by Brandon Witt
“Doesn’t look like I have a choice,” I snapped, my voice tight.
I thought I heard the first filtering wails of sirens and dug my fingers into my thigh. It was one thing to be big and bad in theory; it was quite another to wait at the scene of the crime while the police drew closer.
“So you’re not willing to negotiate?”
“Negotiate what?”
“You and I,” he blurted. “You and I working something out.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes.” The slow, clumsy come-ons that I’d once found amusing almost made me hurl. I shook my head disgustedly. “I can’t believe I ever loved you.”
“Well, you did,” he snapped, his face blooming bright red. “Still do, if you ask me.”
“Keep dreaming.”
“If you’d rather go to jail than do something you’ve already done a million times, then you’re not quite as bright as I thought.”
“I’m a PI, Trevor. Do you really think this is the first time I’ve gone down for a B and E?”
“Get out of my house,” he yelled, close enough for spittle to fly onto my cheek.
I didn’t flinch. The things Trevor and I had done made spittle a very little deal indeed.
“Police are here,” Laura announced from somewhere in the den. She slammed the door again.
Oh, God. They’re going to impound the Audi. Finn leaned into me as if he understood exactly what was going to happen to me and my precious new car.
When I heard Robby’s voice, my heart started beating again. I didn’t know how my brother had gotten the call and how he had gotten here before anyone else, but I was grateful. I didn’t even know what he would do to me, but I knew it would go a hell of a lot better than if it had been a cop that didn’t share my DNA.
He looked tired, irritated, and very official. “What the hell is going on, Mac?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking me that?” Laura snapped. She slammed the door again.
“Stop that!” Trevor yelled.
Robert ignored them both. The radio on his shoulder crackled with sudden static, and Tao lifted his shoulder to respond into it, walking toward the kitchen area.
“He has my dog,” I said, pointing at Finn, nestled on my feet, unnecessarily. Obviously that was the dog. There was no other dog in the room.
Robert rubbed his eyes with two fingers in a V shape. “Please tell me I didn’t intercept this call to settle a domestic?” he pleaded with the ceiling.
“I want him prosecuted!” Laura. Slam.
“Trev, do you want to press charges?” Robert asked.
I crossed my fingers and hoped against all hope that this night wouldn’t end with me huddled on a jail bench. Trevor looked at me hard. And then sighed. “No. I did… take the dog. I thought… I knew he would have to come to me for it.”
“Finn’s not an it,” I snapped.
“I think he means ‘Thank you, Trevor, for saving me from jail.’” My brother gave me a warning glare that I met stubbornly.
“Can we go?” Tao asked. “No one is reporting any crime, and I need some coffee.”
“Well, what about the dog?” Trevor asked. “Who gets it… him?”
Tao shrugged. “It’s a civil matter. Not really our job, guys.”
I felt raw as I gripped the leash so hard I felt the imprint in my palm. I had already lost Jordan. I couldn’t lose Finn too. Robert opened his mouth to agree, and then his gaze met mine. I don’t know what he saw in them, but he sighed.
“Let the dog go and see who he comes to,” Robert said authoritatively.
“That’s not exactly unbiased,” Trevor said, and rightly so.
I didn’t care. I liked that idea a lot and bent quickly to unclip Finn’s leash. I gave him a fond rub before I stood, and Trevor said, “I saw that.”
We stood there, stiff as dummies, until Robby prodded us both. “Go on, get to it,” he said, making a shooing motion.
Trevor reached down, crouching nice and low, calling to the retriever in his sweetest voice. Finn cocked his head, looking at Trevor oddly. After a moment, he began scratching his ear with his hind leg, never taking an eye off of Trevor. I didn’t blame Finn at all. That tone was the same tone you would use to coo “here kitty, kitty,” if you had a knife behind your back.
“Come here, baby,” I said, clapping softly. “C’mere, Finn, boy.”
He gave me a doggy smile but didn’t move. His light brown eyes danced, and I knew he was being vintage stubborn again. I hoped Robby had had dinner—this could take a while. I put my hands in my pockets and jiggled them a bit, hoping Finn would get the hint.
