Page 206 of The Billion Heirs Boxed Set
I pick up my buzzing phone. It’s Jarvis.
“Hey,” I say.
I spent the day in Billings making requests for papers and electronic data. I stayed long enough to receive two boxes of records and a promise that more would be in my email by the end of the day.
I’m now back at the little table in the police station in Bayfield, the surface covered in papers.
“You grew up here,” Jarvis says.
“Yes.”
“But you moved to Phoenix.”
“Yes, when I was eighteen,” I tell him.
“Did you know Chance Bridger?”
“I did. But not well,” I reply.
I don’t consider the words a lie. I thought I knew him well. Trusted him. Believed in him.
“Hmm,” he says.
“What’s up?” I scan the papers and try to organize them into piles.
“How old’s Grady?”
My hands still. “Fourteen.”
“Huh.”
A chill races down my spine…and it’s not from the freezing-ass air conditioning in this place.
“What?”
“Met Chance Bridger today. He’s a handsome man.”
“Great, you should date him.”
He laughs. “By your tone, it sounds like you don’t like him.”
“I don’t. He’s an asshole.”
In my job, I’m always direct, but this comment seems to surprise him.
“Always been one?”
“Always.” Because he lied to me every second we were together. What I thought was real and genuine was a ploy to get into my pants. He said I was his first. What a crock.
“So you think he’s into illegal chemical disposal like his old man?”
We pretty much have Jonathan Bridger for interstate crimes, even though he’s dead and we can’t put him behind bars, but nothing indicates that Chance was, or is, involved.
“No. I’m saying he’s an asshole.”
I’m not sharing more. No way. Being back here makes me nervous that my biggest secret—literally the biggest since Grady’s close to six feet tall at only fourteen—will get out. Get back to Chance.
“Are you headed back here? I could use another set of eyes on all this paperwork.” What an understatement.
