Strict Confidence

by Skye Warren

  Everything is wrong, wrong, wrong.

  “You aren’t taking care of Paige out of the goodness of your heart. This is a transaction. It has always been a transaction. So don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I see right through you.”

  Tears prick my eyes. Maybe he can see right through me. I feel like I’m made of tissue paper that’s gotten wet with sea spray. I’m going to tear in half. He will see everything I’m afraid of—being left alone, having no family, going hungry. All of my fears exposed for him to ridicule. “Beau, I do care about you.”

  “Which one is it, sweetheart? Am I Beau or Mr. Rochester? Are you going to get down on your knees or are you going to spread your legs? Either way I’m getting what I want.”

  Pain lances through me. “Stop.”

  “No, you were right. I should be asking these questions. What are we doing together? As a nanny you’re doing a great job, but as a fuck partner, well, let’s just say I’m used to a little more excitement. So which one are you getting paid to do?”

  Water and salt. I don’t know whether it’s the ocean or my tears. I lick my trembling lips. “We can’t have sex again. I can’t feel this way again.”

  A cold smile. “That answers my question.”

  “Beau—”

  “What if I were to terminate our contract?”

  “No.”

  “The irony is that it would be for your own good. Mateo warned me. He even warned you, not that it did anything. You thought you could make me fall in love with you.”

  “You said you loved me.” I love you, damn you.

  “I thought you were going to die. Now you’re not. The moment passed.”

  I want so badly to be numb, to have that ice around my feelings. The words he’s saying are like hot pokers, burning into my heart, leaving marks forever. “You’re only saying this to protect me. To protect yourself.” Tears make him a wavy form against the backdrop of the ocean. “Because you think you don’t deserve to be happy. You do deserve it. I love you, Beau. I love you.”

  “I’ve heard that before. Emily told me she loved me before I left for California. Then she fucked my brother.” He gives me a hard look all the way down my body, a look that remembers every single kiss and touch we’ve shared together. “Rhys would have liked you.”

  It’s a slap in the face. I stagger back as if it’s physical instead of just a handful of words. “This isn’t you. And I’m not her.”

  “No,” he agrees. “I would have taken care of her, even after she married my brother. If I’d known what was happening in that house, I would have taken her away. Protected her. Saved her. But you aren’t her, are you?”

  My tears feel like acid, burning my eyes. “Stop.”

  “I’m not going to terminate the contract,” he says softly. “But then you already knew that. Because Paige needs you. And the craziest fucking part of all, I think I need you, too.”

  He turns and walks back to the inn, no limp whatsoever, leaving me reeling, the world tilting, my feet stumbling in the powder-soft sand, hardly able to breathe for how much it hurts.

  He told me his love was dangerous.

  Maybe he was telling the truth. It doesn’t start fires. It doesn’t start wars.

  It breaks hearts. Mine feels shattered.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Beau Rochester

  It’s one thing to know the house burned to the ground. One thing to watch it coming down on top of us like hell turned inside out.

  Looking at the charred remains is another thing entirely. I’m still not used to it.

  I can see from the graveled drive where I stand at my car with my hands shoved into the pockets of my jeans. No person’s looked at the ocean from this vantage point in a century. When it was first built, Coach House must have seemed like an intrusion. An unnatural barrier between the flat of the cliff and the view beyond.

  Now its burned husk is a terrible compromise. It hasn’t returned the land to its resting state, but it’s not whole, either.

  It begs to be rebuilt. Or leveled completely.

  There’s a hell of a lot more left than you’d think would be in a burned-down house. Support beams slash through empty window frames like broken teeth. Ancient insulation boils over cracks in the walls. The roof collapsed down the center, leaving a clear path to the ocean.

  The fire chewed up the house and spit it out.

  It almost took me with it. It almost took Jane.

