Page 23 of SEAL's Surprise Daughter

“What’s it say?” I asked, my own anxiety returning. The thought of that guy still out on the streets—knowing he’d been inside my home —was unnerving, to say the least.

Gabe tapped his phone a few times to open the report his friend had sent, then scowled.

So, not good, apparently.

“Talk to me,” I said while tickling Savannah to make her laugh. “Tell me what it says.”

“Elijah Harris was a beat cop for the DC police department,” Gabe said, his tone edged with anger. “Got suspended for excessive force and put on administrative leave for an arrest that ended with the death of the suspect. That was two years ago. Then he joined the Virginia State Troopers, and it looks like he’s racked up an impressive list of complaints against him here too. Asshole.” He squeezed the phone so hard I was afraid it might crack.

To try to defuse the situation, I said, “Well, that’s good. It proves what Alexis said in her journal about him being violent, right?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “But it doesn’t prove that Harris killed her.”

“Is there anything else in there we can use?”

“Maybe.” Gabe frowned and scrolled some more. “Looks like there’s a traffic-cam picture of Harris in Charles Town the night of the murder. It’s close enough to Alexis’s place that he could’ve been there at the time she was killed. But I don’t know if it’s enough to overcome the police department’s inclination to watch each other’s backs.”

“Damn it.”

“Yeah.” He sighed and turned the phone off, then sat on the couch. “But you’re right. At least it’s something. More than we had before, anyway. We can at least show the investigators that he was in the area that night and put him on their radar.”

“So, we go to police headquarters tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yep.” He tucked his phone away.

We both stared at Savannah in silence.Everythingwas stacked against us. I thought about Elijah Harris, about what he was capable of, and felt a shudder pass through me. We were about to head into battle.

The feeling of Gabe’s hand on top of mine jolted me.

“Hey. Stop worrying.”

So I did.

THIRTEEN

“Wow. Thank you folks for putting in all this work,” Detective Anthony Marranto said.

I knew how to make a convincing case so of course the man was impressed. I’d laid out everything on the table in the interrogation room they’d showed us to. The pictures I’d taken of Alexis’s front door, the journal we’d found, the pacifier from the floor beneath Charlotte’s bedroom window, the background check stuff Matt had dug up for me on Elijah Harris. All of it.

“Unfortunately, it still doesn’t amount to a slam-dunk case,” he continued.

The restlessness inside me that had been growing since the day before exploded into full-blown impatience. “What exactly do you need to make it a ‘slam dunk’?” I asked, using air quotes because yeah. I was pissed and didn’t give a shit anymore about being respectful. “Because from where I’m sitting, this is starting to sound like a case of ‘covering up for one of our own.’”

The detective blinked at me a moment while Charlotte stared a hole through the side of my head. Okay. Fine. Maybe I’d crossed the line there, but dammit. I was sick of spinning my wheels.

“Tony,” a voice from out in the hall called. “Take a break.”

I had no idea who the man filling the doorway was, but from all the stripes on his uniform, he had to be fairly high-ranking. The detective got up and walked out, giving me a final hard look over his shoulder before the door closed behind him.

“Harpers Ferry Police Chief Ed Wharton,” he said, extending a hand toward me. He looked maybe sixty, with gray hair and sharp blue eyes that seemed vaguely familiar. We shook hands, and then he took the seat Tony had vacated, his expression thoughtful. “You don’t remember me, do you, son?”

I frowned. “No. Sorry. Should I?”

“Back when I was just a deputy, I was the one who had to tell you about your family.”

Shit. Yep. I remembered those eyes now. They’d been so sad the day he’d told me about the accident. And just like that, I was back there again, on that porch, feeling like the earth had vanished beneath my feet and I was in free fall. Reality started to slip away as the past took over my mind. Thankfully, Charlotte slipped her hand into mine and squeezed, anchoring me back in the now.

Chief Wharton glanced down at the evidence we’d brought in, then back to me, his tone serious. “Look, son. You have my word we’ll investigate all of this. I take the Alexis Barnes case very seriously, and I will personally make sure that there’s no stone unturned here. No cover-ups of any kind.” He cleared his throat and picked up the photo of Alexis and Elijah together. “Law enforcement officer or not, we’ve been looking for leads in that case, and this one seems as plausible as anything else we’ve come up with so far.”

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