Toxin Alert

by Tyler Anne Snell

“So you think he’ll show?” Noah asked, making sure the couple two booths over didn’t hear. “Rob, I mean.”

  “If his routine holds, yes.” She checked the watch on her wrist. It was placed right where the bandage from the cut on her arm met the cuff of her sleeve. Noah had no doubt it was a strategic move to keep the bandage inconspicuous. She’d already used makeup to hide any trace of bruising or the small cut on her face. He’d had to do a double take to see if he’d imagined the wounds from the day before when he’d first picked her up from the bed-and-breakfast.

  Though that second look might have been because of the simple fact that she was stunning.

  However, Noah, who was more of a homebody than a bar hopper, hadn’t had to do anything past leaving his cowboy hat at home and changing to a solid dark button-up instead of his normal flannel. Though he doubted anyone would recognize him regardless. He’d lived all of his life in Potter’s Creek and this was his first time at the Wallflower.

  “So, the plan is to sit here until he comes in,” he summarized.

  Carly nodded. “The team hasn’t come up with a connection between him and the Amish community, so this is all we’ve got so far,” she said. “Opaline said most of the pictures and videos he uploads from here are around eight to nine.” She looked at her watch. “Which gives us a half hour to scope out the place, see if we can catch Lee or something suspicious and then see if we get lucky with Rob.”

  “And if none of the above happens?” Noah didn’t want to be down about the plan but he genuinely wanted to know what happened next if it didn’t pan out.

  “Then we talk to the waitress and the owner. I’d do it now but since we’re at a standstill with all other leads, I think this might be a better approach. We can’t afford for anyone to rabbit because we spooked them.”

  The waitress appeared with their drinks. Noah waited until she was gone again to give Carly a humored look.

  “To rabbit?”

  She wrapped her hand around her beer bottle and smirked.

  “It means to run. I dated a guy during the academy who always used to say it.” She made a show of rolling her eyes. “We didn’t last long, but that one phrase must have left an impression. I’ve had the entire TCD team poke fun at me for saying it over the last few years.”

  Noah had no reason to feel jealousy flare up at the mention of her dating, and he definitely shouldn’t be curious if she was seeing anyone now, but there it was. Front and center before he could ignore it fully.

  And before he could find a smoother way of figuring out how to answer if she was now single or not.

  “So does that mean it’s harder for you to date people in the same profession or do you have someone back home with a badge, too?”

  Carly’s eyes dragged over to his with a small, sliding smile.

  He’d been caught.

  “And here I thought Noah Miller was a dip-your-toe-in-the-water-to-test-it kind of guy and not a-jump-right-in guy.”

  Noah pulled his beer up to his lips and tried to downplay his guilt.

  “I was just making conversation,” he lied. “You did ask me yesterday if I was married, so I thought I’d learn a little about that side of your life, too.”

  “I said I didn’t know that you were married,” she corrected. “I never asked if you were.”

  Noah realized she was right. He nodded into his swig of beer. Carly took pity on him.

  “But to answer your question, yes and no, and then no.” She ticked off her answers with her fingers as she said them. “Yes it can be easier to date someone who’s in law enforcement and deals with some of the same things I do, but no it can also not be easier. I once dated a guy who always tried to, for whatever reason, one-up me about work. He actually bet me he could go to the shooting range and outshoot me one time.”

  “And did you take him up on that bet?”

  She smirked.

  “We broke up out on the range after I won.”

  Noah laughed.

  “Well done.” She did a little bow.

  “As for the last no, no I don’t have anyone back home. Badge or civilian.” Her humor fizzled a little. “This job can be...demanding. That doesn’t always play well with the whole champagne flutes and long walks along the beach at sunset thing. But no harm or foul. Not all of us are made for that kind of life.”

  Her mood shifted, but not in the way he expected.

  It was subtle. She looked down at her drink, her fingers toying with the edge of the beer’s label. Then she went back to watching the patrons. Like what she said wasn’t a big deal.

  Just another somewhat useless stretch of conversation people put between the real issues.

  Noah didn’t want her to downplay what she’d just said by letting the subject change without acknowledging it.

  He shrugged.

  “Doesn’t mean those of us who do cheap beers and dive bars with Santa decorations aren’t the right kind of living, either. Simple isn’t always bad.”

  Carly met his gaze with another subtle change. This one he couldn’t read, but she tipped her bottle to him.

  “I guess you’re right there. I never was a woman fond of strolling any beaches. Too much sand, too many tourists. Speaking of extracurricular activities—” she motioned to the bar around them “—what does a normal night out look like for you? I’ve got a good idea of your day-to-day work life but I haven’t really pegged how Noah Miller takes his messy yet styled hair down.”

  Noah chuckled at that, pleasantly surprised at how often Carly seemed to be able to make him laugh. He ran his hand through his hair for show.

