Blake’s neck muscles were tight as he fired the ignition.
“It’s just a house,” she whispered. “Just a house.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Meg?”
She looked at him. His chest torqued.
“It’s not just a house, Meg. It’s your family home. It’s a vessel full of memories. They live in there. You have a right to feel violated, angry. No one has a right to do that.”
“Jonah said I should get rid of it. That I was holding on to the ghosts—that I needed to let them go.”
Irritation, and yeah, a spark of hot jealousy crackled through him. He geared his truck, reversed, and turned down the street, his beams cutting twin tunnels into the mist as he drove. “Guess that’s why he’s the shrink and I’m not. I don’t have a problem with holding on to memories. You need to tell me what happened, Meg. What’s with those boxes? What’s gotten up Kovacs’s nose?”
“Me. I’ve gotten up his nose. Me and Sherry’s story.”
He shot her a glance. She sat silent for several beats, fiddling with that ring of hers.
Frustration, desire to do something burned in him. “Megan, you need to tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s personal stuff.”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap—”
“Blake, I don’t want to involve you. You have a son who needs you. I … I’ve screwed up your life too much before. I … just need to do this on my own. I have my own life, a …” Her voice wavered. She rubbed her hands over her face. “Please. Just take me to the hotel.”
“You have a fiancé? Is that what you’re trying to say?” He dug in his pocket, handed Meg his cell phone. “Here. Call him. Tell him to come. And when he gets here I’ll let you go to a damn hotel. In the meantime, you’re coming home with me, where at least I can protect you.”
“Oh jeeze, what, because you’re now a trained soldier with a gun?”
“Damn right.”
She stared.
“It’s more than you’ll get at the Whakami Bay hotel. Someone could have killed you tonight, Meg, and clearly the cops are not feeling terribly helpful toward you for some reason, and you have yet to explain why.”
He turned into the marina driveway, and they bumped down the steep gravel track to the bay. Fog was more dense down on the water, a thick, tattered soup in the dark, bouncing back the lights of his truck, closing halos tightly around the lamps along the dock, as if trying to strangle them dead. The beam from the Shelter Head lighthouse arced through mist at the point. The horns sounded, mournful.
“Who’s with Noah?” she said, noticing a light burning in the marina office.
“Geoff. He’s sleeping on the sofa downstairs.” It would be dawn soon. He had to think about Noah’s breakfast, making his lunch, getting him to school.
She turned in her seat. “Blake … how did you know to come tonight?”
He inhaled deeply, turned off the ignition. He was in no mood to rehash the anomalies of his brother’s story, and he had every mind to hammer it out with him later. “Geoff told me. Listen, Meg, before we go inside, I’ve got to know what’s going on. And don’t go telling me it’s not my business, because it is. That selfish this-is-my-circus-my-monkeys, no-one-else-can-understand card is not going to work anymore. This is not just about you.”
She stared. “Oh, that is so not fair.”
He placed his hand over hers. Her skin was ice cold. She was shivering. “We need to get you warmed up, get a brandy into you to cut the edge off that adrenaline withdrawal that’s going to kick in any moment. And I need to look at your feet, but first you’re going to tell me about those file boxes.”
She sucked in a chestful of air, and exhaled slowly. “My mother’s,” she said, finally. “They’re full of transcripts—the police interrogations of Tyson Mack, Sherry’s autopsy report, crime scene photos. My mom got most of it from Lee Albies, who was Ty Mack’s pro bono legal counsel. Albies had started mounting her case in the event that Ty was charged.”
“What was your mother doing with them?”
“She’d come to believe that someone had tipped my dad off to Tyson Mack’s hiding place on purpose, knowing he would probably go and kill Ty. Someone wanted Ty dead, and the case dropped, and they used my dad like a loaded gun.”
“Whatever gave her that idea?”
