by Karis Walsh
She had too much going on in her head to make such a huge and life-altering decision right now. She had hoped for more time. Time to grieve, to think, to plot a new course for her future. Everything was happening too fast.
“I appreciate having the option,” she said. “But we don’t have to rush. I can run the business for a while, until everything is settled and we’re ready to make more rational and less emotional choices.”
“Oh no, dear. I couldn’t possibly drag this on any longer than necessary,” Karen said, the weepy note creeping back into her voice. “Dennis would have wanted me to move on and you to take the reins of the company. I’m sure of it. On the subject, I know you needed to take some time off before coming back to work, but is there any chance you can be at the office to help them find the files and ledgers they need?”
“Yes,” Merissa said without hesitation. She wanted to see what they took. This would give her a chance to look through Dennis’s files and learn more about the stability and solvency of the firm. Would Billie want her to go? Probably not. Good thing she was at the feed store. “What time?”
“Two o’clock. And the lawyers will expect you and the others to turn in your files for the time being. Protocol, you know, until we make a decision about the future of the firm. Anything deemed unrelated to the business will be returned promptly, of course.”
Promptly. Right. “I’ll be there,” Merissa said. She’d be early.
When she ended the call, she rested her palm against the wall and replayed the conversation in her mind. She was about to lose all her contacts, all the sketches and designs she’d created while working with Dennis and during graduate school as well. If she bought the firm, the lawyers would return her files. But what if she didn’t and they didn’t know how to determine which designs were her own? She had too much to lose and if she got to the office before two, she could clear out everything that wasn’t directly related to one of Dennis’s projects. Those personal visions should be hers to keep.
She checked her watch—five after one—and pulled the wheelbarrow full of used shavings out of the stall, leaving it in one of the grooming areas. She’d finish the work as soon as she got home, hopefully before Billie arrived and found her missing. To ease her guilt, she left a note telling where she was going tucked under the brow band of Ranger’s bridle in the tack room. It wasn’t hidden, and it was in a place where Billie would see it. Eventually. Like, tomorrow. Merissa would have to pretend she hadn’t already seen Billie riding the chestnut toward the trails this morning.
Merissa rushed through her shower and threw on a pair of khakis and a blue shirt. She felt uncomfortable deceiving Billie, even though she was probably perfectly safe going to the office when a posse of lawyers was scheduled to be there, too. Besides, it had been a few days since Dennis was killed, and no one had shown even the slightest interest in harming her. Her brilliant move as a witness—saying she might have seen a car that looked similar to the one Billie’s neighbor drove—had literally hit a dead end. Maybe the first reason the detectives had told her had been the real one. She and Dennis had unknowingly driven into the line of fire, and the bullet hadn’t been meant for either one of them.
She got in her car and sped along the gravel road, wanting to be on her way before Billie rounded a turn and they came face to face. Then again, maybe Billie wouldn’t be angry at all. She’d probably understand Merissa’s need to collect her personal belongings before they were confiscated. She seemed very protective of her own privacy and obviously wouldn’t want someone pawing through her belongings.
Merissa gripped the steering wheel as she took a corner too quickly. She didn’t know Billie well at all yet, even though she had been living at the farm, and they exchanged small talk several times a day when they passed in the barn. Billie was friendly with all the grooms, present in the barn but not obtrusive in Merissa’s life, and she always seemed to intuit what other people needed. But she had a wall built around herself, behind a warm, seemingly open exterior. Merissa wanted to call it an illusion of friendliness, but she honestly believed that Billie was the genuinely kind persona she showed everyone she met. That was the reason she was so good at helping people through traumas and tough times. She was like a still pond, reflecting others’ emotions back to them with empathy, and never revealing her own depth.
She was driving Merissa crazy.
She had only been on the farm for two days, and already Merissa felt like she’d become a fixture of the place. Merissa could smell a hint of sandalwood soap whenever she entered a room or section of the barn where Billie had recently been. Almost every time she looked out a window in the house, she saw Billie in one of her fitted long-sleeved T-shirts, hand grazing a horse or riding one around the polo field. Her section of the barn had become police central, with matching halters, blankets, and nameplates hanging tidily next to her six stalls. She seemed as unconcerned by her close proximity to the bed where Merissa slept as Merissa was hyperaware of it. Merissa wanted to connect to Billie somehow, reach past her barriers and discover who she was, but Billie had defenses calmly and solidly in place.
Merissa frowned as she wove through the traffic heading off the bridge. Was she purposefully trying to get a rise out of Billie by ignoring her suggestion and going off alone? No. Instead, she was following Billie’s final instruction, to listen to her own intuition. She didn’t have a bad feeling about this short trip. On the contrary, she was anxious to get there before anyone else.
