target, not like hers. She had a real Kit doll. And I pushed her off the swing and got sent to the principal’s office, but my mom didn’t punish me because she said Missy was a brat and every doll deserves love and cake, just as much as every girl can be a princess if she wa
nts.”

  Maddie felt her own eyes burn. There were so many emotional ups and downs in that burst of speech. She had a feeling Ava carried a cauldron of memories she’d been forced to tamp down with her father. Memories she hadn’t been ready or even knew how to share with Josh, but still, not the kind that would come up in a therapy session either.

  Sometimes pink petit fours were a trigger—for both good and bad.

  “I wish I’d known your mother.”

  Ava grabbed a cake and popped the whole square into her mouth. She smiled and said, “Raspberry,” with a small hum of pleasure. She swallowed and met Maddie’s gaze. “I think my mom would have liked you, but you’d have intimidated her.”

  She’d never considered herself very intimidating to other women, so she asked, “What makes you think that?”

  “You’re a professional with a high degree. Aren’t you like a doctor or something?”

  She shook her head. “I have a master of arts, not a PhD. But yes, that’s a graduate degree.”

  “My mom didn’t graduate high school. I just found out last night she took community college classes when I was a baby. I never knew that. She always said she wished she’d gotten a degree, wished she had skills. My dad wouldn’t let her work. Said she had no skills and would never make more than minimum wage, and someone needed to take care of me, so why bother?” Ava’s mouth tightened. “I think that’s why she didn’t leave him. She had no way to support us.”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “She didn’t like the other moms at my schools. Well, except Marcus’s mom. Ms. Collins is cool. But the other moms were all older and judgy. My mom was an uneducated hick in their eyes, too young to be a mom. They didn’t think she might know anything about raising a child. She had me when she was eighteen.”

  Lori Warner must have been in so much pain. Trapped in an abusive marriage with a small daughter. Maddie didn’t know much about Ava’s parents, but she had no doubt the woman had suffered from emotional abuse, at a minimum.