“My dad. He let slip to my mom on a visit that someone told him where Ty was hiding, but he would not reveal who, because he believed the blame was solely his to bear. So, my mom began her own investigation in the hopes of easing my dad’s sentence when his case finally went to trial. Her journal details her progress, and it shows how she slowly came to think that maybe Ty Mack didn’t do it.” She paused, looked up. Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “I think my father might have gone to prison for killing an innocent man, Blake.”
Blake’s brain reeled as he listened to Meg recount how Irene had caused a fire, and how the safe was discovered when contractors ripped out the bookshelves to get at the subsequent water damage. She told him about the other DNA profiles that had been found in condoms left at the scene, as yet unidentified. And how one of those DNA profiles matched hairs found in Sherry’s pubic hair. He heard about the pregnancy, and the mystery of the paternal DNA, which matched neither of the other two sets of unidentified DNA found on scene, nor Tommy Kessinger’s DNA profile. And how Ike Kovacs sat on that information.
“None of this proves that Ty didn’t do it,” he said.
“But it does raise questions about reasonable doubt, ulterior motive, possible police tunnel vision.”
He stared at the little light burning downstairs, thinking of Geoff. His being on the point that night. Meeting someone else. Someone whose identity remained a mystery. Him finding Geoff in the boathouse. How his brother had left town a few weeks after the murder, never to return. The flotsam sack he’d found near Meg, who’d been close to dead, lolling in those waves.
It all suddenly took on dark context. And it complicated his need for honesty with Meg right now because it butted hard against his reflex to protect his brother. Protecting Geoff was hardwired into him. And honestly, whatever secret Geoff was keeping, he did not—could not—have hurt Sherry.
“The other thing,” Meg said, “after reading my mom’s journal, and seeing how driven she was to get to the bottom of this, how she was working against a ticking-clock deadline for my dad’s trial, I can’t see how she could suddenly have committed suicide.”
“What … exactly are you saying?”
“Her journal details fears about being followed, her house watched, someone trying to break in. She was scared. Scared enough to report it to Ike Kovacs. My mom felt someone might want to do her harm.” She paused. “I think my mother might have been murdered, Blake. I think she was getting too close to the truth, and someone needed to silence her.”
Lori-Beth wheeled herself in front of Henry’s desk computer. She glanced nervously over her shoulder, then clicked it on. She’d never done this before. She never touched Henry’s things in this office, and he knew it.
The monitor flared to life.
What was she looking for? Something, anything. Henry was scared. She could smell it on him, and it made her sick with nerves. He’d been acting weird, getting calls at strange hours that upset him, going out early in the morning. And tonight he’d said he was going to meet a business colleague for a drink. While waiting up and worrying about him, she’d heard about the Forest End shooting on the radio—their community was one of few that still had a human in the studio 24/7, following up on reports from police scanners. Henry had finally come home after 4:00 a.m. Drunk, reeking of booze. He’d passed out on their bed fully clothed. Something he never did.
She clicked open his web browser, and tried to open his history. His cache had been cleared.
Why? What did he have to hide? Her hands froze over the keyboard as she heard a car outside. A car door banged. Her heart raced. She couldn’
t move fast in this chair, so she sat still like a mouse in the dark, bathed by the soft glow from the monitor. The back door opened, closed. Panic kicked. She heard a door close down the passage, in the guest suite. Then all went silent. The antique clock on the wall tick-tick-ticked. She waited. Nothing.
Relief washed softly through her. Just Sally coming home. She must have gone to see that late-night movie at that artsy club she was talking about. Sally always had trouble sleeping.
She reached to click off the computer, but stopped as something caught her eye. An icon on his desktop.
“Meg, that’s just crazy. Your mom’s death was an overdose. They were her pills that she took. You were sleeping down the hall. No one else was there.”
It was growing colder inside the truck cab with the engine off, but Blake wanted to have this out with Meg before running into Geoff, whom he’d left in the house with Noah.