Finn did, trotting over quickly. I rubbed his head, covering up his sniffing motions as he tried to inspect me thoroughly.
I smiled a smile I hadn’t smiled in a while, big, that made my cheeks crease with dimples. Most people didn’t even know I had dimples—just didn’t seem to be that much to smile about. “Mine,” I said to a scowling Trevor.
Neither Robert nor Tao deigned to talk to me in the elevator (I was a criminal now, after all), but they did help me carry Finn’s stuff. As I opened the trunk with the key fob, Robert whistled. “When did this happen, and how do I get to drive her?”
“Today, and as soon as I rewrite my will and die.”
He tossed the bag of dog food in the open trunk and sent me a glare. “Ungrateful beast.” He stomped off, followed closely by his partner.
Finn waited until I covered my passenger seat with an old sheet and then jumped in, sniffing suspiciously. “I know it’s not the old truck, boy, but we’re riding in style now.”
Robby blew me a kiss as he drove by. “Wait till Dad hears about this,” he said with a grin.
I sent him a one-fingered salute as he squealed out of the lot in his cruiser, and rubbed Finn’s head as he sniffed out the treat in my cargo pockets.
I’d had no doubt Finn would choose me over Trevor. But I was a big fan of insurance.
And it never hurt to carry bacon in your pockets.
Chapter 29
ANYONE WHO has ever driven from down south to way up north knows that the journey through Florida seems endless. I remember popping up in the backseat as a kid and asking the same question over and over again—“Where are we now?”—and getting a variation of the same answer, depending on who bothered to answer.
“Still in Florida, sweetie,” from my mom. “You want a snack?”
“Hush, boy. You ask that question every fifteen minutes.” My dad, looking relaxed and enjoying the ride.
“Sit down, moron. Mom, Mac is out of his seat belt!” Robert. Always the tattletale and extremely noogie-worthy.
I grinned at the memory, one square of film on a reel of many, a reel that made me the man I was today. It was the first memory of my mom I’d entertained in a while that me want to smile, not smash something. I enjoyed the moment, just for a moment, and gave Finn a quick rub between the ears. Unlike when I was a kid in the backseat, I knew exactly where I was, and that was twenty miles outside of Fort Drum. I was making good time.
After my victory at Trevor’s, the idea of going home held no appeal for me. After all, it was the start of my hard-earned vacation, which I would now be spending alone. So after a quick call to Nick and a stop home for a hastily packed bag, Finn, the new Audi and I had hit the road. I was not going to mope. I was going to enjoy my new car, an old friend, and have a good time.
My phone rang, and I looked down at the screen. It was him again. I made a face. At some point, I was going to have to answer. I pressed Ignore. But that time wasn’t now.
I drove until the sky darkened around me, dusky sunset pink fading to purple, trees and shrubs becoming undefined shapes that blurred as I flew past. In the encroaching darkness, I tried to turn on my headlights but couldn’t find the controls that would switch the running day lamps to headlights. Well. There were some things Bessie just couldn’t be beat on—simple operation was one of them. And she had come with a paper manual, not a link where I could download the p
df.
I decided now was a good a time as any to walk Finn and stop for gas, so I pulled off the next exit and into a Texaco. After filling up at the pump, I took Finn on a jaunt around the mostly concrete gas station for a whiff of the few patches of impeccably manicured grass. He sniffed each and every one before deciding on a good spot and lifted a leg shamelessly, plumed tail waving in the breeze. I made a quick trip inside for coffee and a muffin and tried to pull up the manual on my phone. It rang again just as the pdf was loading, and I growled.
“What?”
He didn’t bother with the pleasantries either.
“Where the hell are you?”
I craned my neck to see the visitor’s sign and had a secret moment of pleasure. I couldn’t help it. Some remnants of my father inside me enjoyed making good time.
“Somewhere outside St. Augustine,” I informed him.
