Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

all too familiar “—and shaking it until the answer falls out. Or maybe throw it on the floor like a deck of cards and start over in whatever order they land in.”

“I know the feeling,” Alex said wearily. “I’m so tired of reading the same things over and over and always coming up empty—”

She stopped herself midcomplaint. An idea was tickling around the edges of her mind. She stared at the stack of pages. Then at the lists of names: probables, possibles, unlikelies.

“Maybe,” she said slowly.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe we’re going at this wrong. Maybe we’re trying to force these names to fit into the puzzle. Maybe we should quit looking for who’s the most likely.”

He sat up straight. “You mean turn it around? Quit looking for who had the strongest motive and start looking for someone who…?”

She nodded. “We should let the puzzle pieces tell us who fits.”

He grasped it immediately. “All right,” he said. “Let’s start with the first incident since you opened this can of worms.”

“The guy who followed me to the police station in Athens,” she said. “That was the first time I was aware of anything.”

“Who knew you were there?”

“At the station?”

“Let’s back it up even further. Who knew you were in Phoenix at all, at any point,” he said. “Who knew on your end?”

“G.C. of course. Kayla. Christine, at Athena. Eric Hunt.” She slid him a sideways look. “You.”

“Me,” he agreed blandly. “But don’t forget the others. There’s hotel staff. Anybody who saw you when you were out at Athena—now, don’t get yourself in an uproar, I wasn’t accusing anyone, just listing—and anybody who saw you at the station.”

“And anybody you talked to at your office.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.” His mouth quirked. “I knew I’d get ragged on endlessly. They’ve seen you, you know.”

She smiled at the implicit compliment. “Okay then, anybody at your favorite restaurant.” Then she added wryly, “And if you want to get crazed, the airport, car rental agency, and—”

“Okay, slow down,” he said with a laugh. “Even counting all of those people, none of them individually have anything to gain. So at most he, she or they were paid, either to report where you were or were going, or to try and stop you.”

“By one person.”

“In the end, yes, although there could be a chain. At this point I think we should assume it all leads back to one person. Sometimes the easiest answer and all that.”

“Okay, off the endless string for now. The first incident was the morning after I got here. Before I’d done anything except see Kayla and catch up with Christine out at Athena.”

“If it was someone in Arizona, it had to be someone who could mobilize really fast.”

She pondered that, turning ramifications over in her mind in view of the new focus on what had happened rather than who was behind it. What were the possibilities of someone simply spotting her as she arrived in Phoenix, and then organizing all these attempts to stop her in such a short time? Or that someone who just happened to spot her had known who to call who would be interested in what she was there to do?

“And how had they known what I was there to do in the first place?” she asked aloud. “It’s not like I haven’t been back to visit Athena occasionally. And last year I was coming and going all the time, with Rainy and all.”

“Exactly. For them to move that fast, they almost had to already know you were coming. And why.”

“But I didn’t even tell Kayla and Christine why, until I got there.”

Justin stayed silent for a moment before he said what had become apparent to them both. “That implies it’s somebody here.”

“But nobody knew here, either, except G.C. and you. Although…” Her words slowed as her thoughts shifted. “I did interview a couple of people here, before I left for Arizona. People who were against Athena in the beginning.”

“People with something at stake?”

“Not obviously. General Stanley. Senator Rankin.”

“Big names. Anything in their reactions?”

She shook her head. “They seemed…over it. Stanley is grudgingly neutral now. And the senator said he’d always thought it would work, he’d only opposed it for political reasons.”

“Meaning he had to follow his party?”

“That’s my guess.”

Justin considered this. “So Rankin says he wasn’t really against it, and the general was only philosophically opposed. He didn’t really lose anything.”

“No. No real reason for revenge, unless he’s unbalanced, and I highly doubt that.”

“So if it was neither of them, but we still assume it was someone here pulling the strings…” he began.

“Then maybe one of them said something to somebody else,” she said. “It wouldn’t take a lot to connect my questions with my trip.

“No.” She thought a moment longer. “I don’t think it was the general. It just doesn’t feel that way.”

Justin nodded in apparent agreement. “If it had been, you’d already be dead.”

It took her a second to get what he meant. Then she nodded slowly. “He’d have access to people who were a lot better at their job.”

“Exactly. So who else could have ended up with both those pieces of information—that you were asking about Marion’s murder and that you were heading to Arizona?”

She sighed. “It’s an endless chain. Anybody could have mentioned piece A to someone who mentioned it to someone until it hit whoever had piece B.”

“It must be tough, being the subject of so many conversations,” Justin said. “Guess that’s what happens when you’re a famous Forsythe.”

She lifted her gaze to look at him across the table, caught the teasing glint in his eyes. Relief washed over her. He really was joking. Maybe he would be able to handle the Forsythe world after all.

Justin, she thought, could probably handle just about anything.

She grinned at him, and had the pleasure of seeing him catch his breath in response. “Get used to it,” she said.

“Oh, I will. All of it.”

She decided now was not the time to dig into exactly what he meant by “all of it.”