“I don’t know—I just can’t believe she took her own life. Not after what she wrote right up until the night before she died. She didn’t want to abandon me, Blake. She cared for me.” Her voice caught, and Meg took a moment to corral her emotions. Compassion surged into Blake’s chest. It came with an ache to hold her close, to comfort her. He exhaled heavily and ran his hands over his hair.
“In her own words, my mother was trying to protect me from all this. She loved me.” Meg wavered, again trying to control her voice. “And I never knew. Her taking her own life just makes no sense now.”
“This is big, Meg. Shit.” He turned to her. “If, just if, Ty Mack didn’t kill Sherry—if it’s true that someone wanted Ty to go down as a scapegoat, and to use your dad to silence everything, it would mean that a very dangerous criminal could still be out there. And your poking around the case could threaten him. If, just if your mother did not take her own life … this is serious. You could be in serious danger.” His gaze locked with hers. “You’re staying here,” he said firmly. “Until we figure this out. You’re going to show me those documents, and I’m going to help you get to the bottom of this.”
“The incident tonight, it could have just been someone trying to scare me off.”
“And next time? When they see you didn’t get the message?” Adrenaline thumped hot and silent in his blood. He was in full protective mode, an urge swelling in him to just wrap himself around her, keep her safe. His Meg. Like the old days. Except she wasn’t his. She belonged to someone else.
“Are you going to call him?” he said quietly. “Jonah?”
She looked down and fiddled with her massive engagement ring. Several beats of silence hung. He watched her hands, her ring. He wanted to tell her it didn’t suit her. Too big and flashy. If it were his choice to make, he’d pick out something completely different. More natural. Small but pure, an utterly perfect diamond with not a flaw in its facets. A blue white, maybe, that came from the far north of Canada. Clean. Enduring. Something that wouldn’t get in the way of using your hands properly.
A ship sounded its horn out at sea. The soft flare of the lighthouse swept like a searchlight. Dawn was creeping nearer.
“I can’t,” she said finally.
His pulse blipped. But he waited for her to explain.
She looked up, met his eyes. “Jonah called it off.”
Wham. His world wobbled dangerously on its axis. “What?”
She inhaled deeply. “It’s why I came back to Shelter Bay. To prove I could do it—write Sherry’s story, scrape away my own memories, rewrite them within a new context, a fresh understanding of the past. Put it all to bed properly, ‘The End.’ So that I can move on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
She swallowed, looking suddenly small and scared and young, and he wanted to hold her, comfort her. So bad, with every fiber of his being, it made him hurt.
“You won’t get it.”
“Oh, fuck, Meg. What am I? Some physical brute who can’t get a shrink’s cerebral, touchy-feely crap? Give me some credit here. I know you better than anyone knows you.” There. He’d said it. He’d slapped down his gauntlet. I know you better than that tight-ass celebrity shrink … you were more mine than you’ll ever be his …
“I was having trouble committing. To everything. Including my old desk job at the Times. I just … couldn’t stand being held down between four walls and a roof and a routine, and he thought it was because I have some PTSD thing going on. He wanted to set a wedding date, and … and I just couldn’t do it, okay? So he called it off. And he’s right. I can see now that he was right. I needed to come home. To fix things with Irene, the house, Tommy, Bull …” She looked up. The word hung.
You.
Emotion gleamed into her eyes. A tear caught light as it slid down her pale cheek. His stomach folded in on itself.
“I’m doing it for him, Blake. I’m writing Sherry’s story to win him back. And now it’s so much more.”
Blake’s throat tightened. His heart thunked, slow, thick, steady, as if trying to beat its way out of molasses.
She swiped the tear away angrily. “I just didn’t expect this. I thought I knew what ‘The End’ was. I don’t.”
And again, the subtext hung.
I don’t know how to do this now … it’s changed …
“Meg—” He touched her hand, and he fingered her ring, and it was like crossing a boundary, a point of no return, as if he’d decided on a cellular level before his brain was fully aware, that he was going to fight this guy. That he was going to see her take this ring off, of her own volition.
