Thanks for your reviews, follows and favorites. This was so supposed to be uploaded Sunday along with the next chapters, but that is life. Somethings happen outside of my control, and I have just got back online today. I hope you are enjoying this. Be careful about missing chapters, they don't post right on this site when I upload them all at the same time.Trigger Warnings: Grief Standard Disclaimer for this whole work: I own nothing all credit goes to Lena Diaz and maybe a few credits goes to Fox's Glee creative team.

Chapter Eight

Cedes towel-dried the breakfast dishes and packed them into a box. That was the last of them. From here on out, however many days she had left in Destiny, she'd use paper plates and disposable utensils. Tomorrow was trash day. She'd empty the refrigerator tonight and set the bags at the curb.

She'd already had her RAV4 taken to Hummel's to get the windshield fixed. Azimio, the owner, was going to sell her mom's Taurus for her. Movers were scheduled to arrive later in the week to take the boxes she'd designated to go to her condo in Nashville. Then, as soon as her lawyer gave the okay, an auction company would hold an estate sale for everything else, including the house. In just a few short weeks, it would be as if her mother had never even existed.

A sob escaped before Cedes even registered the tears flowing down her cheeks. Her knees buckled and she sagged to the floor.

"Oh, Mama. Mama, Mama, Mama. I miss you so much."

The grief hit her like a tidal wave, pushing her under, drowning her in darkness and sorrow. She'd cried when she'd first gotten the call from the hospital, of course. But that was nothing compared to the paralyzing pain that racked her now. She curled into a ball and cried until it seemed like there was no moisture left in her body to form any tears until her throat ached from the strength of her sobs. And then she fell into an exhausted slumber right there on the kitchen floor.

When she woke up, only a short time had passed. But it felt like a lifetime. Her lifetime, her mother's, her family's. Nothing would ever be the same again. She'd never hear her mother's voice on the phone. Never see her smiling face when the limo pulled up to Cedes's condo for one of her mom's trips to Nashville. Never swap much-loved books in the mail with favorite passages highlighted in pink. Cedes had thought she'd dealt with her grief before coming back to Destiny. But apparently she'd had to see the house all packed up to really push her over the edge and make her face her tremendous loss.

Feeling bruised from the emotional hit she'd just taken, she pushed herself up to sitting and rubbed her bleary eyes. This house had been her home for eighteen years. She'd been happy here, the doted upon only child of two incredibly loving parents. Now both of them were gone. And Cedes wasn't sure how she could go on without them.

She was tempted to curl back into a ball. But she could almost see her mother scowling at her and telling her to "suck it up, Buttercup." Her mom never suffered whining or pity parties. Cedes wasn't going to insult her memory now by ignoring all the life lessons her mama had taught her.

After replenishing her parched body with a bottle of water, Cedes went outside to check the mail that she'd forgotten to check yesterday. That was one more thing she needed to do, set up a forwarding address. She supposed she could do that online tonight.

The bodyguard assigned to watch her this morning sat in his SUV parked in the grass across the street, no longer bothering to pretend that she didn't know about them.

She waved and he waved back. Having him there made her feel safe. But she cringed at the thought of how much the twenty-four-hour security was costing Sam. As soon as she sold her mom's house she'd pay him back. She'd caused enough problems for him. Having him lose his savings wasn't going to be added to that list.

She opened the mailbox and pulled out the short stack of envelopes—a final bill from the funeral home, the electric bill and a manila envelope with no return address or stamp. She hesitated, a cold prickle of unease flashing through her.

It wasn't uncommon for people this far from town to stick a note in each other's mailboxes. It was most likely a note from one of her mother's friends, wishing her condolences. But with everything that had happened since her fateful trip to the Piggly Wiggly, the envelope took on a more sinister appearance.

The sound of shoes crunching on dried leaves had her looking up to see the bodyguard crossing the road toward her. He stopped in front of her.

"Miss Jones, I'm Shane Tinsley. I couldn't help noticing the worry on your face. Something wrong?"