He was silent for a moment. When he spoke, I could hear the barely restrained anger. “Why?”
“I’m on vacation, J. I’ve decided to enjoy it.”
“Apparently without me,” he said dryly.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“You can stop being a little prima donna and bring your butt back home.”
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “I still have to make it to North Carolina tonight, stud, to keep on schedule. Going backward is not an option.”
“Stud?” he repeated with a snarl.
I could picture his eyebrows scaling his forehead at my cavalier tone and resisted the urge to snicker. I did so enjoy getting under Jordan’s skin sometimes.
“Do you realize how worried I’ve been?” he asked. “I must have called you fifteen times in the past five hours. I called Drew and went by your apartment. I even went by your brother’s house. I didn’t know what to think. We were supposed to have breakfast. And talk. I’m trying to remember where in the plan involved you driving off to parts unknown, but I seem to be drawing a blank.”
“I needed… to go.”
“Without telling me?”
“Well, I couldn’t have been abducted,” I rationalized. “I did leave the key.”
“I saw.” When he spoke again, his voice sounded funny. “Does that mean what I think it does?”
Yes. The simple answer was yes, but I couldn’t quite get it out past my tight throat. Breaking up was easier to do without hearing his voice.
“So you’re breaking up with me.” He sighed. “Drew warned me about this.”
“This isn’t like the others,” I defended. “I’m not the one who….” I took in a deep breath. No, this wasn’t the way I wanted to end things. He hadn’t done anything wrong. There was nothing to feel angry about. It just wouldn’t work out. “Look. You have a baby now. A family. And it’s not like you were okay with our relationship anyway.”
“So you’re thinking for the both of us now? What will I do with all my extra time?” he asked, voice laced with sarcasm.
“Take your kid to the park. The swing set. I hear they like that kind of thing.”
“For heaven’s sakes, we don’t have to break up because Rachel’s pregnant. You don’t have to have a shotgun wedding anymore. We can coparent.” He suddenly paused, as if something had occurred to him. “Unless you’re against kids? We never talked about it, but you’re so good with your nephew I just assumed—”
“I’m not against kids,” I said. “This is just… all too much, okay?”
His voice was quiet when he spoke again. “Not okay. How can I give you the assurance you need if you won’t tell me what’s wrong?”
What was wrong? There was nothing he could say to make me believe our relationship was built to last. But he wasn’t quite done.
“As far as the gay thing goes, I think I’ve been doing pretty well. It’s an adjustment, yeah. But it’s still really new to me right now. This is a lot of change in a very short time. It’s not going to be smooth sailing.”
“You almost had a heart attack when I reached for your hand in the store. I’m not going to spend the next five years of my life resisting the urge to so much as brush lint off your shoulder if someone else can see.”
“Some people aren’t into PDA, Mac,” he said hotly. “Have you ever thought of that?”
“You didn’t seem to mind touching her hand at dinner.” Whoops. I resisted the urge to whack myself in the head. Maybe he wouldn’t catch that. I hurried on before that could sink in. “Besides, you got back in town a day before you were supposed to and you didn’t even tell me. What’s the deal?”
There was silence on his end. And mine.
“Problems dating a PI, 101,” he sighed.
“I am observant,” I agreed.
“She was having second thoughts about us breaking up. Now I know why. I owed it to her to talk about it.”
I was skeptical. “You had to meet with her to accomplish that?”
“Well, should I have broken it off by e-mail? Fax? Carrier pigeon? I almost married the woman. I think she deserved a face-to-face breakup.”
“It certainly didn’t look like you were breaking it off,” I accused.
This time, I didn’t quite get away with it. Maybe inside I didn’t want to.
“You were there?” The silence was charged. He wasn’t happy. Well, neither was I.
“Yes.”
“I’m not one of your goddamned clients, Mac. You have no right to spy on me.”
“You lied to me!”
He sighed, and I could picture him driving fingers through his hair. I knew him well enough by now to know he was doing exactly that.
“Well, we certainly have some trust issues to work on,” he said dryly.
