Dizziness hit her then. She leaned against Shane, trying to absorb some of his strength. “I didn’t hear the shot.”
“Silencer,” Connor and Cam said at the same time.
A new word for her to hate. “Convenient.”
Connor frowned at her. “How so?”
Shane spoke up then. “That’s exactly what the shooter wanted to do to Frank, silence him.”
“It worked.” Her stomach wouldn’t stop flipping. Her insides were scrambled as if she rode a never-ending roller coaster.
Shane put a hand on her lower back. “We’ll make sure it doesn’t.”
For some reason, in that second, she believed him.
Chapter Sixteen
Shane had grown tired of everyone associated with the website. Really fast. He’d been close enough to get hit with blood splatter when Frank got shot. Scrubbing it off didn’t wipe the stain clean.
Good guy or bad guy didn’t matter. Frank had been young and misguided and had carried a secret that would fell most halfway decent men. Cam had connected the dots in no time. A friend of Frank’s had died in an alley after a long night of drinking. The person with him? Frank. The friend had expressed concerns about Frank’s stories before he died, and those concerns had died with him.
Shane didn’t know what had happened in that alley, but he’d bet an angry confrontation gone wildly off track. A fight that left one friend dead and the other in an alcoholic spiral and now in the morgue. Life had handed Frank one last wallop. Shane just wished Makena hadn’t been there to see it.
At least her color had come back. She sat on the couch with her legs crossed in front of her, hugging a pillow to her chest. She listened to Connor and Cam tried to make sense of it all.
“There are long periods of time when none of the men in the group are logged in to any of their electronics,” Cam explained.
She nodded and kept nodding, then asked, “What does that prove?”
“They likely have an alternative source of communicating and were using that at the time,” Connor finished, then sat there across from her. No one said anything, not even her, and he started talking again as if he felt the need to break it all down and explain it. “You can see bursts of activity before an event, like the attack at your house, then sustained inactivity during the actual attack.”
The pieces made sense to Shane. Sometimes the lack of information proved to be better evidence than something obvious. Since Frank had only provided a piece—and a small one at that, without much detail—they had to fit it all together. Connor said he had the entire team working on the problem.
Makena tightened her hold on the pillow. “This is so much work. If only they used that power for good.”
“Men like that never do.” Shane had learned that the hard way long ago. He’d hoped his father would change, ease up and actually be there. Never happened. Some men couldn’t change. Men like Jeff thought he didn’t need to.
“It’s more fun to cause trouble,” Connor said. “Speaking of which, Holt is on the way home to check on the two of you.”
“No surprise there.” She eased her grip on the pillow and tucked it next to her. “So, does all this mean we owe Tyler an apology? Can we clear him?”
Shane wasn’t ready to go there. He didn’t trust anyone involved in this case, and that only worsened with each hour. “No.”
She frowned at him. “You sound so sure.”
Shane pretended that look was about wanting more information and not about her being tied to Tyler. Shane knew she didn’t have romantic feelings for the guy, but if she possessed a sense of loyalty, that could trip her up and make investigating Tyler harder. “It looks as if he lied about his service record. We need to know why and at what cost.”
“I don’t get it. Why start the site if he had this big lie in his past?”
That part confused Shane, too. There were possible explanations, but none of them sounded especially smart. “Maybe to throw the scent off, or to get to the investigations first and keep any taint away from him.”
Shane’s money was on one of those. Tyler might just have the bloated ego to think he could be the one to successfully hide his fake past.
“This is so ridiculous.” Makena pressed her head back in the couch cushions and wiped a hand over her face. “I was just trying to help.”
The tone got to Shane. He sat down next to her and pulled her hand down. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Cam nodded. “The work is good. It’s scary that it’s necessary, but it is.”
“Tell that to all the dead men scattered wherever I walk.” She slipped her fingers through his and held on tight.