by Amber Malloy
“Okay.”
“Yesterday we did those runs for you to the storage facility.”
Cayden stepped out of the back doors. The sleek, silver gown clung to the curves of her body. Levi tried to listen to Fernando but couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
“…and when I couldn’t find you, I told the police that it was a run for the resort.”
“I’m sorry.” He turned to his barn manager. “What?”
Fernando laughed and started over. “The second shift of guys we sent to storage got stopped by the cops. I tried to call you but ended up dealing with it myself.”
“Did they take anything out of that unit?”
“No, they did what you said and just snapped some pictures.”
“Great,” he groaned. “If that was the bad, what was the worst?” The music changed and the bride came out of the double doors. Pretty in an unconventional sort of way, Deny walked down the aisle. Once Teddy handed her over to Wes, even from his vantage point he could tell the couple fit.
“We found Desi. He was a hill mound away from the other pony.”
“Throat cut?”
“Yes, just like Lucy.” Fernando dug in his front pocket and took out a pack of gum. “A lot of weird stuff happening lately, boss.” He offered Levi a stick, but he shook his head before Fernando unwrapped one and popped into his mouth.
“Yeah, a lot,” he confirmed.
“We’re going to bury Lucy, then dig a grave for Desi. I don’t blame you for being distracted … she looks beautiful.” Fernando smacked on his gum. The grating sound set his teeth on edge.
“Yeah, the bride looks nice,” Levi agreed.
The barn manager patted his back on his way past. “We both know that’s not who you’re staring at.”
He could still hear his dry laughter even after it faded.
Not the only one mesmerized by Cayden, he noticed the groomsmen couldn’t take their eyes off of her. With the belief that her dress would be the death of him, he sighed and got to work on the horses.
****
The wedding went off without a hitch. After Teddy surprised Deny by walking her down the aisle, Wes finally introduced the pop princess to his parents. In that moment, Deny became the sweet, humble woman Cayden knew she could be. She imagined the tech guru’s family appreciated their son’s pick for a bride … at least for the time being.
Back in the palatial suite, Cayden helped the Deny out of her dress for her final good-bye. They fought over her choice in clothing. In the end, Cayden won with a pink fifties-style dress. Either that or an obnoxious track suit that had Bought Ass on the back.
Without the happy couple’s knowledge, she had a professional photographer from Vogue take their pictures. Once Wes and Deny were off on their honeymoon, People magazine would publish their private wedding portrait.
“I didn’t think this woodsy scene would work, but I love it.”
Cayden buttoned the lace on the back of her dress.
“Do you think his parents liked me, I mean for real?”
As she moved on to Deny’s hair, she grunted out her response. Wild curls worked loose from her chignon. Cayden slicked back the sides and pinned her hair up. After she got her desired look, Cayden placed the pillbox hat on the bride’s head and pulled the tiny veil down.
“Are you sure? This doesn’t seem like me.”
“Do you feel pretty?”
“Yes, of course.” Deny studied herself in the mirror. “I just look…”
“Like an adult?” Cayden offered.
“Sophisticated.” Deny whipped around and grabbed her by the arms. “For the sake of full disclosure, there’s something I really need to tell you, but you can’t be mad.” The pop star nodded her head quickly to get her consent. “Promise me.”
Exhausted from the wedding week, Cayden doubted she could remember her name let alone make another promise. “Just tell me.”
“The hot, blond dude, he’s your partner, right?”
“Levi, yeah.”
Cayden grabbed Deny’s flower bouquet and ushered her out of the suite. They hurried into the open elevator.
“Well, remember when you were transferring all of your duties over to Gil maybe four year ago? It was after my second stint in rehab and I was staying in your New York apartment…”
Once they got to the front of the resort, the guest and wedding party waited outside the main entrance to see the couple off.
“Okay?”
“Um … well, Levi came to the apartment looking for you and I may have told him you were spending the night with Gil. I meant to say you were pulling an all-nighter with him, but it came out wrong.” She flashed Cayden her most endearing smile. “You forgive me, right?”
If Cayden remembered correctly Levi had just gotten back stateside from his last tour. Before he returned, he wrote and called her constantly. They never made concrete plans but just assumed they would be together. She’d begun to tie up loose ends with her corporations and relocate to the resort full-time. Of course all of this occurred before their big fight.
As Wes walked toward them, Deny frowned. “Come on, we’re cool, right?”
“No,” Cayden said though gritted teeth, “we’re not.” Controlled on the outside, inside Cayden wanted to rage. She never knew what caused Levi’s feelings for her to flip. After all this time, Deny finally ’fessed up and gave her the final piece to the puzzle.
“But I was high.” The bride’s face twisted into her famous video vixen pout. “You can’t hold me responsible. Besides, I didn’t know you two had a thing. You never told me.”
“What’s going on?” Wes joined them. Probably sensing the tension, he put his hand on his new wife’s back. “Is everything okay?”
“That’s not true, you knew.” Cayden handed him the bouquet. “You guys have a good time.”
“Hey, give me some credit, I could have just stayed quiet!” Deny called out.
