by C. M. Cevis
“Convenient.”
Luna stuck the key in her pocket and began moving back towards the door. She was just about to leave when something caught her eye.
Sitting off to the side, tucked between desk and wall, were a pair of black boots that looked almost new. Luna made sure once more that she was still alone, before crossing the room and flipping over one of the boots.
“Elons,” Luna whispered. Her heartrate kicked up a notch as adrenaline shot through her, but she swallowed the slight panic and made herself calm down. Freaking out was the last thing she needed.
Instead, she took a photo of the sole of the shoe with her phone and sent it to Graham, along with the size of the boot stamped on the inside bottom. Then, she carefully replaced the boot and went back to why she was there in the first place.
The storage closet was small and well labeled. Luna grabbed one of the cameras, well aware that it would probably be missed the next time someone needed to take crime scene photos. She was going to have to do her best to bring it back before then.
The second thing that she grabbed was a bottle labeled luminol. She put the two items carefully into her backpack, zipped it up, and was slinging it over her shoulder when her grave dirt alarms went off.
She saw him before he saw her. His back was retreating on its way to the front desk, and Luna slipped into the small restroom just to her side. She counted to three, turned on the hand dryer, then pushed the door open, the loud blowing sound filling the hallway before the sensors cut it off. She wanted him to hear it and know where she’d been coming from.
“Ah, there you are,” he said as she returned to the front.
“Sorry, I needed to use the ladies' room. No one came in while you were gone,” Luna said, doing her best to act natural.
“No problem. I don’t have good news for you, though,” he said.
Luna frowned. “Oh no, don’t tell me. That stuff isn’t here?”
The officer shook his head. “No, I couldn’t find it. Sorry about that.” He handed back the list.
Luna sighed and put the list in her pocket. “That’s alright, it’s not your fault. I appreciate you taking the time to look for me.”
“Of course. Do you want to file a police report?”
“I probably should, but let me take one more good, thorough look. If I can’t find them, I’ll be back,” Luna said with a wink.
“I’ll be here,” he said, sitting back down behind the desk.
“Thanks again,” Luna called as she turned to leave the station.
That had gone better than she’d thought it would.
Once she was in the car and had the doors locked, she pulled her phone from her pocket and took the sound off silent. There was a text from Graham waiting for her.
How did I know…
Luna laughed and started the car.
20
“JUST SO YOU KNOW, THE fact that you found that brand of boot in his office is circumstantial. Anyone can buy those boots,” Graham said.
“I know, but it also might just be one more piece of evidence,” Luna said. He’d asked her to come to the hotel to talk about what she’d found, and they’d ended up grabbing a cup of coffee and settling in the square out front.
Graham shook his head. “It means that you were there illegally. If we were to bring charges, we wouldn’t be able to present this as evidence. Even if it’s the same size as the print, we can’t know it’s the boot that made the print unless he confesses.”
“Can’t you just get a warrant and pretend that you found it during your search of his office?” Luna asked.
Graham hesitated. “You’d make a good cop.”
“I’d make a terrible cop.” Luna chuckled.
“Don’t tell me anything else about what you found during your illegal search of a sheriff’s office.” Graham said, taking a sip of his coffee calmly.
“What? Why?”
Graham shot her a look.
“I guess I get to google instead of asking my awesome friend the FBI agent,” Luna mumbled, rolling her eyes into her cuppa.
Graham was apparently acting like he couldn’t hear her. “I’m taking the Sheriff and his lovely wife out to a late dinner after his shift is finished, as a thank you for being so hospitable,” Luna almost chocked on a laugh and coffee.
“Who was hospitable?” she chuckled.
“Did you know that most criminals who choose to burn evidence do so without fully thinking through the disposal? Especially if they aren’t frequent criminals. The ones who do dirt regularly usually choose a different, more efficient method of disposal.” Graham took another sip of his coffee, as if this was the most normal conversation in the world.
“Is that right?”
Graham nodded. “See, most who burn evidence don’t think to check the ashes to make sure it’s all gone. Or to make sure that the burning part coincides with their trash day.”
Luna furrowed her brow. Trash day hadn’t come yet, and if Graham’s thought was correct, Wesley probably hadn’t cleaned up yet, since it would have been sitting in front of the house for days.
”I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, just like I promised Wesley I would. But I’ll make sure to stop by your place to say goodbye before I go.”
Which meant have it ready the next morning for him to take it out of town and away from her.
“I would hope you wouldn’t just leave, that would be rude,” Luna said with a smile. “Do you really have to go just because he said so?”
Graham made a noise that said he wasn’t happy about the situation. “Yup, since it was him who asked me to leave. This is his territory, and I didn’t come here with the intention of stepping on toes. If I need to come back, I’ll need to step on everyone’s toes.”
Luna tugged on her earring, a nervous habit that she had broken herself of years ago but sometimes still popped up when she was stressed. “Okay.”