Merissa took an exit leading to the Old Town of Tacoma and she drove a couple blocks before turning up a side street. She parked in a residential neighborhood where she was less than a quarter of a mile from the firm’s office, but still out of sight of anyone approaching from a more conventional route. She hurried along the sidewalk and down a back alley before letting herself in the back door with her key. The offices were in an old brick building settled on the slope leading down to Commencement Bay, which also housed a tearoom, a photography studio, and an antique book and map store on the ground floor. The outside was worn and surrounded by rosebushes and rhododendrons, but Dennis had decorated the inside with a modern flair. Clean lines, neutrals and gleaming metals, and an open-concept main room with desks and groupings of white sofas scattered throughout. Large windows looked out over Commencement Bay, the Tideflats, and Mount Rainier.
Merissa gently shut the door and cringed when it made a loud clicking sound. She’d been so convinced she was doing the right thing while in the car, but here in the office, all alone, she started to second-guess herself. Should she have come here on her own? No one knew she was coming today except for Karen, and she could certainly trust Dennis’s widow. Couldn’t she?
Merissa stayed close to the wall and skirted the large open area on her way to her own enclosed office. She thought back to Karen’s phone call. She’d done her grieving wife crying bit, although Merissa now thought it might have sounded forced. Then she’d completely changed her tone when she started talking about selling the business and collecting all the files. Had she made up the story about lawyers just to lure Merissa here?
She opened her office door and went inside, closing and locking it behind her. She was overreacting to being near downtown again, and to being in the empty offices where everything was silent except for Billie’s warnings echoing through her mind. She leaned against the door and surveyed her file cabinets and messy desk. She had only a little time to make decisions and grab what was hers. She’d leave everything connected to Dennis’s projects behind.
She hadn’t thought to bring boxes, of course, so she dumped a case of paper reams onto the floor and started to fill the box with her drawings. She skimmed through the file cabinets and pulled anything personal. Some books on architecture, her address book, and piles of newspaper clippings. She left photographs and the few knickknacks she had on her desk behind—if she took them it would be obvious she’d been in here, and she assumed the lawyers wouldn’t care about photos of her horses. She’
d come get them later, when the rest of the employees were here to do the same.
Merissa was carrying the heavy box through the main room when she passed by Dennis’s office. She set her things down and laid her hand against the door as if she could sense what was inside. Was there some clue in there? Something to tell her who had wanted him dead and why? Or was it empty of such evidence because there was none to be had and the murder was a random event?
She checked the time on her phone. She still had fifteen minutes. She fumbled on the key ring for the one belonging to Dennis’s office, but her hands were shaking and she dropped them on the floor. When she bent to retrieve the keys, she flashed back to the car and the dropped index cards, the ping of the gunshot, the expression on Dennis’s face as he pulled to the side of the road.
A loud click came from her right, and Merissa gasped and spun around. Her mind took a while to connect the sound with the heat pump kicking on. She frantically jammed the key in the lock, opened Dennis’s door, and kicked her box into the office before following it inside. Her heart was beating so hard her ribs felt bruised. She had to try three times before she was able to slide the latch and lock the door. She wasn’t cut out for a life of cat burglary. She laughed to herself, a little hysterically, imagining what damage she’d do if she were after a priceless work of art.
The laughter helped, insane as it sounded in the empty room. She walked to Dennis’s desk and looked at the piles of papers. She didn’t have time to sort through all of them, so she took what was on top of the stacks, hoping she was getting the most recent notes. She opened the desk drawers and pulled out two manila folders and a date book. Somehow, she felt as if he was with her, guiding her as she yanked open file cabinets and took folders out at random. She had to find out who had killed him. If there was evidence here, it would soon be swallowed by Karen’s lawyers, and who knew when the truth would come to light.
Her phone chimed loudly and she had to smother her shriek of surprise. She answered without checking the ID.
“Where the hell are you?”
Billie. Apparently Merissa had been wrong to think she wouldn’t be angry.
“I’m at my office picking up some files.” Merissa spoke just above a whisper even though she was alone in the building.
“Yes, I know. I saw your note and came to find you, but I had to search for your car. Do you mind explaining why you parked on a deserted street instead of the more populated and safe parking lot right in front of your building?”
Merissa was about to explain herself when she heard a creak and the murmur of voices. She lowered hers even more, partly so no one would hear her and mostly because she suddenly couldn’t get enough breath in her lungs to talk normally. “Where are you?”
“That was my question.”
Merissa double-checked the door to make sure it was locked, and then she hurried across the plush carpet and looked out the window. Billie was just coming around the corner and heading downhill toward the front of the building. Even from a distance she looked furious. Merissa tugged open the window as quietly as she could and leaned out. “Look up,” she whispered as Billie passed below her.
Billie looked up and saw her. With a shake of her head, she stopped and tucked her phone into her pocket.
“Shh,” Merissa said before Billie could say anything loudly enough for whoever was in the building to hear. “Wait there.”
Merissa grabbed the box she’d packed in her own office and crammed the papers she’d taken from Dennis’s desk and cabinet in it as well. She lugged the heavy box to the window. “Catch,” she said to Billie as she let it drop. Billie stood and watched it land in a rhododendron with a rush of cracking branches.
“What are you…Merissa, don’t you dare jump.”
Merissa straddled the windowsill and swung her other leg out until she had one foot precariously balanced on the wide ledge. She held on to the wooden frame, gripping it tightly even though the rough wood cut her hand. She used the other one to shut the window. She couldn’t lock it again from the outside, but hopefully no one would notice.
