Unraveling the Past

by Beth Andrews

  But the chairs were new, the leather stools recently recovered and, Layne thought as she sipped her beer at the bar, the drinks were cold. Best of all? Everyone there kept to themselves.

  Wiping the pad of her forefinger through the condensation on her bottle, she set an elbow on the bar. Over the past ten years, the Yacht Pub had changed owners three times, had gone from dive bar, to dance club and back to dive bar again—albeit one with twinkling lights and a brand-new pool table.

  On the bar, her cell phone vibrated. She checked the incoming number. Her dad. Again. She shut it off.

  “Turn the Page”—the original, Bob Seger version—played from the jukebox in the corner. A group of fishermen, their faces lined from spending so much of their lives on the sea, sat down the bar from her. Two younger men in T-shirts and jeans occupied a booth while a middle-aged couple cuddled together at a table in the corner near the dartboard.

  More people than she’d expected for a Tuesday but not enough to send her back out into the night. Not nearly enough to send her back to the funeral home where she’d snuck out two hours earlier, leaving her family without a word.

  She’d had to leave. It’d felt as if the walls were closing in, the air itself suffocating her. She was restless. Keyed up. It felt like there was a hard ball in the pit of her stomach. Each breath was painful, a reminder that she was alive. And that she was the exact same age as her mother had been when she’d died.

  “Buy you a drink?” a male voice asked.

  Layne turned and met a pair of light blue eyes. “My mother always warned me not to let strangers buy me drinks,” she said. A lie, of course, as Valerie hadn’t been much on giving advice. Though she had shown by example that if someone wanted to give you something, you should always take it.

  “That’s easy enough to fix.” He held out his hand. “Hunter Foster.”

  “Layne Sullivan.”

  His handshake was warm, firm. His auburn hair wavy, his smile easy. He was attractive and, if she read him right, interested. He was probably a nice guy. A safe guy. Someone she could hook up with tonight, spend a few mindless hours with if she so desired. There were no ties between them to get tangled. And if ever she needed a distraction, it was tonight.

  But she couldn’t work up the slightest bit of enthusiasm.

  Not when Ross’s face kept slipping into her head. Not when she’d spent a sleepless night reliving that kiss.

  “Thanks,” she told Hunter, lifting her half-full bottle. “But it seems I already have a drink.”

  “If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t.” And, taking a long sip, she turned her back on him, unable to work up much guilt for her rudeness.

  She wrapped a strand of hair around her finger. Tugged. Then let it go. This may have been a mistake. Coming here, being in the place her mom had worked, where—in all likelihood—she’d started her affair with Dale York, was a bad decision. But she hadn’t wanted to go home. There were too many memories there. And she hadn’t wanted to be in that big, empty house all by herself.

  Not tonight.

  The door opened and she swiveled slightly as Griffin York strolled in looking like some sort of bad-boy fantasy in his work boots, faded jeans and a black T-shirt that clung to his flat stomach and broad shoulders. His dark hair was tousled and stubble covered his cheeks and chin.

  His features were sharp, chiseled. His nose straight, his mouth full above that slight indent in his chin. It was a face that could make angels weep with joy, one that could tempt mere mortal women to sin.

  It was his father’s face.

  And, like Dale York, Griffin couldn’t be trusted.

  He saw her, of course. His glittering gaze raked over her slowly, from the top of her head to the pointy toes of her high heels and back up again. She fought the urge to tug at the hem of her skirt when he lingered at the few inches of bare skin exposed above her knees, making her feel as if her clothes—modest enough for a funeral—were somehow alluring. His lip curling, he touched two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute before sitting at the far end of the bar, his back to her.

  Bitterness burned in her stomach, her pulse kicked up.

  She slid off the stool, letting her anger and frustration push her to the other side of the bar.

  “Hanging out at the Yacht Pub,” she said, standing at his shoulder, one hip cocked, her toes aching in her high heels. “Like father…like son.”

  He paused in the act of raising his beer to his lips, the hesitation so slight, if she hadn’t been watching carefully, she would’ve missed it. “What can I do for you, Officer Sullivan?” he asked, his tone mild, his eyes straight ahead.

  “It’s Assistant Chief Sullivan,” she snapped before pressing her lips together.

  They weren’t any closer to finding Dale, no closer to bringing her mother’s killer to justice. It was as if he’d simply vanished into thin air all those years ago. Ross had called her earlier and told her, very briefly, that he’d interviewed Griffin and his mother and both had claimed not to have heard from Dale since his disappearance eighteen years ago.

  Ross had promised her he wouldn’t stop searching. But she had to face the truth. They may never find the man. He’d never pay for what he’d done.

  She couldn’t accept that.

  “Where is he?” she demanded of Griffin.

  Still not looking at her, he sipped his beer. “Who?”

  “Don’t play games with me. Tell me where your father is so he can be arrested for murdering my mother.”

  She’d always kept her distance from Griffin in the past. They shared a history—sort of. A terrible one. And while she knew better than to blame a child for the sins of the parent, that hadn’t stopped her from giving Griffin a wide berth all these years. Would have even if her mother hadn’t left her husband, her daughters, for his father.

