Dead End. Lisa Phillips
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Sienna had always hated cleaning toilets, and basically every other part of housekeeping except baking. “But seriously...” Nina shifted her eyes toward Parker, and then back at her friend.
“Parker will help. He does that.” Sienna smiled.
For years it had been the two of them. Did Nina have to actually like the fact that Parker was around all the time now? Sienna didn’t have to rub her face in it.
“You’re not smiling. You have grumpy face.” Sienna paused. “Does it hurt that bad?”
Nina shrugged.
“While you were on the floor of your condo, Wyatt chased Mr. Thomas out your bedroom window. I heard him giving the description to the cops. He saw him.”
Nina slumped back on the bed. Wyatt, chasing a man like Mr. Thomas from her place. Then he sat there like it was no big deal to her, and just asked questions. As though she was some witness he had to get information out of. “I’m tired and sore.”
“Maybe so, but you’re also mad. I’ll make some calls and we’ll find out who this Mr. Thomas guy was. Is.” Sienna’s eyes were narrow. “Then he’ll know why it’s a bad idea to try and do in my best friend.”
Nina rolled her eyes, though she didn’t doubt her friend’s skills. She had been keeping Sienna updated on her lack of progress, but that didn’t mean her friend was going to be involved in clearing Nina’s father. If Mr. Thomas was going to show up and do things like this, Nina wasn’t going to let the outcome ripple outward and hit people she cared about. Innocent people.
“Just let me know what you find,” Nina said. “I’ll figure out what to do about it.”
Sienna didn’t look impressed.
“She’s right.” Parker set his hand on her shoulder. “And yes, Nina, we’ll pass you and Wyatt whatever we find out.”
Wyatt? Why did Parker think his partner was involved in her business? Lunch had been Parker’s idea, and she might have called him, but that didn’t mean there was anything between them.
“That’s our cue to go.” Parker escorted Sienna to the door, but not before she gave Nina one last light squeeze.
Wyatt stepped over to her, but she didn’t look up.
“What’s with the face?”
Nina ignored Wyatt’s question and hit the button for assistance. As soon as a nurse or doctor came in she’d find out how long she had to stay here. Then she could continue her search. Because now that she knew for sure Mr. Thomas had killed her mother, there was nothing to stop Nina from figuring out who he really was.
But first she had to deal with Wyatt. “I actually have a question.”
Wyatt sat on the end of the bed. “Shoot.”
“Why are you still here?” Did he feel guilty he hadn’t been there when Mr. Thomas came in, or that he hadn’t checked out her condo before he left? That wasn’t something he needed to take upon himself. She was a trained former CIA agent. She didn’t want him to stick around if that was the reason.
“A bad thing happened to you today.” His face was neutral, unreadable. “I rode in the ambulance with you, and I wanted to see that you were okay.”
“You did.”
Doubt flashed across his face. “Do you want me to leave?”
Usually he acted like he couldn’t wait to leave her presence. Not today after lunch, but previously when they’d hung out as a group.
Nina sighed. She couldn’t deny it was nice to not be alone. Plus she kind of thought Wyatt felt guilty for the fact that Mr. Thomas had gotten away.
“Maybe you could...stay until the doctor comes.”
“I could do that.” His eyes flashed, but he sobered fast. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when Mr. Thomas came in.”
“He wouldn’t have come if you had been, and you couldn’t have stayed forever. You didn’t know.”
“But you did, and I didn’t believe you. And now a killer is loose.” He pulled a phone from his back pocket. Her phone. He swiped the screen and then held it up.
The text message. That was the thing she’d forgotten to tell him, the text from Mr. Thomas now obscured by the shattered glass of her phone’s screen and the edges of the clear tape he’d covered it with.
“You want to tell me why you didn’t mention earlier that this killer threatened you?”
Wyatt set his mug on the coffee table and sat, still in his pajamas. Sleep had been a pipe dream, especially after Nina shut down and refused to tell him anything more when he’d confronted her over the text. She hadn’t shared it with him. She hadn’t trusted him. If she’d told him about it Wyatt would never have left her alone at her condo.
Nina had been admitted to the hospital overnight, and when the doctor mentioned it she’d looked relieved. It made no sense to him why anyone would choose the hospital over home, but she had to be monitored for a possible concussion. So here he was, just before six in the morning, on his couch.
He held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring. He needed a sounding board, and who better than his cousin, the FBI agent?
Geoff’s voice was chipper, as always. “Up early, aren’t you, coz?”
Wyatt smiled and relaxed back into the corduroy cushions. “Whereas you probably didn’t even go home last night.” His cousin lived on the East Coast where the FBI was headquartered, and he refused to lose. Ever.
“Actually I went to the gym at four after the debriefing wrapped up, and then I went home to take a shower and came back to work. For the record.”
Wyatt snorted. “Overachiever.” Neither of them had slept, then. Wyatt probably looked a whole lot rougher. He certainly felt it.
“So what’s up with my favorite Oregon cousin this morning?”
“Nothing your very-special-agent, East Coast self can’t help me with. So get your Fed fingers moving across that keyboard and find me whatever you can on the murder of Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes.”
A choking sound erupted on Geoff’s end of the phone. “Congresswoman who?”
“It happened thirty years ago.”
“Thank goodness. I thought you’d stumbled on something big. I would have owed you.” Geoff made a shuddering noise.
“I didn’t say I hadn’t,” Wyatt said. “Now type.”
“Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes?”
Wyatt rattled off the date of the murder, which he’d gleaned from the crime lab’s sweep of Nina’s apartment and the array of documentation she had detailing her mother’s life—and her death.
Geoff made a negative buzzer noise. “Nada. Next question.”
“Nothing?”
“Crime predates electronic files. When it was entered into the official record, the file would have been incinerated and only the evidence kept. What I have onscreen are the bare bones of a file that is curiously missing pertinent details—not sure why it wasn’t all filled out correctly. I have only key elements that would confirm it’s the right case, and a note about a fire at the evidence storage facility. That’s all.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“So basically I got nothin’ but an address and a date.”
If the evidence had been destroyed and the file altered, that couldn’t be good. Clarissa Holmes’s