  There’s a sense that the house tried to eat itself to swallow its secrets. It would make me sound crazy to say it out loud. The house isn’t sentient, but that’s how it feels. It didn’t do a particularly good job of the project, though. There’s too much left. Too much scorched wood and blown-out insulation and paper scraps curled over everything.

  Instead of consuming its secrets, it’s exposed them—their charred remains floating in the salt-tinged wind, waiting for someone to read them.

  It would be the most unsettling thing about today if I hadn’t just left Jane on the beach.

  Left her there, with tears in her eyes and her body half folded like I’d hit her. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m not my brother. I’m not Rhys.

  But that’s bullshit, because I’m just as bad. Just as unpredictable. Worse.

  I said that I didn’t love her. I lied to Jane’s face. What I said in the literal heat of the moment when the house was burning down was the truth, but I called it a lie.

  What the hell kind of consummate bastard follows that up with I need you?

  The kind I am, apparently.

  I’ve been staring through the punched-out hole in the wreckage of the house for too long. It’s not what I came here for. For several long moments, I can’t remember why I came. Who gives a damn? I never should have walked away from Jane the way I did.

  My first priority should be driving back down from the cliffs and offering her an explanation. But there’s no explanation I’m willing to give. I won’t subject either of us to that scene.

  Paige is the one who needs her, not me.

  And the last thing Jane needs is for her asshole of a boss to come knock on her door with his heart in his hands, begging for her kindness and her body.

  She’d forgive me, too. That’s the part that makes me feel sickest of all. That diary punched a hole through her understanding of the past. Then I said things that made it worse.

  The things that came out of my mouth. Jesus.

  I walk around the corner of the house, revealing myself to the wide-open landscape. The hair on the back of my neck stands up… as if someone’s watching.

  I glance along the line of the cliffs.

  Along the tree line. Everywhere a person could be.

  There’s too much destruction to see anything clearly. In the bedrooms the inner walls stay partially standing. All it takes to get inside is pushing back damaged siding. It crumbles under my hands. A pocket watch peers out at me from the floor of the room. This was Rhys and Emily’s bedroom. I push inside, and the feeling of being watched dissipates.

  Paranoia brought on by stress. That’s all it is.

  My feet sink into the heat-weakened hardwood. If I’m not careful, I’ll fall straight down to the cellar. Every footstep has to be considered. It doesn’t take my mind off the prickling sensation all down my spine. If someone is here, on the property…

  A gust of wind moves through the gaps in the structure. Its touch chills the back of my neck. Under my shirt. Everywhere under my coat. I feel like a ghost just walked through me. I feel like a ghost would have done less harm to Jane, unless it was a ghost who set the fire.

  I’ve been back to the scene once before. A deputy escorted me around while I threw whatever I could find into boxes to bring to the inn, but this is the first time I’ve had free rein.

  Then I was restricted to the least damaged part of the house. Now I wade deeper into the area blackened and weak with fire, everything still smelling of smoke seven days later.

  The glint of cherry wood re
flects the sunlight through its layer of soot. I climb over rubble and unrecognizable burned furniture. It’s my desk. Rhys’s desk, technically. I didn’t want to change too much when I moved in. Paige had been through enough changes in her life without also watching me redecorate her childhood home. But I’d never been completely comfortable in another man’s home. Especially that man. My brother. We’d been competitive at best. Toxic and violent at worst. I always felt the lingering dark energy, a kind of subtle menace. The knowledge that he would fuck someone over if he could get away with it.

  Somehow, the light has chased away that feeling.

  Soot dances in the sun, surprisingly active, almost playful. Rooms that were heavy with history are now a pile of wood and fabric, made ordinary by ruin.

  The fire was devastating, but one good thing came of it.

  It cleansed the house, more effectively than a tidal wave.

  The desk fell through the ceiling of the dining room. I climb over singed chairs and the large, cracked table to get there. My leg protests every goddamn crater. I used to ski the black diamonds in Vail. Now I’m reduced to leaning heavily on disjointed furniture to move around. When I first fractured my leg, it was a straightforward recovery. The strain of the fire, of being trapped under a beam, has irrevocably fucked it up. I need weeks of bed rest, according to the doctors. Months of physical therapy. Instead I’d checked myself out against their advice the next day. Paige needs me. Jane needs me, too.