“You know, I’m fairly sure he hit me with a rock or something and knocked me out. That’s dangerous. What if I’m not the only one? We can’t let him keep doing that.”
“Allegedly,” Graham replied.
Luna shot him a look, even though he was right. “Yeah. Allegedly.”
“If you need me, you know I’ll be back in a heartbeat.”
“I’ll be fine,” Luna said, smiling.
Graham looked at her for a moment before returning the smile. “You’d better be.”
“I’ve got to go, before Asher comes looking for me,” Luna said, standing and draining the last of her coffee.
“She comes looking for you?”
“Normally, no. But with what’s going on right now… she worries. And I know her,” Luna laughed.
“She’s a good friend,” Graham replied.
She hesitated, then hugged Graham. “So are you.”
It wasn’t something that she’d ever done before, but he’d watched out for her for years, dropped everything and drove up when this whole mess had started. He’d been there for her when he didn’t have to be; he could have simply been a good fed and made sure she was still alive every once in a while. She wasn’t sure that she deserved the help that he’d given her, but she was thankful for it.
“Go on, before you make me feel like less of a guy for being emotional in public,” he said as she released him.
Luna laughed softly. “I’m sure your manhood is intact, Agent.”
Graham shot her a look that made her laugh. Luna dropped her cup into a nearby trashcan, and left.
~*~
ASHER WASN’T AT THE HOUSE when Luna arrived. That was a little odd, but then again, Asher was a big girl. She’d thought she would be the one being looked for, but found herself looking around for signs of where Asher was. She was worried, for some reason.
Mom, Asher’s mother, had always said that she should trust her gut feelings. Normal humans always ignored their guts. They chalked things up to luck or said that what they’d seen was a hallucination, explained it away as som
ething mundane. But those who knew what was really going on around them—people who knew about witches and shifters and the like—they were more attuned to their guts.
At that moment, standing in her dark entryway, Luna’s gut said something was wrong. She just didn’t know what. She started walking through the house slowly, hoping that a double-check of any and everything would help her feel better. As she visually checked the rooms, she examined her wards. She was on her way through the kitchen when she heard the window break in the front room.
It took a moment and a few deep breaths, but she convinced her brain that charging into the front room and sticking her head out in full view of the window was a terrible idea. Instead, she stopped turning lights on and off, stayed low, and made her way slowly into the room.
Glass was all over the floor, indicating that the force that had shattered the window had come from the outside. That didn’t surprise her since no one else was in the house. But as she searched the shards for what had broken the window, there was nothing else. No rock or brick on the floor, nothing to indicate what had caused the glass to give way.
At first.
It took her a while to see it, but in the darkness of the far wall, she could see a hole. A bullet-sized hole. One that went through the wall and into the next room.
“Who in the hell is going through all this trouble for me?” she whispered, running her fingers around the hole in the wall.
Better yet, what did she do about it? Calling the police seemed like a bad idea since she was pretty sure that their boss was trying to set her up, and staying there just to prove that she wasn’t scared without protecting herself in some way seemed like an even worse idea. She had things that needed to get done the next day, though none of that would matter if she caught a bullet that night.
As she considered her options, she went into the dining room, where the bullet had embedded itself in the paneling in the far wall. It looked like she could have pried it out, but instead, she took a picture first, and sent it to Graham. Then, she popped the bullet out with a knife, dropped it into a Ziplock bag, and texted him that she’d pried the bullet out of the wall and to come get it.
As she waited for him, she put in an emergency call to the glass repair place a few blocks away. It wasn’t late enough for them to be closed, but they would be on their way to cleaning up and turning off lights. She offered to pay double and explained that she feared for her safety were she to leave it until tomorrow. The man who owned the shop said he and his son would be on their way as soon as they had the glass ready.
Three minutes after hanging up—three long minutes—Graham arrived. It took longer to convince him that she would be okay without him there for protection than it did for him to get to the house. Even then, he stayed while the glass was repaired and helped Luna clean it up before he’d leave. He promised her that the bullet would be on its way to his office before he was, and he left just in time to pass Asher on her way up the walk.
“What'd I miss?” she asked as she came up the porch steps with a frown on her face.
“This is going to need wine,” Luna said, motioning for Asher to come inside. She locked all of the locks on the doors and headed straight for the alcohol.
21
LUNA WOKE UP NORMALLY, WITH the sun in her face, but with the knowledge that it wasn’t going to be a normal day. It was the day the before Graham was leaving, which meant it was the day that she had to remember how to break into places without being caught.
Asher had almost insisted that they both go back to her house for the night, but Luna hadn’t wanted to bring whoever was out to get her to Asher’s front step. Instead, she had asked Asher to go home, where it was safe. Asher had flat-out refused. So, the two of them had hopped into Luna’s bed together, for comfort’s sake, and fallen asleep listening for any sign that someone was trying something else.
Luna woke before Asher did and left her tightly wound in the covers. There was no reason for her to be up yet, and Luna had no intention of going back to sleep. She was entirely too wired. Instead, she settled at the kitchen table with the first of many cups of coffee and the paper from the front porch.
