Page 19 of One More Truth
He’s a double agent? A traitor to king and country?
Bloody hell and fuck twice over. This is not good. Not good at all.
9
TROY
August, Present Day
Maple Ridge
Six retiredNavy SEALs in their late thirties, my brothers, and I are sitting around the campfire, our five tents erected a few feet away. Our talking and laughter are the only sounds in the night air heard above the crackling flames.
Allan pops open a beer can and takes a swig from it. “You guys are lucky to live close to all this.” He gestures with his can to the towering pines skirting the area. “It’s a huge improvement over San Diego.”
“But you have the ocean,” Tim points out. “And beaches.”
“Plus, San Diego doesn’t get buried under dumps of snow,” Kevin, who’s from New York State, adds.
“Does get pretty cold in Manhattan,” Allan says, tipping his can as if to acknowledge Kevin’s point. “But you sure do have a lot of fancy restaurants.”
The men’s conversation shifts to a story about their last deployment together. My thoughts drift to Jess—and how we’ve been dating for the past month, but we haven’t gone on a date. The kind of date that involves dinner. In a restaurant.
“I heard the other day that Savannah Townsend is living in Oregon.” Eric’s tone is casual, as if he’s discussing his favorite beer, and his words yank me from my thoughts.
Allan makes a scoffing noise that sets off warning sirens in my gut. “I still can’t believe she got let off. She was the mastermind of Wayne Townsend’s murder.”
Kevin’s forehead creases into a frown. “Savannah Townsend?” He slides a puzzled glance between Eric and Allan.
“The cop killer?” The lilt at the end of Allan’s reply isn’t so much a question about whether she killed a cop as it is inquiring what rock Kevin has been living under. “She got her lover to murder her husband. She was originally convicted for killing Wayne and was sentenced to twenty-five years. A technicality got her out of the slammer after she only served five years.”
The technicality being she was wrongfully convicted of the crime.
I tighten my grasp on my beer bottle and open my mouth to defend Jess to this asshole. My gaze falls on Kellan. He slowly shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine.
Message received.
Me going land mine on Allan won’t change the SEAL’s mind. If anything, it will just draw their attention to which Oregon town Jess lives in.
“What happened to her lover?” Kevin asks.
“Don’t know,” Eric responds. “She’s probably with him.”
“No doubt killed him too,” Allan pipes in. “Or she’s plotting to do that as we speak.”
Kellan glowers at his beer. Lucas and Garrett look like they don’t know what to say or do.
Fuck that.
“From what I heard about the case,” I note, keeping my anger to a low simmer, “Savannah’s husband was an abusive asshole. I’m not saying he deserved to be killed.”He totally deserved what happened to him after what he put Jess through.“But if the cops hadn’t arrived at her house when they did, she would have died from a drug overdose.” I keep my opinion out of my tone. I’m just impartially relaying the facts. “She hadn’t knowingly taken those drugs. Someone gave them to her.” That part was on the news a few months ago, after a blood splatter expert had raised new questions about the legitimacy of the previous testimony.
Allan snorts, shaking his head like I’m the one who’s the idiot. “That’s what she wanted the media to believe. It was a great excuse. Except I’m sure she hadn’t taken enough to end her life. She wouldn’t have actually died.”
He’s wrong. She would have. An anonymous phone call alerted 9-1-1 that they had heard shots from the house. That fed into the conspiracy theory her lover had been the caller. To this day, no one knows where the call came from, other than it was probably sent from a burner phone.
“Did the news say where she’s living in Oregon?” Kevin’s question is directed at Eric and Allan. The other three SEALs sit there quietly, apparently having no opinion on the topic. Or maybe they do, but they’re not willing to voice it. Two of them watch the campfire.
Unable to listen to this bullshit any longer, I stand from the log I was sitting on and walk past the tents.
