Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

“He’s… gone.” Chloe said. “He didn’t just… send… you?”

Kendra shook her head. “In a way he did. It’s why you need to hear this.”

“Go ahead,” Sloane said as she went to sit beside her sister. “We talked about it. We knew he was putting himself in danger for us.”

The two sisters had gone through so much heartbreak over the years, Kendra thought. She hated to be the one to bring this new threat to the forefront. And it wasn’t over; new agony loomed on the horizon.

Get it over with. They could take it.

“Well, then I guess I should begin where it started for me when Paula asked me to help with the case she and Williams had worked together when you were children. At first I didn’t want to take it. I didn’t know enough…”

She had expected questions but both girls were silent as she told them about Paula Chase’s murder, Williams’ story, and later the rest of the events that had brought her here. Toward the end there were tears but she found she was also crying as she tried to comfort them. But there was no real comfort to be had at this time.

After she finished, she found that one of the girls had brought her a cup of tea. She didn’t even remember which one but was grateful for the kindness.

She finished the tea and set down the cup. “Enough?”

“Too much,” Sloane said. “You knew it would be, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “But we couldn’t even begin to try to solve it until you knew everything. It’s not over, you know.” She smiled. “As startled as I was by Sloane’s tackle, I totally understand it. And I appreciate that you’ve been on high alert out here. Williams obviously brought you both here because he thought it was one place you could stay safe. But what brought him—and you—to this point?”

Chloe let out a long breath. “It was my fault. I was the one who reached out to him.”

“You two were reaching out to everyone connected with the case, weren’t you?” Kendra asked.

“It was different with Detective Williams.”

“You should probably go back and tell her about Setzer,” Sloane said.

Chloe nodded. “After we started re-interviewing people, I was approached by someone named Justin Setzer. It was no one I’d ever heard of. He said he had some information for us, but he was limited in what he could say. We had to do the follow-up work ourselves, but he said he could guide us and push us in the right direction if he thought we needed it.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told us to look into the Dayton Group and what they were doing at the Baum house around the time that our mother was killed. We started asking around, but we didn’t get far at first. So Setzer started telling us more and more.”

Kendra nodded. “We know about the Dayton Group.”

“Well, we didn’t have any idea until Setzer told us. He eventually admitted that he was a member of the group. He revealed how the Dayton Group enabled and covered for the Bayside Strangler, whose name was Rod Wallace. Setzer told us he even helped fake Wallace’s death.”

“Really?” Kendra thought for a moment. Although Highcastle suspected the man’s death had been faked, this confirmed it.

Chloe nodded. “I think he felt guilty that they had enabled this psychopath for as long as they did. Setzer left the Dayton Group not long afterward and started his own private security company. Anyway, we told Detective Williams all of this, and we probably would have gotten in touch with Detective Chase if we’d had the chance. Williams had just started reaching out to his law-enforcement and intelligence sources to confirm and investigate the story when Setzer was murdered. That’s when Detective Williams decided it was too dangerous for me and Sloane to stick around. He figured that Setzer’s old Dayton Group teammates found out that he was being too forthcoming with information about their activities, and they silenced him. Williams wanted to get us the hell out of Dodge as soon as we could.”

“Leaving behind your phones, purses, credit cards, everything?” Kendra said.

“He didn’t want us bringing anything that could possibly be tracked. Phones, of course, were out. But driver’s licenses and credit and ATM cards have RFID chips that can flag sensors all over the place. When Williams realized what we may be up against, he didn’t want to take any chances. He said that these people have resources we can’t imagine. He even made us take off our Apple Watches and fitness trackers. I took his file and the file we had started for Setzer and left everything else behind.”

“The bad guys were aware you knew about all of this,” Kendra said, putting it together in her own mind. “And they figured you most likely had some written evidence in those files of yours. That’s why they wanted your files so badly.”

“We gave those particular folders to Detective Williams,” Chloe said.

“I wish he had stayed here, too,” Kendra said.

“We asked him to stay, but he wanted to get back and get to the bottom of things,” Sloane said. “I guess that’s what he was working on when he was killed.”

“He was probably reaching out to his old law-enforcement contacts,” Kendra said. “I wish he had confided in Lynch and me sooner. But he didn’t really know us, and I think he was a little suspicious of Lynch because of his government work.”

Sloane shrugged. “Well, when Detective Williams left us alone on this island with food, blankets, and his old service revolver, we couldn’t be sure of surviving. We knew he would try to help us but he obviously didn’t want us to have any contact with the outside world until he could make it safe for us.” Her lips twisted. “But evidently that wasn’t going to happen. We decided that we were going to have to take care of ourselves. So we set out to do it. We did everything from setting up sentry posts to watching for any bad guys who might be coming after us over the horizon.”