Game of Fear (Montgomery Justice #3)(19)

“No, but their murder is probably related to an unsolved shooting here. I’m sure Neil’s checking that information now. He’ll look good for making the connection so fast.”

“If only someone jumps on Ashley’s BOLO that quickly.”

Gabe shrugged out of his jacket, too, and tossed it next to Deb’s. He kind of liked how they looked together, side by side, not alone. He shoved the romantic musings aside. The moment he’d dragged her into his office, things had changed between them. Yesterday, she might not have even come to him before trying to report her sister’s disappearance. Somehow they’d gone from acquaintances to . . . he wasn’t quite sure what.

He had to stop thinking this way. She didn’t need a lover, she needed a cop. And despite what everyone believed, he was still a deputy with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. He turned to her. “Neil agreed to put your contact info on the bulletin, too. That should help a lot with credibility when you talk to the police in Colorado Springs.”

“God, I hope so.” She wrapped her arms around herself and looked around his house.

“Do you want a beer or any food?” he asked in an attempt to distract her as much as anything. He could imagine the horrors going through her mind. She’d seen more than most, but Search and Rescue was like being a cop in a lot of ways. It wasn’t personal. Most of the time.

“My fridge is pretty bare since I usually eat at the bar, but I can nuke frozen dinners with the best of them or boil up some hot dogs.”

“A beer would be great,” she said with a sigh. “Maybe it will calm me down a little. My mind is racing.” She hesitated. “Gabe, how do you know so much about the Taos case? That accident happened eight years ago. You would have only been in high school. When I was a teenager, I rarely watched the news, much less knew about anything happening an entire state away.”

Gabe snagged two beers out of his refrigerator and walked into the living room, trying not to be pleased she’d checked him out enough to estimate his age. Even so, he dreaded the upcoming discussion. And how much to reveal. So many secrets. He chose his words carefully. “My father was in Homicide then. I have some of his old investigative files. One might tie to those kids.”

After giving Deb her drink, Gabe set his bottle down, then walked to the wall-to-wall bookshelves across the room. He moved several large books on the history of flying. Behind them, he’d hidden the thick expandable folders containing Patrick Montgomery’s final obsession. The notes and materials for Shannon Devlin’s case.

“You keep all your old police files tucked away for a rainy day?” Deb asked.

“Nope.” Gabe sat on the couch and set the five-inch bound collection of files on the coffee table. “This case was different for my father. It tortured him. The one he couldn’t solve.” The one involving his daughter. Gabe pulled out some of the folders he’d scoured over the years, whenever he could face the guilt, and opened the most worn manila file.

Despite Gabe’s familiarity with the contents, the photo of the girl he hadn’t been able to save still haunted him.

“She looks a lot like my sister, Ashley.” Deb moved in close beside him. “That’s kind of spooky. Who is she?”

“Shannon Devlin. She came to town eight years ago. Someone gunned her down in the bus station. My father and I . . . were there that night. I was standing next to her, but I couldn’t save her. My father tried to catch the sniper, but he got away. ”

Deb’s gaze flew to Gabe’s. “Oh my God. No wonder you reacted so intensely to that car bulletin in Neil’s office. If that wreck is related to this case, maybe this is the break the police need to solve it.”

“I hope so.” Gabe pulled out a few more folders. The base of his neck throbbed, like it always did when he opened this file. These weren’t sheriff’s office files. They weren’t even part of Patrick Montgomery’s official investigations. Gabe’s father had copied all of these materials in secret and continued to investigate on the side.

Then again, Patrick Montgomery had done a lot of secret things on the side.

Gabe shoved the bitter memories aside. If his mother ever learned that his father had conceived the daughter she’d always longed to bear with another woman, it would destroy his mom. She’d idolized the man. All Gabe’s brothers did, too.

Concealing his anger all these years had made Gabe feel like an outsider sometimes, but he had enough guilt to atone for with Shannon’s death. Tearing apart his family wasn’t going to be one of his sins, so he kept his father’s secret. No one would know from Gabe that the Montgomery brothers had a half sister born less than a year after Anna Montgomery gave birth to the final child she could carry.

Gabe spread out the manila folders, determined to concentrate on the job at hand. He flipped to the next page in the file. “Take a look at Shannon’s bio. She sounds a lot like Ashley. Intellectually, Shannon was way ahead of her peers.”

Deb scanned the page. “Wow, she was more than just a good student. Ranked number one in her class—a physics and math brain. Nearly perfect SAT math score. It says that MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale were actively recruiting her.”

“Shannon was set to graduate early. She’d been heading from her home in Angel Fire to the state math bowl in Taos, New Mexico, and was attacked on the way. The cops might have considered the attack random, except her three teammates didn’t show up, either.”