by Marika Ray
I sniffed the air as she got closer.
“You smell like apples.”
She smiled. “I wanted to see if you’d do a stakeout with me this weekend.”
I frowned, confused. “Uh…do you mean takeout?”
She chuckled and I stared at her lips. “No, I mean a stakeout. I want to follow the mayor and see if he’s up to something.”
A flash of warning had me focusing on what she was saying. “Amelia. I thought we talked about that. It’s too dangerous. Leave it alone.”
She frowned at me, brown eyes flashing. “You know, you used to be more fun, Jackson.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “And you used to be more sensible, Waldo.” I glanced up at the ceiling. “No. Wait. That’s right. You’ve never been sensible.”
She gasped, feigning offense, and punched me in the arm.
“Hurt your hand?” I smirked.
She narrowed her eyes and spun, dark hair flying. Marching out of the room in a huff, I watched her go, knowing she wouldn’t stay mad long. She was always up to no good and sometimes she just needed to be told no. Growing up in a house of five girls meant she got away with everything simply because her parents were outnumbered. Amelia had never learned when to walk away from danger, instead, facing it head-on with nothing but a shield of sass and false confidence.
I tapped my chin long after she’d left, her apple scent lingering. I’d bet my entire tool set she’d still do that stakeout, with or without me. Looked like I had plans this weekend: following Amelia while she followed the mayor.
“Good night, Lia,” I called to Amelia as I walked across the little lobby of the hotel. It was Friday night. I told her earlier when she brought me lunch that I had plans with Rip tonight. In actuality, I’d be following Amelia.
She gave me a broad smile, with no hint of mischief in those bright eyes. The girl was good. Too good. I reminded myself never to play poker with her.
“Good night, Titus. I hear there’s a bonfire planned for Tuesday night to celebrate Hazel’s birthday.”
“I saw the text. I’ll be there. You want a ride?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I better. I plan to get Hazel doing shots with me. It’s like a birthday ritual, you know?”
I cringed. “I do know. Except I see it more as Amelia’s birthday hangover ritual.”
She made some weird noise with her lips. “You sound like an old man, T.”
“Just ’cause I like my liver working doesn’t make me old. Makes me smarter than you. See ya.” I headed out the door to my truck, whistling like I was headed home from a good day’s work. Another week and I’d have all the repairs done on the hotel. Only one more week of sharing space with Amelia.
I threw my tool belt in the box in the back of my pickup truck and climbed in. The engine let out a racket as I fired it up and left the parking lot, just to pull around the side of the hotel to idle at the curb. I’d have to keep the engine running because starting that sucker would give away my presence. Even the dead in the cemetery across town probably heard my truck start up every morning. I’d never minded the noise before, but then again, I’d never stalked anyone before either.
“Bingo,” I said quietly, seeing a figure in all black leave the hotel not even thirty minutes later. I couldn’t see well enough to know if it was Amelia, but I had a hunch it was her based on how she kept darting behind each parked car before continuing her walk. The damn woman looked more guilty than a bank robber walking out with a bag full of money spilling on the ground.
As soon as she got in her car, I followed, careful to stay as far back as I could and still keep her in my line of sight. She didn’t go far, parking on Brinestone Way by Lucy’s sperm bank. I parked behind the Hardware Store and shut the engine off. I had no idea where she was going, but I’d have to go on foot from here.
I thought I lost her when I didn’t see her outside Lucy’s place, but a soft yelp snagged my attention a minute later. There she was on the side of the road, nearly falling down into the weeds that sprouted waist high there. I rolled my eyes and headed in that direction. I didn’t know where she was going with a backpack on, but I was along for the ride.
It wasn’t easy hanging back and not alerting her to my presence, but I wanted to see what she was up to. The lengths that she would go to get the gossip on the mayor. Much to my surprise, she wasn’t headed in the direction of Mayor Bennett’s house. Right as she got to the town limits, she crouched behind a bush for a long while, her head popping up occasionally to scope out the area.
“What the hell are you doing, Lia?” I muttered on a whisper, about a hundred yards behind her, hiding behind my own cluster of bushes.
Friday night was bingo night at city hall, which meant most citizens who participated in such activities were already there, whipping out their red daubers and leaving the roads light. And it was too early for the younger kids to be out and about yet.
Finally, she popped up and darted across the road to hide behind a tree. Damn, she was fast for a girl who never exercised. I stayed where I was, too entertained to show myself now. A few seconds later, the light that lit up the Welcome to Auburn sign went dark. I frowned.
A dark figure came out from behind the tree and knelt in front of the sign. I stood quickly, my legs tingling from staying crouched so long. Stepping as lightly as I could, I crept closer.
A weird psfttt noise broke the still night air and I frowned, trying to place it. There it was again. And again. The second my brain figured it out, I dropped my chin to my chest.
“Dammit,” I muttered, barely making a sound.
I staggered out from behind the bush and walked up behind Amelia. She didn’t seem to hear me over the rush of graffitiing the Welcome to Auburn Hill sign with spray paint. Mystery solved. Amelia was our resident tagger.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked out loud to the back of her head.
