by Lexi Blake
Which also didn’t sound like her husband. Henry wasn’t a violent man, but she’d never had a question in her mind that he would protect the people around him. She believed in nonviolence, but she wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t understand sometimes there was no other way. She already knew she would defend her husband and child and friends if she was forced to.
Henry wouldn’t hide. He might throw his body in front of something deadly, but he wouldn’t hide.
And that meant something was wrong with his story.
Laura patted her daughter, Sierra, on the back as the baby started to mewl. She’d only recently adopted the infant, but she was already settling into her new role as a mom. “I suppose he wants Gemma to take a long statement. You know Nate doesn’t love to type.”
“Why would he need a long statement from a man who was in the bathroom the whole time? Henry didn’t leave the bathroom until it was all over.” He’d said he’d had to help stop Seth’s bleeding, and that was how he’d gotten the blood on his clothes.
He’d seemed haunted by the whole thing. But Henry had been around blood before. He was always solid in a crisis. Something was different this time. The only other time she’d seen him so shaken was a few months before when Gemma had been in trouble.
Holly sank down beside her. “I think Nate is trying to make sure he gets everything right on this one since he’s going to have to talk to the feds. Some of the people who attacked Seth and Georgia were from other countries.”
She didn’t buy it. Something was wrong, and it made her wonder about the incident that happened before. “Do you remember when Jesse got shot?”
Laura let out a huff. “Who could forget that? Gemma’s ex-fiancé comes into town and tries to kill her because he thinks she’s working with you on a case that eventually got a presidential candidate taken out of the primaries. No. I don’t forget that easily.”
It had hit close to home because Nell had been working with the township that formed the basis of the case Gemma’s old firm had been working on. They’d been able to prove the EPA investigator was taking money under the table from the corporation that was polluting the town’s water table and causing a cluster of cancer cases. One of the primary investors had been a presidential candidate. Gemma and Nell had been able to prove that the candidate had known what was going on. The scandal caused the candidate to drop out.
But not before Jesse had been shot and Gemma and Cade had nearly died.
Holly sat down beside her. “Caleb complains regularly about how he’s taken more bullets out of Bliss citizens than all his years in war-torn countries.”
Holly and Laura shared a look, one that normally Nell would let slide as her two best friends trying to figure out how best to handle her so she didn’t go off on a protest. But this time she rather thought it was about something else.
“How did that man die? Gemma’s ex?” She’d heard the rumors and laughed them off. Because the rumor was someone had killed the man who’d shot Jesse and tried to kill Gemma. Because there was only one other person in the woods that night. By the time Nate and Cam had gotten there, the man had been dead.
“He broke his neck,” Holly said matter of factly.
Laura said nothing, but there was a tightening around her eyes.
“I heard the words internal decapitation used.” She’d overheard Max and Rye Harper talking about it at Stella’s one morning. And it wasn’t like she’d eavesdropped. Max was very loud. “That’s when the spinal cord is separated from the base of the skull. It’s a rare injury and one that doesn’t normally occur from someone tripping and falling. I believe that was the theory Nate put forward.”
“How do you know about internal decapitation?” Holly’s eyes had widened.
She felt herself flush. Not even her two best friends knew about her writing. They knew she wrote, but not what she wrote and that she’d been published. It wasn’t because she thought Holly and Laura would be shocked. They wouldn’t. Her best friends would be supportive. But when Henry had started working on the books with her, she’d liked the intimacy of it being only the two of them. They shared so much of their lives with everyone around them that having this part remain private made it even better. Those books contained her secret self, her fantasies and dreams, and sharing them with Henry alone felt right.
Henry didn’t actually write the books, but he helped her plot. He did a lot of research and was her first line editor. Henry had read everything she’d ever written.
Henry had been the one to suggest that her spy hero understood the fine art of atlanto-occipital dislocation, more popularly known as internal decapitation.
“I’m doing research for a possible book.” They knew she was always planning something.
“I thought you were writing about recycling or climate change.” Laura had sat up, shifting her now sleeping baby from her shoulder to her arms.
“I research a lot of things.” She researched the things she found interesting and let Henry teach her about things like war and which kinds of guns law enforcement would use. He’d researched everything from how to defuse a bomb to bioweapons. She worried he might be on several watchlists. It was probably a good thing they didn’t travel much. “And my research taught me that it requires a good amount of force in exactly the right place to separate the skull from the spine. There’s a reason it’s rare. It mostly happens in high-speed car accidents.”
“Why are you asking, Nell?” Laura asked before she glanced Holly’s way again.
It was obvious they’d been talking about this, too. “I think it’s odd, that’s all. I also think it’s odd that Seth had a problem with the plumbing. It was just put in.”
“Did he say what was specifically wrong?” Holly asked.
“Plumbing can go wrong at any time.” Laura continued to rock. “And it makes sense since you said he hid in the bathroom.”
Nell nodded. “That’s what he told me. Do you know when the call went in? I can’t see the front of Seth’s cabin from the kitchen. I was working on some bread and then I answered some email. That window faces the river, so I was utterly unaware anything was going on. Why didn’t Nate have his siren on?”
