Page 53 of Heartbeat

“The last call on Townley’s phone was to a burner phone,” Muncy said. “When we contacted the police, they gave us access to school employees who confirmed the timeline of the warning Mrs. Pope gave to the office to the timeline of the last call made on Townley’s phone.”

“And?” Colin asked.

“Mrs. Pope’s warning was within a minute of the last call on Townley’s phone.”

Colin took a deep breath. “Okay. I see where you’re going, but—”

“That’s not all,” Muncy said. “We pulled banking records for Townley and Romo. Both men received large lump-sum deposits into their accounts on the Monday before the explosion on Friday. Townley’s wasten thousand dollars. Romo’s was twenty-five thousand. But we don’t know who put them there, and this is where our need-to-know ends and yours begins.”

Ramsey was stunned by the developments. “Can you send me all of the files and info you have on this?”

“Yes, sir, with pleasure,” Muncy said. “We’re still after Romo. If we find him, we’ll let you know. Unless something happens, he’ll likely be charged with Townley’s murder. But your team is the one to dig deeper into phone calls and bank deposits.”

“Much appreciated,” Muncy said. “Send your files to my email address here at headquarters. We’ll take it from there.”

“Happy to help,” Muncy said. He wrote down the email address Colin gave him, then hung up the phone and began assembling files.

A short while later, Colin received the files, made printouts, then set Brokaw on the trail of the money deposits and gave another agent the job of issuing a request for the phone records of both men, while Colin began to dig into Fiona Rangely’s background.

Fiona Rangely was fully convinced that no one knew about her fling with Hank Kilmer, and she needed tokeep it that way. Since she was Wolf’s widow, a perception of propriety and grief was important. There would never be a public reveal of her and Hank’s relationship, because Hank’s wife would have something to say about that.

She had been given to understand there were no physical remains of Wolf to recover, only bits and pieces of DNA. It was a shocking realization that a body could just disintegrate.

Now she would wait until the lab’s findings officially determined the identities of the crash victims before she could proceed to the business of what to do next, but scheduling a memorial service and a reading of the will would have to wait. And that was something of a nail-biter, because she didn’t know what was in Wolf’s will. They’d signed a prenuptial agreement, so she already knew there were boundaries, but the rest was a mystery and that made Fiona nervous. She didn’t like surprises. She sat within the silence of her home, thinking through everything she’d set in motion.

It was all Wolf’s fault. That damn Ancestry test.

Once she knew he’d sent it off, she spent weeks watching his email for the results. He was off on one of his trips when it came. As usual, after going through her own personal mail, she logged into his email account from her laptop. She knew the password because she trolled the account daily, making sure he wasn’t cheating with another woman on the side.

Even though she knew it was coming, the day she saw it, she clicked to open it and realized it was the test resultshe’d sent off. But she didn’t have access to the Ancestry account, so she couldn’t follow through. Angry, she just deleted it from the list.

She’d spent four years of her life on this man, grooming their relationship, being the loving, attractive, devoted wife he wanted, and it had been worth it. Wolf was handsome, sexy, and rich as sin, everything she wanted in a man. Ultimately, it would still have come to this end. They always did. But he’d forced her hand, and so she’d gone into her little bag of tricks and made calls and pulled strings, and bought off people to create what she needed to make happen, and here is where she’d landed. The rich grieving widow, awaiting a death certificate to get on with her life.

She’d stayed home from the office today and got up to make herself a drink. It was early in the day, but she could be forgiven for the need. She poured herself a shot of bourbon and carried it to the window overlooking the grounds between the house and the tennis court, then took a sip.

Liquid fire, smooth as silk, slid down the back of her throat. It always made her eyes water, but she loved the kick. Then she threw back the shot and swallowed the rest of it like medicine and closed her eyes, waiting for the fire to reach her stomach.

And in that moment, while she was still riding the burn, a horrible thought occurred. She’d put an end to Wolf Outen. But now that he was officially registered, what if he got a hit from Ancestry.com?

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!”

Wolf was gone. His laptop reduced to shrapnel and ashes. But his fucking DNA was now on record for life in that repository. What if someone had already keyed in on his new entry?

She made a sharp pivot and went to get her laptop. Wolf was gone, but nothing about his life had been changed or deactivated. She logged back onto his personal email and began searching. When she saw another Ancestry email with the heading,You have a new connection!, and knew she couldn’t open it, she wanted to throw up.

If the connection reached out to Wolf, it wouldn’t go through the Ancestry website. It would come in the form of a personal email to him. All she could do now was continue to troll his email and wait.

Wolf had been on his laptop all morning. He wanted to log on to his bank accounts and check in with his lawyer, but that would open the floodgates of his resurrection, and it still wasn’t the time. Instead, he finally began going through the daunting task of sorting through his business email. There were hundreds of them, and the urge to purge was strong. But he didn’t have anything else to do, and it was a way to pass the time.

It was nearly midafternoon when he paused, then got up and walked away. He was thinking about home, andwhat he wouldn’t give for the freedom to walk over to the wet bar and pour himself a drink.

“Whiskey neat,” he muttered, as he popped the top on a can of Coca-Cola.

The house was quiet and isolated, and after a few moments, he walked out of the kitchen and onto the back side of the wraparound porch and sat down in one of the cane-back chairs against the wall. He took a quick sip of the cold pop as he surveyed his surroundings.

The lagoon behind the house made him wary of alligators. He frowned at the neglected landscaping, knowing he was paying someone for upkeep, and made a mental note to deal with that when he got home.

It was chilly today, even with full sun, but it was January, Georgia’s coldest month of the year, and he was wishing for different clothes than what he had. Next time he left the house to get food and gas, he was going to pick up a couple of sweatshirts, denim pants, and laundry soap. No way to tell how long he would be here, and washing what he had was inevitable.

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