Foster laughed, taking them out to the street and pointing the vehicle toward the neighborhood exit. For a famed detective he seemed oddly at ease and not at all as uptight as Millie would have expected. He seemed like a man you’d want to get a beer with instead of a man who went after criminals and worse.
“I did. Born and raised in a house not even ten minutes from here.”
“So you have family here?”
He shook his head. “I used to, but after my dad passed a few years ago my mom moved to Huntsville to live with her best friend.” He laughed again. Even in profile his smile was easy on the eyes. “I’ve almost gotten used to getting random drunk calls from them when they’ve had a little too much wine while watching one reality show or another. It’s a special kind of awkward to be at a murder scene and have your mom call you upset that Bachelor Mark, or whoever, picked the wrong woman.”
Millie couldn’t help but join in with a laugh. Just like she couldn’t help imagining the man at a crime scene, notepad in hand, and eyebrows drawn together in deep concentration. For extra effect she imagined his long hair slicked back while the dreary Seattle sky sat as his backdrop.
“Kelby Creek sure has to be a far cry from Seattle.”
Foster slowed to a stop at a light. Night was falling and the smell of rain had followed them into the cab of the truck. South Alabama summers only ever had two modes: hot and humid or humid and thunderstorms. Millie hoped no showers were headed their way. The only thing she’d grabbed before leaving her house was a small purse. She could picture her umbrella perfectly in a holder by the door.
“I was eighteen when we first got out to Seattle. Life happened fast there, really fast, for two South Alabama teenagers who’d never been out of the state until then. We got swept up in that pace for a few years. School. Work. More Work. Repeat. I grew a lot, changed a lot, and when we got used to the pace, I realized two things.” He ticked off both points on his fingers as he said them. “One, I love being a detective and, despite all of the bad things I’ve seen, I’d make the same career choice in a heartbeat.” Millie heard his mood shift in his tone. Anger. “And, two, even though I left Kelby Creek in my rearview as fast as lightning, I still am extremely protective of it.”
“The Flood,” she guessed.
He nodded. “I had just wrapped up a particularly nasty homicide and the local paper covered the story. It went from stating the facts about what had happened to my victim’s poor family and closing the case for them to how miraculous it was that someone from Kelby Creek could be in law enforcement and not be dirty.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. After that something just clicked for me,” he continued. “I reached out to Sheriff Chamblin and said I wanted to help in the rebuild. A week later I had the job.”
Millie wanted to say that was noble of the man, but something he said had her stuck so she looped back.
“You said we moved to Seattle? Did that person also come back with you?” Millie felt that blush again. She hurried to sound less like a curious teenager and more like a considerate neighbor. “I just mean I’ve only seen you come and go from the house.”
Foster snorted as he turned on the street where Rosewater was located.
“My high school girlfriend and I eloped the second we were both eighteen. It wasn’t until we both hit twenty-eight that we finally admitted that was a mistake. We’re a whole lot better as friends now. I just wished we’d realized that sooner.”
Out of her periphery Millie saw him turn his head to look at her. She didn’t rightly know how to react. A part of her felt an unreasonable amount of jealousy surge at the idea of him being married for ten years while the other part of her was cheered at the fact that he was no longer married.
Then she thought of Fallon and Jason Talbot and William Reiner.
It was sobering.
“Well, I’ll be honest. I’m glad you’re here now.”
Millie met his eyes. He gave her a small smile, but neither said anything until they were parked in the Rosewater lot.
Foster was all focus. He was already scanning the cars around them, no doubt trying to take in all the details.
Millie should have been too, but what he said next only made the bundle of nerves within her multiply.
“If Reiner is in there, let’s not bombard him as soon as we’re through the door. Let’s treat this like a date and get our own table and drinks first. Then we can go from there. I don’t want to spook anyone.”
Millie’s concentration shattered on the word date. It didn’t have a chance to recover before Foster was retrieving his blazer.
“Sounds good,” she agreed out loud.
Yet inside she was struggling.
Pretend it’s a date, Millie. No big deal, the angel on her shoulder told her.
Whatever the devil had to say, Millie decided not to listen to it.
* * *
THE ROSEWATER BAR had been converted into one long and narrow room. The bar stuck out from one wall while the bathrooms had been tucked to one side at the back. The only door you could go into past those belonged to the kitchen, a straight shot from the former lobby’s front doors. Most of the locals knew that through the kitchen was the office where Gavin Junior, current owner of all of Rosewater, did the mundane paperwork part of bar-owning while his bartender would occasionally use the space to smoke a joint.
Only a handful of people knew the secret that connected all three of the spaces.
He moved along the two-by-fours in the attic space above the bar with familiar precision. It wasn’t his first time going high to listen to the chatter below, and it wouldn’t be the last either.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous when he walked above the heads of the patrons.
