Page 9 of Marked For Revenge

“Yeah?” the woman said, sounding very groggy. No surprise there. She’d probably been asleep.

“I’m Sheriff Theo Sheldon,” Theo greeted, “and I’m sorry to bother you. Are you Marnie Dunbar?”

“Yeah,” she repeated. “Why are you asking?”

“I’m trying to track down Aaron Walsh, aka Eddie Walker.”

There was a groan followed by a huff. “What do you want with him?” Marnie snapped. The grogginess was gone and Ava knew defensiveness when she heard it. What Ava didn’t hear was any kind of surprise over Aaron using an alias.

“I just need to talk to him,” Theo assured her. “Do you have a contact number, or can you tell me how to reach him?”

“No, I can’t—”

“I’m a friend of Aaron’s,” Ava interrupted because she knew the woman was within a fraction of a second of ending the call. “It’s important we talk to him because he could be in danger,” she lied.

Well, maybe it was a lie. They didn’t know how, or if, Aaron fit into the picture.

“Danger how, why?” The woman was no longer defensive or riled, but she didn’t seem overly worried either.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the specifics of an active investigation,” Ava insisted. “We just need to find him and make sure he’s okay.”

There was a long silence. “You’re really his friend?” she asked.

“I was. I’m Ava Lawson. Maybe you heard him mention me.”

“No, I don’t think so. How do you know him?”

Ava decided to go with a piece of the truth. “We went to school together. He was my boyfriend.”

Another silence. “You’re the rich girl he dated.”

“Yes,” Ava answered after a pause of her own. “He mentioned me?”

“He told Christina—that’s my sister—that he’d gotten messed up over some rich girl back in high school. I’m guessing you two had a bad breakup or something?”

“Or something,” Ava muttered. It didn’t surprise her that Aaron had gotten “messed up” over her. Or more specifically, over their situation of her being pregnant with his child. She had certainly been in the messed-up category, too. “How is Aaron?”

“He’s a train wreck right now. Correction, he’s been a train wreck since I’ve known him. In fact, I don’t have a whole lot of love for the SOB, and I think Christina would still be alive if she hadn’t gotten mixed up with him.”

“Oh?” Ava settled for saying, hoping it would spur the woman to continue. It did.

“Yeah, Christina wanted to marry him and start a family.”

That caused Ava’s breath to stall a little and she braced herself in case Christina was about to admit that Aaron had confessed to her that he had a child. But she didn’t.

“My sister just couldn’t see the bad in him,” Marnie added.

“What kind of bad?” Ava pressed. “Drugs?”

Marnie groaned. Then cursed. “He didn’t use drugs, not that I know of. He used my sister. He’d go off drinking with his friends and wouldn’t come back for days. When she would get mad, he’d try to put it all on her, telling her if she’d quit nagging him, he wouldn’t have to drink.” She paused. “But I will say when Christina died, it just about ripped him to pieces. He fell apart at the funeral.”

Maybe it’d done enough ripping to set Aaron on the path to murder.

“Christina had a drug problem?” Ava asked, hoping to get more insight into what had gone on.

“No.” Marnie paused, cursed, then groaned. “Okay, so she used every now and then, but she got a bad batch or something, and it caused her heart to stop. Aaron was at work and didn’t find her for hours.”

“I’m sorry,” Ava said and hoped it didn’t sound too abrupt to move on to the next question. “What kind of work does Aaron do these days?”

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