Help Me Remember (Rose Canyon, #1)(78)

“I didn’t steal it from you.” I huff. “I have a contact at the hospital.”

Emmett shakes his head. “I don’t even want to know.”

No, he definitely doesn’t. “Anyway, no one on it seems to have any connection to the attack or her office being trashed.”

“That’s the one part of this that has been unanswered. Are the two events connected, and if they are, what was the person looking for in her office? I thought the ring was the key.”

“So did she.”

“But we were wrong there since you’re the ring giver.”

I sigh. “The paperwork she’s missing is the key, but we can’t begin to know what paperwork she had.”

Emmett nods. “What else are you thinking?”

“I think it would be safe for us to explore the possibility that the events are connected, which means she was the target.”

Emmett sits in the chair across from where I’m leaning against the desk. “Why is that?”

“Everything leads back to Brielle, not Isaac. Since his death, nothing of his has been touched. The house is vacant and there has been no activity there. If it was about him, what he knew, or had, we would’ve had a move.”

“Most likely and her office was trashed.”

“She could see the murder, but not the face. She can hear a voice, knows it’s a man, but then says it’s Jax, whose voice sounds more feminine. Much higher than either of us at least.”

“You think it could be a woman?”

“That seems doubtful. It’s more likely that she was so desperate to hear the voice that her mind inserted Jax’s voice in its place. She ran into him at the awards dinner, and she knew him but couldn’t remember him. We also believe based on the position of Isaac’s body that he went for the shooter. He may have tried to neutralize the assailant and we all assume it was a man.”

That was one of the first things that everyone agreed on. The force of the blow and the angle in which she was hit suggests the assailant was a man. Plus, Isaac played defense from the time he was six until he graduated college. If anyone could take someone down forcefully, it was him.

“It’s possible, the evidence suggests a male. There also was that image off the camera of someone getting in a vehicle and the build fits a man.”

“I agree, but at this point, I’m not ruling anything out.”

“Okay, what were your other thoughts?” Emmett asks.

“This is what we need to get to the bottom of.”

Emmett leans down, watching the video. “Where did you get this?”

“After hours of going through footage that a source pulled, I found a recording of Brielle arguing with someone outside her office two weeks prior to the incident. It was late and the tape is very fuzzy, but it appeared that she was upset. Her hand was on a boy’s shoulder, and she was pulling him behind her as she argued with who I assumed to be one of the child’s parents.”

“And she mentioned this before the shooting?” he asks.

“No.”

We talked about our days, her work, my lack of work, and everything else, but she never brought up an altercation at work. The date shows it happened on a night we didn’t see each other, but we always talked.

Every day.

“Well, you’ve gotten much further than I care to admit we have.”

“I have motivation and resources that you don’t. Not to mention, I don’t give a shit about the law or the prosecution’s case.”

Emmett nods slowly. “Yeah, but . . . still.”

I shrug. “It’s the best answer I can come up with. It’s at least a thread I can’t tie up neatly. It also gives you a possible person of interest. You just need to find out who that guy is.”

Emmett raises a brow. “You make it sound so easy.”

“I know.”

I already spent hours combing over that angle. Identifying the target was the best place to start.

“Okay, but what if Isaac was the target?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, just wanting to get back to work. “If the lead on Brielle and this video goes cold, then I’ll start over again. I’ll reexamine it from Isaac being the target, but I’m going off my instincts and what the evidence I have is showing.”

He nods slowly. “You’re not far off from my theory. I just don’t know anyone in this town who would go after either. Jesus, they talked about making a statue of Isaac if he won states. And Brie, well, she’s a damn angel. She works with all those kids, giving time and money to make the programs successful. Who the hell could hate her?”

“That’s what I need to find out. Whoever she was in that confrontation with is suspect number one. Once I’m allowed to talk to her in a few hours, I can explain all of this to her. We can talk about everything, figure out a plan, and . . .” I can’t even finish because it sounds ridiculous. “I’m a fucking idiot. She doesn’t care about this.”

He looks up at me with confusion in his eyes. “You don’t think she cares about catching her brother’s killer?”

I look at the ceiling, letting out a loud sigh. “Of course she does, but that’s not going to fix us. I can find the killer, have him arrested, and she still will feel like I betrayed her.”