Amelia whirled around so fast, she fell on her ass, the spray paint can hitting the ground with a metallic clunk and rolling toward my feet. Her mouth froze wide-open and she stayed mute, just staring up at me like a deer in headlights. I always wondered what it would take to stun Amelia into silence.
“Caught you red-handed,” I deadpanned, seeing the stain of red paint on her gloves.
It hit me like a punch to the gut. The woman I was in love with could be arrested for pulling this little stunt. What the hell was she thinking?
She snapped her jaw shut and got back on her feet in a crouched position. “Hand me that can so I can finish and get out of here.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think what you meant to say is,” I continued in a falsetto voice, “damn, Titus, I’m really glad you stopped me. I’ve come to my senses and I’ll stop graffitiing public property so my own father doesn’t have the shame of arresting me. I’m so grateful for your valuable counsel.”
Instead of arguing with me like I expected, Amelia looked down at my boots like a reprimanded child. When she looked back up at me, her eyes grew wide again, this time in a plea that hit me right in the heart.
“Just help me finish and I promise I won’t do it again. You know I keep my promises, T.”
I sighed and dropped my arms, crouching down so I didn’t attract attention should anyone be driving by or looking this way. Irritation was still forefront, but I had to admit, I didn’t want her to actually be caught, and the woman did keep her promises. Maybe I could keep this information in my back pocket to strong-arm her into giving up her deviant ways. Or maybe I could convince her of other deviant ways to get her rocks off…like, say, with her best friend?
I blinked hard to get my head out of the gutter. Seemed I’d taken up permanent residence there lately when it came to Amelia. Rolling the can back toward her, I resigned myself to my fate.
“Hurry up. I’ll hold you to that promise, you know.”
Her face transformed into a huge smile and she snatched the can up before I finished blinking. She just needed
one more L on the sign to complete the word “HELL” so she was done quickly, packing the can away in her backpack. She waved at me to follow her, sneaking out the way she’d come, stopping behind the large bush to mess with a cord.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, leaning close to see what she was doing.
She snickered softly. “I felt bad cutting the electrical line to the light illuminating the welcome sign, so I learned how to fix electrical wire. I mean, this cord should be underground, so I think that’s the fault of the city for being careless, not mine, but either way, I figured defacing the sign was enough damage.”
I shook my head at her explanation, watching how she carefully wound electrical tape around the cord to fix whatever she’d spliced previously.
“You’re lucky you haven’t fried your hands doing that,” I muttered, wondering when she’d stop being such a daredevil.
“I have, actually. That’s why I wear these thick cloth gloves now.”
I rolled my eyes and yanked her away from the scene of the crime as soon as she was done with the electrical wire. Of course, she’d thought of everything a criminal would need.
I didn’t stop until I had her in my truck and she took off her black baseball hat. With the doors closed and danger averted for now, I turned on her, the irritation bubbling up faster than I could tamp it down for the sake of our continued friendship.
“How the hell am I supposed to keep you safe when you’re doing shit like that?”
Her eyes narrowed and I prepared for the verbal storm in response. “The only thing you need to keep safe are your family jewels if you even think of outing me.”
I shook my head and screwed my eyes shut. “I’m not going to turn you in, stupid. I’m just wondering why the police chief’s daughter would take it upon herself to deface the town sign, not once, but what? Maybe twenty times?”
“Hey! I’m not stupid. Like you’ve said, I’ve done it probably twenty times and never got caught. Doesn’t sound stupid to me.”
I took a deep breath and grabbed her hands, holding them like a fervent prayer. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you stupid. You definitely are not stupid. I guess I’ve always known you had a wild child streak with a knack for pushing boundaries, but this just seems reckless. You say your dream is to own your own B and B, but you can’t do that if you’re in jail. And even if you didn’t end up in jail for it, I doubt the town would be so forgiving once they found out it was you.”
Amelia pouted, that thick lower lip doing things south of the border that were totally inappropriate for the occasion.
Focus, Jackson.
She lifted her chin in the air and looked at my ear. “You bring up valid points.” I squeezed her hands and she finally looked me in the eye. “I sometimes just like to act out when I’m feeling frustrated. I’ll stop. Okay?” she added softly.
“Okay,” I whispered back. I brought our hands up to my face and kissed the back of her hand until she lost the frown. “You’re my best friend. I can’t have you going to jail. I’d have to visit you in that horrible orange jumpsuit.”
“Hey! I’d rock that jumpsuit. Orange is my color.” Amelia snatched her hand back with a smile and all was well between us.
“Hey, man. You all right?”
Rip was sitting on our couch, a beer in hand. Nothing was abnormal about that except for the fact not one light was on in the house and he was staring at a blank television screen. He was normally a grumpy fellow, but he’d shoved grumpy into overdrive the last few weeks.
He shrugged, his hair a mess like he’d been running his hands through it. Poor guy had had a rough childhood. From the outside, he looked like he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Being the mayor’s son should have given him some clout in this town, but all it brought him was abuse from his father. He’d shared a few things from his past with me when he’d had one too many beers. Things I almost wish I didn’t know. Mayor Bennett was an awful human. Which was why I didn’t want Amelia looking into him. She thought his worst sin was cheating on his wife when I knew his evil ways went way deeper than that.
