by Nancy Bush
He didn’t blame the Montgomerys. He actually liked Conrad and Cecile, even now. He might have stayed friends with them, but Tina had made them choose—her or Sam. They’d really had no option, and so that door had been closed to him. But by then he’d had his own issues to deal with anyway—his mother’s death and his father’s decline—and was too busy putting out fires to worry about it too much. He’d let the friendship lapse, and in a strange twist of fate, it was Joe who’d connected with the Montgomerys through his business, and they’d become his clients.
He got my girlfriend, and my ex-wife’s family.
But you were the one who let Jules go....
Sam reached for the passenger door handle as Griff asked, “Not planning any more swims in the ocean, are you?”
Sam shook his head. Griff was just one of those guys who loved to talk, and Sam wasn’t ready to tell him about Jules, or his fears over his brother, because he wouldn’t keep it to himself. The news would be out as soon as the media got hold of the story.
“It was a rescue, right? Not a recovery,” Griff tried again.
A recovery . . . The idea made Sam’s gut tighten. “A rescue, so far. I’ll tell you more as I learn it.”
“Okay, good. I’m going to be lifting a few at the Seagull, in case you decide to join me later. Get some dry clothes. You make me cold just looking at you.”
“I will. Thanks.”
“And don’t mess with a head injury, Sammy.” His gaze took in the side of Sam’s head. “You should have Sadie look at you. I could tell her to stop by the cabin later, if that’s where you’re headed.”
“Thanks, I saw a doc. I’m all right.”
Sadie McClesky was Griff’s older sister, who had a way of undressing Sam with her eyes, whenever he saw her. She was tall, blond, and severe, and Sam steered clear of her as a matter of course. He always fell for a certain type: slim, athletic, beautiful, smart, and sexy. But there was more that he wanted, too—a warm smile, a sense of humor, compassion. Tina had failed all of those last ones; Dannella, most of them. Like Griff’s sister, Sadie, both his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend were determinedly and doggedly on their own paths to achieve whatever goals they felt were paramount. Tina wanted money, social standing, respect, and a husband to float on her arm, and Dannella wanted marriage, a family, and maybe also social standing and wealth. He figured they’d picked him because they liked the look of him, and only later decided he wasn’t really checking all the right boxes.
Griff finally gave up and turned out of the lot as Sam swung himself into his Chevy pickup and backed it away from the jetty. His headache was a dull pain that was manageable. Instead of taking Griff’s advice, he drove straight to his brother’s house again. He did not have a key, but on his first trip he had seen that there was a window partially open in the back. He didn’t much like the idea of crawling inside in view of all the neighbors who lived across the narrow inlet, but one of them had already thought he was Joe, so maybe he could get away with that, if anyone was looking.
He slid the window all the way back. It moved smoothly, and Sam wasn’t surprised. Joe was tidy and careful and kept things in good working order, whereas Sam had a tendency to go by the seat of his pants. He wasn’t as organized as his brother in any way. He operated on gut instinct and a kind of management by crisis, which worked for him, but had been another of Dannella’s many complaints.
He climbed through the kitchen window and had to lever himself onto the counter and then down to the tile floor. The kitchen was white and gray: white painted cabinets, white counter, stainless steel appliances, and gray slate on the floor. There was a vase of maize flowers on the peninsula that separated the kitchen from the dining nook. It looked like someone had moved the sunny flowers from the center of the white melamine table, as there were also several light gold votives shifted as well. A pen had dropped to the slate floor, along with a piece of scratch paper that Sam picked up. A sticky note, as it turned out, that simply read: “Cardaman file.”
The name was familiar. Ike Cardaman had been arrested for financial improprieties. He was in the same business as Joe, but unlike Sam’s brother, Cardaman had played fast and loose with the legalities and wound up in jail, and there were scads of people who’d lost their savings as a result.