"Maybe. It seems silly, really, but this—"

"Didn't go through the post office." He frowned down at the envelope. "Mind if I open it?"

Since he was already pulling on a pair of latex gloves, she didn't bother answering. When he was ready, she handed it to him.

"Please step back," he said.

Her throat tightened at his request. Did he think someone had hidden something dangerous inside? It didn't seem possible, as thin as the envelope was. But she stepped back anyway, watching him carefully pat down the surface and examine the edges before pulling the flap open. He peeked inside, then his posture seemed to relax and he motioned her forward.

"It's some kind of picture." He reached in and pulled it out. His gaze shot to hers, and he slowly turned the picture around.

Cedes blinked in shock as the proof of her sins stared up at her from an eight-by-ten glossy photo. She couldn't fool herself any longer. This wasn't something she could run away from again. It was time to finally face her past.


Sam propped his booted feet on top of his desk and leaned back in his chair, watching the sun burn away the last of the morning fog through the police station windows. Yet another chilly day had dawned with no viable leads about who had arranged for the racists to go after Cedes in the grocery store. To say that he was getting frustrated was an understatement.

One desk over from him in the expansive squad room, Mike was leaning back in his chair, too. Both of them had the case files up on their computer monitors and were tossing theories back and forth.

"The Rachel thing is still bothering me," Mike said.

"Tell me about it. I didn't expect her to be released so quickly. She should be toughing it out in a jail cell right now."

Mike jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the chief, who was talking to Santana by the interrogation room. "His orders. When you didn't call back saying Miss Jones wanted to press charges, he wouldn't let us lock her up. Sorry, man."

"Nothing you could do. I'd just feel better if she wasn't on the loose with that rifle. If she told us the truth, then her emotions are running high and impairing her judgment. What's to stop her from deciding to go after Cedes again?"

"And if she's lying?"

"Then maybe whoever hired the gang to hold up the grocery store hired her, too. What did we find on Anderson senior? Do we have anything at all to link him to any of this? His belief that Cedes killed his son is no secret. And he certainly has the funds to hire anyone he wants to do just about anything."

Mike dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Santana's been following that angle and so far she's got nothing. Obviously he's too sick right now to have gone to Nashville. And we can't get a look at his finances to look for payments to any thugs without a warrant. Trust me. Santana tried. But the judge turned her down, said he needs something more than conjecture."

"Did she interview him?"

"Officially, no. He's refusing to talk to us. But she caught up to him outside the hospital before one of his chemo treatments. She barraged him with questions as his son, Blaine, pushed his father into the hospital. Didn't do any good and his lawyer called the chief later threatening a lawsuit for harassment if we pulled something like that again."

Sam shook his head. "Other than what I got from Rick Nelson, we've got nothing from the shooters, either. None of them are talking. I'll give it to Anderson senior, or whoever is behind this, they picked the right thugs to hire. Or maybe threatened them with some dire consequence if they talked."

He tapped his right hand on his thigh, thinking it through. "Rick and the other one who was shot are still in the hospital. Maybe we can play them against each other, even with their lawyers present, and get one of them to take a deal."

"I thought Rick Nelson didn't know the name of the guy who hired them. That only leaves the Bobby guy. And he's a hard-core criminal. I don't see us getting him to go for a deal."

"He's facing hard time for the grocery store holdup."

Mike shrugged. "You can try to talk to him. I certainly didn't have any luck."

"Maybe I'll head over there in a little bit." Sam tapped his thigh again. "Even if he doesn't have a name, he's got to have a better description, maybe even of the make and model of the car. If we can narrow it down, get the specific date when it happened, too, we might generate a viable lead on who was in that car that night."

"Like I said, I already tried. But hey, maybe after stewing in the hospital for a few days he's softened up. Or getting worried about heading to jail when he gets discharged. Anderson seems like the logical money man. Maybe one of his security guys is the man who drove to Nashville. I can work up a list of everyone who works for him and—"

"Already did."

They both turned to see Santana standing a few feet away. The chief was still on the far side of the room, talking to Hunter this time.

