by Celia Ashley
“Sure,” she agreed, a little taken aback by his agreement to meet Dan at the station. She assumed he wanted her to go with him when the time came. “I’ve got a chair and a blanket in my car. Wasn’t sure which I was going to use.”
“You were really going alone?”
“Who do you think I would have gone with? Dan?”
He appeared to contemplate that for a moment, a mocking comment playing on his lips, but his expression changed, sobered. “No. I’m not worried about him. It’s the alone part that concerns me. You need to be careful.”
He kissed her then, as he’d promised, and she did nearly melt like frozen confection in the hot sun.
Chapter 19
Paige sat in an uncomfortable blue plastic chair in the police station lobby. Her folded hands rested on her thighs, left thumb stuck inside the fist of the right. Dan had promised to keep Liam no more than a quarter hour. The minute hand had long ago passed the half hour mark and was moving up the left side of the clock face on the wall. Photos flanked the utilitarian timepiece on either side, community events at which the police had played a part. She recognized Dan in one and the dedication of the stone circle at Alcina Cove Nature Preserve in another. As the photo was filled with people and held a caption beneath, Paige rose and crossed the small foyer to see if any of those pictured might be Felicia Woodward.
Left from center, beside Alcina Cove’s mayor, stood the woman identified by the legend beneath as Felicia Woodward. The teenage girl of the yearbook photo remained evident in this older version, smiling as she shook hands with the professor who had discovered the standing stones beneath the encroaching forest. Paige could tell by the shot that Felicia had said something humorous because everyone but the three of them faced the photographer’s lens, both the mayor and Columbus gazing at Felicia with open laughter.
What had the woman’s son said? That she was wicked funny. Knowing her mother had possessed such a friend, a companion who had provided her joy and alliance, made Paige’s lips curl in a fondness as dear as if she already knew the woman. She would definitely return to the nature center to speak with Felicia Woodward—avoiding the stone circle, of course.
Remembering, Paige’s gaze strayed to the stones rising in eerie formation from the earth behind them. The photographer had captured a cool air mist circling around the rocks, floating low to the ground, drifting up and around the upright boulders here and there in a foggy caress. Paige reflected on the mythology of Alcina’s lovers transformed to stone by her once she’d finished with them. Paige had been a little like that. Not turning them to stone, of course, but turning them away, pushing them from her life, often without plausible explanation.
Paige, I worry about you.
I know, Mom. I worry about me, too.
Paige blinked to clear her vision of a memory overlapping the photo before her. She blinked again, slowly, deliberately, and stepped closer to the framed image. Coiled by fog and pressed against one of the stones, a dark figure stood, nearly blended into the myriad shadows of trees and undergrowth beyond the circle.
Footsteps sounded on the linoleum behind her. “Paige?”
Paige lifted her hand and tapped the glass with her fingernail. Liam stepped up to her shoulder, leaning close.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. “Is that—”
“Not a ghost,” said Paige. “It’s my dad.”
* * * *
Liam watched Paige pick at her nails in the front seat of his Jeep. An uneven color splotched her cheek like a hand slap. “I guess that was a shock,” he said. “You’ve probably been carrying him around in your head a certain way, and then to see him in everyday context threw you for a loop.” He waited. She didn’t speak. Liam turned the key in the ignition.
“Where are we going?” Paige asked.
“Over to the ball field. Or don’t you feel like staying for the display now?”
“No, I do. Sorry.” She straightened, turning to look out the side window and then ahead. “It’ll be fun.”
“You don’t quite sound like you believe that.”
She surprised him with a bolt of laughter. “Don’t mind me. I’ll snap out of it soon enough. Soon as those boomers start going off for sure. What do you think he was doing there?”
Liam steered around a man pulling a folded stroller out of the open door of a car. “I’m assuming you don’t mean the creep in the drugstore right now.”
“You assume correctly.”
“I don’t know. Came for the ceremony?”
“He looked like he was hiding.”
“Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. That photo is a snapshot of an instant in time. He could have been checking out the circle and something the mayor said caught his attention and he came closer to listen. Paige, you can’t judge anything about your father’s character through that one photograph.”
“I’m not.”
She spoke with particular emphasis. He wondered how much she remembered about her father from when she was young. Enough, he supposed. But sometimes people weren’t quite what you thought they were. Memories could be colored by misperception, by interpretation, by the influence of others.
“We can avoid the crowds if you’d rather. There’s a place we used to go… People will be there, but not like at the ball field. We could even watch from the comfort of the Jeep. What do you think?”
She agreed, reaching into the small cooler she’d transferred over from her car. With a smile, she handed him a bottle of water, twisting the cap off before she did so. Once she’d grabbed her own, she drank thirstily for several seconds before speaking. “So, were you any help to Dan with his sketch?”
Liam set his water in the pocket on his door. “I suppose.”
She shot him a sideways glance. “Does he have ideas he’s not telling me about?”
“He has ideas not worth telling you about.”
Paige snickered. “Suspicious of everything, that guy.”
“That he is. Nature of the job, I guess.”
“Diligence.”
“Whatever.”