“I think Logan managed to get a call out before he took down the bad guys,” Laura explained. “I’m sure Nate didn’t want to alert them the police were on the way.”
Nell had gone over and over the timing in her head. “I talked to you five minutes before Henry came home. By then he’d helped with the people who’d gotten hurt, and then helped some with the cleanup. He had to take a shower and change his clothes because he got blood on them. And he was only gone for an hour and a half.”
“Nell, what are you worried about?” Laura asked, her mouth down in a frown.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit it, but she needed to talk to someone. “Have you heard the rumors? About Henry?”
Holly sighed. “I’ve told Caleb he’s insane. It’s ridiculous.”
“He’s not the only one,” Laura countered.
She’d heard the rumor from Rachel, who’d rolled her eyes and called Doctor Caleb Burke crazy for even hinting that Henry Flanders might be some sort of trained killer. She’d thought Nell would find the idea hysterical, but then Nell heard how the man had died.
Was it merely coincidental that Henry had done a ton of research on internal decapitation for her latest book, and not a few weeks later someone died that way right here in Bliss?
“I’ve heard Gemma thinks something’s wrong with Henry, too,” Nell admitted.
Holly reached out and covered Nell’s hand with hers. “No one thinks there’s anything wrong with Henry. Caleb and Gemma both have vivid imaginations, and neither of them have been here for long. What do you think happened this afternoon? Do you think Henry stormed into Seth’s cabin and took them all down? How would he have even known there was trouble?”
But that was where Logan came in. And Seth. When Henry had first come to Bliss, he’d met Logan and Seth.
He’d had an oddly close relationship with Seth over the years. Henry had kept in touch with the young man while he’d gone to college and started his incredible business. “Why would Logan come to our door when he could have called? If it was an emergency, calling would have been faster.”
“You know how people are around here,” Holly countered. “They like to be friendly.”
“But he wasn’t friendly. I didn’t even hear him knock on the door. He didn’t come in or say hello to me.” It hadn’t bothered her at the time. She’d been concerned with her bread and her latest project. She found kneading bread a soothing way to think, and it wasn’t until later that she’d been struck by how odd the encounter had been.
“I still don’t understand why this is a problem.” Holly sat back. “Do you think Henry lied?”
“When he first came to Bliss he was cold.” She could still remember how cold he’d been unless his hands were on her. He’d been a bit combative with everyone he’d met in the beginning. She’d known there was a warm heart under all that ice, but it had taken a while to find it. Then he’d left and when he’d come back he’d been a different man, a warmer man. He’d been the man of her dreams.
“So was I,” Laura pointed out. “This place has a way of changing a person. Do you think Henry lied to you about who he used to be? Is that what this is about? You’ve heard the rumors and you’re worried they’re true?”
She couldn’t help but think about it. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll have a long talk with my husband,” Holly promised. “He’s always paranoid, but he usually manages to keep it to himself. If it helps, Alexei teases him about it. He thinks it’s completely ridiculous, and he was in the mob for years. If Alexei can’t tell who’s dangerous and who isn’t, then no one can. And Gemma literally worked with murder lawyers for years and didn’t see it. I think Henry is fine.”
Holly wasn’t telling her anything that hadn’t gone through her head. He hadn’t given off signals anyone had picked up. She knew Stef had vetted him.
Why was she even thinking these things? And why hadn’t she confronted Henry with her questions?
“I hid a lot of things about my past when I got here,” Laura admitted. “It certainly didn’t make me some kind of killer.”
Nell shook her head. “I didn’t say he was a killer.”
“Then what else are you worried about?” Laura sometimes got a look in her eyes that reminded Nell she’d worked for the FBI for years before she’d come to Bliss, though she hadn’t admitted that for a long time.
“I’ve never met any of Henry’s old college friends. With the singular exception of Bill, I’ve never met anyone who knew Henry before. He talks about some people he knew and they sound interesting, but he’s never offered to go see them or bring them to Bliss.” She’d known he didn’t have any family, that he’d been raised by a single mom and she was gone. No siblings or cousins.
“Not everyone is close to their work friends,” Holly pointed out. “And it’s easy to fall out of touch when there’s so much distance. Caleb doesn’t have any friends from his days in Chicago. Alexei has a cousin he talks to quite a bit, but that’s about it. All of their friends are from here now.”
“It’s pretty much the same for Rafe and Cam,” Laura agreed. “Rafe tries to reach out to his family, but I don’t think it’s going well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Laura had explained that Rafe’s family was very old fashioned, and they were giving him trouble about his unorthodox marriage. They didn’t consider it a marriage at all. “That has to be hard on Rafe.”
“It is.” Laura looked down at her sleeping child. “We thought his mom would bend when we adopted Sierra, but apparently she’s only interested in children who have her blood. I don’t know. Family can be overrated. Sometimes it’s good to make a family on your own, to choose the people who stand beside you. I think that’s what Henry’s done. He’s incredibly devoted to this town and its people.”
He was. Henry was always the first to volunteer. Was she looking for trouble where there was none?
“The rumors are getting to you,” Laura said, not unkindly. “My question to you is does it matter?”
