Page 22 of Silencing Stolen Whispers (Kinsley Aspen #2)

Kinsley Aspen

July

C ountry tunes played from several speakers near the bar, creating a background that filled the comfortable gaps in conversation without overpowering the discussion of weather patterns and crop yields.

The old country music was a nostalgic blend of classic hits about love lost and found, along with the simple pleasures of small-town living.

The Plow was one of the few places in Fallbrook that hadn’t been modernized over the years.

It was one of the main reasons farmers and ranchers preferred the remote bar located on a quiet country road in the middle of nowhere.

It was also why The Plow attracted a different crowd than those who visited The Bucket, the pub across from the station.

Kinsley had claimed a booth in the back corner, where the scuffed wooden floors and the overhead beams flickered with golden light from the hanging lanterns. She took a long, slow sip of her beer, the cold amber liquid most welcome after a day spent sorting through a dead girl’s belongings.

Someone called out Kinsley’s name, and she spotted Chuck Harrington behind the bar.

His hair and beard were salt and pepper, matching his neatly trimmed beard.

The front of his flannel shirt was covered by the apron he always wore when deep-frying chicken wings.

He raised his hand in greeting, flashing her a smile.

She waved back, figuring he would come over to chat when he had a moment.

Chuck, originally from Fallbrook, was a former truck driver who had used every penny in his checking account to buy out the previous owner of The Plow. The spontaneous purchase had been his way of staying connected to his hometown.

Back in the day, Chuck and her father had been as thick as thieves. Their high school days had come and gone, though.

“Sorry, sorry, I'm here!” Lydia's voice preceded her arrival by several seconds, carrying across the bar with the same enthusiasm she brought to everything else.

She slid into the booth across from Kinsley with her characteristic lack of grace, her curly auburn hair slightly disheveled and her cheeks flushed with exertion.

“I couldn't find a parking spot that wasn't the size of a matchbox.”

“I hear you,” Kinsley said in agreement as Lydia tucked her purse into the side of the booth.

“I had to park on the grass on the north side of the building. I heard Chuck switched wing night from Wednesday to Saturday. Smart move, but I think every rancher from here to the county line decided to get here early.”

“Please tell me you ordered our meals before Chuck rings that bell announcing he’s all out of wings.”

“Of course, I ordered for us.” Kinsley had ordered their usual—loaded nachos with extra jalapenos as their appetizer, and two orders of wings and fries for their meals. “But you said that you’re on some health kick, right? I ordered you the garden salad.”

“Don't start with me.” Lydia reached for the bottle of beer that Kinsley had preordered for her. “My entire body feels like I've been hit by a combine harvester. I can barely lift my arms, and don't even get me started on what sitting down does to my ass.”

“I thought you went to Stacy’s yoga class today.”

“Yoga?” Lydia's hazel eyes widened with disbelief.

“How is it you can be in your line of work? You haven’t seen the flyers all around town?

Stacy thought she would try something new to attract clients.

It was goat yoga, Kin. Goat yoga. Those little suckers can headbutt harder than a linebacker, and they have absolutely no respect for personal space or the concept of downward dog.

I'm pretty sure one of them tried to eat my hair when I was doing my cool-down stretches, too.”

The mental image of Lydia being attacked by farm animals while trying to stay Zen was enough for Kinsley to swallow her beer the wrong way. She grabbed a napkin and then did her best to clear the alcohol from her lungs.

“I thought yoga was supposed to be relaxing,” Kinsley said once she could breathe. “Find your center, and all that?”

“Yeah, well, my center got relocated about six inches to the left,” Lydia complained as she set her beer down and proceeded to stretch an arm over her chest. “I told Stacy that next time it better be kitten yoga.”

Cecelia approached their table with a full tray, balanced with ease. The waitress had moved to Fallbrook over a year ago, but Kinsley wasn’t privy to the reasons why. From her understanding, her younger brother had made quite the impression.

