Page 23 of Marked For Revenge

“Too busy to let me know about an attack,” Edgar countered. “Too busy to give me a heads-up? I had to learn about the shooting from a reporter.”

So, the press had picked up on that. Harley fired off a text to let Theo know that Silver Creek might soon be getting a share of reporters out looking for a story about the senator’s cop daughter. Theo wouldn’t give them that story, but at least he’d be prepared before the first one showed up.

“Yes, too busy,” Ava confirmed. “I had to give my statement to the Austin PD and then I got tied up with the investigation.”

She didn’t add more. Nothing about Caleb or Aaron. She was no doubt waiting to see how much her father knew about all of this.

Or to maybe learn if Edgar had been involved in some way.

Edgar, however, stayed quiet for several long moments, maybe because he’d been hoping Ava would be the one to do the spilling. It must have occurred to him, though, that wasn’t going to happen because the man finally huffed.

“I have contacts in Austin PD, so I know you met with Aaron Walsh,” Edgar finally said. “And I know where you were when those shots were fired at you. Did Aaron try to kill you, or did he put his spawn up to doing it?”

Oh, that was so not the right thing to say, and Harley saw the anger whip through Ava’s eyes. “My son’s name is Caleb. If you use that disgusting term again, I’m hanging up. Now, tell me what the heck it is you want so I can end this conversation and eat.”

Maybe Edgar was weighing his options because he went quiet again. “All right, I’ll tell you what I want.” Obviously, his brief silence hadn’t toned down his own anger, because he then used the mean-as-a-snake tone that suited him so well. “I want you and your fellow cops to be more discreet when dragging me into this investigation. I had nothing to do with those shots being fired, nothing to do with the murders.”

Ava’s forehead bunched up. “What do you mean dragging you into this investigation? Are you doing general griping about that, or is there something specific?”

“Something specific,” he snapped. “The sheriff you work for called Valerie Chandler and my campaign manager so he could verify that I had alibis for the dates of the murder. He wanted alibis from me.” Edgar’s voice rose on that last bit, said in a way that he felt he was above the law for such things.

He wasn’t.

And Harley decided to let him know that.

“Senator, your daughter could have been killed today,” Harley spoke up. “I’d think you’d want to do anything and everything possible to make sure her attacker is caught. That means providing pesky info to law enforcement so they can do their jobs. That also means the cops interviewing your longtime social companion, Valerie Chandler, so you can be ruled out as a potential suspect in three murders.”

“Harley,” Edgar grumbled, stretching out his name. “Of course, you’d be with my daughter. Why the hell didn’t you stop shots from being fired at her?”

Ava huffed and moved as if to end the call, but Harley waved her off. Edgar was riled, and they might get something out of all this ranting.

“Harley put himself in between me and the shooter,” Ava informed her father. “Unfortunately, Harley doesn’t have wings or a superhero power, so he couldn’t fly to the top of the building and dissolve the shooter with his laser vision.”

“He shouldn’t have put you in the position where you could have been shot in the first place,” Edgar fired back. “If you hadn’t insisted on seeing...that young man, you wouldn’t have been such an easy target.”

Well, at least Edgar had refrained from using the spawn word again, but Harley couldn’t tell if the man’s anger was because he was genuinely worried about Ava’s safety or because of the bad publicity this might generate. Maybe it was some of both, but considering this was Edgar, the publicity was definitely a big factor.

“Why did you go see that young man anyway?” Edgar pressed a moment later.

“I figured your sources would have told you that,” Ava countered.

“Is it because he’s a suspect in the murders?” Her father threw it out there.

Ava dragged in a long breath. The weariness was coming back in her expression, and Harley so wished he hadn’t stopped her from hanging up on this dirtbag father of hers.

“We questioned him,” Ava said. “And he’s not a suspect. That’s because he fully cooperated with the police and didn’t whine to me that he was being treated unfairly. Ironic, since he of all people could have claimed mistreatment at his bio-mother being forced to give him up or else see his bio-father arrested.”

“That wasn’t mistreatment,” Edgar stormed. “It was the right thing to do. I was trying to save you, and look what you did. You ended up throwing your life away by pinning on that badge and bedding a damn Texas Ranger—”

Ava hit End Call, and Harley could see the visible effort she had to make to steady herself. She didn’t get long to do that, though, because within seconds, her phone rang again.

“I’m going to block him,” she muttered, but when she looked at the screen, a different kind of tension crossed her face. “It’s Theo. Is everything all right?” she immediately asked. She put this call on speaker, too.

“No one else has been shot at or murdered,” Theo let her know. “I’m just calling to give you a heads-up that your father might be getting in touch with you.”

Ava frowned. “I just got off the phone with him.”

“Ah. Well, he was fast. I’ll bet he was mad because I talked to Valerie Chandler and Duran.”

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