“I can’t call him,” she whispered. “Not until this is done.”
“Do you want to?” he said, softly.
She was silent. Waves crunched out on the distant reef.
“I don’t know.”
His heart quickened. It was a gap, and he took it. Acting almost of its own accord, his hand reached up, and he gently cupped the side of her face. Every moral fiber of his being that told him, no, don’t do this; she’s promised herself to someone else; she’s vulnerable right now; this could get far too complicated; it could mess with your relationship with your son, was being countermanded by another hot whisper in his head—her engagement is off, she isn’t calling him, doesn’t want to, this is your window, this is your second chance to win her back …
She leaned in toward him, her lids lowering, and desire gushed hot through his gut, kicking every residual thought clean out of his head and sending his blood south with a sweet, pulsing delirium as his lips met hers. Her mouth was cool, soft, firm, and she opened to him.
He slid his fingers up into the dense, soft waves at the nape of her neck. A moan slipped from her throat, and her hand touched his arm, moving up his biceps, along his shoulder, encircling his neck as she pulled him closer, and opened her mouth wider, moving suddenly faster, hungry, her tongue, slick, warm, mating, warring with his.
CHAPTER 14
Meg drowned into his kiss, into the rough sensation of Blake’s stubble against her cheek, into the past, and present, and future, and nothing, drawing him closer, deeper. His body was hard, warm. His scent, his taste, filled her with a rush of the familiar and too long forgotten. It was a feeling so blinding and so right, like sliding into a shoe of perfect fit, into soul-warming comfort. His splayed hand slid firmly down her back as his lips forced her mouth open wider and his tongue sought hers. Something imploded deep inside her, cracking open a sweet, thick heat—a hunger that surged fierce up into her chest, firing her blood with driving need. A need to have him, all of him. Completely. She opened her mouth wider, her breath coming faster, faster, her nipples tightening and aching, tingling with desire to be touched, her consciousness spiraling into blackness. Down, down, down …
A banging sounded in a remote part of her brain. Then louder. He stilled his mouth on hers. His hand froze on her breast. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart in his chest. Knocking came again, against the driver’s window.
She pulled back, shocked. At what had just happened. How she’d lost control. She stared at him, her breath coming ragged and raw. His eyes burned, dark and glittery, and desire etched the rugged planes of his features into hard shape. A kind of indefinable terror and confusion rose in her chest.
“Shit,” Blake said as the banging sounded again, a dark shape looming behind the steamed-up glass.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Geoff. Listen, Meg, I …” His eyes locked with hers. Words failed him. Her, too. Because, what now? What kind of threshold had she just crossed?
Blake swung open the truck door and stepped out. Air gushed in—wet, salty. Cold. Meg drew her coat close over her chest and got out of the truck, pain suddenly searing under her feet. She gasped, taking weight off her left foot, which hurt most, and she grabbed her tote from the front seat, shouldered it, then reached into the back for her bag of clothes. Wind was picking up. It whipped her hair around her face.
“What is it?” Blake said coolly to his brother. “Noah okay?”
“Fine. Still asleep. I saw the truck.” Geoff came around the front. “Heya, Meg, long time.” He gave her a big hug. He was lean and hard and smelled of booze as he kissed her cheek. He stepped back, his gaze flickering between Blake and Meg, a look on his face she couldn’t read in the dark. The passage of years whispered in the mist around them. And he’d seen them kissing. This knowledge was now shared between the three of them and it put an uneasy feeling into Meg’s chest.
It brought guilt.
It made her think of Jonah, of why she’d come here.
“Is everything okay?” Geoff said.
“It’s fine,” snapped Blake. “Just someone trying to spook her off.”
Geoff glanced at his brother. “Because of the book?”
“Probably. Meg needs to get inside,” Blake said abruptly, taking her arm.
“Wait—my file boxes. In the back.”
In the Waning Light Page 17