Sam walked into the living room and sat down on the couch. His shirt had dried and his jeans were getting there. He slipped out of his shoes, then pulled out his phone, setting the timer for twenty minutes. He just needed to lie down for a while.
It felt like he’d just closed his eyes when his phone rang. Not the alarm, but the loud and jingly default ringtone. Sam had to lift his head to remember where he was. He threw a hand out for the trilling phone, snatching it up from where he’d left it on the coffee table. “Hello?”
“Mr. Ford? Langdon Stone from the Tillamook Sheriff’s Department. I understand you called for Detective Dunbar earlier. She’s not in today.”
The other detective from the TSD. Sam had met Stone a number of times before. The last time he’d seen him was when he’d interviewed at the Sheriff’s Department. Stone had been friendly enough. A compatriot, of sorts. So, his formal tone now made Sam’s heart clutch a bit. “I called about the boat that caught fire this afternoon . . . you know whose it was?”
“Haven’t had that confirmation yet.”
Stone’s careful tone told Sam he knew something, though, something he just wasn’t saying. Time to lay it out for the detective and get some answers. “I’m looking for my brother, Joseph Ford. His boat’s missing and his wife’s in the hospital. I found her on the beach. Joe’s boat is The Derring-Do.”
There was a hesitation. Sam counted his own heartbeats. This was not good.
Stone said soberly, “The coast guard picked up a male body in the bay.”
A body. Not a living person.
Recovery . . .
Sam closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He climbed to his feet and walked a bit unsteadily toward the white table, staring out across the inlet toward the other houses’ back decks, seeing nothing but his brother’s stern visage imprinted on his retina. “It’s Joe?”
“Not confirmed yet. The body wasn’t near the boat that caught fire. It was closer to shore.”
“Is that body at the county morgue?”
“Yes.” Another hesitation. “I may ask you to come in and identify it. I’ll call you back soon.”
“Okay,” Sam managed to get out, then pressed the off button. He didn’t need to wait to hear more about the body from Stone. The recovered body was Joe. He knew it. Had known it from the moment he’d first smelled the drifting smoke and seen the burning boat on the horizon. Had understood the danger in his brother’s careful text even before that.
Meet me at my dock at noon.
Not Joe’s regular way.
Sam put on his damp sneakers and drove back toward the hospital especially carefully, even though every nerve was screaming at him to hurry, hurry, hurry. But he ignored the signals. There was no hurry anymore. Joe was gone.
A man in blue scrubs was pushing a cart loaded with covered meal trays down the hall as Sam walked to the reception desk. It was dinnertime. Sam knew he, too, needed to eat, but he had no appetite.
“What room is Jules . . . er, Julia . . . Ford in?” he asked the woman at the desk.
She didn’t have to check her computer as she said, “Two-twenty-one. It’s down this hall and—” She cut herself off then, her eyes on the monitor. She’d been pointing to a hallway that veered toward the right, but abruptly dropped her arm. “I’m sorry. She has a limited visitor list,” she apologized. “I didn’t see that at first. What’s your name?”
His instinct was to lie, but he decided to play it straight. “Samuel Ford.”
Her brows knit together. “You’re a relative?”
“Her brother-in-law.”
“They’re only allowing family, but I don’t have your name on the list.”
“I was with her when
she was brought in. Dr. Metcalf saw us both.”
“Let me call Roxanne. I think she’s still here.” She punched in a number and conferred with someone on the other end. Sam had the room number, but he waited while she ran through her protocol. Apparently Roxanne was unavailable, and the woman asked Sam if he would take a seat while she made further calls.
Sam agreed, but when someone else walked up to the desk and shielded him from her direct vision, he slid out of range and headed in the direction she’d pointed, looking for room two-twenty-one.
He found it easily enough. There was a security guard posted outside, currently in conference with a doctor. He walked past them down the hall, catching a bit of their conversation.
“. . . who put you in charge?” the young Asian doctor with the stern look was asking.
