Tinted Windows

“No. It’s almost considered a courtesy at this point. They’ve already questioned you, so they’d expect you to accommodate them again.”

“To hell with that. Why would I want to go through it again?”

“If they do contact you, you can’t have that sort of attitude.”

Danielle rolled her eyes. “So I just bend over and keep taking it as long as they want to give it to me?”

“For a while, yes. Just please…Danielle, please stick to the story. Don’t let your emotions or annoyance take over.”

“Is that really why you called?” Danielle asked.

“It is. Well, that and because I know how you tend to stew in your emotions when things get bad. How are you holding up?”

“I stink. And I’m out of things to binge on Netflix. Thinking of heading back in to work tomorrow.”

“That sounds good,” Chloe said. “Please don’t talk about what we did to the people you work with, okay?”

“My God, Chloe. I’m not an idiot.”

“I know, I just—”

“Chloe, let’s not do this. How about you go ahead and resume your life and I’ll do the same. Let’s give it a few weeks and see where we are. I know how this works. We’ve been through something pretty fucked up. And no matter how you like to paint it in your head, you and I have never been especially close. We don’t have that tight sisterhood bond, you know? So maybe we don’t need each other to get through this.”

She sensed she had said too much about halfway through, but it had been too late to stop by that point.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Chloe said. Her voice was deflated and thin. Danielle had clearly hurt her feelings—something she had never been fully aware of either as a child or as a grown woman.

“Chloe…”

“I think you should get back to work,” Chloe interrupted. “Pick up your life like it was before all of this. And if the bureau or the cops come calling, all I ask is that you play it cool. Don’t take it personally. They are, after all, only doing their jobs.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Love you, sis. Bye for now.”

Before Danielle could respond, Chloe ended the call. Danielle set her phone down slowly, not quite sure why she was so bothered by the nature of the conversation. She had always been the sister who had not been bothered by hostile discussions. But now, to feel that Chloe was so annoyed with her, she felt like she was letting her sister down.

It’s because she saved your ass from a stupid mistake, she thought.

Yes, it had occurred to her several times in the last few days that Chloe had likely saved her life. And that would change the direction of their relationship from here on out. Never having been comfortable with feeling as if she owed people anything, Danielle was simply not sure how to handle it.

She absently started scrolling through the Netflix home screen again. She looked back to her phone and considered calling work. Maybe she could even get on the schedule for tonight.

Chloe was right, after all; she had to pick things up at some point. She no longer had the shadow of her father looking over her to blame everything on. No, now the bigger mistake was one that she had to own—the knowledge of knowing she had played a very large hand in her father’s death.

Yes, it would alter her entire life from here on out, but it was no reason to throw in the towel and give up on everything. But what scared her the most was the notion of discovering—even after her father was no longer around—that he may not have been the only problem after all.

CHAPTER FOUR

Chloe had pored over the information in the case files the moment she received them. She did not realize it then, but she was diving into the case in the same way an alcoholic turned to the bottle. She was trying to drown out the reality of what she and Danielle had done. She felt that if she could bury it all beneath enough passion for her work, she might just be able to obliterate it completely after a while.

They were headed to the rather small town of Pine Point, Virginia. About ten miles outside of Winchester, it boasted a population of just under ten thousand and was made up of predominately wealthy families, making it a case that seemed to line up with just about every case Chloe and Rhodes had been assigned to. The difference here, though, was that the victims were both male. From what Chloe could tell from the reports, there was nothing special or unique about the killings. It appeared that in both cases, the men had been beaten to death rather brutally, with no apparent links between the two.

“Getting tired of these high-end neighborhoods yet?” Rhodes asked from behind the wheel. Chloe, looking over the case files on her tablet, looked away from the content and out the window. Somehow, they had already arrived. The distance between DC and Pine Point was only about an hour and a half, and it had gone by quickly.

