the diner across the street from his office. Probably taken with the same long-range camera since it had a grainy texture.
“Did you have any idea you were being photographed?” she asked, hoping that maybe he’d seen the person who’d snapped these shots.
Declan shook his head, and while his expression didn’t change much, Eden figured that had to bother him. It was a violation, something she knew loads about since this whole computer-hacking incident.
She clicked to another photo of Declan in his truck, turning onto the road that led to his foster family’s ranch and to his own place. The next shot was of his license plate.
And then Eden got to the last one.
The puzzling one.
It was an old wedding photo of four adults and a young boy. Even though the person who’d emailed it to her hadn’t identified by name all the people in the group shot, he had said that the child was Declan. He was about four years old, dressed in his Sunday best, and the people surrounding him were his parents, an uncle and the uncle’s bride. They were all smiling. A happy-family photo.
It didn’t make Declan happy now.
He closed his eyes for just a split second, and then he cursed, using some really foul language. And Eden knew why. She, too, was personally familiar with bad memories. And despite the smiles, this photo was indeed a bad memory, because in less than twenty-four hours after it’d been taken, Declan’s life had turned on a dime.
Or rather turned on a different kind of metal.
Some bullets.
“The information this hacker gave me was that the photo was of your family in Germany,” Eden said. “They were all murdered when you were four years old.”
Declan took a moment, inhaled a slightly deeper breath. “Why the hell did he send you that?”
Eden shook her head. “I was hoping you could tell me. The person also said your name had been changed after the murders.”
“It was. Twice. But as far as I know, no other living person has that specific information. Except maybe my family’s killer.”
Was that it? Was that the connection?
“What does this photo have to do with the order the hacker gave me to kill you?” she asked.
He snatched the phone from her, backed up, but he still didn’t lower his gun. He kept it aimed right at her while he glanced out the window. Maybe to see if the camera installer was returning. He apparently wasn’t, because Declan’s attention went back to the photos. There weren’t more to see, but he paused for a long time on that last one.
The bad-memory one.
“I’ve been digging, but I don’t have many answers,” she admitted. “Still, I have to believe that picture has something to do with all of this or he wouldn’t have sent it to me.”
Eden paused, hoping Declan didn’t shoot her for asking what she had to ask. “What do you remember about your family’s murders? Who killed them? Because the person sent me links of the old crime, but all the articles said the culprit was an unknown assailant.”
A sterile term for something far from sterile.
“I don’t know who killed them.” He was in control again. The tough cowboy lawman, and he was glaring at her, maybe because he didn’t believe she was innocent in all of this.
And maybe she wasn’t.
Eden didn’t know if she was one hundred percent blameless, but that was what she intended to find out—after she bought herself and her sisters some time.
“I don’t have any memories of the attack,” Declan finally added. “According to the shrink the cops made me see, I blocked them out.”
Too bad. But Eden cringed at the thought. Maybe blocking them out had been the only way Declan had survived. That and being hidden in a cellar while his family was murdered. If he hadn’t been in that cellar, he would have been killed, as well. In fact, Eden was afraid that Declan was the reason they’d been killed in the first place.
Judging from the look in his eyes, he thought so, too.
He groaned, dropped back another step and shoved her phone in his front pocket. Maybe so he’d have a free hand to scrub over his face—which he did.
“What’s the first memory you do have after the murders?” she asked.
“A few days later.” And that was all he said for several long moments. “The local cops put me in protective custody, gave me a fake name and eventually sent me to a distant cousin, Meg Tanner, in Ireland. I lived on and off with her and then some of her friends in County Clare for eight years before she brought me to Texas.”
Yes, because Meg had learned she had Parkinson’s disease and could no longer take care of Declan. Or at least that was the info Eden had been given by the mystery person who’d orchestrated this visit to Declan’s place.
“Eventually your cousin took you to the Rocky Creek Children’s Facility,” Eden supplied. “Why there?”
“She just said I’d be safe there. I got another name, the one I use now, and Kirby said I shouldn’t talk about my past to anyone. So I didn’t.”
Eden took up the rest of the explanation. “The facility didn’t normally take boys your age, but they made an exception. Actually, someone there faked the paperwork so you could be admitted.”
Declan glared again. “How do you know that?”
“Despite what you think of me, I’m a good P.I. I know how to find information, even when someone wants that information hidden.”
Though it had been especially challenging to get any records from the notorious facility because of an ongoing investigation into the murder of the orphanage’s headmaster, Jonah Webb. According to what she’d learned, Webb’s wife had murdered him sixteen and a half years ago when Declan was just thirteen years old and his five foster brothers had all been living at Rocky Creek.
And Webb’s wife had an unknown accomplice.
Declan and all five of his foster brothers were suspects. So was their foster father, Kirby Granger, the retired marshal who had “rescued” Declan and his foster brothers and then raised them on his sprawling ranch.
That led Eden to her next question. “Is this connected to Jonah Webb’s murder investigation?”
Declan certainly didn’t jump to deny it, and coupled with that photo of him as a child, this might be one very complex puzzle. Something they didn’t have time for right now.
“I need to fire the gun,” Eden reminded him, checking the time again. “The person who set this up needs to believe you’re dead.”
“So you’ve said,” he argued.
Eden was sure her mouth dropped open. “You don’t believe me?”
“Why should I?”
It