The guard was also young, Hispanic, and wore the same stern look. “Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Specifically? Could you give me a name, please?”
“Will Detective Langdon Stone do it for you, Doc? You can call and talk to him if you want.”
The doctor bristled and Sam moved on, bypassing this little war of authority. The fact that Jules had a guard and was on a limited visitor list told him there were questions about the boating accident.
What the hell had happened out on the water? Why had Joe asked Sam to meet him?
With a heavy heart, Sam decided to take a pass on fighting it out with the guard just now. He chose a different corridor and turned back to the main reception room of the hospital, crossing in front of the desk and heading out through the sliding doors to a cloudy July evening, now heavy with the threat of rain. He climbed into his truck and sat behind the wheel, his mind full of questions, his thoughts ping-ponging all over the place. Leaning back on his spine, he let his chin drop to his chest. He was still tired. His whole body was shutting down. He suspected Joe was dead and he couldn’t grasp it. A lot of guilt mixed in with sadness and an overall feeling of low-grade dread. Something was very wrong. Something he should have prevented.
He pictured his brother: tall, tough, with a rare smile that occasionally broke through, shining like the sun after days of rain. But he couldn’t hold the thought, wouldn’t take the trip down memory lane. It was too raw.
Instead his mind shifted to Jules. Easier to focus on her. How he’d tried to forget her. How much he’d hated her for marrying Joe. How she’d never left his thoughts even when he’d tried desperately to forget about her for his own well-being.
No good thinking about Joe. Better to think about his first love. Easier. Julia . . . Jules . . .
He’d met her a million years ago at a high school football game. A rivalry between her school and his. He’d been standing on the sidelines, ostensibly watching the game but mostly looking at her . . . and yes, Martina, too. There were other Triton cheerleaders jumping around on the sidelines, but it was Jules Sam had been drawn to. He learned enough about her to know that her name was Julia and all the kids called her Jules, that her family was as wealthy as the Hapstells and Montgomerys, who owned most everything from Seaside to Tillamook and beyond, and that she looked damn good in a tight sweater.
He watched as she leapt into the air screaming for her team, wearing black and gold, her school colors, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail and fastened by a shiny gold ribbon. Beneath her Triton sweater her breasts bobbed up and down. Nice breasts. He could imagine cupping his hand around one. He told himself to stop fantasizing, but he couldn’t pull his gaze away.
She and the other cheerleaders were a tight band of girls in sweaters and short, pleated, black skirts with gold insets, leggings, and sneakers. Football season. An orange October moon hung low over the blaringly bright stands. The crowd was roaring with glee because the Tritons had pulled ahead. Not for long, though. Their rivals, the Hawks, Sam’s team, hadn’t lost one game this season and everyone at his school constantly bragged about how they could easily play a division higher. That was a total no-go, he knew, but the Hawks were a whole helluva lot better than the Tritons. So far Jules’s team had just gotten lucky.
Sam was a football player himself and just the month before he’d been a running back. But then his own teammate, Brady Delacourt, had lumbered into him just as Sam was dodging a tackle. Brady’s two hundred and fifty plus pounds had collapsed onto Sam’s ankle, crumpling it, ripping tendons and cracking bone. Sam had been sidelined on crutches ever since and there was no hope that Jules St. James would notice him. There was no chance anyway. Everyone in both schools knew she was Walter Hapstell Junior’s girl. Hapstell was the Triton quarterback and though their team was just a shade or two above mediocre, “Hap” was the best player on it. Good enough to play college ball, maybe. He was also a wealthy son of a bitch, the Hapstells being in the same league as both Martina Montgomery’s family and Jules’s.
Not that Sam Ford gave a damn about any of that, but it was just a known thing. Something the guys talked about in passing. “Hap’s loaded,” was the general consensus. Sam knew who had money at his school as well. Brady’s family, the Delacourts, were right up there. There were no secrets along this section of the Oregon coastline. The fact that most of the wealthy families sent their children to the local high school rather than the nearest private school in Portland, a good two hours away, just proved good parenting, according to the locals.