  There were two large flat-screen monitors on the desk. My computer’s tower underneath. None of that is anywhere to be seen. It’s probably under some of this other debris. The papers I’d been working on are gone. Burned to dust, probably.

  The bottom of the desk has crumpled like an accordion.

  The top is still intact. I open the first drawer, revealing a keyboard that seems barely bruised from the fall. The next drawer used to contain manila folders stacked neatly. Now they’re crammed full of papers spilling over each other. I pick up one piece of paper. It’s the court documents granting me guardianship of Paige. Her birth certificate. I gather the papers roughly and stuff them into the manila folder. The fact that they managed to escape both the fire and whatever chemicals the firefighters used to douse the flames is a minor miracle.

  “Not safe for you to be climbing around in there.”

  I make a sharp turn at the voice. My foot cracks through the floor and I almost drop the folder. It’s not a ghost who stands outside the dining room window—or the wall where the window once stood. It’s the fire chief. Hanging close behind him is the bastard Joe Causey.

  “No, Chief,” I say. “It isn’t.” Alan Diebold has been the fire chief in Eben Cape for about as long as I can remember. He’s personally attended most of the fires in the area. People still talk about the one he missed. The old bookstore, down on the main street in town. He was in the hospital with a heart attack. “Just wanted to see what was left.”

  “Not much,” Diebold says, his tone grim.

  The corner of Joe’s mouth turns down. He steps back to let me climb out. He acknowledges me with a wordless grunt. I give him a short nod in return. That’s about the extent of the politeness between us, and it’s only for Diebold’s benefit.

  The fire chief is in his sixties. He must be on the verge of retirement by now, but his dark eyes take everything in the same as they did before. “Like I told you on the phone, the scene’s been released. That means we’ve collected all the evidence we need to get. You’re free to get a cleanup crew in here to see what you can salvage. I imagine you’ll want to tear it down, start over. The property will be worth a pretty penny, even empty.”

  “Haven’t decided yet,” I say, my tone noncommittal. I’m keenly aware that Causey is listening, aware that he’ll use anything I say against me if he has the opportunity. I lead them a few steps away from the house, and they follow me. “What did the evidence say?”

  “Arson,” the chief says, his eyes solemn. “Traces of accelerant in the attic. Not near any of the origination points we’d expect for an accidental fire. No stoves or electrical points. You know we mostly see pranksters around here. Tourists starting bonfires that get out of hand. Not often we come across a case like this. Have a couple fire investigators under me, but I took this one myself. Known the two of you since you were babies.”

  My stomach clenches. Accelerant in the goddamn attic. I’d known it was possibly arson. Probably, if I were honest, but I was hoping it wasn’t. “Appreciate it.”

  His eyes are an unearthly pale between bushy gray eyebrows. He settles a stare on me that sends a bolt of cold down my spine. “You didn’t store anything flammable up there, did you?”

  “Christ.”

  “I have to ask.”

  “The truth is I don’t know everything that was up there,” I admit, my voice gruff. “It was full of furniture and boxes when I got here. I never really looked through it all.”

  “Sad business,” he says, staring at the ruins. “First she loses her parents. Then she near burns to a crisp. It’s a good thing you stepped up. She needs you, Rochester.”

  Tension vibrates through the air. Does the chief know that he’s taking sides in a conflict that goes back decades? Hell, he might. He’s always seen too much with those pale blue eyes. He lifts a thick finger toward the sky. “That’s where it started, in the back, near the outer wall.”

  There was a window in that part of the attic. There was nothing up there.

  But someone was.