Because of the slope of the ground, the drop would be less than a full two stories, but it still looked like a long way down. She closed her eyes and let go of the window frame, hoping the bushes below her would break her fall enough to keep any body parts from snapping in two. She felt a moment of nothingness as she fell, and then Billie’s strong arms grabbed her and they both crashed to the ground in a heap.
Chapter Twelve
Billie got the first-aid kit from the tack room and stacked it on top of the box of files. She carried everything up the stairs to the apartment while Merissa called Karen and made up an excuse for not being at the office. She had wanted to go around to the front door and pretend she’d just arrived, but Billie had managed to talk her out of it. Merissa would have had a hard time explaining why she showed up at the office with a cut on her temple and a bleeding hand. Not to mention the leaves in her hair and the dirt stains smeared on the left leg of her khakis. If anyone noticed the destroyed shrubbery under the window, they’d have connected the dots pretty quickly.
Billie’s most important reason for taking Merissa home instead of agreeing to have her meet the lawyers was one Billie wouldn’t admit to her. When she had come back to the farm and found Merissa gone, Billie’s stomach had clenched in a too familiar way. And when she couldn’t find Merissa’s car near the office? Billie’s tension had turned to outright dread. She couldn’t even justify the response to herself—it was as overpowering as the ones she’d experienced during the moments when she realized one of her teammates was missing during a mission or when her gut instincts had kicked in and warned her of danger before there were any real signs to be seen. Like in the brief seconds before Mike was killed.
An overreaction, nothing more. She was keyed up because of her responsibility to the horses and to Merissa. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be having these reactions simply because her charge was out of her sight. Unreleased tension was giving her more flashbacks and nightmares than normal, and they—not Merissa herself—were the explanation behind the panic Billie had felt today.
She pushed open the door to the barn apartment and saw Merissa sitting on the couch. Her normally tidy hair was still a little leafy, and her pale skin was marked with bright red scratches and one deeper gash. She held her phone in one hand and cradled her cut left one in her lap. Billie sighed and leaned against the doorjamb.
Her reaction had everything to do with Merissa.
Billie set the box on the coffee table and sat next to Merissa on the couch. She inhaled and noticed an earthiness from Merissa’s roll in the rhododendron garden layered over her usual scent. She smelled like a lavender field on a warm summer day, with rich soil and blossoming plants. Billie shook her head to dislodge the heady fragrance, and she distracted her wandering thoughts by listening to one half of a conversation about rescheduling a time to meet with the lawyers and about Dennis’s funeral arrangements.
She put some antiseptic on a gauze pad and dabbed at Merissa’s head wound. It was superficial but dirty. Billie cleaned it thoroughly, ignoring Merissa’s wincing, and covered the cut with a Band-Aid. She took her time with the job, letting her fingers brush against Merissa’s unblemished skin and removing leaves from her silky hair, feeling a sense of wonder at the way her own body responded to the gentle touches. She always cared about the wounded people she helped while on the job, whether their pain was emotional or physical. She had to let herself become them, in a way, and feel what they were going through from the inside out. Those experiences were never easy to dismiss, and they necessarily drew her closer than was comfortable to aching hearts and bodies. Even with the closeness, though, she always managed to keep a barrier deep inside, not letting anyone cross it. She’d learned the hard way, with her father and friends like Mike, what happened when someone broke past her defenses.
In a few short days, Merissa had managed to do just that. Billie had tried to think o
f her as just another victim to help, just another rich woman who wanted to clean up the city. But she’d seen more sides to her than those generalities. She’d watched her around the barn, joking with and working alongside her grooms, and she’d seen her riding and caring for her horses with a compassion and gentleness that she had been too tense to show at the police barn. Billie’s initial attraction was developing into something stronger as she watched Merissa change from a static victim to a real person moving through life.
When she’d finished with Merissa’s head, she held her wounded left hand in her own and wiped off the blood, probing for splinters. She rubbed her thumb across Merissa’s palm, where her skin was soft and pliant, and over the ridge of calluses from long hours spent holding reins and pitchforks. The sensations flooded through her as each nuance of texture created an exponential response inside her. She finally realized Merissa had put her phone aside and was watching her in silence.
“Why did you stand under me when I jumped?”
“Why do you think? I was there to catch you.” Billie eased her leg into a straight position and rubbed her knee. Tomorrow, she’d be bruised on one side from hitting the ground, and on the other from having Merissa land on top of her. “Okay, maybe I didn’t exactly catch you. But I did break your fall.”
Merissa smiled. “You were cushier than the ground. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And thank you for nearly knocking me out when you threw this box out the window and at my head.”
“I thought you’d catch it.”
Billie shook her head. As if she’d risk her life by jumping under the box, but just let Merissa tumble to the ground. What could possibly be so important? She didn’t have an excuse to keep holding Merissa’s hand, so she placed it back in Merissa’s lap. “I don’t want to know, but I have to ask. What’s in it? And please, please don’t say anything illegal.”