Once he’d misstepped and had seen what could have happened in his mind like a slow-motion horror movie.
One wrong step and he could have very well fallen through the Sheetrock and landed in the laps of the people he’d been listening in on. That, no doubt, would have resulted in him landing somewhere else.
Jail.
Or worse.
It wasn’t like Kelby Creek always stuck with following the law.
Another time he’d shuffled along the beams with too much enthusiasm, knocking loose a thin sheet of dust that had floated down onto a table of patrons. Then he’d had to stand still for almost an hour to make sure no more dislodged and drew attention up at him.
Wouldn’t that have been a kick in the pants? Everything he’d been working toward, and some ceiling dust gave him and his secret away.
So that night he was careful as he moved along the beams. Methodical in practice, attentive to every single move.
Slow and steady doesn’t win any race. Careful and confident does.
He replayed this mantra over and over in his head until he was at one of the two vents that hadn’t yet been closed since the renovation. They served no other purpose other than being a grated window that looked down into the bar.
Slowly he knelt, making sure no body part was in danger of slipping off a beam, and surveyed that night’s crowd, hoping tonight was finally the night.
To say what he saw surprised him was an understatement.
Or, rather, who he saw.
Millie was seated at the most popular table along the right wall, situated beneath a neon sign that spelled out Danger, High Voltage and across from a man he didn’t recognize. She was wearing her party clothes and had one of Rosewater’s Pink Drinks between her hands. From his vantage point he was looking diagonally down at her but could see the smile she was sporting for her date.
He sat there for a while, trying to hear what they were saying but Millie and her companion had the good sense to keep their voices low. Most nights he was lucky to get loud patrons who only became louder the more they drank.
Check the other
vent.
The mental reminder, since time got lost between the rafters when he became distracted, made him abandon his attempt at eavesdropping. He was careful as he pushed up and walked over to the vent opposite.
This one gave him a better view of the front doors and the middle of the main room.
And William Reiner’s usual seat.
Since his wife had left him, William had been a constant at Rosewater. The same beer, the same small table and the same sour face. He never had another soul sitting across from him, and he never was interesting at all.
Tonight would be no exception, he decided.
Plus Millie was there.
And she’d never been there before.
That had to mean something, right?
He went back to the first vent, deciding to put his attention there for the night, but came up short when the table showed empty. He bent lower and tried to see the rest of the room.
Where had they gone?
Like a mouse caught in a maze, he scuttled back over to his only other view into the bar. Millie and her date were probably leaving, though they hadn’t been there long. Still, Millie Dean had never been known to spend a lot of time in bars.
Maybe they were going to a late movie or—
“Well, I’ll be...”
Millie and the man weren’t headed for the front doors but had instead gone straight to another patron’s table.
William Reiner’s to be specific.
That couldn’t be good.
Not after Jason’s death.
He pulled out his phone, triple checked that the flash on his camera was turned off, and took the best picture he could through the grates. It wasn’t as flattering an angle of Millie but it put her and her date side by side, something he knew would be interesting to his boss.
He tried to stay a while to listen but even with the addition of William the group’s volume remained low.
Whatever they were talking about couldn’t be heard.
Which made him nervous, and he bet he wasn’t the only one.
CHAPTER NINE
Millie opened her eyes. Pain hit her faster than clarity. The groan that left her mouth was instinctual; rolling over and finding a bucket in time for her Pink Drink to come back up was luck.
If she hadn’t been so disoriented and in the process of emptying her stomach, she might have felt fear radiate up her spine as a hand touched her back. Instead, all she could focus on was the relief that came after a smooth, deep baritone spoke.
“You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Foster.
It was Foster.
Whatever was going on, it felt nice to know that he was there with her.
But where was there?
He shifted behind her, but his hand didn’t stop stroking her back until she was done getting sick. Millie would have normally been embarrassed, but confusion, pain and fear had put every normal reaction on the back burner.
She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and shook her head. The pain that had made her sick swam from the top of her head to behind her eyes.
She didn’t understand.
What had happened?
Why had she woken up when she didn’t remember ever falling asleep?
Millie let herself be turned back over. Foster helped her to sit up. Her head was foggy. Slushy. Not able to put the clues from around them together to create a picture that made sense. A dim light was coming from a flashlight just beyond her feet on the floor. The light showed a small, small room around them. Not at all what Millie had expected.
Not that she expected anything.
“Wh-what’s going on?” she asked, voice hoarse. “Where are we?”
The room was the size of a small bathroom or maybe a large closet. Metal walls had peeling and bubbled-up paint. The floor was cold and in the same poor condition as the walls. Old linoleum squares came up in places, bare in others. An opened box was turned over and empty just beyond the flashlight. A mop was against the wall next to a small window that had been spray-painted black. Then there was the bucket next to her.