  She recognized trouble when she saw it and she saw it now sitting in front of her, calmly drinking a beer. Her entire life she’d avoided trouble, had spent more than her fair share of time getting others out of trouble. But tonight she felt like diving into it, letting it overcome her good sense, her sense of self-preservation.

  Griffin lowered the bottle, turned enough to give her a smirk. “I have no idea where he is. Guess you’ll have to put that badge and handy dandy detective license to good use and find him yourself.”

  And he went back to drinking his beer.

  “Want to know what I think?” she asked, wedging herself between him and the empty stool to his right.

  “Nope.”

  She crowded closer. “I think you’re lying. I think you know exactly where that bastard is.”

  He raised one dark eyebrow, let his gaze drop to the deep V of her shirt where she’d left the top two buttons undone. He smiled, a sharp, killer grin that must’ve brought dozens of women to their knees. But when his green eyes met hers, they were flat. Cold.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think,” he said almost conversationally.

  Fury—at him, at the situation—had her hands curling, her vision turning red. He lifted his beer and she grabbed his arm, jerking the bottle. Beer foamed, splattered over his arm, her hand, dripped down the neck of the bottle.

  “Tell me where he is.” Her voice shook—with anger, she told herself. Not because she was having some sort of emotional breakdown. Her nails dug into his arm. “Tell me.”

  “Police brutality,” Griffin murmured.

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Layne glanced at the bartender, a petite, bleached blonde in her twenties who’d spent more than her fair share of time in the tanning booth.

  “No,” Layne said tightly, “no problem.”

  The bartender’s narrowed gaze zeroed in on Layne’s hold of Griffin’s arm then up to his face. “She bothering you? Should I call the police?”

  Layne tossed his arm down, put her hands behind her back to hide their unsteadiness. “I am the police.” Except she didn’t have her bad
ge, didn’t have any ID on her at all. “This man is wanted in connection with a murder investigation.”

  Griffin wiped his hand down his wet arm. “Now you just sound desperate.”

  “Do you know what the penalty is for aiding and abetting a felon? Not to mention obstruction of justice and hindering an ongoing investigation.”

  Maybe she did sound desperate. Desperate and frantic and heading quickly to hysterical. The worst part, the most frightening?

  She didn’t care.

  “This is all fascinating, especially those charges you’ve dreamed up, but I didn’t come in here to be harassed by Mystic Point’s finest. I came to have a couple of beers and to get laid. So unless you’re buying the next round and you plan on volunteering for the second half of that equation, we’re through here.”

  A primal scream rose in her throat. She swallowed it. Held her head high, her shoulders back as she went back to her stool and got her cell phone. Forced herself not to rush as she passed by him on her way to the door.

  “If you change your mind about that lay,” he called, “let me know.”

  She faltered and inwardly cursed herself for giving him even that slight satisfaction.

  Outside, she walked around the back corner of the bar, leaned against the building and gulped in air. The briny scent of the ocean filled her lungs but it still felt as if she couldn’t breathe properly. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this way before. As if she hung off the edge of a precipice, her grip slipping, her feet trying to find purchase.

  Chewing her lower lip, she went over her options but there wasn’t really a choice. She knew what she wanted. And with one last look at the drop awaiting her, she dialed a familiar number.

  And prepared to take a fall.

  * * *

  NO SOONER HAD ROSS pulled into a space in the Yacht Pub’s small parking lot, when he spotted Layne walking toward him, caught in the headlights of his truck.

  His heart stopped. His chest tightened.

  Her hair was down, the ends of it lifting in a breeze that also had the ruffled collar of her white shirt fluttering against the pale skin of her throat. The shirt was tucked into a narrow black skirt that ended above her knees. Her legs were bare, her feet encased in a pair of pointy-toed high heels.

  She pulled on the passenger-side door handle but he’d been too absorbed in watching her, he hadn’t unlocked it yet. He quickly disengaged the lock and she pulled again, opening the door.

  She regarded him seriously, her eyes hidden in the shadows of the night. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she said in her husky voice.

  “Yes, you did. Or else you wouldn’t have called me.”

  She smiled, a small, extremely satisfied, completely feminine smile. His stomach pitched, the sensation reminding him of riding a roller coaster. The fear and excitement of not knowing what was coming next, of being out of control. Then she tugged on her skirt, hitching it up over her smooth thighs so she could climb in beside him and he started to think maybe not knowing wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Maybe just this once, he could live in the moment instead of trying to control what happened next.

  He switched on the dome light as she shut the door. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She exhaled a soft laugh. “Not really, no.”

  He studied her. She’d done something to her eyes to make them all smoky and mysterious. Her lips were a bold, shiny red. She stole his breath. She tempted him beyond measure, beyond good sense.

  But her eyes were clear and focused. And while her voice was wobbly, she didn’t slur her words, hadn’t stumbled when she’d walked up to his truck.

  “You’re not drunk?” His words were a question. And an accusation.

  She buckled her seat belt. “I never said I was.”

  No, he thought, his eyes narrowed, she hadn’t. But why else would she have called him?

  “It’s almost midnight,” he pointed out. “And you called and asked me to pick you up at a bar.”

