by Jill Shalvis
“Creepy but correct.”
“The twins.”
“Too young for the first fire.”
“Stella and Gregg,” Joe said. “Neither of them smoke or have a size eleven-and-a-half shoe, though they have no alibi for either fire. Plus there’s the fact they lost a store of their own, and kept that quiet. Revenge.”
“Gee, Joe, you’re good at this. Maybe you should get a job here.”
“Ha ha. We need a real motive, Kenny.”
“And a real suspect.”
Joe leaned back in the chair, his head against the wall, his legs spread out in front of him. The exhaustion had set in. “My brain is so tired I could crash right here.”
“You shouldn’t even be here,” Kenny said. “Where’s your watch woman? I told Summer to keep you in bed.”
“That’s not really working out for us.”
Kenny looked disgusted with him. “You kept your mouth shut again, didn’t you?”
“Ironically, no. This time I opened up, all the way. And this time, unlike any of the others, I actually did the dumping.”
“Well, that was stupid,” Kenny said.
Joe had to agree.
That evening the phone rang while Joe was sharing a can of SpaghettiOs with Ashes.
“Summer needs you,” Chloe said without a greeting.
“What?”
“Just get here. Oh, and don’t tell her I called you.”
He paid yet another cab driver yet another ridiculous amount of money, and twenty minutes later got out in front of Chloe’s condo. “Where is she?” he asked when Chloe opened the door.
“In the kitchen. I burned dinner and the smoke alarm went off. She sort of freaked.”
He found Summer sitting on the counter, hugging her knees, staring out at the ocean. At the sight of him, she let out a long breath and shook her head at her cousin. “Damn it, Chloe.”
Chloe chewed her fingernail. “I’m so not sorry.”
“Well, I am.” Summer turned to Joe. “You didn’t have to come.”
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“Nothing.”
Chloe snorted. “You had a damn panic attack.”
“Did not.”
“Right.” Chloe rolled her eyes at Joe. “I think I’ll leave her to you.”
When she was gone, Summer sighed. “I really am sorry. It’s just that the alarm triggered some stupid response in me and in a heartbeat, I was back at that warehouse fire.”
“There weren’t any alarms at that fire.”
Her eyes were clouded. “No, but when I woke up in the hospital, Tina was there, holding my hand. It was a few days later, and I was so groggy. I was awake for a few minutes before she realized, and she was talking to someone about the fire, and the lack of an alarm. I guess that stuck with me.”
“Was she talking to your mom?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t remember. My head hurt. God, it hurt so bad.”
“You took a good hit,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.” She rubbed her chest as if that hurt too. “I was pinned on the floor of the warehouse. Couldn’t breathe.”
Joe blinked. This wasn’t a hospital memory, but from the actual fire. It was coming back to her?
“I can still hear my dad.” Her voice broke. “I tried to get to him but the beam held me down.”
Small tremors wracked her body and he limped closer, knowing she’d never remembered past this point. “Red, don’t. It’s okay—”
“I screamed. I wanted help. And through the smoke I saw someone, only they didn’t come help me.” She clapped her hand over her mouth and stared at him. “Oh my God.”
He set down the crutches and put both hands on her arms, gently squeezing. “It was me. You saw me. I came up those stairs after you and was there right after you got hit.”
“Yes, I could hear you calling my name behind me. I could hear you pounding your way up the stairs.” She fisted her hands in his shirt and clung. “But in front of me, I saw someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes tight and shook her head. “I don’t know. But someone else was there, Joe. I know it.”
“Your mother?”
“No. No, she couldn’t have been.”
“She’s covering for something.”
“Someone.” Summer dropped her head to his chest and drew a shuddery breath. “I think she’s covering for someone.”
“Tina?” Joe asked.
“Well, look at my timing,” Tina said, and came into the room. “Chloe called your mom, darling, but she’s not home, so you get me. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. There’s a jackknifed semi on I-5.” She looked from Joe’s face to Summer’s, then back to Joe’s. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“We’re talking about the first warehouse fire,” Joe said.
Tina’s smile faded. “Oh.”
“Someone else was at the fire that day,” Summer said.
“Are you sure?” Tina’s face was all concern as she hugged a clearly shaken Summer. “Darling, are you sure? Or are you wishful thinking?”
“There’s nothing wishful about it. Someone else was there.” Summer stared at Joe as the implications sank in. She was now a witness to a crime. To a possible murder. “Do you believe me?”
He looked into her eyes. “Yes.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“How about a hot bubble bath?” Tina asked. “That’ll soothe your mind enough to help you sleep later, at least.”
She nodded, and let Tina lead her out toward the hallway.
Joe knew she’d want to be alone. And wasn’t that half the problem. He had no choice but to watch her walk away, and he had to wonder, when the hell would he get used to it?