"Did what?" Mike asked.

"Got a list of everyone working for Anderson. I've even spoken to a few of them. But they all, of course, insist they haven't been to Nashville. And ever since I tried to talk to their boss at the hospital, I'm persona non grata at the Anderson estate. I haven't given up. But I'm spending most of my time on the computer looking into everyone instead of interviewing them. Slow going."

"Let's assume Anderson is the money guy and one of his security guys hired the thugs," Mike said. "Why now? If his goal was to get Cedes to confess to murdering his son, why wait ten years to go after her?"

"Cancer," Sam answered. "He's going through chemo. And he sure didn't look well when I saw him at his lawyer's office. Maybe he decided he's got nothing to lose by breaking the law and going after Cedes. Maybe getting her to confess to murdering his son and going to prison is his last dying wish. Who else has a motive to want her to confess?"

"Rachel Berry," Santana and Mike both said at the same time.

Sam slowly nodded. "She's got motive. She loved Cooper and has always blamed Cedes for his death. But the same question goes for her. Why wait ten years?"

Santana frowned and looked deep in thought.

Mike shrugged. "Beats me. Unless seeing Cedes in town was enough to make Rachel go ballistic, like she did when she shot that rifle. Her family has a big farm outside of town. They aren't exactly hurting financially. Maybe she's got a piece of that pie and decided to use it to hire those wackos to scare Cedes into confessing."

"Okay," Sam said. "Robert Anderson and Rachel Berry are still suspects. And we still have nothing concrete to charge either one."

Mike and Santana exchanged a frustrated look.

"There's something else bothering me about this whole thing," Sam continued. "If the goal is to get Cedes to confess, why make such a public thing out of it? Those thugs could have kidnapped Cedes at her mom's house at any time since she got here. She doesn't have any neighbors close by. It would have been easy. So why wait until she's in the grocery store to go after her? Either of you have a theory on that?"

"Not me," Santana said. "And the chief's waving me over again. Probably to fuss at me for pushing so hard on the Andersons again." She rolled her eyes and headed toward the other side of the room.

"I don't have a theory either," Mike said.

"I might," Sam said. "But it's a bit out there. I was hoping you had something better."

"Well, I don't so you might as well share. Who knows? Maybe you're onto something. Spill."

Hunter, who'd just sat down at his desk two rows over, must have heard their conversation, because he suddenly rolled his chair over in front of Mike's desk and crossed his arms, daring either of them to tell him to go away.

Mike frowned, obviously unimpressed with Hunter's challenging posture. "Don't you have something to do? Like issue parking tickets down Main Street?"

"Leave him alone," Sam said.

Mike's mouth twitched, and Sam knew he was trying to hold back a smile. Picking on the new guy was more of a habit than anything else at this point. But Hunter was a serious kind of guy and was getting more and more wound up. For both Hunter's and Mike's sakes, it was time to move on and let the new guy start contributing.

"What's your theory?" Mike asked.

The relief on Hunter's face was palpable. He sat at attention in his chair, eagerly waiting to hear what Sam had to say.

"Okay, the Pig isn't far from the station, so as soon as a nine-one-one call went out, it was only a matter of minutes before some uniformed cops would show up, a few minutes more for the SWAT team since they had to gear up. And it's right in the middle of the main business area where most of our restaurants and shops are."

"Right," Mike said. "Which doesn't make sense, as you already said."

"It doesn't make sense if your goal is to get Cedes to confess. But what if that isn't the goal?"

Mike frowned. "We already know that was the goal. That's the only useful information Rick gave us."

"No. Rick said the goal was to scare Cedes. Sugar's the one who said they were going to kidnap her to tape a confession. We don't have corroboration on that yet. But Rick isn't exactly a genius. He didn't ask questions and didn't really care why he did what he did. He was in it for the money, doing whatever Bobby told him to do. Maybe he thought the goal was to scare Cedes. But he wasn't told the real reason for the Piggly Wiggly assault."