“I’m getting there,” Chloe admitted. “You have to admit, though…the familiarity of it is pretty nice, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose. The files for this one, though…makes me think this one is going to turn into nothing more than some whacked out muscle-bound dick taking his aggressions out on those he feels are either beneath him, or a threat to him.”

This had also crossed Chloe’s mind, but she wasn’t too sure. Someone killing for those reasons would likely be perfectly fine with placing a bullet between someone’s eyes or slicing through a throat. A brutal beating on two separate occasions seemed to speak to something a little darker.

There was more to dissect, but her brain was in a fog of sorts. There were a few questions she wanted to ask Rhodes—questions to help her probe into what Johnson and others in the bureau were truly thinking about what she had helped her sister do. She couldn’t help but wonder if they knew more than they were telling but didn’t have enough evidence to actually confront her. After all, it was the fact that Johnson had been fully prepared to send Rhodes out on this case alone that had Chloe more paranoid than anything else.

“Can I ask you something, Rhodes?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Have you heard anything about an internal investigation into my actions regarding my sister?”

She tried to read Rhodes’s reaction but her partner had a poker face. After a few moments, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. I know there were questions about your father and his abduction of your sister, but I haven’t heard anything about an internal investigation into your actions.” She hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. “If you’re worried about Johnson not immediately pairing you with me for this case, I wouldn’t read too much into it. I’d imagine he was just taking your mental well-being into consideration.”

“Maybe.”

“Now…let me ask you something,” Rhodes said. “And please don’t take this the wrong way. This is just between the two of us, but I need to know. Is there anything I need to know about? Is there anything you’re afraid they might be looking into?”

“No,” Chloe said. She feared she’d answered too quickly, with a bit too much bite to her tone.

“I had to ask,” Rhodes said. “Working together in this capacity and all. I can’t claim to understand what you’re going through, so I won’t patronize you. But I just need to know you’re good to go. In hindsight, I should have maybe asked before you signed on to help with this case, but you know how it goes.”

“I’m good.”

This was mostly true, but now Chloe could not help but wonder if Rhodes’s prying had ulterior motives. Had Johnson spoken with Rhodes before they left DC, asking her to try to pry information out of her? It wasn’t like Rhodes to ask deep, personal questions. She typically remained above the surface, not going too deep. For her to pry so blatantly seemed a little out of character for her.

“Good,” Rhodes said. “And I hope you know that if you do ever need to talk it out or process through it or whatever, I’m a decent listener.”

“Thanks,” Chloe said, though the comment made her even more suspicious.

The two women fell silent as the GPS on Rhodes’s phone told them to turn in half a mile. And beyond that turn was their destination, the crime scene of the second victim.

***

There were two local cops waiting for them, as had been arranged with a phone call before leaving bureau headquarters. Their car was parked on the side of the road, a few feet away from a curb where two streets intersected. One of the cops, a very tall red-headed woman, smiled and pointed to the space directly behind their car. Rhodes pulled into the designated place and said: “This one already seems bossy.”

Chloe and Rhodes stepped out of the car and joined the two cops on the sidewalk. The tall woman greeted them first, her smile wide and strikingly beautiful. The second cop was an African American man who looked to be forty or so. He had the look of someone who knew full well he worked in the shadow of his partner. When he shook Chloe’s and Rhodes’s hands, introducing himself as Officer Benson, he did so with a lackluster smile.

The tall redhead was named Anderson, and she spoke with a slight southern drawl. “Good to meet you,” she said, the you coming out with a dragged out a on the end, the typical southern ya. It made Chloe wonder if she was the type who used the word y’all.

“So,” Anderson said, “it’s a pretty simple story. A guy named Viktor Bjurman was found on this curb last night. Two teenagers on bikes discovered him. The blood was still pouring out of him. He was pronounced dead right away when the ambulance got here. The latest report from this morning tells us that there are multiple causes: blunt force trauma to the head, a broken rib, which was shoved upwards and pierced his heart, nearly completely crushed chest and breastbone, or a collapsed lung. Take your pick.”