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“Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already spoken to the county, and they’ll be getting in contact with her to let her know about the change.”

Alden put on his professional face as he escorted Mr. Smith out of the office. As soon as he was gone, he shut the door and turned to face me.

“What the hell is this all about?”

I ran a hand through my hair. “Witches.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Witches?”

I nodded. “Or maybe vampires. We’re not sure yet.”

“Witches? Vampires? We? Jonah, this was supposed to be an easy job. You could have spent half the time sitting in your truck drinking coffee. What the hell happened?”

I sank into a chair and explained what was going on. To his credit, he listened to my ramblings before he spoke.

“I don’t want to have to pull you off this assignment, believe me. I don’t need that pain in the ass in my life right now. But digging into a two-hundred-year-old case of graveyard vandalism is a job for Scooby and the gang, not Equinox Protective Group.”

“Cemetery, actually. Graveyards are attached to churches.”

A vein in his temple throbbed, and I snapped my mouth shut.

“What you do in your spare time is none of my business, but this assignment is being paid for by Mr. Smith, so we do as he asks. The girl is out until November first.”

I huffed a breath, fighting the urge to tell off my boss.

Alden sat down and leveled me with a look. “Are you in too deep? Can you do this job?”

I glared across the table. “I can do the fucking job. I could do it in my sleep.”

“Good. Just don’t do it while sleeping with a trespasser.”

“She isn’t a trespasser.”

“She is if she touches that cemetery before Halloween.”

“I’ll handle it,” I said, pushing to my feet.

“Sure, sure.” Alden waved a hand in my direction. “You’re not the only one of my guys causing trouble this week. Kingston lost millions in jewels at the gala he was supposed to be guarding, Damien can’t figure out if his client is the victim or the suspect, and Colt’s father is missing.”

I cursed under my breath. Compared to those cases, mine was nothing, except it wasn’t nothing to me, and I knew it wasn’t to Briar either.

Fuck it. Alden was busy, and he trusted my judgment. I wouldn’t go against what the county or the client wanted, but if a loophole presented itself, I might just jump through it.

Chapter Thirteen

Briar

After Jonah dropped me at my car, I bypassed it and headed into the library. I should go home, get some more sleep, put on clothes that hadn’t spent hours on his floor. Instead, I went straight for the microfilm machine and started researching. I was tired from a lack of sleep, but Jonah had stopped on the way to drop me off at my favorite coffee place, so I had my trusty iced coffee to get me through.

After we’d had sex, we’d stayed up for another hour or so, just talking about everything and nothing. We’d had the kind of talk you can only have in the dark. The one where you slowly reveal your layers to see if the other person likes what lies underneath.

I tucked the growing feelings I had for him aside. I had to solve this before Mercer’s followers showed up and held a séance or something.

I pulled all the reels for the year of the death of the Smith family matriarch, Emma. Hopefully, I could find her obituary and it would list her children.

It didn’t take me long to find it. Full obituaries weren’t common back then, but there were one liners about deaths.

Died