Page 81 of Crimson Heart

“It’s about the car accident I mentioned the other day. It’s a lot more than that. It was premeditated.”

As Tim continued explaining what he’d found out, Byron felt all the blood leave his body.

“Fuck!”

He headed toward the door and ripped it open.

“Hang on, Tim. Jude needs to hear this from you. He’s upstairs.”

As he left the living room and entered the foyer, the front door opened, and Flora entered with a couple of shopping bags. When she spotted him, she set her bags on the floor.

“Oh, good, you’re here. Heath and I need help with the groceries. Go to the car and⁠—”

“I don’t have time,” he interrupted and hurried to the stairs.

“You’re not doing anything right now,” Flora said.

“I’m on the phone!”

He didn’t care that his words had come out a little harsher than he’d planned. In any case, he didn’t have time for something as trivial as bringing groceries into the house and stacking them in the pantry.

Flora let out an annoyed grunt, but he didn’t care. He didn’t stop and headed up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. He was impatient for Jude to hear what the bounty hunter had found, though he dreaded how Danielle would react. It would be a difficult revelation to swallow and open up old wounds. He wished he could tell Jude in private so he could prepare Danielle for what she was about to hear, but he couldn’t waste time.

At the master suite, he knocked loudly so his knock would drown out the voices in the room. He couldn’t hear what exactly they were talking about, but he recognized that it was a heated discussion. He knocked a second time, then simply opened the door and entered.

The first person who saw him was James. He narrowed his eyes.

“You? Get out, this is a private conversation.”

Alerted by James’s rude words, everybody in the room looked at him. He made eye contact with Jude.

“This is important. You’ll wanna hear this.” He lifted his phone.

Jude gave a nod and motioned him to come closer. Byron shut the door behind him to make sure the conversation remained private and tapped on his phone.

“Tim, I’m switching you to a video call.”

A moment later, he turned the phone so that Jude could see Tim on the other end of the line. “Tim, tell Jude what you just told me.”

“Hey, Jude. I’m still down here in San Bernardino looking into the Leon pack. And boy, do they have skeletons in the closet.”

“Go on.”

Byron noticed how everyone in the room was staring at the phone in anticipation. He avoided looking at Charlotte, who stood next to her mother, her face tense, her eyes filled with worry. He hated seeing her like this and yearned to take her into his arms to soothe the pain she was in. But he’d lost that right—at least for now. However, Jude had given him hope that he could win Charlotte back. But right now wasn’t the time.

“About six and a half years ago, there was a car accident in which Diane Powell was killed.”

A gasp came from Danielle, and she moved closer to the phone. Jude put his arm around her to comfort her.

“That was my mother,” Danielle said into the phone.

“I’m sorry to open up old wounds, but it wasn’t an accident. It was classified as a hit and run, but I found something in the police files that showed that this was deliberate.”

Byron noticed Danielle’s lower lip quiver and her eyes widen in shock.

“The car that hit your mother’s was a stolen truck, which was later found burned out. Most likely to destroy any DNA evidence. However, in the police file, there was video footage from a gas station where the truck stopped briefly after the hit-and-run. But it was later deleted. I managed to have one of my tech guys backtrack and find the video. When I watched it, I realized that the police may have deleted it because they were either pressured or paid off. In any case, the driver got out of the car and filled up a couple of cannisters with gas, which he then used to set the truck on fire a few miles away in a deserted area.”

He could see that both Jude and Danielle held their breaths.