Page 145 of Buried Too Deep

“Now, Sara,” Beauchamp gently scolded. “You have life insurance money from your sister. You can afford it.”

“I’m giving that to the church. We’ve already had this conversation.”

“But I don’t want you in danger,” Beauchamp protested.

Burke held up a hand. “If we put protection around your house, Miss Morton, anyone who comes after you will be someone we’re looking for, too. They shot our friend. We want to catch them. Let’s talk about compensation later. You’d actually be doing us a favor.”

Sara nodded reluctantly. “All right. But you will bill me. I don’t need charity, Mr. Broussard.”

Burke gave her a business card. “My cell’s on the back of this card. Send me a text with your email address and I’ll have your number, too.”

Sara clutched the card to her chest. “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you. I don’t know why anyone would have broken into your offices to steal your laptops or why someone broke into Cora’s house and chased her through the Quarter.”

Burke stood. “You might have helped us more than you know. We’ll leave you alone now. Thank you for your time. And thank you, Reverend. We appreciate your candor.”

Beauchamp nodded shakily. “You’re welcome. I hope you find out who shot your coworker.”

“We do, too,” Burke said and led them back to the SUV.

They were silent until they were all buckled in and had driven to the end of Sara Morton’s street, Burke behind the wheel this time.

Cora clutched Phin’s hand again, even more tightly than the last time. She wasn’t as all right as she seemed to be.

That Medford Hughes had been a pedophile was a shock.

“Well?” Burke asked.

“I didn’t like him,” Phin said. “But I think that was because he goes on TV and gets old ladies to give him money.”

“Same,” Val said. “He was laying it on thick there at the end.”

Phin nodded. “I agree.”

Burke sighed. “I agree with both of you. Cora? You okay?”

“Not really,” she said. “None of this makes any sense. None of this explains how it connects to me. Unless…” She rubbed her forehead with her free hand, still clutching Phin’s with the other. “Unless my father was working a child abuse case and the perpetrator came after him, like Alice’s first husband did.”

“Then why kill Medford?” Val asked.

Cora shrugged. “Predators communicate on the dark web, right? If Medford got involved with a pedophile group and whoever killed my father was part of it and if Medford somehow betrayed them or threatened to expose them…Well, it would be a convenient way to silence Medford and set him up for the murder of Jack Elliot at the same time.”

“I don’t know,” Val said doubtfully. “There’s a lot of ifs in there, Cora.”

There were, Phin thought, but he also thought that explained some of her calm back in Sara Morton’s living room. She’d been feeling relieved that her father had been trying to rescue children abused by some very bad guys and had been killed for his effort.

It made Cora’s loss more palatable, for sure. It was possible. And certainly better than the alternative—that Jack himself had been part of the crime. Phin was going to keep that thought to himself for now.

But there were a lot of ifs. The only way to get to the truth was to investigate Medford Hughes.

“We can check Medford’s browsing history even without his computer, can’t we, Burke?” Phin asked. “I remember Antoine talking about that, that he could access the browsing history on the router from the back end. That program he installed on our laptops was triggered when Medford logged in on his own Wi-Fi. We can find out who he was dealing with.”

Burke met Phin’s eyes in the rearview mirror. What had been approval in previous days was now admiration. “Yes, we can. I hadn’t thought of that yet, but yes. Antoine should be able to do that. Can you text and ask him?”

Val reached her fist around the front seat and Phin bumped it. “Nice job, Phineas.”

“Thank you, Ingrid,” he said dryly. “Let’s get Cora home. She needs to rest.”

“I need to work,” Cora corrected brokenly. “I need to know what my father actually did.” And there was something in the tone of her voice that made him think that she was also wondering if Jack himself had been part of the crime. “I need to finish this.”

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