“Come in.”
“You have a few?”
“More than a few. I could use a break. With Willa and the kids staying at Viper and Winter’s, I don’t have anything else to do but catch up on church paperwork and write sermons. I’m good until next year.” Lucky placed his ink pen down on his desk right as his cell phone dinged.
“Excuse me for a second,” Lucky said as he replied to the text. “Sorry. I’m having a new gate installed on the children’s play area. Ginny talked her brothers into making a donation. So, what can I do for you?”
“Actually, it’s because of Ginny that I stopped by. I wanted to pick your brain about Ginny’s stalker. There’s something Shade, Rider, and I are missing.” Shoving his hands in his back pockets, he paced back and forth in front of Lucky’s desk.
“I was wondering if dealing with the Wests would give you a guilty conscience.”
Frowning at Lucky, Reaper stopped at pacing. “Where the Wests are concerned, the last thing I feel is guilt. Ginny wasn’t close to the Wests—Shade reported they hadn’t talked in years. His report said the Wests gave negative feedback to the State on Ginny. There was not one thing positive they had to say about her in her file. The only good deed they ever did was give that other child, Darcy, back to the State.”
“I agree. Lisa gave Darcy back to the State when she was sick and failed to tell the caseworker. If the new foster mother hadn’t reacted fast enough and sought medical attention, that little girl would have died. Do you think Ginny’s stalker could have any ties to the Wests?”
“No. I looked at their hard drive. The Wests weren’t like the other couple. Slate was their only contact to provide their fantasies. I’ve gone over Shade’s and Rider’s information over a dozen times. I’m missing something.”
“Shade did the same thing you’re doing when he was watching Ginny. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to him or Rider when they asked me for a new pair of eyes.” Lucky twirled his ink pen between his fingers.
Frustrated at himself for not being able to come up with any new ideas about Ginny’s stalker, Reaper stopped pacing in front of Lucky’s window. The Colemans were lifting an iron gate out of a heavy-duty pickup truck. Silas, Jody, and Jacob were straining to lift the gate once it was on the ground.
“There wasn’t much information on Ginny’s mother in the file,” Reaper mused out loud.
“No, there wasn’t,” Lucky said from his desk. “I asked Shade about her. He said he checked that lead out. Her mother died shortly after giving full custody of Ginny to her father.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“Freddy?”
“Yes.”
“Oh yes, I met him.” Lucky laughed. “He was a character. He had no time for the church or me. He was a nicer version of Greer Porter, but even more mountain-minded about wanting to stay isolated. His children were his whole world.”
“Silas takes after his father.” Watching the men outside work to set the gate up, Reaper couldn’t place what was bothering him. Each day after he had left the Colemans’, it nagged at him that he was missing the component to make everything click into place.
“Do you still have the file that Shade gave you?”
“Yes.”
Reaper heard Lucky open his desk drawer.
“I’ve got it here,” Lucky said.
“Who was at Ginny’s roommate’s party when the first note was found?”
As Lucky rattled off several names, Reaper braced his hands on Lucky’s windowsill.
“Shade checked each of them out,” Lucky said when he finished the list. “He even went so far as to break into their houses and double-checked their whereabouts during each subsequent note that followed. There was no connection.”
The nagging feeling he had been experiencing was so close that he could almost grab it ….
Reaper turned from the window to face Lucky.
Lucky looked up from the file on his desk at his silence. “What?”
“There was no connection.”
Confused at having his words repeated back to him, Lucky stared back at him blankly. “I don’t get it.”
“We’ve been looking at this fucking wrong.”
“How?”
“If there isn’t a connection to Ginny—”
“There has to be … The notes and attacks—”
Reaper shook his head at him. “One of the first lessons I learned when I was in the SEALs was when a problem couldn’t be solved, change the problem.”
“So …?”
“Take Ginny out of the equation.”
Lucky paled. “The problem becomes different.”
“Ginny isn’t the target. The Last Riders are ….” Reaper was flinging the office door open before the last word was out of his mouth. Running through the church, he then ran out the front door with Lucky trailing after him.
Making his way behind the church, Silas, Jody, and Jacob looked at him like he was crazy when he came barreling toward them.
Reaper took out his cell phone and started calling Ginny’s phone number at the same time he asked Silas, “Where’s Ginny?”