Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead by Lena Diaz

you.”
    “Protecting me? From what?”
    “From someone accusing you of destroying evidence because it had your prints on it. You’re lucky he didn’t flat-out take you off the case.”
    She blinked in surprise as his words sank in. He was right, even though she hated to admit it. “I suppose if someone else in the office had been in a similar situation, I might have reacted the same way. After all, I did practically beg him to let me work on this case. He knows it’s important to me.” She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “No, actually, if I were the boss in this situation, I would have taken the agent off the case. I wonder why Casey didn’t.”
    As soon as she spoke those words, she knew the answer. Their deal. He’d given her seven days, had made her sign a document that detailed their agreement. He was making sure she got every one of those days so she’d never bring up the letters case again.
    She sighed heavily. Casey was doing everything he could to help her, to let her work this obsession out of her system. She would have realized that herself, back in his office, if she wasn’t so emotionally wrapped up in solving this mystery. Which made her wonder all over again: Why did this case matter so much to her?
    Matt made a turn and zipped down a side street. “You begged him for this case?”
    “What?” She was still distracted by her thoughts.
    “The case. You said something about begging to work on it.”
    “Oh, yeah, well, beg might be too strong a word.” Or not. “I didn’t quite get down on my knees. And before you ask, no, I don’t know why. There’s something about the letters that’s gnawing at me. I can’t seem to let it go. I want to give it everything I can so if another letter comes in I won’t feel that I didn’t at least try to keep someone else from being killed.”
    “That strengthens the theory that you might know the killer. It sounds like your subconscious recognizes something about the case that’s familiar, even if you don’t know what that is.”
    “I agree, in theory. A lot of the names on the letters seem to . . . speak to me. While others don’t. But I still don’t have a clue who the killer could be.”
    He gave her a sideways look, as if he were trying to piece some things together in his mind. She was about to ask him what that look meant when she noticed where they were—an industrial part of Savannah.
    “Matt, where are we going? This isn’t the way to your studio.”
    He parked next to a long, one-story white building made of uninspired concrete blocks.
    “What is this place?” she asked.
    “It’s a business I started last year, after some products I designed took off and made a good return.” With that cryptic answer, he shut off the engine and got out.
    He owned a business other than his private investigation business? At twenty-four? Tessa was still wrestling with that new piece of information when he opened her door.
    She slung her purse onto her shoulder and accepted his hand to help her out of the car. But he didn’t let go. Instead, he pulled her with him down the sidewalk.
    “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
    He towed her around the corner and stopped at the front of the building. When he let go of her hand and turned to face her, the intent expression on his face put her on the alert. He looked like he was ready to go into battle.
    “I may have done something . . . slightly illegal,” he admitted. “But since we only have a handful of days to solve this case, I made an executive decision.”
    She didn’t like the sound of that. “What are you talking about?”
    The glass door swung open behind him. A woman stepped outside and headed down the sidewalk. As the door began to swing closed again, sunlight glanced off the small gold letters on the glass. Tessa’s stomach dropped when she saw the name of the company spelled out in those letters.
    “Oh no, you didn’t.”
    “Yes, I did.” He