They spent long hours working on the accounting discrepancies, not an easy process. Summer, Camille, and Tina started by figuring out which dates had cash missing from the deposit. This in itself was a huge chore, as the original deposit slips had not been kept with the daily records, but in a filing cabinet. Actually they’d been literally thrown into the bottom drawer and never looked at again. All the hundreds and hundreds of little white strips were in there like a tossed salad.
Summer had taken the job of pulling them out and putting them in order to compare with the bank statements. After that, she’d go back and figure out who had been working on each day, who had closed, and who had gone to the bank with the day’s deposit. She didn’t know what she’d find, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it.
At the moment, Summer and Camille sat on the floor of the back office, alone. Tina had gone to pick up lunch. Chloe was working the front of the store with the twins. Summer was doing her best not to think about Joe. “This is shocking,” she said flipping through receipts that dated back fifteen years. “You’re both such smart, modern women. How did you get so completely record challenged? I mean, fifteen years, Mom.”
“I know it looks bad, but the truth is, once a year we bring our accountant the general ledger from the computer printouts. He’s never asked for paper backup. We never needed these little slips, you’re lucky we even kept them.”
“We could call the accountant for help now.”
“Sure, but he’d cost a fortune, not to mention think we were the biggest idiots in town.”
Summer’s stomach rolled as she listened to her mother’s reasoning. Was embarrassment the real issue here, or was there something else?
God, she hated this doubt, this never-ending fear.
Camille was sitting on the floor. “What I don’t get is why you haven’t run screaming for the hills.” She wore a peasant blouse and a full denim skirt that was splayed around her, and four beaded bracelets up her right arm that jingled together with her every movement. “I’m beginning to think you’re enjoying yourself here.”
Summer looked into Camille’s smiling but baffled expression. “I am, actually.”
“You weren’t
at first.”
“I know, but that was my fault. I kept you all at a distance. I’m good at that.”
“What changed?”
“I don’t think it’s a what.” Summer set down a fistful of deposit slips. “I think it’s a who.”
“Joe?”
Summer held her suddenly butterfly-ridden stomach. “Yes,” she said in a hushed whisper as if giving away a soul-deep secret. It felt like one.
“Oh, honey. He’s just what I would have wanted for you. Caring and compassionate, strong and kind. Like you.”
Summer was so stunned that for a moment she couldn’t speak. “You think I’m all those things?”
“I know it. Your dad used to say it all the time.”
“Mom.” Summer shook her head. “How come we never talk about him?”
Camille closed her eyes. “Too painful.”
“It’d be less painful to let it out. I want to let it out. I’ve been thinking about everything for so long now: Dad, life, love. How to make the motions of going through it all.”
“Having any luck?”
“No, and I’m going to lose Joe forever if I don’t figure this out.”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s a matter of getting past the fear.”
Summer laughed. “You have a book for that?”
Her mom remained serious. “Maybe you just do it. Maybe you just leap. Without looking.”
“That sounds painful.”
“Not as painful as not living,” Camille said. “Right?”
Just when Summer thought her mom not quite in touch, she went ahead and said something so profound it set everything in its place.
“Of course,” her mom added. “It’s one thing to say leap. Another entirely to do it.”
There came a soft knock on the door. They looked up to see Kenny standing in jeans and a polo shirt, looking tall and extremely GQish. No clipboard in sight. “Hi,” he said, eyes on Camille. “Busy?”
“Uh, yes, actually,” Camille said.
“No.” Summer snagged the towering stack of deposit slips from in front of her mom and gathered them into her own pile.
Camille snatched them back.
“Mom.” Summer leaned in and whispered, “Do it. Leap.”
Camille stared at her, then bit her lip as she tipped her head to Kenny. “I guess maybe I’m suddenly not so busy after all.”
Kenny crouched next to her. “I’m off today. Thought maybe we could go have lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“Sure, you remember, where we sit across from each other over food and talk. Smile. Even laugh.”
Camille stared at him in indecision.
Kenny just waited with that endless patience of his.
“This is such a bad idea,” Camille finally said. “It’ll just lead to one thing or another…” She broke off, leaving Summer to wonder what exactly those “things” were, and had her mother and Kenny already done them?
Oh boy. Summer began to get up but Camille put her hand on Summer’s arm. “I thought we agreed not to see each other anymore.”
“No,” Kenny said. “We agreed to let you think about it. Me, I’m done thinking. I want to see you after this investigation, no matter the outcome. I want to see you a lot.”
“When I’m sixty, you’re going to be fifty-three.”
“And when I’m one hundred you’re going to be one hundred and seven. Looks like we both know our math.”
“Oh my God.” Camille looked at Summer, just a little scared and a lot lost.
Leap, Summer mouthed.
Camille looked disconcerted at having her own advice flung back at her. “You should go out with a woman who will marry you and give you children,” she said to Kenny.
“Camille,” he answered with a low laugh. “I’m looking for a sandwich and some conversation. Not a white dress and a white cake and a new set of china.”
Camille hesitated. “Well, I guess under those conditions, I could use a little nutrition.”
He stood and held out his hand for hers.
