Page 135 of Trouble Comes in Threes

Witt appeared in Mikey’s doorway. “Here.”

“Can you take Liam?” Joe asked as he reached me and wrapped an arm around my back. “I need to talk to Rose for a moment.”

“Of course,” Witt said, holding his arms out for the baby and taking him from me.

“Joe,” I said under my breath, “you’re scaring me.” A sudden thought hit me. “Is Neely Kate okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s with Jed.” He ushered me down the hall. “Let’s talk in our room.”

“Daddy!” Hope called out from her bedroom doorway. “Youwa home! I missed you!” She ran to him and hugged his legs.

He leaned down and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I need to talk to Momma for a minute, then I’ll give you lots of hugs when we’re done, okay?”

She looked up at him, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout. “But I have to go to bed.”

“I won’t be very long. You can wait up for me.”

“Me too, Uncle Joe?” Mikey called from his bedroom doorway.

“Everyone gets to wait up, even Liam,” Joe said, then took my hand. “We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

He tugged me down the hall to the bedroom, then shut the door behind us before leading me over to the bed. He sat on the edge, and I sat beside him.

“Joe, you’re scarin’ the crap out of me.”

He took my hand and looked me in the eye. “We IDed the body we found by Shute Creek.” He paused. “He was one of your employees.”

My brain was scrambling as I tried to process what he’d just said. “What? Who?”

“Jeremiah Stone.”

It took a second for the name to register. “He’s one of Bruce Wayne’s new hires.”

“That’s what Bruce Wayne said. He said he’d only been working for you for about three weeks.” He paused again. “He had a record.”

I nodded. I didn’t know the specifics of what Jeremiah had done, but Bruce Wayne liked to give men on probation a chance. He said the second chance I’d given him had changed his life, and he wanted to pay it forward by helping other people find their way out of trouble. “Bruce Wayne won’t take anyone with a history of any sort of violence.” That was one of his hard and fast rules.

“Jeremiah Stone had some petty theft and drug convictions. He’d been in rehab a couple of times.”

“Do you think he’s tied to Harvey Smith’s and Noah Parker’s murders?”

“It seems the most logical explanation, but the break-in at your office worries me. Neely Kate says nothing appears to be missing. Whoever broke in was obviously lookin’ for something, though, and I’m not sure it was the note Harvey left at his sister’s house.”

I ran through Austin’s account of the murder he’d witnessed.

“Jeremiah’s murderers were lookin’ for some kind of package.”

Joe’s brow lifted, but he remained silent.

I closed my eyes and ran through my options. I wanted to keep Austin’s secrets, but I could be at risk. My kids could be at risk. They had to come first. Always.

I opened my eyes, tears making his face fuzzy. “I think I know a witness to Jeremiah’s murder.”

Was it a freak coincidence that Austin had sought out the Lady in Black the day after Jeremiah’s murder? Or that he’d asked to speak to Bruce Wayne, who’d been Jeremiah’s direct supervisor?

“Like I told you, a kid showed up at one of our job sites, searching for Bruce Wayne because he thought Bruce Wayne had a connection to the Lady in Black. Bruce Wayne called me, and the kid said he had witnessed a murder. He was scared and wanted protection.”

Joe’s thumb slowly rubbed the back of my hand.

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