Nothing like reading about the rest of the world falling apart to distract you from the fact that your world is falling apart too.
~*~
GRAHAM HAD ATTEMPTED TO EXTEND his invitation to Wesley by dropping by the station, but the sheriff never seemed to be in his office. He had gone to the sheriff’s house the night before with the intention of trying one last time, but found no one home.
The fact that ten minutes later he received the text about someone firing a gun into Luna’s house had to have been a coincidence, right?
Right.
This time, he decided to try and different approach. He waited until Graham’s wife, Georgia, left the house. Then, he just happened to bump into her in the small grocery store.
“There’s only one left, do you want it? I don’t need it,” Graham said, holding out the last honeydew in the entire store.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Georgia asked, concern on her face.
“Of course. I’m leaving town tonight anyway, I can just get some of the pre-sliced fruit. I’m only in town to help Luna out with the situation that happened at her B&B.” Hopefully that didn’t sound too obvious, but he needed her to know who he was.
“Oh! You’re the FBI agent? My husband is the sheriff. He told me that there was someone in town who was federal.”
Graham smiled and nodded. “That’s me. I was hoping to have helped more than I did, but it looks like I have to hit the road first thing tomorrow morning. Actually, I wanted to invite you and your husband out for dinner tonight as a thank you for allowing me to be on his turf, but I haven’t been able to catch him to extend the invitation.”
“Wesley has had to put in some late nights lately, so sometimes he’s a bit hard to get hold of. But he told me he’d be home tonight around eight, if a late dinner wouldn’t bother you,” Georgia replied, her face lighting up.
I bet he was working late, Graham thought. “I don’t mind at all. I think that small Italian place down the street is still open that late. Would that be okay? My treat, of course. Say, nine thirty?”
The restaurant was open until 11 p.m., Graham knew from a call to the place earlier, though he had no idea why. He wasn’t going to ask, though. He was just glad that things were working out with this idea he and Luna had hatched.
“Are you sure? That place is expensive,” Georgia whispered as if she were saying something scandalous. She was adorable.
“Of course. Your husband didn’t have to allow me to help at all, but he did, and I am grateful. Think of it as a thank you before I leave. And don’t worry about the cost,” Graham said with a grin.
“Then we can’t wait. I’ll make sure that I let Wesley know, and we’ll meet you there around nine thirty.”
“See you then,” Graham said, smiling and waving a farewell as Georgia went off to finish her shopping. He, in turn, picked up some pre-sliced fruit and checked out before heading to his car. He’d done what he’d come there to do.
He had one other thing to do that morning, and that was head to the post office and mail off a few pictures and a bullet in a Ziplock baggie. The office knew it was coming, and they were fully prepared to have the results from this and the shoe print waiting for him when he got back.
His boss was already working on the paperwork to get him back into Calidity without Wesley’s permission. All he needed to do was get through one more night of playing his cards right. He could handle his part. He just hoped Luna could handle hers.
22
GRAHAM HAD INFORMED LUNA THAT dinner that night was at 9:30. He wasn’t sure how long it was going to last, so she had no intention of taking her time. She was going with a purpose: To get in, get info, and get out.
Once she was sure that Asher would be distracted, thankfully mom needed help with something at the house, she put on everyth
ing dark that she had, grabbed the bag that she’d packed, and headed out. It was just now 9:30, so even if the happy couple was running late, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t run into them.
Wesley lived on one of the nicer streets in Calidity. That meant the houses were bigger and newer. There weren’t really any “bad” streets in town, and just about every home was one that had been well taken care of.
The sheriff’s house was on the end of the street, at the head of the cul-de-sac, and usually lit up like a monument. Tonight, the lights weren’t as bright as Luna remembered. She’d heard from Valerie that the neighbors had complained about how bright they were. Georgia had probably turned them down, because Wesley wouldn’t have.
Either way, the house was as dark as it was going to get. Luna made her way through the grass beside the driveway and checked the garage to be sure. The police car was parked beside Georgia’s car, and Wesley’s non-police car was gone. Surely they had ridden together to the restaurant, but she reminded herself to be careful anyway.
Their backyard was massive, larger than Luna had thought it would be, and she felt a slight pang of jealousy. Entertaining in this yard must be amazing. Well, it would be if they were actually into that. The rumor was that the better half of the marriage was, but that Wesley wasn’t. So, no house parties.
Luna made her way around the side of the house until she reached where house stopped and fence started. Their fence was low enough for Luna to hop, something she wouldn’t have attempted if she’d had to work to get over for fear of attracting a neighbor’s attention. Once she was securely over, she headed for the back door.
No one spent their money on back door locks because most people figured that if someone was going to break in, they’d use a window or an entrance that didn’t require scaling a fence. That meant the back door lock was easier to pick.
It popped open after only a few seconds’ work, and Luna slowly and carefully pushed the door open.