Mike nodded. "Okay. I'm with you. But you're thinking the real reason wasn't to kidnap Cedes either?"

"Look at who was hired for the job. Budding criminals, hate group members who want to prove to other chapter members that they're tough, who think they're way more badass than they really are. Too stupid to think through the odds and realize they probably wouldn't make it out of that store without being caught. They saw easy money, something fun and illegal to add to their résumés to make them look even cooler to the rest of the crew. Heck, maybe the three without tats were doing it to earn full membership."

"Yeah. So?"

"Then you've got Rick. Younger than the rest, a new recruit. Not hardened yet. He's a weak link, a really weak link. As soon as we started questioning him and threatening him with the usual cop lies, he started singing, told us everything he knew—which wasn't much, but the end result could very well be exactly what whoever planned this whole thing wanted."

Hunter leaned forward, resting his arms on the edge of Mike's desk. "The guy behind it wanted the gunmen to be caught?"

Mike frowned at him, then looked at Sam. "Is that your theory?"

"Yes, but follow it through to its logical conclusion. The guy behind this wanted the whole incident to be public so everyone in town would hear about it. And he was counting on Rick to squeal. His goal wasn't to capture Miss Jones. His goal was to force the police to look into the Cooper Anderson case again."

Mike blinked in surprise. "Makes sense in a weird kind of way. We always investigate the victim's past to see if there's a connection. That means looking at the old Anderson case, too. You may be right. Pretty brilliant, in a sick kind of way. Which points the finger right back at Cooper Anderson's father again. Robert Anderson is bitter enough and rich enough to pull it off. And we already said he has nothing left to lose since he's terminally ill."

"What about the brother?" Hunter asked.

"Blaine," Sam said. "You think he might be behind this?"

"I think we should look into him, too, before jumping to any conclusions."

Mike narrowed his eyes. "Now look here, I'm not jumping to—"

"Stop," Sam ordered. "You're both right. We need to focus on looking for a tangible link between any of the Andersons and the gunmen. They had M16s. Those are military-issue. Blaine is ex-military. Most of the Anderson family has served in the military after college as officers because many believed that they would one day be elected as President of the United States, and their military service would look good for their political careers. Maybe he's in on this and managed to get his hands on those guns. Has anyone traced the serial numbers yet?"

"Randy did that the first day," Mike said. "They're part of a shipment that was labeled as destroyed because they failed inspection. We're still following that angle to see how they ended up in those terrorists' hands instead of being melted down for parts. Anderson senior is ex-military, too, and a gun collector. Wouldn't surprise me if he's got some contacts who helped him get his hands on those rifles—assuming he's involved."

"It's all speculation for now but we need to follow the trail," Sam said. "We're still right back to where we were. But having talked it all through, I feel like we're on the right track. We just have to hit them hard, help Santana dig up any information we can to piece together what the Andersons and their hired hands were doing since Cedes came to town. We need timelines, dates, places, witnesses. Let's get some pictures together of everyone who works for the Andersons and circulate those around, see if anyone can help us build those timelines. We can show those pictures to some of the rental car companies in Nashville to see whether they recognize any of them, since I highly doubt the Andersons or their men would use their own car when they hired those losers. It's highly likely they rented one."

"That's good," Mike said. "I can follow up on the alibis and rental angles."

"I can help," Hunter offered. "I can get the car companies in Nashville to give us information without making us try to get a warrant, which we probably can't get right now."

"You're right," Mike agreed. "We probably couldn't get a warrant. Do it. That sounds good."

Hunter jumped up and rolled his chair back to his desk. The sound of the keyboard clicking quickly followed.

"What about Rachel Berry?" Mike said. "Are we not looking at her anymore?"

"I think we shouldn't rule anyone out yet. We'll work on a timeline for her as well, track her movements since Cedes got into town. Who knows, maybe someone will remember seeing her talking to one of the Andersons or their hired hands."

Mike stood and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked.

"To the hospital. I'm going to see if I can't put the screws on Bobby and Rick and get a make and model on that car."

