Page 56 of Crash and Burn

Sebastian laughed again. Good for Marina. He owed her one—or several—for sharing sensitive information because it would help keep Maggie safe.

“Also, the Redemption PD didn’t find any fingerprints on our laptops that weren’t ours. Mine all over mine, yours on your keyboard, apparently a few of mine on your keyboard?” She scrunched up her face as though that was the oddest thing about it.

Sebastian didn’t care that she’d reached over and typed a few things rather than spelling it out and waiting while he typed far more methodically than she did.

She climbed carefully back onto the couch and settled in the circle of his arms. But just as she leaned back against him, her phone rang again. Popping up, she muttered something about how she should have kept it on her. And this time as she answered, she had a far more professional tone.

Sebastian sat up straight, as he listened to just the one side of the conversation again. Maggie stood rigid, the tension in her shoulders visibly tightening with each thing she heard. He was on his feet and standing behind her in seconds, though he wasn’t sure what he could possibly do.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. Okay. Yes. Yes.”

What he heard told him nothing and he hated being in the dark, but at last she hit the off button and turned to look at him. Her eyes were covered in a thin sheen but she wasn’t crying.

“They’ve finished and the house is open. I get to go in now and clean out all the black fingerprint dust and try to put everything to rights again.” She sounded resigned.

“Wewill,” he told her. She was probably the only woman he was willing to go clean a house that large for. But in a burst of brilliance, he realized he probably wasn't the only one willing to help Maggie out.

First though, he had to call the chief. He needed another shift off. And he couldn't just trade with someone—he couldn’t pick up extra shifts until this was over. The problem wasn’t the day, it was leaving Maggie alone for twenty-four hours. “I need to make a call or two. Are you good for a few minutes?”

She nodded but didn’t move. Cleaning the house was daunting, but it shouldn’t make her that tense or give her that thousand yard stare … He definitely needed to get his shift subbed out.

He was just hanging up when Maggie’s phone buzzed again. This time it was a text, then another and another.

She was flipping through them, her frown pulling tighter and tighter. At last, she turned around and showed him her phone and the picture that had come through. “Look what the FBI found.”

It was just a picture of fabric with pen circles on it, large and small. The pictures showed it in blue light and red, each revealing some other hidden stain. It took a moment to see that it was a pillowcase. But the look on Maggie’s face told him this was about much more than just a piece of bedding …

Chapter Forty-Six

Maggie walked across the room in a daze and dropped down onto Sebastian's couch. It was a good thing the piece was large and cushy or she would have hurt herself.

This time, when he sat next to her, he wasn't wrapped around her comforting her, instead he was clearly waiting to hear what she said. “What is it?”

She took a deep breath. “Remember the itemized list that I made the FBI give me when they took things out of the house as evidence?”

He nodded.

“There were weird things on it, but I didn't think anything of it because there were so many weird things. It seemed like they were taking anything that could possibly be evidence of anything.”

“But the pillowcase is important?” he asked.

“They found it at the back of the top shelf in the closet in room five. We must have missed it but, according to the list of what they took, that's where they found it.”

“Why would a pillowcase be up there?”

“Apparently the FBI wondered the same thing and they tested it. It had Aunt Abbie's saliva on it.”

“What?” Sebastian frowned suddenly, seeming to go through the same thought process she initially had. “I mean I guess if you drooled a little while you were asleep?”

“That would make sense,” Maggie conceded, but that wasn’t what Marina had explained. “The thing is, Abbie was a stickler for clean laundry, and she didn’t sleep in room five. Ever.” Maggie needed a deep breath to go on and was glad that Sebastian was willing to wait. “It had someone else's saliva on it too.”

She watched Sebastian's face fall as he began to put the pieces together. “They were sharing a bed?”

“That would make sense, except that the evidence was found onoppositesides of the pillowcase,” Maggie told him, repeating the information.

Sebastian frowned again, not following. Marina had needed to explain what it likely meant to Maggie, and now she had to tell him.

She needed a deep breath. “It looks like it's the pillow that one of them slept on, and that it was held over the face of the other.”

---