  I didn’t hear footsteps in the middle of the night. No soft creaks along old flooring. Never once during a storm, when the rain would have muffled the sound. If I wonder about it now, if I hear the haunting echo in my mind, that’s just paranoia superimposing itself on my memory.

  It’s only because I haven’t been up there in weeks. Months, maybe.

  Can’t remember the last time.

  “When’s the last time you’d say you talked to Em?” Joe says, his notepad out like it’s normal as hell to ask about a dead woman. Even if that woman is his sister.

  Of all the things I hate about Joe, this is the fact I hate the most.

  He lurked in the background of my relationship with Emily. Bristling. Scowling. Watching me as if I posed some threat. He tried to catch me out for years, when it was Rhys who was the dangerous one. Of course he probably blames me for that, too. I blame myself for it. We all know she would never have ended up with Rhys if I hadn’t left for the West Coast.

  The wind from the ocean quiets. The whole place is listening now, even the trees. Joe drags his gaze up off his notepad and arches an eyebrow in accusation.

  “Emily’s been gone for years,” I say, and a muscle in the side of his jaw flexes. “Any conversation I had with her has nothing to do with this.”

  Alan clears his throat. “There are those in this profession who talk about the psychology of arsonists. Profiling, they call it. Don’t know if I always buy into it, but if I did…”

  I tense. “Yeah?”

  “The location of the fire suggests the arsonist is more likely to be a woman.”

  My pulse drops into my fingertips. “How? A fire’s a fire.”

  The fire chief cuts a glance at Joe. “Female arsonists more often set fires that are calls for help. Not for the attention, not for the love of fire. Not to become a hero pulling people out of the house. We find those kinds of fires in the kitchen, usually. On the ground floor.”

  A kitchen fire would have killed us all. The flames would have eaten through the ceilings to the second floor, running down electrical wiring and skittering up the walls before we could get downstairs. It would have meant jumping out second-story windows.

  Or dying before we could.

  No. This fire was meant to flush us out. To chase us out.

  “Did you look into Zoey Aldridge?” I ask, biting out the words, forcing myself to say them. I don’t want to believe she would set the fire. I didn’t think she had that in her, but I’m not going
to take any chances. Someone set that fire, and now it sounds like it was a woman. “And she left a threatening note at the inn.”

  “She has an alibi,” Causey says. “Though I did have an interesting conversation with her. Seems you’ve left a string of broken hearts through LA. Plenty of women who’d like to bring you down. Plenty of women with motive.”

  “What about the insurance money?” I say, raising a brow. “You seemed pretty set on that when you tried to interview my nanny without a lawyer present.”

  “Guilty people don’t need lawyers,” Causey says, and I snort. They do when there are questionable cops like Causey around, people who love power more than peace.

  Diebold clears his throat. “Money’s always a motive. But I don’t see how you could be hurting for half a million dollars when you got many times more than that sitting in your accounts.”

  I run a hand over my face. It feels grimy. Walking through the smoke-drenched house left a residue of soot on my skin. “So you’re saying the fire was set in the attic. That means someone was inside the house. How did they get there?”

  “Couldn’t say,” Diebold says. “We looked for signs of forced entry, but there wasn’t much left. No lockpicking marks on the deadbolt, for what it’s worth.”

  Christ. The thought of someone walking the dark hallways makes me go still. I was wrapped in bed with Jane. Paige was in her room, defenseless. Did the intruder open her door? Did they look at that sleeping child before they lit a match?

  Joe taps his pen on his notebook. “When was the last time you saw Emily?”

  “We’ve been over this,” I say, my teeth gritted. “You want someone to blame for her death? Talk to Rhys. You were friends with him. He’s the one who took her out on that boat. Everyone knows she never liked being on the water.”

  “That’s right,” Causey says, his tone cold. “Blame a dead man.”

  “This is ancient history. The only question we need answered right now is who set the fire. That’s your job, Detective,” I say, adding sarcasm to the title. “Paige is your niece. Maybe if you’re concerned about her safety, you can focus on the investigation.”