Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

no other reason than to put it out loud into words for herself to hear, to test, to try on.

“He put…the man I love in the hospital. I want to stop him. I have to. I’m going to stop him. You can just make it happen a little sooner. Maybe before somebody else gets hurt.”

More silence, then a rueful sigh. “You Athenas are all cut from the same cloth, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are.”

“All right. Hang on.”

He didn’t sound happy, but he was going to do it. She heard a click as he put her on hold, and then the recorded promo for an upcoming reading fair. It was interrupted after about thirty seconds when he came back.

“Give me the number.”

She read the card number off the list in her hand. When she finished there was silence. Then a sigh. She felt for him, she really did. He was in a difficult place. But neither he—nor she—could change that, not anymore. The world was what it had become, and sometimes difficult choices had to be made.

“It’s a match,” he finally said.

Alex let out the breath she’d been holding. “Thank you, David. It was the right thing to do.”

“Sure.” He sounded beyond grim.

“It was,” she reiterated. “This time. If there’s a next time, I expect you to fight just as hard.”

It took a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was lighter. “Oh, I will.”

“I know.”

As she hung up, Alex took a moment to wish an Athena on David Lang, too. She thought he could handle it.

And then she sat there with the list in her hand, the list that confirmed to her what she’d suspected, what they’d been struggling so long and hard to find out.

Who had been behind the murder attempts on first her, then her and Justin both.

Who had been willing to risk killing two federal agents.

Who had been willing to sacrifice a busload of innocent people, including children, in yet another attempt to keep them at bay.

Who had murdered Senator Marion Gracelyn.

She knew some would say that she was crazy to even try to bring this man down. You just didn’t mess with people at his level, they would say.

Watch me, she thought, anger boiling up inside her. You just watch me.

Chapter 21

Alex waited for her temper to ebb before she picked up the phone and made the first of what she knew would be many phone calls. She knew this was going to be huge. While last year’s investigation that had grown out of Rainy’s murder had been big, much of it had been below the public radar. This was likely to be the highest profile thing she would ever encounter.

And that meant planning. Lots of it. This was going to have to be approached like a military strike, she thought. She had to think of every possibility and prepare for it. She had to cover all the ways her quarry could evade responsibility. She had to line up all the dominoes so they fell in the right direction, and with enough weight to take out that last, biggest domino.

And Alex knew the fall of that final domino was going to reverberate in places she didn’t even know about.

She had the sudden need to talk to Justin, and only the knowledge that he did truly need to rest and would be in better shape tomorrow stopped her from calling.

There’s time, she told herself. It’s been ten years, it can wait another day or two.

It’s more important that this go down perfectly, she thought. And that was going to take a perfect plan. Which was going to take time.

She sat down and opened a fresh page on her laptop. She began typing notes furiously, stopping only to copy and paste segments in a different order. Every note, every report, every theory, became crucially important now, because of the scrutiny it would all inevitably come under. And now that she had the last piece of the puzzle, the pattern became clear, and each piece fit with a solidness that made it impossible not to believe.

When she was done, she locked away the original documents and packed up her laptop. She gathered several items to put in her satchel. She called and caught G.C. on his way out.

“It’s just a meeting of the Hunt Club board,” he said. “You should come, you know they’d love to see you.”

“I didn’t think they’ve ever forgiven me for not making the run for the Olympic team.”

He chuckled. “They seem to have forgotten that. Now they just say that you would have made it and leave it at that.”

She laughed, but knew she sounded as tightly wound as she was feeling. And her grandfather knew her too well to miss it.

“Alex? What is it? Is it Justin?”

“No, no.” But interesting that he assumed that first, she thought. “It’s something else. Big.”

“What?”

She took a deep breath and let it out. Once she told G.C., the ball would be rolling. There’d be no turning back. She’d better be damned sure she was right.

She was.

“I can’t talk about it on the phone. I’m on my way to the farm.”

There was the barest fraction of a second’s pause before her beloved grandfather said, “I’ll let them know I won’t be there. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Bless you, G.C., she thought.

“I love you,” she said.

“And I you. Drive carefully, and let me know if there will be any planned delays.”

She didn’t miss the implication, that if she was late and didn’t call, he’d assume something had happened.

“I will.”

She loaded up and headed for G.C.’s car, which she’d picked up at the country club after she’d left the hospital. With her grandfather’s words echoing in her mind, she went over the car carefully, looking for any sign of tampering or anything that didn’t belong. Finally satisfied, she got in.

Wanting to be able to pay full attention to possible threats on the road, she phoned the hospital before starting out. She got the good-natured