Page 31 of Marked For Revenge

“How do you think Ava reacted when she found out you’d lied to her?” Harley threw it out there. “How do you think my boss will react when I announce that you smeared my name for your own gain? And that gain was to make sure your daughter and I didn’t end up together.”

More silence, followed by a whole string of cursing. “I didn’t call my daughter to be threatened by you—”

“It’s not a threat. It’s a guarantee,” Harley assured him. “Either tell Ava the truth right now, that there was no deal cut, or I’ll file a formal complaint for your allegations about me.”

Even though Harley couldn’t see the man’s face, he knew Edgar was seething. Ava was actually smiling while she drank her milk. Apparently, she was enjoying the pettiness, too, but underneath the enjoyment and smiles, Harley knew that Edgar’s lie had done a lot of damage. It was likely the reason Ava and he weren’t together right now.

“Ava misunderstood me,” Edgar insisted several moments later. “I said I’d gotten a good deal what with the charges being dropped. I didn’t mean for her to infer that you’d pulled strings or covered up anything. What you did was the only thing you could have done by dropping those charges because I was innocent. And now back to the reason for this call,” he quickly tacked on. “Is Duran keeping something from me?”

Ava sighed. Her smile had vanished, and now there was plenty of anger in her eyes. “Ask him for yourself,” she snarled for a split second before she ended the call.

She stood there a moment, probably waiting for Edgar to call back so she could decline it, but when that didn’t happen, Ava’s expression changed. Some of the anger vanished and in its place came the kind of look a cop got when they were trying to figure out if a suspect was telling the truth.

“Well, at least he admitted that he’d lied to me about there being a deal,” she muttered. “But I think he called because this was a way of covering his butt.”

“I agree.” Harley couldn’t say it fast enough. Edgar was a schemer, and this chat and concern about Duran could have all been a ploy. “This way, if anything leaks about Aaron, Edgar could be planning to come back with the response that he was out of the loop on that, that it was all Duran’s doing.” He paused and did some more thinking. “Would Duran just go along with this by taking the fall for his boss?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Of course, Edgar would do everything within his power to stop Duran from being charged with anything criminal, but he would absolutely let Duran take the blame for anything that could end up reflecting badly on him.”

That’s the way Harley saw it, too, and it meant if it came to light about Aaron being threatened and run out of town, then Duran would likely say it’d been his doing and Edgar had had no knowledge of it.

“Did Edgar ever directly threaten Aaron back when he found out you were pregnant?” Harley asked.

She thought about that and finally shook her head. “I assumed he had, but maybe Duran is the one who delivered the message from Edgar. Of course, my father told me he’d have Aaron arrested if I didn’t give up the baby. I’m sure he’d deny that, though, and he’d claim it was another misunderstanding.”

True, but it would still cause some bad PR problems for the senator if all of this came out. And it would. Harley couldn’t see another way around it.

“Now that Austin PD is involved with the investigation, someone will likely spill about Caleb’s connection to you,” Harley said. “Are you prepared for the fallout?” Because there was no way to keep it out of the media.

Again, she didn’t jump to answer, and she looked directly at him before she spoke. “What if I get Caleb’s permission to go ahead and leak it?” she suggested. “How do you think the killer would react to that?”

Harley blew out a long breath after he played around with some possibilities. “If the killer is Aaron, it’d likely piss him off since his plan would probably be to set up Edgar or even Duran for the murders, and he hasn’t fully set that in motion.”

Ava made a sound of agreement. “And, if Duran is the killer, he also hasn’t had the time to set up Aaron, if that’s what he has in mind.” She paused. “If the killer is Marnie, then leaking this might suit her just fine because this would make Aaron the most obvious suspect.”

“True,” he admitted, trying to figure out the best way to word what he had to say next. “Whoever’s doing these murders could be a sociopath or have some other extreme instability. You know both Aaron and Duran. Has either of them ever showed any signs that would make you believe instability could be playing into these murders?”

“I’ve considered it,” she admitted. “Duran, yes. He has such an extreme devotion to my father that he could have crossed some very big, very dangerous lines. Could have,” Ava emphasized. “As for Aaron, I really can’t say. He had that bad-boy thing in high school, a recklessness. In hindsight, I think I was attracted to him because he was the opposite of the boys my father was pressuring me to date.”

So, a rebellion of sorts. Harley wasn’t jealous of Aaron. Well, probably not anyway. Ava and he weren’t kids, and each of them had a past. He just didn’t like the idea of thinking of Ava with another man.

So, yeah, jealousy.

“What about Marnie?” she asked. “We’ve only had that short conversation on the phone with her, but have you read anything in her background to indicate she could be unstable enough kill in order to get revenge?”

“Nothing so far, but if she was as devoted to her sister as Duran and Aaron have said, then Christina’s death could have tipped her over the edge.” Still, there might be something he hadn’t uncovered yet.

At the mention of the woman’s name, Harley checked the time. “We should be getting to the sheriff’s office. Theo had a cruiser dropped off right before you got in the shower, and I had it parked in your garage.”

That would minimize the time Ava was outside, and therefore be a harder target for a sniper. The cruiser didn’t guarantee Ava’s safety, but it was one of those precautions he intended to take. Another was making sure he was near her at all times. If the killer could get to her back porch, then whoever it was could smash a window and come after her in the house.

Ava took a breakfast bar and a thermos of milk with her as they made their way to the cruiser.

Harley kept watch all around them as he pulled out of her driveway. It was broad daylight, which helped with the visibility, but since the last attack had also happened during the day, that didn’t give them any level of comfort.

As Theo and he had worked out, Harley made the short drive to the sheriff’s office and parked in the covered lot directly outside the door to Theo’s office. It was mere steps away, but each one of them seemed to take an eternity. Harley definitely breathed a little easier once he had Ava inside.

The breathing easier hadn’t lasted though.

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