  “I’ll take the hair compliment, thank you.” Carly did another little fake bow, fluttering her fingers as if before royalty. “But as for letting it down, what I do for fun is just as simple as dive bars and beers. I like spending my time outside—hiking, fishing, the occasional building something with my hands. Sometimes I come out to the city for a drink or two with my staff, or go to their place to watch a game but, mostly, it’s just me beneath the sun and moon.”

  Noah hadn’t meant his answer to sound so solitary yet he heard the subtext in it before Carly’s expression turned thoughtful.

  “That sounds nice, but a bit lonely.”

  The past, his past, surfaced as quickly as a rising wave in a choppy ocean. It took too much of his focus to keep his body from doing what his heart wanted him to do—stiffen up and then retreat into himself. Right to the blue shed on the edge of the property that used to belong to the Tucketts. Back to the memory of the yellow house that was no longer there. Back to when he’d fought to leave a place he was told he belonged only to fall into the unknown.

  An unknown that he had spent years making familiar.

  Making home.

  His home and no one else’s.

  Carly outstretched her hand and caught his on the tabletop next to his drink.

  The feeling of fight or flight, to swim or drown, cleared in an instant. All Noah could feel was a hand smaller than his, warm and firm. Following it up to a woman who looked more serious than smiles.

  “One person’s lonely is another person’s choice and no one can understand that choice until they’ve lived the reason behind it.” She ran her thumb along the top of his hand, soothing him while making her point. “So I’m sorry if that came out judgmental. It was more of an observation. I’m sorry.”

  She released his hand as quickly as she’d taken it.

  “It’s fine,” Noah assured her after a beat. He shook the darkness off his mood and managed a grin. “It’s no secret to me that I come off as a solitary creature most of the time. I think it took the Tucketts two years to convince me to go on trips with them for the farm. Even then I don’t think I really talked much until I was older.”

  He hadn’t said it for sympathy and the way Carly smiled, she wasn’t dishing it
out.

  “Ah, the quiet kid routine was one I had down pat. It used to drive my parents crazy the first year or so I came to live with them. My dad ended up coaxing me out of my bedroom with promises of candy and old, crummy cop movies, and yet it still took a while before I said more than a few words at a time to them.”

  Noah’s brow furrowed, wondering if he’d heard correctly, but Carly seemed to realize the confusion.

  “I was adopted when I was eleven.” Carly paused. Her eyes went to the label on her beer. She started to finally peel it when she returned her gaze to him. “They’re really good people, and were amazing then, but my biological mother was killed when I was ten and adjusting was hard for a while.”

  A part of Noah that he couldn’t really define softened.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he offered.

  Carly did a little shrug. The label on her bottle was already half-peeled.

  “A lot of people I’ve met in my line of work don’t get there without some kind of traumatic event that changes everything. At least, that’s how it went for me. One day I wanted to be an astronomer, charting stars all night, every night, and the next?” She motioned around them. “I’m Dr. Poison. A horrible nickname my last boyfriend gave me, but I guess that left an impression, too.”

  That’s when it happened.

  Like a rain cloud passing across a sunny day.

  One second Noah was appreciating her, listening to her, and worrying about what he said and how he reacted to her. And Carly? She was doing what, he had no doubt, she thought was expected of her.

  She had dipped into his past on accident and so she’d given a little of hers up in payment for it.

  But then she’d slipped.

  For whatever reason, she’d given more to Noah than she’d meant to give.

  And it hadn’t been okay, whatever the memory she had been sucked into.

  Noah didn’t know who Carly Welsh was a week ago but tonight, in this moment, he believed he knew her.

  At least, in a way that felt more real to him than with any other woman he’d met.

  So, Noah did something he hadn’t planned on—though he would have been lying if he’d said the thought hadn’t crossed his mind.

  Just as she had done with him, he took Carly’s hand in his, and locked his eyes with hers.

  There was surprise and sadness and an X factor he couldn’t understand yet, pulling him in to the woman who made dive bar and beers sound like the most appealing thing in the entire world.

  He knew it was his imagination, but the world around them seemed to dim. When he spoke, Noah was already hoping she’d accept what he was going to do when he was done talking.

  “I have no doubt that you, Carly Welsh, leave quite the impression yourself.”

  Then, in sight of a poorly lit Santa Claus figurine, he took Carly’s chin in his hand and kissed her.

  Like the bar around them, as far as he was concerned, the rest of the world fell away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Carly kissed him back.

  The moment Noah’s lips were against hers, it was like instinct took over.

  Instinct mixed with a surprising amount of desire. Well, maybe not surprising, but definitely not what she meant to overtake her.

  Yet, it did.

  And right after a conversation she hadn’t meant to have.

  It hadn’t taken her academy-taught profiling skills to realize that Noah had led a solitary, possibly lonely life. What’s more, she’d acted on that by questioning him for a realization she was sure she had gotten right.

  Then two things had happened at once.

  Noah had started to shut down again, just like he had in the truck after she’d asked him why he left the Amish community. His expression of humor had wiped away and an instant tension had lined his body.

  Carly hadn’t liked being the cause of it.