“Ladies,” Cecelia greeted them, setting down the nachos first, along with extra plates and a stack of napkins that suggested she understood the magnitude of the mess they were about to create.

She also delivered two extra bottles of beer.

“Wings will be out shortly. Can I get you two anything else?”

“We're good for now,” Kinsley replied, already reaching for a chip loaded with enough toppings to constitute a meal by itself. “Thanks, Cecelia.”

The waitress's smile brightened at the use of her name. Cecelia moved away to check on another table, prompting a question that had been lingering in the back of Kinsley’s mind for a while now.

“I wonder if Dylan is still seeing her,” Kinsley pondered after eating a couple of nachos. “He hasn’t mentioned anyone in particular lately. Then again, he wouldn’t call attention to himself during the family dinners. Mom’s goal is to see Owen married off by next Christmas.”

Lydia barely glanced up from her systematic deconstruction of the nachos, waving a dismissive hand as if shooing away an annoying fly.

“Dylan and Cecelia were a one-night stand. Ancient history.” Lydia wiped her fingers before changing the subject. “Have you and Alex made any progress on the Scriven case?”

The certainty in her friend's voice about Dylan caught Kinsley's attention. She, too, picked up her napkin and wiped her fingers. She wasn’t about to let Lydia change the subject, though.

“How do you know Dylan and Cecelia were a one-night stand?”

“Don’t I know everything?” Lydia flashed Kinsley a smile before turning her attention to the plate, as if she couldn’t decide which nacho to go for next.

“Besides, you know Dylan flirts with half the female population of Fallbrook. He’s got commitment issues worse than Owen's, which I heard through the grapevine might be overcome here soon. Your mother might be onto something. Remember Daphne Briar?”

Kinsley would have remained on the topic of Dylan’s love life if the name Lydia had just mentioned hadn’t diverted her attention. No wonder Kinsley’s mother was so invested in Owen’s love life.

“No,” Kinsley protested as she balanced a nacho so as not to lose all the toppings. She continued to stare at Lydia in shock. “Really? Daphne Briar, the famous oil painting artist who bought the old Cranston farm? I just read an article about her that was front and center in the local paper.”

“One and the same.”

“How did I not know this?” Kinsley stuffed the nacho in her mouth.

“Because you don’t pay close attention to any of your brothers’ love lives?”

Lydia’s deflection hadn’t gone unnoticed, but Kinsley wouldn’t push the issue. She would file the information away for future consideration, though part of her wondered if she really wanted to know what her best friend wasn't telling her about her brother.

Any of them, for that matter.

Just as it was imperative she keep part of her own life under wraps.

Kinsley reached for the first bottle of beer and drained what was left of the contents.

The alcohol was a little warm, but she wouldn’t let it go to waste.

Setting the empty bottle near the edge of the table, she pulled the cold one closer.

Seeing as she had to drive home, she would tap out at two before switching to water.

Kinsley would have brought up tomorrow’s flag football game, but Lydia’s expression shifted when she caught sight of someone across the bar. The easy comfort of their conversation evaporated into thin air.

“Isn't that the journalist who was harassing you last year?” Lydia asked as she reached for her napkin again.

That familiar vice of anxiety clamped around Kinsley’s chest. Lydia didn’t have to mention a name.

There was only one investigative journalist who had made her life a living hell, and that was Beck Serra.

Her father had granted Beck an exclusive interview with Gantz before the trial began, hoping it would sway public opinion.

It had been after Gantz’s so-called disappearance that Beck had tried to dig deeper into the man’s whereabouts.

Kinsley believed he had finally given up on the story, but apparently not.

She monitored his progress toward the bar, and his profile was unmistakable even in the muted lighting.

His dark hair was still messy, as if he had just run his fingers through the thick strands.

He wore the same type of well-worn jeans and t-shirt that had basically been his uniform during his relentless pursuit of the Calvin Gantz story.