Barely resisting the urge to flip off the pop idiot, Cayden abandoned her bridesmaid’s duties and left. Not only were her actions calculating but malicious. For her to imply to anyone she screwed Gil didn’t seem innocent at all.
As she stomped down the hall, a war of words at what she should have said played in her head. Since Deny rarely gave a crap about anyone else, cussing her out would have been wasted.
“The crew almost has the reception area broken down.” Levi caught her in the lobby. “So I came up the back to take you home. Whoa.” He grabbed her arm. Once he saw her face, he said, “What’s up?”
The burn to confront him simmered in her gut. On steady ground with him for first times in years, Cayden didn’t have any fight left. If only he had asked her about Gil back then.
“Tired,” Cayden lied without meeting his eyes. She didn’t want to change their good vibes.
“Pretty sure that’s not it.”
“These shoes hurt like a mutha—”
He spun her around and pinned her to the wall. Face-to-face for the first time in days, he leaned in and kissed her, slowly moving his lips until her body went limp against his. Cayden easily melted into him.
“Your right eyebrow twitches when you’re not telling the truth. It’s been that way forever.”
“Good to know.”
He touched his forehead to hers. “Slide your foot up the wall.”
Always game to see where he wanted to go, she put all her weight on her right foot and moved the left one up. He fumbled with the straps of her shoes.
“Deny and Wes just left and you didn’t say good-bye.” He gazed into her eyes while unbuckling her heel. “Next foot,” he said, slipping it off. Cayden put her bare foot on the floor and gave him the other one. “Anything I should now about?”
“Nope.” Once Levi finished, he held both her shoes in his hand. “Now what? I can’t walk back to the cabin like this.”
He held her by the waist and led her to the east end of the resort.
“Well, in that case”—the sexy
man moved his hand down to her ass as he pushed open the side doors—“your chariot awaits.”
Stepping into the cart with his help, she bit back a smile. Before he ran over to the driver’s side, he slipped off his plaid jacket shirt and wrapped it over her bare shoulders.
“Are we good on that dress?” Levi asked, after he came around the front and started the small engine. “Because I want to burn it.”
Form-fitted and slinky, her slit nearly reached her thigh. Underwear didn’t seem to be an option. “Would it kill you to pay me a compliment?” She laughed.
“Yes, yes, it would.” He put the cart in gear and drove onto the gravel road toward the cabins.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Early morning sun blared through the window, but the incessant pounding woke him up. He rapidly blinked a few times to get his bearings. Last night they came back to Cayden’s cabin to go over Shana’s case. The more information they gathered, the clearer it became that they had nothing concrete. The inner workings of a sixteen-year-old girl would remain a mystery with all her secrets gone.
Levi grabbed the sheet to cover himself up and stumbled out of bed. Stubbing his toe against her dresser, he hopped to the front of her cabin. “How the hell did you forget your key again?” He opened the door to the cheery face of DA Taylor Garber.
For a good thirty seconds, which felt similar to eternity, she stood on the porch gaping at him. “I was looking for your … uh, partner.” She swallowed. “I was hoping she could talk some sense into you concerning the conference room, but—”
“Pretty sure the phone would have worked just as good.”
“I didn’t know you were partners in this way. How long?” She wiped at the non-existent tears in her eyes. The dramatic act reminded him of Meghan. His high school girlfriend hadn’t crossed his mind in years.
“Let’s just say it’s complicated.” Too old for this type of nonsense, Levi sighed.
“If I would have known, I wouldn’t have ever slept with you. I thought you were a good guy.”
“This doesn’t make me a bad one.”
“I wonder what the administrative board would say if the they knew.” Anger contorted her pixie face while she threatened him.
Not exactly a deep person, Levi at one point did rate Taylor’s moral compass higher than zero. “Considering that I’m grown, none of their damn business! I’ll tell Cayden you stopped by.” He began to shut the door.
“Slugging Dale and now this…” She gestured toward Cayden’s cabin, fumbling with the strap of her purse. “Maybe you were never right for us in the first place.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled before he shut the door. “I tried to warn you the first time you asked.”
Hungover from lack of sleep, he walked to the kitchen.
“That awkward shit was fun to witness,” Cayden said. The small, silk robe barely covered her beautiful behind as she turned around to hand him a mug. “Went to your house for coffee. I ran out.”
“Taylor wanted you to talk sense into me by allowing the mayor’s council to come back to Goosebay Lake for their weekly meetings.” He dropped the sheet from his waist.
“Then I must thank you for taking that particular bullet for me.”
Levi reached around to grab a chunk of her ass before he backed her into the counter. “You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”
****
Winnetka, Illinois, became the home of Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the prime destination for more than one John Hughes film. Perfect suburban utopia for plenty of grand teenage angst and one third grade teacher, Mary Donahue.
After a forty-mile trek, they arrived at the school a little after the last bell. Grade school never changed. Short lockers lined the halls along with the smell of cheap cleaning products. They waited for missing teacher Ray Donahue’s wife in her classroom.
“Not saying I hated school, but…” Levi wrestled with a small chair. “I hate school.”
