Page 75 of Never Stay Gone
But where had Drew gone after exiting the stage? Dakota had waited with the senior staff in the ops center—and he swore Jessica had been there, with them, at least for a while—and he remembered seeing Drew come down the backstage, take a bottle of water from one of the television producers. It was late. The backstage area was shadowed. Texas state troopers were standing guard. It wasn’t Dakota’s job to be security.
“Excuse me,” he heard in his memories. Jessica, slipping out the back door of the operations trailer and disappearing into the darkness. He’d thought… he’d thought she was going to Amanda.
Had she gone to Drew instead? Had they both slipped away?
After the rally, everything was chaos. Amanda joined the crowd, and she spent hours in the bowl of the outdoor stadium shaking hands, talking to locals, listening to story after story after story. Music was blaring, confetti was raining. The party was starting all over Odessa, and people were chanting “President Riggs,” and Dakota had known it was going to be one of those all-nighters.
His thoughts were like thunderstorms, lightning striking between darkness and dread. Jessica’s calendar was full of trips all over West Texas. Her whole area, as chief of staff of the Odessa office, was Texas west of San Angelo.
What were the chances that those four trips lined up with Drew Riggs’s travels? Was Dakota seeing something more than what was there?
Or was he seeing exactly what this was: lovers’ rendezvous, scattered across the dusty Texas plains, secret overnight meetings every thirty days.
The baby. Jesus Christ, the goddamn baby. How far along was she?
Twenty-six weeks. Almost six months.
How long had Drew and Jessica been seeing each other? Long enough to have a system to meet up in place, apparently. Long enough for her to have gotten pregnant? Joey had said Jessica wasn’t likely to get pregnant, not with her condition. Was it beginner’s luck for her and Drew? Or dedicated, consistent effort over a long period of time?
Why hadn’t she left Joey if she wanted to be with Drew?
Hell, Drew wasn’t going to leave Governor Riggs. That fallout of that would be… Good fucking God. “Presidential Candidate’s Husband Has Affair, Baby, with Staffer.” He could imagine the headlines and see Amanda’s career cratering to the earth, hitting harder than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Drew would never leave, not after twenty years at Amanda’s side as she rose to the top echelons of politics. So why should Jessica leave Joey? She had a man who supported her—a man she could pin fatherhood on, too—and the lover she really wanted on the side.
How long were Drew and Jessica going to pull off this charade?
If Dakota was thinkingaffair, then what about the murders? Every time Jessica and Drew were together, they were also within driving distance of the last sighting of each victim. And Carly Hurst had to have seen Drew with Jessica that weekend. Ninety days ago, Drew and Jessica were in Pecos, according to their calendars. That was close enough for a day trip, a lovers’ getaway down to what they thought would be an empty national park—a place they could be together with no one to see. That was the same logic Carly Hurst used with her airman lover. Get away, out to Big Bend, where there’s no one and nothing for miles and miles.
Would Drew have killed Carly to cover up his affair and the child he was having with Jessica?
Whoever had killed Carly had cut off her fingers and toes, pulled out her teeth, and set her body on fire, all so no one could identify her if she was ever found. Why?
Because if Carly was missing, she was just a runaway wife. Adults were allowed to leave, to escape a life they no longer wanted. If she was gone, she was probably down in Mexico, like Bennet had said, and no one had looked too closely at the details. Too much embarrassment for her husband, too much noise amid all the lovers.
But if there was a body, a whole hell of a lot of investigators were going to turn her life inside out, go through every last detail with a fine-tooth comb.
And in all those hundreds and hundreds of texts, someone was going to find the one to an unlisted, private number, the one that saidNice to see you! What a surprise!Bennet hadn’t known who that number belonged to. But Dakota did.
Carly had seen Drew and Jessica together. And she died for it.
Had she been trying to give Drew a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, make them coconspirators in a way? Or was that text the prelude to possible blackmail? Had Drew felt forced to act, to conceal his affair?
But Carly was found in a grave with five other women, five other sets of remains. Why were they killed, and why were they dumped in the desert alongside Carly? If Drew loved Jessica, enough to carry on with her for months in secret, enough to father her child, then whykillher?
And why was Shelly murdered? What could possibly connect her to Drew, to Jessica, to Carly?
The only thing connecting Shelly to this case… wasthem.
Shane and Dakota.
Killing Shelly could have derailed the whole investigation if Shane had been fingered as the killer. And would Dakota give any shits at all about Drew Riggs or his affair with Jessica, or their baby, if Shane was sitting in jail, charged with murder?
No. He really wouldn’t.
Khaki fibers under her fingernails. The murder weapon a piece of glass from a shattered picture of Shane and Shelly. A perfect frame job. Fucking perfect, except for Shane’s alibi.
What a goddamn night for Shane to tell Dakota he loved him for the first time.
But who killed Shelly? Drew? Why would Shelly open the door for him? Why would she let him inside her house? There was no forced entry. Had he used a gun? Taken her hostage right there on the doorstep? If so, why strangle her?