Sam had learned all about the Hapstells and Montgomerys from his father. Donald Ford had been a one-time stockbroker and financial advisor who’d quit that slugfest, as he called it, for a simpler life away from Portland and the hubbub of investments and finance. He’d followed his dream to “retire” to the coast, keeping only a few clients whom he’d advised up until just a few years earlier. That was about the time Sam’s mother divorced him and moved away. Joe had already chosen the financial road their father had veered from, living in Portland and working on making his own fortune. He was eight years older than Sam and engaged to be married to Gwen, a woman with a toddler from a previous marriage.
Sam had been in his last year of high school and found it hard to imagine what it would be like to settle down with a woman and begin a life together. At the time all he could think about was sex . . . and Jules St. James . . . and maybe that haughty bitch, Martina Montgomery . . . and sex, and sex, and sex. Sam had wondered if Jules was doing it with Hap, and it made him feel slightly ill whenever he thought of them together.
As he watched from the sidelines that night, his eyes had strayed from the cheerleaders back to the game. Walter Hapstell Junior was running backward with the football held high aloft as he looked for a receiver to pass to. Sam was on Hap’s left side, and he saw the wide receiver, number eighty-eight, break right. At the same moment Hap threw a bullet to the receiver, who caught it in a wild reach toward the sky that sent the Triton fans stamping the bleachers and screaming with excitement as the receiver pulled it in and ran another twenty-five yards, making it to the ten-yard line before being brought down.
Great catch. Mostly because of a great throw.
“Damn,” he muttered to the fates, looking down at the cast around his right ankle.
But on the next play the Triton running back fumbled the ball and it was the Hawks’ ball. Hap looked ready to have an aneurysm as he strode stiffly off the field, hands clenched.
The Triton cheerleaders were huddled together, colluding with a couple of guys dressed in similar outfits. Honorary cheerleaders? They’d only just appeared and the game was well into the second half. The newcomers arranged themselves to hike the girls into the air, offering their threaded palms as a launch pad. Sam watched as Jules placed her hands on the two tallest guys’ shoulders and stepped into one of their woven fingers. The male cheerleaders hefted her up to their chests, their taut arms holding her in place, her fingers linked through theirs. Sam swallowed at the thought of what they might be able to see beneath that short skirt once they tossed her skyward, as they were preparing to do.
Then sh
e was in the air, twirling twice, her arms hugging her torso, her body rising to the crest of the parabola before falling back, down, down, down, then caught neatly in one of the spotters’ arms, a tall boy with Michael Phelps arms. He swung her to her feet and she bounced onto her toes, raining a bright grin of thanks on him.
Sam dragged his eyes away from her with an effort, concentrating back on the game. The Hawks’ quarterback, Tim Stanton, threw a shovel pass to the running back who’d taken over for Sam. Sam gritted his teeth as the guy tucked the ball from Stanton and ran over ten yards for a first down. The two of them made two more first downs, and then they were at the fifty-yard line, marching down the field. It was hard for Sam to acknowledge that the team didn’t need him, that the sophomore who’d taken over for him was as good as he had ever been, but hey, that was the nature of the game. Didn’t mean he had to like it.
Sam could feel the momentum going the Hawks’ way, and he was just sorry he wasn’t a part of it. The Tritons were losing ground and desperately trying to halt the Hawks’ relentless attack, but it was no use.
Less than a minute later the Hawks scored a touchdown on a quarterback sneak and the score grew to 28–10.
Not enough time for the Tritons to recover. That, however, didn’t faze the Triton cheerleaders, who were shouting and furiously shaking their gold pom-poms.
What would it be like to kiss Jules St. James? he wondered.
“Sam.”
He looked around to see Zoey Rivera smiling at him. She was cute. One of the cutest girls at Oceanlake High, and she’d never shown him the slightest interest.