Page 57 of Target Acquired

“Well, you’re wounded now. I doubt you’re going to be doing much renovating, and surely they gave you a few days of sick leave from both jobs.”

She simply stared at him, then laughed and shook her head. “You’re unbelievable.” She should walk out now. Let him wallow in his bitterness and self-pity, but her gaze slid back to the wall. He thought her mother was murdered, and he had some weird potential evidence that somewhat backed up that belief. She wasn’t going anywhere. “Fine. I’ll do what I can.” With her phone, she snapped pictures of the wall and the mechanic’s reports and tucked the file folder into an evidence bag. “If we want to open a case, I’ll have to take this to Commander Hill and—”

“No,” her father blurted. “You can’t make this an official case. If you do that, you can’t look into it. I don’t even know where that file folder came from or if it’s legit. And I certainly don’t know who to trust in the department. Someone went to a lot of trouble to knock me down. If they’re still there, they’re not going to want you, or anyone else, investigating.”

“But—”

“No. Just look into it, see if there’s anything to it. If there is, then . . . I’ll decide where to go from there.”

“Sir,” Cole said, “I noticed you have a camera on your front door. I know you checked. Is there security footage of someone placing that in your mailbox?”

“There is. You’re right, I looked. But it’s not helpful. Whoever it was rode on a bike and slid it in the box, then pedaled off. Shockingly,” he said with an eye roll, “he had on a hoodie, jeans, sneakers. I studied that footage like I’d win a million dollars if I could find an angle with a shot of his face. Nothing. He knew the camera was there and kept his face covered at all times. His clothes were baggy too. I can’t even give you a weight range. Height is probably somewhere between five nine and six feet. Could be a couple inches taller than that.” He shrugged. “Useless information.”

“Send me the footage,” Cole said. “We’ll look at it anyway.”

“Yeah,” Logan said, and Kenzie flinched. She’d almost forgotten he was in the room. “I want to see it too.”

Her father rolled to the desk and opened the laptop, clicked a series of keys, and her and Logan’s phones pinged. “Don’t have Cole’s number.” One thing she could say for her dad, he’d learned how to be tech savvy.

She glanced at Cole. “I’ll send it to him.” With a few taps of the screen, she did so, and he nodded he’d gotten it.

Kenzie tucked her phone away. “We’ll see what we can find out. Unofficially.” She paused. “Dumb question alert. Where’s the vehicle now?”

“Scrapped, of course.”

“Yeah.”

“Now don’t ask any more dumb questions. Try smart ones.”

“Sir—” Cole shut up when Kenzie lasered him with the fiercest look she could muster. She didn’t need him to run interference with the unit, and she didn’t need him to do so with her father. He held up a hand in surrender.

Her father’s gaze flicked between her and Logan and a look she remembered from her late teen years crept into his eyes. “Why don’t you two battle it out? See who can figure this out first? Be like old times, right?”

“Or Logan and I can work together.” She kept her eyes on her brother, refusing to let herself get pulled back into the desperate desire to prove herself worthy of her father’s love. She bit her tongue on what she wanted to say while Logan shot her a small smile and gave a half nod. His response lowered her temperature, and she was able to keep her cool. “If this report is legit, there should be pictures somewhere,” she murmured.

“Should be,” her father said, looking disappointed she hadn’t taken his bait. “But if so, they weren’t included.”

She nodded. “All right, then I guess we start with Tabitha Lewis and go from there. She’ll have access to all the reports from twenty years ago.”

“And I’ll see if I can track down Cliff Hamilton,” Cole said. He glanced at her. “Come on, I’ll take you home. You can work from there, right?”

“Sure.” They said their goodbyes and she followed him out of the room, leaving Logan and her father in quiet conversation. That was good. At least they weren’t yelling.

“What time do we need to leave to head to the lake?”

He raised a brow at her. “You think you’ll feel up to that?”

“Um, yes. I need s’mores.”

He chuckled. “I don’t guess it would hurt and there’s definitely safety in numbers.”

“There you go.”

“No swimming, though. No telling what kind of bacteria you could get in that wound.”

“Thank you, Dr. Garrison, I never would have thought of that.”

Ten minutes later, she walked into her home and finally decided she should probably check her phone. Sure enough, she had sixteen messages on the friend group thread asking her to let them know she was good and if she needed anything. How had they known? She looked up to find Cole watching her.