Tristan, Texas
Tuesday, June 14—9:30 a.m.
As Ava stepped into the quiet confines of Tristan’s only library, she was hit by the haunting edge of nostalgia. The smell of books reminded her of academia and her career that had yet to begin. It reminded her of her past studies, of everything that in the last few days had seemed lost. In fact, in the face of her new reality, they were lost. There was only the nightmare that she somehow had to wade through without getting anyone else hurt. Despite that thought there was something...someone, actually, who emerged out of the ashes of pain—Faisal. Ironically, now when she needed him most, she’d turned her back on him. But she’d had no choice. She’d cared about him too much. She’d thought about him too often through the last years when school had occupied her life in a way she knew few other periods of her life could. It was strange how psychology had turned her into an old soul with a knowledge that someone her age should not have. Again, she was diverting herself and her thoughts, and ultimately her need for Faisal. She’d never forgotten him and now she’d run, leaving him behind in the hopes of keeping him safe.
She pulled her thoughts from the past and from Faisal with difficulty. She had to face the present and the unknown if she were to stop whatever evil had taken out her father and could very well hurt others she loved. She had two names. She knew Ben Whyte had tried to kill her father. She also knew that the evidence for the land deal that implicated her father was filed here in Tristan—at least that’s what her father had told her. The second name was Darrell Chan; she knew nothing about the man, except that her father had said in the event of tragedy to tell the authorities about him. She had—she’d told Faisal. She regretted that. It endangered him by giving him another degree of involvement.
She pushed the thought from her mind. On a back table a stack of books sat beside a thin, gray-haired woman who glanced up once from the computer terminal and then returned her attention to the computer.
“Can I help you?” The librarian smiled and Ava tried not to stare at the woman’s thin lips, which were generously coated with red lipstick and stood out like a slap in the face. Her hair, bobbed at the ears, was a no-nonsense cut. That look clashed with the lipstick’s attempt at glamour but her blue eyes smiled with a vibrant youthfulness.
If her problems had been simpler, the look and the attitude would have made Ava feel at home. As it was, she was on edge, well aware that she had little time. There was so much to do and it was already midmorning. She still had to find a job. The twenty-five dollars she had left weren’t going to carry her far and she needed to eat. Her stomach growled as she thought of food. She’d had little of that. A loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter had been her only purchase this morning and the groceries were tucked in the canvas bag over her arm.
Ava Adams had disappeared in favor of Anne Brown. It was a plain name that suited her current situation and had been inspired by the woman who had been so kind to her on the bus.
“I’d like to buy some computer time.”
“No charge,” the librarian said. “The town is trying to get more people online. The locals are notoriously cheap and sometimes I think that half of them might really believe in the rise of the machine. The Terminator, loved that movie,” she said in response to what Ava knew was a slightly blank look. “Look, sorry, too much information.” She gestured to two terminals, one that was occupied, the other free. “Help yourself. Call me if you need assistance.”
“I will, thank you,” Ava said. She went to the terminal, which was in a far corner of the library away from both the librarian and the woman who seemed to be the only other patron in the library.
She pretty much knew that she was fishing in the dark. But she had nothing else but the knowledge that this place was the beginning of it all. What beginning that might be she didn’t know. Hopefully, there was some clue to it all in her father’s affairs. She opened his private email account. She’d told her father often enough to kick the email and move into more secure messaging methods but he’d been old-school that way.
He’d hinted that he was ready to take her advice two weeks ago. That was when he’d given his account password to her. It had been a casual mention, as though saying nothing would ever happen but he wanted to tell her anyway. He’d said that if something happened to him, she should access his email. At the time she’d thought that it was only because he was close to hitting a landmark birthday, shortly after hers, and he was feeling his own mortality. Now it meant so much more.
As she clicked through the various emails, she felt less like she was intruding into her father’s private life than she’d thought she would. There were more business-related than private emails. They were emails concerning various meeting results, a response from a birthday greeting to a woman she knew had acted as his assistant.
Five minutes in she was frowning as a name kept reappearing. Darrell Chan had sent her father a number of emails in regard to ranch land he had purchased in the area.
The correspondence was antagonistic, about a complaint that didn’t seem quite clear. They were messages that seemed mired in secrecy as if there was a code being used. None of it, including the land mentioned, made any sense. Her father was a man who had been involved in a variety of businesses in his day. But he’d always had a particular loathing for real estate ventures. It had something to do with his own childhood growing up with a father who was what he liked to call a slumlord. As a result, or so he claimed, he had no use for investing in real estate. Therefore, land transactions weren’t something her father would be involved in—until now, apparently.
A shiver of foreboding ran down her spine. She’d never felt so alone. And for a second and then two she let her mind wander to a place of safety and that took her immediately to Faisal. She wished she could talk to him. More than that, despite her actions, she wished he were here. She remembered the way he had looked at her the last time she’d seen him. She could have melted into his arms but she hadn’t acted on that or even admitted it. In truth, she hadn’t been in any condition to act on such feelings. She pushed the thoughts from her mind. What she felt for Faisal had no place here.
She opened another email. There Darrell clearly stated that he wanted his money back. It seemed that he was beginning to believe that he’d been duped. She scrolled down. There was nothing else, no further correspondence. Nothing sent by her father, nothing received. And the date of the last email was the same as that fateful night on the yacht.
“What did you get involved in, Dad?” she whispered. Whatever it was, Ben Whyte and that ill-fated night on the yacht were now looking like they might be the climax of a deal gone terribly wrong.
A few minutes later she closed the account and after asking the librarian where land deeds were registered, she was directed to a small office down the street. A half hour later she left that office realizing that this was much worse than she imagined.
“Fai, what would you do?” she murmured as if he were by her side. Her father’s name was signed on the transfer of the very land that Chan had insisted he’d been sold. Worse, the signature in her father’s name was not his, it was forged. She was sure of that. She’d seen her father’s signature often enough. Now, she clutched the copies of two land transactions that the clerk had given her. She was exhausted and she still had to fulfill her last promise to her father—to stay alive.