Paige squeezed his arm. “He suspects you of something, I’m guessing.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He told me I should talk to you about all of this.”
Liam’s hands tightened on the wheel. “That makes no sense. Did he think I broke into the cottage?”
“No,” Paige answered. “He thought you were less than truthful, though. I, however, trust you implicitly.”
Liam experienced a sudden tug of tension at the base of his skull. “Do you really, Paige? Even with all my secrets?”
She shrugged. “Let’s say I’m starting to. And we all have secrets.”
He wasn’t ready for that degree of trust. Didn’t deserve it or want it. Because he knew how much more she would hurt if he failed her. If? When.
“Liam?”
He said nothing, swinging the Jeep left and off the road up a dirt track. Sentinel Hill was more like a wide knoll rising unexpectedly out of the surrounding landscape and providing an unassailable ocean and town view from its peak. The crown had weathered over millennia to a plateau, making a perfect spot for camping or parking a vehicle to stargaze or indulge in the types of things one did in the dark with another person. Although not exactly around the corner from his hometown, he’d driven up for parties with his buddies on weekends as a teenager and with high school dates. Those times had been on his mind when he suggested the spot to Paige. Driving at a snail’s pace up the worn lane, he thought of Alice.
Not a place for intimacies with another woman. He hadn’t been expecting Paige to leap into the backseat with him as if they were sixteen, but there’d been a passing fantasy. It was gone now.
As they drove onto the hilltop, Paige looked around. “What is this place? I don’t think I ever knew it existed.”
Liam lowered his eyes as he pulled up the brake on the Jeep, studying her hand still lyin
g on his arm. Somehow, with that statement, he felt infinitely better. The idea she might have been here engaging in the same type of activities he’d once enjoyed had, ridiculously, made him jealous.
* * * *
The first rocket went up about half past nine, shooting brilliant white stars across the sky. Paige forgot she’d been about to pass the bag of chips back to Liam and clutched the crinkling paper sack to her chest.
“You were really going to eat all this stuff you brought by yourself?”
“Yep,” she said, “I really was.”
In the dark, she heard her own oohs and aahs echoed by the watchers gathered on the hilltop. She settled back against the angled seat with the intent of not looking away from the sky until the finale. When the second, screaming whistle rent the night, Liam leaned across and kissed her on the mouth, pulling away with the bag of chips in his fist.
“You taste like barbecue,” he said, “and salt.”
“So do you. Funny how that works. No surprises later, then.” She grinned at him.
He left her to her enjoyment after that, the fingers of one hand entwined around her own, the other firmly engaged in finishing off the barbecue potato chips with the occasional pause to fish the water from the door. Every boom reverberated in her chest. The sky above the small ballpark rained color and transformation in dazzling pyrotechnic skill. Paige didn’t anticipate the grin leaving her face before morning, especially when Liam’s hand tightened around hers. She glanced over at him for a second. His focus was not on the display or on her, but caught by something outside the Jeep’s passenger side. With a catch in her throat, Paige swung around to her open window.
Someone stood right beside the door. Liam moved like lightning beside her, reaching past out the window and grabbing shirt in his fist. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Wait. Liam, wait! I know him.” Paige pushed back in her seat, giving Liam room to withdraw. The man next to the car tugged on his shirt front to smooth it down. He bent from the waist, peering in at Paige.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t figure on scaring anybody. Did I hear you say you know me?”
“Yes,” Paige answered, moving closer so he could see her. “We met the other day. I was asking about your mother. I’m Paige Waters.”
“Yeah, right,” the younger Woodward said. “I remember that. How’re you doing? Enjoying the show?”
Liam leaned forward again, an arm across the dashboard. “Did you want something here?”
“What? Oh, yeah, forgot.”
Paige wondered if Felicia’s son had been drinking. She was sure of it when he stumbled a bit, digging around in his pocket. Not drunk, but having himself a good time on the Fourth. Paige wondered if perhaps he had spoken with his mother and she’d given him a message for her. How he’d known to find her in Liam’s white Jeep was a mystery unless, of course, he’d seen them pull in. It hadn’t been dark then.
But no, that couldn’t be right, either. When she’d spoken to him a few seconds ago, he hadn’t known her. “Billy? It is Billy, right? I think that was on your name tag.”
“Yep,” he said, “Billy. Hold on, I’ve got it right here.”
“Got what?” Paige wriggled closer to the door edge, squinting at his antics in the dark.
Billy pulled something small from his pocket with a flourish. “Here. He said to give this to you. I didn’t know it was you, though. He just said, ‘give this to that lady in the Jeep over there.’”
Taking her hand, he pressed a square of thick paper into Paige’s palm. Before Paige could say anything in response, he strode away into the dark with a wave. Paige dropped the door to the glove box open for light and unfurled her fingers.
“Who was that?” Liam asked.
“Billy Woodward. The third, I guess. And someone Dan needs to speak with.”
“Why is that?”
Paige held up her shaking hand. “This is a photo of my mother. A photo which, up until the night the bookmark went missing, I’d wager resided in my wallet.”
