Face the Music

Chapter 22

"First of all," Brennan said. "We need to get our hands on that evidence. Where is it?"

Ella eyed him skeptically. "Not here. But I'll go get it."

"You shouldn't go out," I said. "It's not safe. Tell us where it is and we'll get it for you."

She said nothing. I rolled my eyes. "C'mon, Ella. After everything are you really going to act like you don't trust me right now?"

"It's not you I don't trust," she said, looking pointedly at Brennan. He didn't look happy about it.

"Don't fret, my dear," said Brennan sarcastically. "I won't be staying. I have business to attend to back in Chicago. But I'm warning you, Ben," he said, shifting his attention to me. "If you screw this up, you'll be off the case and I'll have you working behind a desk until you retire."

"Understood," I said.

"Ben, you go with Ella. I'll get Brennan back to the airport," Collins told me. "Good luck." When he and Brennan left, I turned to Ella.

"So where are we headed?" I asked.

"The daycare," she answered.

**

Ella unlocked the back door of the daycare center. The lights inside were all off, the toys were all picked up and put away for the weekend.

I stopped her just before she was about to walk through the door.

"Do we have to worry about anyone being here?"

"Just the janitor, but he knows me."

I nodded and we continued into the playroom. Ella strolled in with a purpose, completely at ease, but I was on edge, looking in every dark corner for a person waiting to hurt her. I tried to relax. Tried not to act so paranoid, but my feelings for Ella were beyond anything I could control, and my fear of losing her was even stronger.

I watched as she strolled over to the CD player. I remembered my first time in here, only a two days ago, when we'd been dancing to Billy Joel. Ella plucked a CD case from the stack and handed it to me. It was an Elton John CD.

"In the mood for another dance?" I asked, confused.

"Open it."

I popped the cover open. Inside, there a white disc that most certainly was not Elton John's greatest hits. Someone had written Loretto in black sharpie on the disc. 

"You're lucky I like Billy Joel more than Elton John or I would have seen this the last time I was here."

She bit her lip and smiled a little. "I thought I was going to have a heart attack when you started looking at CD's."

"Have you looked at it?" I asked.

"Only once, four years ago. I never believed that my mother's death was an accident, so the day she died I went looking for anything to support my...hunch...about my father killing her. I found a file on my mom's computer labeled to look like old case reports, but it actually held all of the evidence she'd collected against him. I read through it all, looked at the pictures and the videos, then I burned it onto this disc and took off. I haven't looked at it since then."

"I'd like to go check it out," I said. "That way I know what we're dealing with. And maybe your mom had something on him that will help us. Then we'll take it to the sheriff."

**

"Let's do this," Collins said. He and I settled ourselves behind the screen of the computer and Ella pushed the disc into the disc drive.