Page 64 of (Un)Rivaled

“No,” Devyn said suddenly. “It’s not possible. That wasyearsbefore he ever came into town, before he knew any of us.”

“That’s not true,” Laurel said. “I’ve found lawsuits filed by our father, blocking the sale of land in town to one of his subsidiaries. They named David as one of the defendants.”

“It was an accident,” Devyn insisted. “Bad weather. His car lost control?—“

Laurel motioned to the file. “That’s what we weretold. But read the police report. There were signs of another car, like someone forced his car off the road. It reads the same as other cases in that folder.”

Devyn just kept shaking her head, as if she was trying to keep the words from landing. “No, Laurel, this is insane! You’re saying David is responsible for dozens of deaths? Including our father?” She ran her fingers over her face. “This is so much bigger than we thought.”

"Which is why I didn't want you involved," Laurel said softly, the words hanging in the air like a silent plea. “From the moment I connected the first death to him, I tried to hide this from you and Calla. I couldn’t risk him hurting you two.”

“But you could risk Gray?” she snapped. “You threw my husband into the line of fire!”

“He knew the risks.”

Devyn turned to me, tears filling her eyes. “You should have told me.”

“I didn’t know,” I sighed, pulling her over to the side. “I know about some of the connections Laurel made, but I never knew about your dad. I swear, Ace.”

She searched my eyes and then nodded slightly. I let out the biggest sigh of relief. “But now you know why I needed you away from this. I couldn’t risk you–”

“You shouldn’t have taken that risk either, Gray,” Devyn snapped. “The moment this got too dangerous, you should have walked away. If anything had happened to you…” Her brown eyes searched mine. “You should have walked away.”

“Would you have walked away?”

She snapped her mouth closed, and I had the only answer I needed. Devyn shook her head and walked back over to the bed, almost in silent agreement. We were in this, and neither of us was leaving without the other.

Devyn sat down on the bedspread and ran her hand over her face. “I don’t have the mental capacity to even think about this, much less what you’re implying.” She looked up at Laurel. “You have the list of names, and I have all of David’s financial records. If we combine what we both know, maybe we can find some kind of payment history.”

“We can try,” Tomas said, pulling out his laptop. “I’ve one of my best hackers digging into some of these offshore accounts, but we haven’t gotten anywhere yet. Whoever is handling things behind the scenes, they’re good.”

“Or are they just better than you?” Laurel asked.

Tomas’ eyes narrowed. “You want to make comments about me, go ahead, but not my team. They are the best, and I won’t let anyone question that, especially not you.”

I glanced at Devyn, who was transfixed by the argument unfolding in front of us. Tomas’ tone had no hint of flirting—he was utterly still and solemn. Laurel stared at him, likely waiting for him to say something more, but he just continued to work, effectively turning his back on her.

“There has to be something,” Devyn mumbled as she stood, looking at all the boxes. Her voice was low, as if talking more to herself than the rest of us. “I refuse to believe he’s committed perfect crimes.”

“Or he’s just very good at burying the skeletons in his closet.”

“Wait,” I said, grabbing the folder Devyn had pushed aside. “Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been trying to work backwards,” I said as I dug through the file, trying to sort the printouts by date. “We’ve been looking at his most recent crimes, thinking they would have the most evidence, more information we could pull from different servers. But we should be looking at his oldest crimes, trying to connect those dots.”

Laurel looked at me. “Why?”

“Because rookies make the most mistakes,” I answered under my breath. “Think about it. David’s business had to be built from the ground up. There’s a long history here. And if he made mistakes, it would have been back then, before he knew anyone was looking. Before he made connections that could help him cover up his crimes.”

Laurel shook her head. “I don’t know. Some of these people have been missing for twenty years. What are we going to be able to find that the investigators missed?”

“We’ll never know if we don’t check it out.” I shuffled through the papers, pulling out the one sticking in the back of my mind. “This man—William Garber. He disappeared in 2004 from a town only twenty minutes outside of Saint Stephen’s Lake. I say we start with him and see if we can find something the cops overlooked.”

Laurel’s eyes narrowed at me. “It seems like a long shot.”

“But it could be something,” Devyn added, meeting my eyes with a proud smile. “Even if it ends up being a dead-end, it’s a place to start. Better than spinning our wheels trying to dig through all these files again.”

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