“Hang on a minute.” Camille pulled Summer aside. “Thanks for lending me some of your endless courage.”
Courage? Is that what her mother thought she had?
“You’re so full of life.” Camille smiled, even as her eyes went misty. “So like your dad.”
Summer’s heart filled. “Mom.”
“It’s true. He’d never have done as I did, shutting myself off. Especially not from you. Promise you won’t take after me and shut yourself off,” Camille whispered fiercely.
Summer leaned in and kissed her mom, on first one cheek, and then the other. “I love you.”
Camille gathered Summer in for a powerful hug, then pulled back, cupping her daughter’s face. “We’re going to be okay.”
“Yes. Now go take your leap.”
When Camille and Kenny left, Summer looked around at the messy room. Now it was her turn to leap. Without looking. Without a safety net. Without a damn thing but her so-called courage.
That night, Summer went to her cottage instead of to Chloe’s. She needed some clothes, and some alone time. It was dark and quiet, and feeling mentally and physically exhausted, she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes, telling herself she just needed a moment.
She woke up in the middle of the night to her cell beeping, signifying a new text message.
In the ensuing silence, her stomach clenched. It was never good to get a message in the middle of the night. It meant someone was hurt, sick, or dead.
Or it was Chloe, wondering where the hell she was.
She reached for the cell phone on the coffee table, retrieving the message with shaking fingers.
I’ve asked you nice. Now I’m not asking, I’m telling. LEAVE.
Chapter 25
Her heart pumped hard as Summer punched in Joe’s number.
“Walker,” he said, bringing her out of her mindless panic like no one else’s ever had.
He sounded sleepy. He sounded…warm and rumpled, and damn, she’d missed him. She’d missed him so much. “It’s just me.”
“A bad dream?”
She didn’t question how he knew something was wrong, it was the middle of the night. But even if it hadn’t been, he’d have known because he’d pretty much always been that tuned in to her. “I have a problem.”
“Define problem.”
No longer sounding sleepy, he spoke in his fire marshal–calm, alert voice. She knew his eyes would be flat and unreadable. “I received a new text message.” She read it to him.
“Where are you?”
Damn, she’d known he’d ask. “Don’t get mad.”
“Red—”
“I’m at the cottage.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Oh, no. Don’t drive. I’m sorry, I didn’t think—I should have called Kenny. I just got spooked. Anyway, it can wait until morning—”
“Red.”
She gulped in a breath. “Yeah?”
“Lock your doors.”
“I did.”
“Keep your blinds shut.”
Oh, God. “They are.”
“Keep breathing, I’m already in my car.”
“But you shouldn’t drive.”
“Too late.”
“You have a clutch.”
“Yeah.” His voice was tight now, probably with pain. “I’ll be fine.” Indeed she could hear the engine roar to life. She realized she was rubbing her chest where it had pulled tight like a fist. “I’m sure I’m just fine,” she said.
“I’m sure you are, too, though we’re going to talk about why you’re there alone.” There was a slight edge to his fire marshal cool now. Temper, though not aimed at her. Okay, maybe some aimed at her.
“Where are you with the books?” he asked.
He was trying to keep her calm. Distracted. “Not far enough. I brought the stuff with me.”
“How long until you have a list of everyone who made a deposit with missing
cash?”
“Maybe never,” she admitted. “I’m discovering that there’s often no way to tell who made what deposit, and on the days everyone was at work…”
“You can’t even guess.”
“No. Because everyone goes to the bank, it just depends on who feels like it.”
He was silent a long moment. Thinking. God knew about what.
She voiced her fear. “I’m thinking I’m hitting a nerve with someone.”
“You certainly have a knack for it, Were you sleeping when the call came in tonight?”
“Dreaming,” she said. “Joe—”
“Yeah?”
I missed you. I miss you so damn much. “Nothing.”
“Jesus, Red. Just say what you’re thinking. It can’t be that hard to level with me.”
It never had been, but now there were new and fairly terrifying feelings on the line, and she hadn’t exactly dealt with them.
“Let me cut you a break since I figure you could use one,” he said quietly. “I miss you. Is that anywhere in the ballpark of what you wanted to say?”
“You always could read my mind,” she said shakily.
“I miss your smile,” he said quietly. “I miss your laugh. I miss the way you make me laugh. I miss you teasing me, making sure I don’t take myself too seriously. And I miss having you touch me at night. I really miss that.”
“You have all the words,” she whispered, her throat tight. “I don’t know how you come up with such things.”
“Just open your mouth and let it roll out.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“You could have called the police. You could have called Kenny. Or anyone. But you called me. There’s a reason for that, Red.”
“I wanted you.” The words were on her tongue and out her mouth before she realized it. “I got scared and you were the only person I wanted. I miss you too. Thanks for doing this, coming out here in the middle of the night.”
“Don’t thank me, I haven’t yelled at you for being alone yet. There’s a bunch of no-parking signs posted on your street.”
“They’re going to repave or something.”