  Which he’d done without thought. Without hesitation. Something he’d have to think about later when her scent wasn’t clouding his thoughts.

  “I know. Seeing as how I only had half a beer, and the phone call you’re referencing happened not fifteen minutes ago, I remember it clearly.” She pushed her hair off her shoulder. “Can we go?”

  He put the truck in Park and stretched his right arm along the back of the seat. Close enough to brush his fingertips across her shoulder, to feel the softness of her hair. He curled his fingers. “Layne, what’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer, was quiet for so long, he didn’t think she would. How long should he sit there, pushing her with his patience, his silent insistence that she open up to him?

  He wanted her to trust him.

  He was a fool.

  Sliding his arm off the seat, he took a hold of the gearshift when her voice stopped him.

  “We had my mother’s memorial service tonight.”

  “I know,” he said. “I was there.”

  “You were?”

  He nodded. “I got there just before the service was to start,” he said, leaving out his conversation with her father. That would have to wait for another day. “Was still there when your sisters discovered you’d jumped ship. Did something happen to make you run?”

  “Nope. It was all very…ordinary. Mundane, even. People came, offered their condolences.” Her voice was level, her gaze straight ahead. But he still had the feeling she was slowly coming apart at the seams. “And as I glanced around at our family, our friends, at the tears in their eyes, the grief on their faces and I…I suddenly couldn’t breathe. So I excused myself to use the restroom except I walked right past it. The next thing I knew I was outside the funeral home and I just kept walking…” She shrugged, met his eyes. “I ended up here. Where my mom worked. Where she met the man she planned on leaving her husband for, the place where they probably planned their escape.”

  He studied her. She was in such denial, was in so much pain, but it wasn’t up to him to ease that hurt, to get her to face her feelings or acknowledge how much she was hurting over her mother’s death. But he wanted to. He could admit that to himself, as long as he remembered there were boundaries he shouldn’t cross.

  He shifted into Drive when the door to the bar opened and a dark-haired man stepped out.

  “That’s Griffin York,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  Suspicions started forming in his head as he watched Griffin swing onto a Harley and roar off into the night. “Did something happen between you two?”

  “We had a discussion,” she said, a shrug in her voice. But she wrapped the delicate silver chain she wore around her finger only to unwind it and then repeat the entire process.

  An ache formed behind his right eye. “Did this discussion involve aspects of your mother’s case? A case, I might remind you, that you are not to have any involvement in, whatsoever.”

  “All I did was ask him where his father is.”

  “Did I hallucinate that phone call this afternoon? The one where I specifically told you that I’d interviewed Griffin and his mother and both claimed not to know anything about Dale’s current whereabouts?”

  She dropped the chain. “I didn’t believe it.”

  Ross wasn’t sure he believed it, either. But then, he tended not to trust many people associated with a murder investigation. It was his job to be suspicious of everyone, to question their motives, their every word. To sift through the emotions of others, to find the facts.

  His job. Not hers. Not in this instance.

  “Tell me you didn’t do anything that could jeopardize my investigation,” he said flatly. “That you didn’t go all rogue cop on him.”

  “Relax. Your investigation is safe. As is Griffin. You saw him walk out of there, didn’t you?”

  “Which only means you didn’t cause any bodily harm.”

  “Oh, I wanted to,” she assured him solemnly. “I wanted to hurt him. To
make him pay for what his father did. God, all my life I’ve tried to live down being Valerie Sullivan’s daughter, of looking so much like her, and I go off on some guy because he just happened to have the bad luck of being fathered by Dale York.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Plus, I just didn’t like him much. But that was all on him. He’s kind of an ass.”

  He snorted out a laugh. “I got that impression, too.” And he wasn’t going to think about how relieved he was that she hadn’t liked York with his permanent sneer and dark good looks. “You were right about Griffin—he’s got a chip on his shoulder and he wasn’t too eager to answer questions about his past, but I think that had more to do with a general resentment toward law enforcement rather than a need to protect his father.”

  “I lost it,” she admitted, rubbing her hands down the front of her skirt, drawing his attention once again to her long legs. “Completely lost control and any hold I had on my judgment. Just for a minute but it was enough to make me realize I needed to get out of there, fast. So I…I called you.”

  Him. Not one of her sisters or her father. Not Meade or Campbell or one of her fellow officers. She’d needed him.

  He nodded. Slowly pulled out of the parking space. “Is your car still at the funeral home?”

  She didn’t answer so he glanced over when he pulled to a stop to check for traffic. She was watching him, her eyes dark and unreadable. “I don’t want to pick up my car. I want you to take me home.”

  His heart did one slow roll and then he nodded. They drove in silence and, ten hellishly long minutes later, he pulled into Layne’s driveway, his headlights illuminating her front door. But he didn’t cut off the ignition, didn’t even put his truck into Park. Strangling the steering wheel, he stared straight ahead; his jaw ached from clenching his teeth.

  She shifted, undid her seat belt. “The least I can do after dragging you out of bed is offer you a drink.” Her words were husky, an invitation.

  He exhaled through his teeth. “No.”

  “Why not?”