"Sounds good." Sam stood. "I'll go with you. We can play good cop, bad cop."

"Only if I get to be the bad cop this time," Mike teased.

"We'll toss a coin."

Mike laughed and they both rounded their desks.

Sam stopped, staring at the double glass front doors of the squad room. One of the bodyguards he'd hired was opening the door. And behind him was Cedes.

Cedes' dark hair swirled around her. She clutched her jacket closed against the light wind that was a precursor to the storm that Sue Humphries had predicted days ago.

Beside Sam, Mike said, "Wow. Never thought I'd see her voluntarily come here. You think maybe something else happened?"

That was exactly what Sam was worried about. Cedes' face looked haunted. And he couldn't think of a single reason for her bodyguard to have brought her here unless something terrible had happened.

As soon as she saw Sam, a look of relief seemed to pass over Cedes's face and she hurried toward him.

"Sam, thank goodness. Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes searching his.

Sam frowned in confusion at the bodyguard standing next to her before looking at her again. "I'm fine. What happened? Did someone try to shoot you again?"

Her eyes widened. "No. No, nothing like that." She half turned and motioned toward the man beside her. "Mr. Tinsley, the picture please."

"What picture?" Sam asked.

In answer, the bodyguard held up a manila envelope. Sam noted he was wearing a latex glove, so he automatically grabbed one for himself out of the top drawer of the closest desk and yanked it on before taking the envelope.

The frightened look on Cedes' face, and the way she kept glancing at the chief on the other side of the room still talking to Santana, told Sam something was very wrong. The little hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. And he didn't like the determined glint in Cedes's eyes, like she'd made some kind of important decision. Whatever had brought her here, he wished she'd spoken to him in private about it first.

"That was in my mailbox this morning," she explained. "The mail comes in the afternoon. But I forgot to check it yesterday. As soon as I saw what was inside, I had Mr. Tinsley drive me straight here."

Sam pulled out the picture, then stared at it in surprise. Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't this—an eight by ten of himself walking into the police station.

Paint had been used to draw a red circle on his back. Special care had been taken to make the circle look like the crosshairs of a rifle. But that wasn't what worried him. What worried him were the words, also in red, painted across the bottom—CONFESS OR ELSE.

The meaning was clear. Whoever had sent this to Cedes wanted her to confess or they would kill Sam. It didn't take a genius to know what they wanted her to confess—that she'd killed Cooper Anderson. He turned the envelope over.

"No stamp. No return address." He looked at the bodyguard. "Were you on duty when the mail came?"

"No."

"It doesn't matter who was on duty," Cedes said. "I wasn't home when the mail came. I was running errands."

"And the bodyguards are watching you, not your house," Sam said.

"Exactly," she agreed.

Footsteps sounded off to Sam's right. The chief was heading toward them.

Cedes sighed. "That picture is karma I suppose, telling me it's time to face my past." She laughed nervously.

Sam's gut clenched with dread. This was suddenly one conversation he did not want to have with a station full of cops listening.

"Miss Jones," the chief said as he stopped beside Sam. "Thank you for finally coming in. Let's go right to the interview room. We have a lot to discuss."

She swallowed and looked past him to the room at the front left corner of the station, a wide window clearly showing the table and chairs inside. "O-okay."

Schuester smiled like a Cheshire cat and crossed the room. He held the door to the interview room open and waved his other hand for Cedes to join him.

She started toward him.

"No." Sam stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

She frowned. "Sam, it's okay. This is what I expected to happen. I can't hide from the past forever. I need to tell you what happened the night that—"

"Shut up, Cedes."

Her eyes widened with surprise.

"Now listen here," Schuester half shouted from across the room. "Sounds like Miss Jones has important information pertinent to our investigation. You need to be very careful about what you're doing, son."

Sam ignored his boss. He frowned down at Cedes. "You need to go back home. Now."

She shook her head, apparently trying to be brave even though she was trembling. "I can't. You're in danger. Don't you see? And it's my fault. I have to tell you what I—"

"Not one more word." He grabbed her hand and hauled her toward the exit.