That was it.
There was nothing else in the room other than them.
“Are you okay?” Foster didn’t answer her question but, based on the blood across his face and his torn shirt, he might not have known how.
He took her face in his hands. It was a gentle movement that Millie appreciated, considering how she felt.
“I—I don’t know. My head feels cottony? And it hurts.”
“What about the rest of you? Anything else?”
Millie did a quick mental scan of her body.
“Everything else feels normal. What about you? You’re bleeding.”
He didn’t let her face go as Millie reached out and lightly touched his cheek, beneath the blood. For the moment it was just the two of them touching, trying to make sense of something.
“My head also feels off but I’m fine.” He ran his thumb across her cheek and let her go, only to then pause his hand in midair. “I definitely fought someone.”
He titled his hand so she could see his knuckles. They were busted and bloody.
“I don’t understand. What happened? The last thing I remembered was being at Rosewater.”
It was like someone had rubbed the memory right out of Millie’s head. One second she was drinking a Rosewater special drink and coming up with a plan to talk to William Reiner, and the next moment was just gone.
“I think we were drugged.” Foster stood with a slight wobble. “I can’t remember anything past walking up to Reiner in the bar.”
Well, that was more alarming than Millie had expected.
“Drugged? As in things they do in the movies?”
Foster nodded as he walked the few steps over to the mop. Then he was back at her side, reaching down to help her stand.
“It would explain the gaps in memory and how our heads feel,” he said. “I’m thinking someone could have spiked our drinks.”
Millie was less of a wobble on her feet and more of a stumble. Foster wrapped his arm around her and turned them both around to face the only door in the room.
It was narrow and old, sitting at the top of two stairs. Two plastic stairs. The room didn’t make sense, not that anything else did, but the feeling of queasiness that was still in the pit of Millie’s stomach was familiar.
She didn’t place it until Foster had her positioned behind him with the mop handle as her weapon and him with the small flashlight about to try to open the door.
“Foster. I think we’re on a boat.”
As soon as she said it, Millie knew it was true. The room wasn’t a room. It was a cabin. Not only were they on a boat, she was as sure as her motion sickness could be that they were also on the water.
Foster accepted that line of thinking with an even more severe frown.
“The creek is only wide enough for a boat this big at, maybe, three spots. All of those are a good twenty to thirty miles away from anything useful.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense why we’re here and not bound or with a captor watching us.”
For the first time since gaining consciousness, Millie realized Foster’s blazer, gun and badge were nowhere to be seen. Which meant whoever had done this to them could be armed with something that had been meant to protect them.
Foster must have seen the new flare-up of worry.
He closed the space between them and leaned his head down. His forehead touched hers. Warm and reassuring. She could even still smell his cologne. With one hand he held her arm, with the other he motioned to the mop handle. His words came out crystal clear.
“If you need to use this on anyone, when you swing don’t imagine hitting them, imagine going through them. Okay?”
Millie nodded. It hurt.
Foster’s f
ace softened, but he didn’t say anything more. He turned back to the door. Millie readied the mop handle like a baseball bat.
She held her breath as Foster tried the door.
It was unlocked. He slid it open slowly but with ease.
Millie tightened her grip on the mop handle, sure someone would be waiting.
Yet, the only thing that came for them was the ambient glow of darkness.
And water.
Millie had been right.
They were on a boat.
A boat that, aside from them, was empty. It was also in the middle of the water. Foster shone the light along a bank and its tree line to their right and then to another bank with more trees to their left. Millie could make out the dark water ahead of them and behind.
“We’re anchored,” Foster finally said. He turned his attention to a chain off the side of the boat. Millie went to the captain’s chair and looked at the engine.
Since she had to have Dramamine in her system to even think about being on a boat, she wasn’t that familiar with their intricacies. Still, it was easy to see the key to the ignition was gone. She said as much, and the two of them lapsed into a confused silence. Foster inspected every nook and cranny while Millie tried not to get sick again.
When he seemed to be done, she asked a few of the several questions she was holding on to.
“Why would someone anchor us here? In the middle of the creek, at night, and alone?”
Foster shook his head then shone his light to the tree line to their left. The bank had more sand than the one opposite it.
“One time I got called to the scene of a homicide while I was off duty. It was pouring rain and I got drenched.” Millie felt her eyebrow raise at the subject change but then he pointed to his shoes. “I was wearing these, and it took almost a full day for them to completely dry out.” He ran his hand along the closest part of the boat to him. Millie realized belatedly that it was wet. It had rained. “They’re dry now, which means we were inside when it rained. That might help us with a timeline later.”
“I guess it also means we never were in the creek,” she added. “So does that mean that someone either drove us here and left us or used another boat to get us to this one, which was already anchored?”
Harlequin Intrigue July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 26