Page 21 of Covert Chaos

See? He was a smart man. They'd figured it out. "We have a situation."

There was a long pause, then he swore. "What's going on?"

"First of all, you need to address all of this with the mindset that Hattie is innocent and didn't do anything wrong, other than move one body and grab the shoulder of another. So, you need to look past the obvious evidence pointing to her and look for what's really going on."

Devlin unleashed a string of curses. "Two bodies? Where are they?"

"We followed Charles Barnes into the Ugly Man about fifteen minutes ago, and we just found him on the ground behind the building. He has a corkscrew in his neck, and he looks quite dead."

Devlin swore again. "Hawk! Now!" I heard him breathing fast, and I knew he was running. "Where’s the other one?"

"Hattie found Beckwith Barnes in the back of her truck when she left the Ugly Man about an hour ago."

"In her truck?"

"Yeah. She panicked and kept driving to my marina to get help from me and Lucy. We brought him back. Her truck is in the parking lot of the Ugly Man now."

"Hawk! Go check Hattie's truck out front. Mia says there's a body in there."

I heard Griselda mutter something in response, and I grimaced.

"I need to talk to you all. Now," Devlin said. "Where are you?"

"On a boat ride."

"A boat ride? Come back." His feet pounded down steps.

"Yeah, we can't do that. We saw someone sneaking around in the bushes, and then she got into a boat. So we're following her."

"Hell, Mia. If that's a murderer?—"

"We'll stay far away. We just want to see where she goes. We'll report in. If the murderer is still at the Ugly Man, it's your party. We think it has something to do with the Diamond Pie Baking Company, and both Rachel Harrison and Emmeline Williams are part of it, and they were there tonight."

He swore, and from the tone of his profanity, I knew he'd just found Charles. "I need to call this in. Get back here now."

"Right. Okay. We'll be right there." I hung up. "Devlin says we have to go back to the Ugly Man." I paused. "He sounded like he meant it."

Maybe the urgency in his voice had been because he'd found a body. Maybe because he'd been worried we'd get ourselves killed. Or maybe because we'd crossed some lines that even he couldn't protect us from. Crap. How far did we push this?

"Then we should turn around right now," Hattie said, not slowing down at all.

"No damn way are we turning around." Beau was still watching the lake with his binoculars. "I walked away from a corpse for this. I'm not giving up now."

Lucy raised her brows at me. "Doyouwant to turn around?"

I sighed. "Honestly, sort of. If she's a killer, she killed two big men. She could take us out easily."

"They're men. Men aren't nearly as clever as women," Hattie said. "I'm not worried."

"I'm standing right here, fully capable of hearing you insult my intelligence," Beau said. "I can revoke use of my boat at any moment."

I hooked my arm around King Tut and hugged him as we flew across the water. Right in that moment, Devlin was probably reading Hattie's name on the corkscrew in Charles’s neck. Griselda was opening the back of Hattie's truck and finding a body.

She was in such trouble.

We had to keep going. If we went back, we were out of options.

But as I stared across the dark lake, unable to see the boat we were chasing, I felt the night closing in on us. Hattie had asked me how far I'd go for a friend. What were my moral codes?

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