Page 9 of Outlaw Ridge: Shaw (Hard Justice: Outlaw Ridge #5)

Shaw opened the door, and with Ava right behind him, they stepped into the room.

As expected, Grant was in the bed, and his face was a riot of bruises and scrapes.

The injuries extended to his hands as well.

He looked as if he’d lost a couple of rounds with a heavyweight champion, but none of the injuries looked especially serious.

“Shaw, Ava,” he greeted, his voice a rasping whisper.

“Grant,” Shaw said, going closer to the bed.

Before the rescue at the Hole in the Wall bar, he hadn’t seen the prosecutor since Dell’s trial, and with all those facial injuries, it was hard to tell if the years had been hard on him. The last twenty-four hours sure as hell had been.

“Who’s doing this?” Grant asked.

The question made Shaw want to curse. So, maybe they weren’t going to get those answers about the killer after all.

“We don’t know,” Shaw answered, and Grant shifted his attention to Ava as if hoping for a different response.

“We don’t know,” she verified.

It was Grant who actually did some cursing, and he scrubbed his hand over his face which in turn caused him to grunt in pain when he touched those bruises.

“Tell us what happened,” Shaw instructed. That was for starters. Then, he could get into the possible BS that Lorelei had spouted about the affair and Dell not being guilty.

Grant shifted his weight on the bed, sucked in a slow breath.

“I was leaving work for the day and was about to get in my car in the parking lot behind my office. I was talking on the phone, not paying attention, and I felt this jolt.” He turned so they could see the marks on his neck.

“Someone hit me with a stun gun, shoved a cloth bag over my head and shoved me into the backseat of my car.”

“I can have the security cams checked,” Lexa said, taking out her phone.

“There aren’t any in that parking lot,” Grant volunteered. A muscle tightened and flickered in his jaw. “That’ll change. I’ll have cameras installed to cover every inch of the building before I return to work.”

Even though that felt a little like closing the barn door after the horses were already out, it was a good move. Because the killer could go after Grant again.

“What happened after you were in the backseat of the car?” Ava asked.

Grant groaned. Shook his head. “I recall being jabbed with something.” He pointed to what could have been a puncture mark on his arm.

“After that, I lost consciousness and didn’t wake up until I was in that vent.

” He closed his eyes a moment as if to shut out the horrific memories of that.

“Thank you both for saving my life. I would have died in there if you hadn’t found me.

Did you get a riddle? Is that how you knew where to go? ”

“Yes,” Shaw confirmed.

Grant cursed again. “We got the right man seven years ago. Dell did those murders. And now someone wants to make us second guess ourselves. Don’t fall for it. Dell is behind this. I’m sure of it. Have you checked Valerie’s alibi? Because she could have done this.”

Shaw couldn’t argue with that. “Is Valerie the she that you said wanted us all dead?”

“Damn right, she is. She’d do anything for Dell. Anything,” he emphasized. “You have to question her. You have to make her confess.”

“The sheriff’s already questioned her but didn’t have anything he could use to charge her,” Shaw explained.

“Find something,” Grant spat out, and then he seemed to remember that he wasn’t talking to one of his employees. “Find something,” he repeated in a much softer plea.

“That’s the plan,” Shaw assured him. “We’ll interview anyone who might help us figure out what’s really going on. That includes Lorelei. She was just here, insisting that she talk to you.”

Grant’s shoulders visibly tensed. “What did she want?”

“Well, for one thing, she said you and her sister were lovers,” Shaw said, and he had no doubts that like him, Ava was watching for Grant’s reaction.

And Shaw saw one all right. No actual profanity this time, but he was betting that Grant was doing plenty of silent cursing.

“That had nothing to do with Dell’s trial,” Grant was quick to say.

Interesting that he’d jump to that first and not admit or show some kind of emotion for Melissa.

“How long had you been seeing Melissa before she was killed?” Ava came out and asked.

“Only a couple of weeks. It was nothing,” Grant added. “Just sex. And that’s why I didn’t mention it during the trial. It wasn’t relevant information and might have muddied the legal waters.”

“Yes, it would have,” Shaw grumbled, and he wanted to throttle Grant for not doing a full disclosure about this.

“It was nothing,” Grant insisted.

“It could have been the reason Dell targeted Melissa and Lorelei,” Ava pointed out.

Grant’s eyes widened, and he looked horrified at that possibility. “No,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Ava disagreed. “Dell hated…hates you because you got the conviction on Valerie. It would fit his profile to go after anyone who’d slighted him, and doing something like that to his sister would have made him want to hurt anyone connected to you.”

“Hell,” Grant spat out, and he groaned. “I didn’t know. I thought the affair didn’t play into any of this.”

Shaw might have pointed out that it was something that should have occurred to Grant and if it had, it might have given them a clue about Dell’s future targets.

But he didn’t get a chance to say anything else because his phone rang, and when he saw Owen’s name on the screen, he knew it was a call he had to take.

“Excuse us a second,” Shaw said, motioning for Ava to step out of the room with him. He waited until they were away from Grant’s door before he put the call on speaker.

“Just got off the phone with one of Dell’s lawyers,” Owen immediately said. “Dell wants to talk to the two of you.”

Because Ava’s arm was touching his, Shaw felt her tense. He did some tensing, too. Just the thought of seeing Dell had to trigger all kinds of bad stuff for Ava.

“Did Dell say why?” Ava asked, and the tension and strain were already in her voice.

“No. Nothing specific. But he did say he would make the visit worth your while. Whatever the hell that means,” Owen added in a mutter. “If you think this is part of his usual mind game’s crap, then don’t go see him.”

Ava sighed. So did Shaw. Because, yeah, this probably was mind game crap. Still, one look at her, and Shaw knew this visit would happen. A visit that would spin them both into memory hell.

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