“I’m fine. Just sitting here contemplating what to do with my life. You remember learning about how an object in motion stays in motion?”
I flopped down on the recliner I should have taken to the dump years ago, but the thing had an exact mold of my ass. You couldn’t throw that kind of perfection away.
“Uh, yeah. I think so. Science wasn’t really my thing, though.”
He carried on like I hadn’t even spoken. “Thing is, I’ve been wondering why I haven’t done anything with my life. I’m just kind of in a permanent pause, you know? I work a few jobs on the water now and then, live here with you, avoid people in general. Repeat, repeat. So, then I decided that maybe what I needed was a big strong push to shove me into motion.”
He quit talking, like a toy that someone had pulled the string on and it had reached the end.
“A push, huh?”
“Yep,” he said, popping the P. “A push. Then I’d be an object in motion, which is always easier to keep in motion.”
His dark eyes found mine in the dark, an excitement to them I hadn’t seen in a while. Rip was one of those people whose thoughts and motivations remained a mystery, even to me, a guy who’d known him since elementary school. He kept everything buried deep, where it festered. Him even telling me about his grand push idea was a rare show of vulnerability.
“Anything I can do to help you get that push?” I didn’t have to understand him to be all in. Friends helped friends. End of story.
His gaze bounced around and finally settled on the blank television screen again. “Nah. I think I have to do the pushing myself. I just have to decide what that push would be exactly.”
“We can brainstorm some ideas if you’d like.” I didn’t have the first clue how to play armchair therapist, but if I could get Amelia to stop defacing the town welcome sign, I could probably handle this too.
Rip sat quietly, taking a swig of beer every so often. I was happy to sit there quietly and let him think, figuring I’d jump in to help when he wanted me to. I was just about to get up and head to bed when he finally spoke again.
“I think my push has something to do with my father. It’s past time to right some wrongs. Expose the truth this town has ignored for years.”
My stomach clenched. Rip wasn’t wrong, but those kinds of ideas would mean trouble ahead. For Rip, for Amelia if she got involved—which everyone knew she would if nothing else but to be in the middle of every fight—and for the town in general. I briefly thought about telling Rip about Amelia’s suspicions, but for Amelia’s safety, I’d sit tight on that knowledge for a little bit.
Rip’s epic life push would stir up some shit.
And that shit was sure to hit the fan.
8
Amelia
I teetered on the verge of explosion. Or was it implosion?
The semantics didn’t matter. What mattered was the juicy bit of information I had in my hand. I had to share it with someone before it blew out of my mouth in the form of gossip. And because no one else knew about this little investigation I was engaged in, that someone would be Titus.
If I could find him.
The guest room that had sustained the tree damage was put together perfectly. In fact it looked better now than it had before the storm, thanks to Titus’s high standard of work. Wayne was a lucky bastard Titus had felt sorry for me. I shut the door behind me and hustled down the hall to find Titus. He wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye, would he? By the time I’d hit the lobby with no sign of him, I began to think he had.
Crystal, the front desk girl I’d hired just last month, wasn’t at the front. I found her, nose pressed to the window in the back, where we kept snacks out for the guests at all hours of the day.
“What’s going on?” I asked, approaching her.
She jumped back and tried to wipe the face mark off the window with her slee
ve. Her cheeks were bright red, which made me even more curious.
“Oh, nothing. Gotta get back to the front desk.” She hustled around me and fled to the front. The poor girl would have to toughen up if she would survive working at a hotel. We saw a lot of weird shit around here, so to be bothered by something going on outside was not a good start.
I stepped closer to the window, seeing our overflow dirt parking lot. And then my gaze slid left where I saw Titus standing by a huge pile of wood and drywall that he’d ripped out of the guest room. His T-shirt was off and there was a healthy dose of sweat dripping down his torso. He twisted off the cap to a water bottle and chugged the whole thing, his Adam’s apple working to hypnotize me. Holy shit. When was the last time I’d seen him without a shirt?
Because that? That specimen with six-pack abs and a chest you could bounce quarters off of wasn’t the Titus I remembered. He’d always been lanky, which made sense, given his extraordinary height. And he’d always had muscles because he was athletic in school and his job required strength. But holy wow. What the hell had happened over the last year?
My nose hit the cold glass and I jumped back, rubbing it as I pondered the changes in Titus when I hadn’t been looking. The steady hum in my gut also gave me pause. Was that...lust?
My brain screamed at me to walk away and quit staring at him, but my body was having nothing of it. We were gonna pull up a goddamn chair and stay for the show for as long as the show lasted. Better yet, why not go out there and see it up close?
Good judgement had always been a weak spot in my character, but I never shamed myself for it. I went with impulses, so what? Sometimes they worked out great. Other times, not so much. But the way I figured it, you never got some excitement in your life unless you made the leap. And right now, I wanted some excitement in the form of a half-naked Titus. I’d worry about what it all meant later. Much later.