Liam swore, a string of words all in keeping with the one he’d uttered in his recent demand for Billy’s identity, and then he flung open the door. Yanking his keys out of his pocket, he tossed them in her direction. “Lock it up. I’ll be back.”
As soon as he vanished into the night, Paige secured the doors to the Jeep and closed the windows, barely leaving enough space at the top for circulation. She clasped the photo to her breast, teeth firmly entrenched in her lip. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Outside, the fireworks continued unabated, the revelers unaware of the drama that took place in their small corner of the field. She had convinced herself the bookmark theft was a sick quirk. Pilfering her mother’s photo indicated, as Liam had once suggested, a far more personal involvement. A vendetta, perhaps. But why? Could this be something to do with her father? Was that why Dan had been asking her questions about his associates? What in heaven’s name could her dad have been involved in?
In her anxiety, Paige had begun rocking in the car seat. She forced herself to count to ten, out loud and slowly. Hysterics would do no one any good. Panic was not her usual method of coping. Disbelief? Loads. And rage? Yeah, that too.
Reaching for the door handle, Paige noted a flaring light stabbing into her peripheral line of vision. Well beyond the harbor, a party boat had sent up a rocket in private celebration, orange sparks spreading in an umbrella in the sky above. She recognized the reflected beauty on the rippling water despite her agitation, but summarily dismissed her admiration. She needed to find Liam. She wouldn’t have him hunting through the people on the hilltop on her behalf by himself.
Another rocket went up over the water. The car to her left started its engine and rolled out of place. People standing beneath the sky moved aside. She heard another car and then another, headlights coming on all around. Liam appeared at the door, sliding on the grass. She let him in.
“Why are people leaving?”
“Buckle up,” he said. “That’s a distress call out there.”
Chapter 20
Paige couldn’t tell what Liam thought or felt. Concentration had settled over his features like a mask. The knuckles on the hand wrapped around the wheel were the color of bone. With the other, he shifted through gears in rapid succession. Paige’s fingers dug into the seat on either side. She thought about her father.
“Liam?”
“I have to do this, Paige. I’ve seen these signals go up numerous times since I’ve moved to Alcina Cove, and I’ve ignored them. It’s killed me, but I can’t help thinking—”
“About that night you tried to save my father? Coming home and finding your family gone?”
“Yes.”
Liam slowed the Jeep as they neared the harbor. Red and blue strobe lights cut through the night, reflecting across the onlookers’ faces in a jarring hue. Paige’s heart leapt with the same rhythmic intensity as the shadows jumping like animation across building fronts. The area was already a mass of activity, mostly official from what she could tell, with the Marine Patrol in the forefront to keep the growing crowd cordoned off and under control. Liam swung the Jeep into what wouldn’t have been a parking spot on a normal day and propelled himself from the vehicle before he’d fully opened the door.
“Stay here.”
Paige was getting a little sick of those words and, as usual, did not heed them. She snatched the keys he’d left dangling from the ignition and clambered out, locking the Jeep behind her. She had to sprint to catch up to him.
He glanced down at her as she appeared at his elbow. “I told you—”
“Yeah, I heard you. Word to the wise. Don’t give me orders. They tend to backfire.”
He said nothing but she glimpsed a flicker in the muscle of his jaw. She hoped it was amusement.
A man in a dark T-shirt with an emblem emblazoned across the breast and a radio to his mouth held up a flashlight as they approached, not shining the
beam at them but indicating that he wanted them to stop where they were. Paige obliged but Liam continued forward, speaking close to the man’s ear in a rapid exchange. Paige couldn’t hear a word of it, but twice they glanced back in her direction. Not waiting for the third time, she joined them.
“We can go on,” Liam said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Are you?”
His brows lowered in a brief frown and then he squeezed her upper arm. “Yep.”
He took her hand and tugged her forward through the turmoil. People ran back and forth shouting into radios, yelling across open space, coordinating the rescue effort. Floodlights lit the docks. Paige saw small boats cutting slowly through the water, searchlights on their bows that slashed a direct beam across the rippling, dark harbor for employment, she supposed, in seeking survivors if the ship went down. Farther out, a larger vessel—a Coast Guard search and rescue craft —had already reached the signaling ship. She and Liam were stopped again, this time by a man in uniform.
“If you’re short-handed, I can pilot a boat.” Releasing her hand, Liam pulled his wallet out of his pocket and displayed identification for the man standing by the barrier. The uniformed official nodded in response.
“You can go down,” he said. “Might not be necessary, but the help is appreciated. You, miss, will have to stay here.”
“Understood,” Paige answered and stepped back. Liam passed a grazing kiss across her forehead before moving with a long, swift stride toward the far end of the dock. “Take care, Liam,” she whispered at his departing back. He was a brave man, choosing to face his fears this way. At least the sea wasn’t choppy. Whatever had disabled the ship, it wasn’t something likely to threaten the rescuers.
With a nod at the official, Paige moved from the main activity. No need to be in the way. She couldn’t do anything to help. She only hoped Liam would be all right. After what he’d told her concerning his attempts to save her father, this scenario had to be dredging up some troubling memories.