Cayden studied the homework that covered the walls. Mary Donahue’s move from St. Geneva may have been far, but not far enough to outrun her past.
“Hi! I’m sorry, I don’t remember having an appointment.” A petite, middle-aged woman with girlish looks stood at the door. Cayden crossed the room to greet her, while Levi got stuck in the child-sized chair. He struggled with the seat as Mary laughed at his predicament. “More of the fathers get stuck that way. Here let me help.” She hurried over and pulled down on the desk part while he tried to sit up. The seat fell with a clunk. “There you go.”
“Sorry,” he admitted with the good decency to look pitiful.
“This is Levi, and I’m Cayden. I used to go to Chesterfield, with Shana Waters.”
“Oh.” Mary’s round face fell. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“We found her,” Levi stepped in, “that day, and we think you may know something to exonerate your husband.”
Mary took a deep sigh and sank down in one of the kid’s desk. “Raymond was a good man. We were both teachers, so there wasn’t a whole lot of money. When he got that job at Chesterfield…”
“Good salary?” Cayden pressed.
“Yes, for us it was a fortune. We were happy we could finally start the family we wanted … but Chesterfield changed him.” She gazed out of the window. Branches from the oak tree tapped against the pane. They waited for her to finish. “Withdrawn and fidgety, I thought he was having an affair. When I confronted him, he promised that wasn’t the case. All he would say was that a little girl was in trouble.”
As a single tear slipped down Mary’s face, Cayden touched her shoulder. “Did he say who she was?”
“No. He promised me he would tell me everything once he got her help. Then like that”—she snapped her fingers—“he was gone.”
“What do you think happened?” Levi passed her the Kleenex box from her desk.
Mary grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her tears. “Truthfully, I think whoever murdered that girl murdered him first.”
Unable to add anything else about her husband’s disappearance, they gave Mary their contact information and said their good-byes.
“Wow, is it always like that?” Levi asked.
“What?” They stepped outside while Cayden checked her phone and saw no less than five missed calls from Deny and three messages.
“Exposing a raw nerve.” He shrugged.
“Pretty much.”
“Hey!” He put his hand over the screen of her phone. “I’m pouring my heart out here.”
“Sorry.” She smirked. “Please continue to tell me how Mary’s pain makes you feel.”
“What about how it makes you feel? How many of these have you done?”
Too many. “A few,” Cayden admitted.
“It’s sad.”
Uncomfortable under the weight of his scrutiny, she tried to move around him, but Levi stepped in front of her.
“Look, if we don’t find something soon we’re going to have to stop.”
“You don’t think we’re making progress?” she asked, confused.
“She didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already suspect. Besides, it felt like we were snatching out her heart just bringing up her husband. I mean shit, the woman can’t even move on.”
“True.” Cayden chewed on her bottom lip. She noticed the teacher’s ring-less finger. After seven years, Mary could have declared Ray Donohue dead but she didn’t. “We have a timeline that makes better sense, now.” She pulled up the crime report on her screen and read it. “According to Mary, Mr. Donahue went to a parent teacher meeting around 7:00 PM and they lived fifteen minutes away. Shana was seen in the administration building where his office was held around that time, but her last sighting was at the library later that night.”
“Which means, what? She didn’t meet with him?”
“According to his employee card, he never swiped back onto property that day.”
Levi gave her a lopsided grin.
&nb
sp; “What?” she asked him about his quick change in moods.
“So then Dale could be on the hook for … two murders?” He held up the number on his hand while his smile turned downright devilish.
“Biased much?”
“All jokes aside.” He laughed before he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Dale’s a douche and I’m sure he should be in jail for something.”
Darkness ate away at the light in the sky. She was positive they would be stuck in the middle of rush hour traffic because they were a good hour away from home. Levi opened the truck’s door for her.
“Maybe we’ll find something at the storage facility?” She got into the passenger side.
“Yeah, about that…” Levi said before he shut the door on any further explanation.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They stopped off at Happy’s Cheeseburger Joint before they parked outside of Park It Storage. Endorphins from the burger washed over her. Cayden hadn’t eaten the greasy mess since junior year of high school.
“Aren’t you going to get that?”
She shook her head at Deny’s eighth call, letting it go to voicemail.
“Whatever you guys fought over must have been epic.”
“Good attempt at digging,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food.
“Fine, don’t share.” Levi crumbled up the greasy wrapper.
“Tell me again why we’re staking out the storage facility?” she inquired, glad to change the subject.
“We’re waiting for a shift change.” Finished with the horrible junk food that would force her into the gym for a week straight, Cayden let Levi grab her garbage. “The guy who works second shift is Shawn’s brother-in-law.”
“The chief of police?”
“Yeah. He has a criminal record … the whole nine. Anyway, he called the cops on our workers the other day and I doubt it was a coincidence.”
Cayden sipped at her cherry bomb blast, regretting while enjoying every sugary sip.
“Also…” He showed her a text from Greg.
“He probably wants to talk about the administrative council,” she said, reading the screen that requested Levi’s services for a group hunting guide.