“There’s nothing to work on.”
I started my new love, which would never leave me—Audi Darling—and finally stumbled on the headlamp switch. The interior ignition sound pinged insistently as xenon headlights blazed into the darkness.
“So that’s just it,” he said.
“That’s it.”
He made a sound of disgust. “I’ll call you when you cool off. You’re clearly in no mood to be reasonable.”
“Don’t,” I warned. “Don’t call me. Whatever we had… well, we tried. And it was a mistake.” I gritted out the word mistake, and my mouth felt like it was full of glass. Calling what we had shared a mistake felt like plunging a knife in my own chest.
After a beat of silence, he twisted that knife good. “Nothing lasts forever, I guess.”
“Exactly,” I managed. I didn’t have enough verve left to respond to his casual “See you” before he disconnected.
I tossed the phone into the cup holder. Nothing lasted forever. That included heartache, right?
Chapter 30
I TOOK Nick’s advice and sprang for the water taxi that would deliver me less than a mile from the B and B. It had hurt to leave Audi Darling in extended parking, but she and I had been soothed by me murmuring “Papa will be back soon” as the parking attendant rolled his eyes at us both.
Standing at the railing like most of the other passengers, I tunneled into my windbreaker a little more as the wind bit into me. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t just a chilling wind. It was crisp, revitalizing. Refreshing. I breathed in deep. Perhaps this had been a good idea after all.
I scanned the shore to see if I could see Nick, and before long, my eyes landed on a familiar figure. We locked eyes for a moment—he was so damned familiar to me. The dark-haired man standing beside him, hands protectively curled on the handles of Nick’s wheelchair? Not so much. My gaze darted between the two figures as the ferry groaned into port, and I was glad I would have at least until the slow-moving ferry docked to examine them at will (most likely ninety-eight days, the way the ship was moving). I wasn’t surprised he was tall—so was I—but everything else about him seemed the antithesis of me.
His muscles seemed to come from cutting wood instead of a gym, and he wore his flannel so comfortably I knew it was a usual look for h
im, if not a favorite. And he had a beard. My hand stroked over the smooth bottom half of my face. Hmph. Apparently Nick was now into the Paul Bunyan type. I couldn’t help the half smile that crept over my face as I looked at Nick again. The tips of his blond hair curled at his ears and lay against his jacket—a heavy blue thing that looked like it could withstand a windstorm.
I pointed at my jacket and pantomimed a shiver. Then shook my fist. I saw his middle finger flip up, and suddenly we were both grinning. The second my boots hit the dock, we were hugging, Finn running in crazy circles around our feet. I pulled back after realizing our hug had lasted indecently long, but Peyton was only smiling at us indulgently.
I swatted Nick on the shoulder. “It’s fucking freezing here!”
“Please. You’re lucky you beat the frost.”
“Lucky I brought my long johns.”
He shook his head. “A Florida jacket isn’t gonna do it, Mac. Between Peyton and I, I’m sure we can rustle you up some outerwear.”
I looked Peyton up and down. “Hrmm, I think it’s on you, Nick. Unless Peyton’s coat comes with some muscle pads to fill it out.”
Peyton’s belly laugh was as burly as the rest of him. “Good to see you, Mackenzie. You’re just like Nick said you’d be.”
I raised my eyebrows, but Nick only smiled, scratching the wildly sniffing Finn’s floppy ears.
“I couldn’t wait for you to get to the inn,” he said as Peyton tossed my duffle over his shoulder like it weighed nothing at all. “I connived and tricked him into letting me meet you at the dock.”
The walk up to the van was long and hazardous, and I soon realized why it had taken conniving to get Peyton to push Nick all that way. I was having a hard enough time walking, much less pushing another person. Finn spent most of it running ahead and then back down with a confused look on his face, as if to ask “What is taking so long?” On the way up, Peyton and Nick entertained me with stories of the guests and the inn, interrupting and complementing each other at the same time. And despite my initial balk at Peyton carrying my bag, by the time we crested the hill, I was beyond grateful.