What Lies in the Woods(66)

I copied the address, heart hammering, and plugged it into the search. A nail salon in Redmond? Wait—it was one unit of the building. I checked the other businesses. A dog grooming place—probably not sinister—a pho joint, a board-game shop, and something called Jessup Consulting.

“Vague. Not at all suspicious,” I muttered. I pulled up their website. The web design was definitely criminal, with retina-searing colors and a stock photo of a comically serious-looking dude with a wired earpiece and a sharp suit. The header told me they provided security and investigation services.

The guy in my hotel room was a PI?

A personal grudge was one thing. Hiring people to come after me—that was something else.

Twenty minutes later, Ethan arrived with takeout to find me lost in a flurry of open tabs and scribbled notes. I’d tracked down the name of the owner of the company, Terry Jessup, and from there found a half dozen current and former employees. None of them were my guy. Jessup Consulting came up as a minor note in a few articles, but nothing relevant—work for corporations and small companies, mostly. Nothing that stank of “violent personal vendetta.”

“Why would this guy attack you?” Ethan asked. “It doesn’t exactly sound like normal PI work.”

I frowned. Ethan was right. At a glance, Jessup Consulting didn’t seem like thugs for hire. And why attack me? He hadn’t killed me, and he could have. So rough me up? Why?

Except that he hadn’t attacked me, had he? Not exactly. He’d lunged for me.

Or he’d lunged for the door.

I’d surprised him in my room, and he’d tried to get out. And I’d gone completely psycho, trying to brain him with an iPhone. I rubbed my forehead with the tips of my fingers. “I went after him. He was just trying to stop me,” I realized, and almost laughed. He hadn’t been trying to kill me at all.

“He still broke into your room,” Ethan pointed out. “If he wasn’t after you, what was he after?”

“All he got was my phone, as far as I know. And there’s nothing incriminating on that,” I said. You couldn’t be friends with Liv and not have a little of her paranoia rub off on you. Sensitive stuff did not belong on the cloud.

“Is there anything else they could have taken?” he asked.

“I checked all my gear. It’s still here,” I said. Unless. I walked painfully over to my roller bag and unzipped it. My cameras were there—but I popped one open and sure enough, the data card was gone. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.”

“Was there something important on the drives?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, an entire wedding,” I said. “Shit. I hadn’t uploaded everything yet! Goddammit. I always upload everything right away, but I was starving and then he was in the room.”

“You’re missing wedding photos,” Ethan repeated, carefully neutral.

“They’re important,” I insisted.

“Of course. But they aren’t going to get you killed or arrested, so I’m going to call this a win,” Ethan said. “Jessup Consulting will have them. We can get them back. Especially if they don’t want to get reported to the police for having an employee assault you.”

“Okay.” I took a breath, released it. Calm. I could do calm.

“Sit. Eat. Relax. I’ll see if I can turn up anything more,” he said. He eyed the tabs in the browser skeptically. “Do you ever close tabs?”

“I might need them later.”

“One of them is playing ‘Old Town Road.’”

“I usually just mute the computer when that happens,” I said. “Easier than finding it.”

He sighed and sat down to work.





After I’d eaten, with Ethan still rooting unsuccessfully around the internet for signs of my assailant, I went on a pilgrimage to the ice machine. When I stepped back out of the alcove, bucket of ice in hand, I found Chief Bishop waiting for me.

“Jesus Christ,” she said as soon as she saw me. “Who the hell did that to you?”

“There was a scuffle over the bouquet, and I caught an elbow,” I said. She blinked at me. “I’m a wedding photographer. Sorry, bad joke. I got mugged.” Close enough.

“Here?” she asked in disbelief.

“I was back in Seattle shooting a wedding.”

“You didn’t mention you were leaving town,” she said, hand on her hip. She’d parked her car slantwise across two spots, right next to mine.

“I didn’t realize I had to check in with you about it,” I replied.

She frowned at me. “Olivia’s death has been ruled a suicide. We’ve released the body. The funeral is on Tuesday,” she said.

My balance faltered. I managed not to stumble, but only just. It was official, then.

“I think it’s a mistake,” she added flatly.

“You think Liv was murdered?” I asked. She nodded. “Then why—”

“I’ve been in this town six months. I’m new, I’m not from here, and my job exists up until the exact moment that Jim Green tells the city council to get rid of me,” she said, voice thick with discontent. “He made it very clear that it was time to move on. But I don’t buy it. That girl killing herself that way, when she was terrified of guns and blood and everybody in her life, you included, was watching her like a hawk for the slightest hint of suicidal ideation? Yes, I think she was murdered. But if I don’t sign that paperwork, I don’t have a job and can’t do anything about it. So here we are.”