Holly frowned Laura’s way. “Of course it matters. I would be upset if people were talking about Caleb and Alexei around town.”
“They’re always talking about Caleb.” Laura shook her head. “But it’s not the talk that bothers her, not really. Nell’s dealt with rumors all her life, but something about this one is getting to her. It’s the idea that Henry might have a darker past than he’s been willing to talk about. Does that matter? If you found out Henry wasn’t who he said he was, that he might have hidden something about his past from you—would that change how you feel about him?”
It was time to level with her closest friends. It had been so hard to not talk to them, but she could now. “I love him. I’ll always love Henry. I’m having his baby.”
Laura’s eyes widened, and Holly went still.
“Nell, are you serious?” Laura managed to get to the edge of her seat without waking the baby.
She hadn’t told anyone because she and Henry had decided to wait a while longer, but she needed to talk to her friends about this. “We’ve been trying for over a year. I’ve had a couple of miscarriages.”
She said the words simply, and this time they didn’t bring immediate tears to her eyes. She’d cried so much over those two losses.
“Caleb didn’t tell me.” Holly’s eyes filled with tears. “Does he know?”
Even in Bliss there were HIPAA rules, and Caleb followed them. The doc was awfully good at keeping his mouth closed. Even around his wife. “Of course. We went to him both times. It was very early on in both pregnancies. So early that he thinks I might not have been pregnant at all the first time.”
But she had been. She’d felt it.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Laura held Sierra close.
There had been so many reasons. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. You were getting married. At first I didn’t want to take attention away, and then I didn’t want to make anyone sad. It’s a happy time.”
“It can be both.” Holly moved closer to her. “It can be happy for us and we can still mourn with you. That’s what it means to be sisters. Like Laura said, sometimes we put together a family out of the people we love. Laura and I don’t have any family left. Not the blood kind, but you two are my sisters and that means we don’t hold things back. Not for anything. I would rather have postponed the wedding than have you go through that alone.”
“But she wasn’t. She had Henry,” Laura said quietly. “Haven’t you noticed how close he’s stayed to her the last several months? He’s hovered even more than usual, and he’s been…sad.”
He’d been mourning, too. Now he worried. Another reason to think something had been odd today. She’d offered to go with him because he didn’t like to leave her alone. But he’d told her to stay. “We’ve both had a rough time, but he’s been amazing through all of it. Now we’re pregnant again, and Caleb says everything is going well and I feel different this time. I’m further along than I’ve ever been. I think the other reason I didn’t want to tell you was that I’ve always said I wouldn’t have kids.”
She’d been rather arrogant, thinking she didn’t need the things other people seemed to. She’d proclaimed to all who would listen that she wouldn’t contribute to the world’s overpopulation, and yet here she was putting herself through great heartache for the shot at overpopulating with one more kiddo, one who looked like Henry.
“Oh, sweetie, you can change your mind.” Laura reached for her hand. “There’s nothing in the world that I want more than for you to have this feeling I have when I hold Sierra. If you want it, there’s nothing better in the world. And I’m so glad you and Henry get to have this together.”
Holly reached out, too, putting her hand over Laura’s and completing their trifecta. “You should know that I’m taking fert
ility treatments because we’ve decided we would like to have a kid. Just one. Caleb is unconcerned with passing on his genes, so Alexei and I are trying and Caleb is playing fertility god for us.”
“He doesn’t care?” Laura asked.
“He’s Caleb. We know we’re only going to have this one shot, and he wants Alexei to take it. He says there are too many Sommervilles in the world already. He’s gotten closer to his brother, but he still worries about the rest of his family. They can be overbearing, and they put far too much faith in genetics.” Holly shook her head. “But that doesn’t matter. I think about how amazing it would be if we all had kids close in age. It would be so nice for them to have cousins to play with.”
Now the tears did show up. They made their appearance as the sweetest vision hit her. All her life she’d been that weird kid with the single mom who thought she was a refugee from a faery plane. She’d had no family and few friends. As much as she’d adored her mother, the idea that her baby could have cousins pierced through her.
If there was one thing Bliss had taught her it was that families could be made through love and choice and pure will.
“I would love that so much,” she said.
The door came open and Henry was there alongside Cam, who’d likely driven him back since Nate had taken him to the station.
Henry’s eyes went wide at the sight of her, and he visibly paled. “Nell?”
She stood because she knew that look. She’d seen it on his face twice recently, that helpless look she’d never seen before and now seemed too familiar. “I’m fine, Henry. I’m good. I just told my best friends about the baby. I know we decided to wait but…”
Her explanation was lost as Henry crossed the distance between them and hugged her tight to his body. “I was so worried. When I saw you crying…”
He took a shaky breath and she could feel a fine tremble go through him. He’d thought she’d started bleeding because that was how he’d found her twice before.
“I’m fine. I’m good, and so is the baby.” They’d been through a lot in the past couple of weeks. Why was she pushing for more? Henry didn’t lie to her. Even when it hurt. He would do it gently, but he told her when her culinary experiments didn’t go well or when a particular color wasn’t the best on her.