  So much so that, while he shut down, she did perhaps the most startling thing since coming to town, or, actually if she was being honest with herself, in a long time.

  He’d been shutting down, so she started opening up.

  Taking his hand, letting him know she truly didn’t mean to pry and then feeling the weight of her own self-imposed walls had led her to a snippet of a story.

  A nickname. An awful, accidental reminder.

  Dr. Poison.

  For all of her intentions to help ease Noah out of whatever she’d pushed him into, Carly had instead fallen into the trap of her own past.

  Then it was Noah who had saved the day.

  He’d brought her back to the present and out of her darkening, heartbreaking thoughts, with a caring, human touch.

  Carly might not have known the man long, but that had been absolutely what she’d needed.

  Him.

  She’d needed him.

  So Carly had kissed him back and, what’s more, leaned deeper into it.

  It was perfect.

  That is, until the sound of a new group of patrons coming into the bar filtered into their bubble.

  Perfect became ice-cold water to the face.

  Carly’s eyes flew open just as Noah broke the kiss.

  He didn’t say anything and she didn’t want him to; instead they synced back up to the plan.

  He took her hand again, adopted a cover-perfect smile and gave her the room to slyly examine the new group without both of them gawking.

  A surge of adrenaline went through her in an instant.

  “Bingo,” she whispered. “Rob Cantos is in the house.”

  Rob was nothing like his friend Rodney. At least not in looks. While Rodney was a force to reckon with and filled with violence, Rob was stocky, short and a guy who looked like he laughed all of the time. His friends that followed him to a set of stools at the bar, however, weren’t throwing out any vibes that Carly could work with. They were also more of Rodney’s build. Just looking at their size made Carly’s bruise beneath her foundation pulse a little.

  “It looks like they’re going to hang out at the bar,” Carly said after a moment of watching the group. She used her free hand, the one not within Noah’s hold, and took a long pull on her drink.

  Noah’s lips twitched at the corner.

  “What? Never seen a lady take a drink of beer before deploying a ruse to question a person of interest?”

  Noah chuckled this time. He made a show of doing the same with his drink.

  Then it was all charm.

  “And what if I said I had?” he asked.

  “Then your dating life definitely was a lot more eventful than my ‘to rabbit’ guy.”

  He laughed again, but that humor was replaced with focus as Carly felt her own demeanor changing into work mode. They didn’t even bring up the kiss.

  Carly grabbed her purse as Noah placed a tip on the table. He let her take the lead as she scooted out of the booth and stood.

  “Let’s see if we can’t just sweet talk our Mr. Cantos into telling us all about his friend.”

  * * *

  RIHANNA DIDN’T NOTICE the camera in her room, but she did notice that her laptop had been moved right before she went to bed.

  Before that, when she’d come back from the hospital after she’d spoken to hospital staff, deputies and then the sheriff of the county himself, she’d used her work laptop to go through some of the files Alana had sent her. Most were social media accounts to look into for a possible connection between Rodney Lee and David Lapp.

  She’d gone through incident reports and community news looking for anything that stood out as suspicious or different enough to garner a closer examination.

  By the time Carly and Noah had gotten their undercover idea approved—though including Noah had gotten considerable pushback at first—Rihanna had saved only three pieces of information that had struck her as odd compare
d to the rest.

  The first was an incident report from the year before. An unidentified male, mid-twenties, light-skinned and dark-haired, had been seen spray painting a marijuana leaf on the side of an abandoned barn on land formally owned by the Kellogg family. He hadn’t been caught and no more graffiti had shown up in the town.

  The second was a social media post on the county’s Facebook page. It was a call to arms for any tips or information on a teenager or young woman, no one seemed to be able to pinpoint her age, who had been seen as suspicious, hanging around Potter’s Creek and then running before anyone could ask why.

  As far as Rihanna could tell through the comments and following news story and investigation, the woman hadn’t been identified, either.

  The third tidbit of information that she found was the piece she really started to get excited about. It was a Facebook comment thread on a story about local business growth and tourism in which someone talked about a local real estate developer who wanted to open up a dude ranch in the middle of Amish country. Half of the people who commented had been vehemently against it—there were enough farms in town to begin with and The Grand Casino in the city was as close as they wanted to be to more tourism—while the other commenters had been supportive but realistic.

  One woman had said that, while she might have liked the idea of getting more outsiders into town to shop at her local boutique, there was no way that the Amish families would sell out to an Englisher.

  Rihanna might be a liaison, but she’d been an agent first. Her knack for keeping the peace in her current job hadn’t softened the edges of knowing a good lead when she heard it. Or, in this case, read it.

  She’d emailed the screenshot of the conversation to her phone and hurried downstairs to the kitchen. The owner of the bed-and-breakfast, Dot, a lover of gossip but professional as far as Rihanna could tell, was getting ready to go to her house behind the inn for the night and looked elated that she’d been interrupted. Not.

  Rihanna was apologetic but then got down to business.

  While Carly was doing the right thing by being sly to get clues, Rihanna had long since run out of coffee and was in no mood to be coy.