It wasn’t like Beck had to stand behind a camera. He wrote investigative pieces and sold them to the highest bidder. Kinsley hadn’t seen him in close to a year, but it wasn’t Beck's presence that made the nachos want to escape her stomach.

It was the man who greeted him.

“Who is that he’s meeting with?” Lydia asked with interest as she continued to stare while reaching for another nacho. “I’ve got to say, Kin. I’ve never seen either man at The Plow before.”

“Elliot Goff.”

“No!” It was Lydia’s turn to protest in response. “The forensics tech who was fired from the department?”

“One and the same,” Kin murmured as she wrapped her hand around the chilled bottle of beer.“He accepted a bribe from a reporter who wanted inside Gantz’s home after his arrest.”

Elliot Goff was of average height with a lean build.

He also carried a nervous energy that caused him to constantly shift his weight from foot to foot.

He was the reason all the evidence had been dismissed from the trial.

Technically, Kinsley was to blame because her father had overheard her private conversation with Alex.

“Doesn’t Goff work for some private lab now?”

“Last I heard,” Kinsley murmured in agreement as she began to pick away at the label on her beer bottle.

Beck had shaken Goff’s hand, but the interaction didn’t seem overly friendly. If anything, Goff appeared uneasy, his gaze drifting around the bar while listening to Beck. The lights above them highlighted the man’s discomfort, too. It wasn’t long before he locked gazes with Kinsley.

She didn’t bother to hide her disgust at his presence.

Suddenly, Goff was shaking his head and arguing with Beck.

He hadn’t quite caused a scene, but those nearby had begun to take notice.

It was apparent that Beck tried to reason with the man, but the battle was lost.Elliot Goff left Beck standing alone at the bar, eventually exiting the establishment without once glancing her way again.

“Do you think that Beck Serra is still trying to locate Calvin Gantz?” Lydia asked as she finally pushed the half-empty plate of nachos away from them. “He hounded you last October about it, remember?”

“Hard to forget,” Kinsley muttered in disdain as she continued to monitor Beck.

He raised a hand to signal the bartender for a drink.

While waiting for Chuck to approach, he started scanning the faces of the patrons.

She didn’t avert her stare when he froze in place upon realizing why Elliot Goff had left in such a rush.

“And yes, I think that’s exactly why he decided to meet Elliot Goff out here.

Goff knows better than to step foot in The Bucket. ”

The pieces began falling into place with sickening clarity.

Kinsley wasn’t sure why she hadn’t considered that Beck might have been the one sending her notes in the first place. While he had already been known as a respected investigative journalist prior to the Gantz trial, landing that interview had cemented his status among his peers in journalism.

Gantz’s disappearance had left Beck with no follow-up story, though. The missing persons report was enough to spark his curiosity, and he had tried very hard last year to get an interview with her. She believed at the time that she had shut it down.

But what if Beck had never stopped investigating?

What if he had been quietly digging into Gantz's disappearance, following leads and chasing shadows in hopes of landing another career-defining article? Just how far was he willing to go to get a story?

As quickly as her suspicion had formed, it began to shift into something else entirely. If Beck was responsible for the notes, then he didn't truly have knowledge of anything concrete. He was just guessing, throwing out bait in hopes of making her slip up or reveal information he could exploit.

The notes weren't proof of his knowledge—they were proof of his desperation.

The weight pressing down on her chest for the past eight months began to lift, like fog clearing under morning sunlight. If Beck was her tormentor, then she wasn't dealing with someone who had damning evidence. She was facing someone bluffing with an empty hand.

Kinsley stopped peeling the label on the bottle.

Instead, she picked up her beer and tilted the bottle toward her best friend.

“What is this about?” Lydia asked in confusion, lifting her own drink in automatic response to Kinsley’s gesture.

She wanted to reply with the truth. That her oldest brother’s life, his family, and his daughter were safe from harm. Kinsley would have protected all three had she been arrested for murdering Gantz, but she was confident now that it wouldn’t come to that.

“To getting back to normal.”