“Will do.”
Kipling watched her, thinking he might have liked to get to know her a little better if he’d met her before Dunlap. That was always his luck, a day late and a dollar short.
Chapter 18
Dunlap
I thought Knox was out of her mind when she told me that we were going back to the house. I knew she was tough and that she could handle herself. But were we really going back into a house that someone had rigged to blow up while I was there with my two children? With the nanny and Knox and Elliot? Were we supposed to wait around until someone blew up the rest of the house?
But I trusted her.
“We should move in together,” I said as we drove through the city.
I hadn’t meant to just blurt it out that way, but it just sort of came out. I watched her, waiting for her reaction, but there wasn’t one at first. And then she glanced at me.
“Okay.”
Just like that.
I wanted to get up and dance; I wanted to hug her and kiss her all over her beautiful face. Instead, I looked out the window and hid the huge smile that took over my face.
The fire investigator was waiting for us when we pulled up to the house.
“It looks like a gas leak,” he said, just as Knox had said he would. “We’ve had the city come out and check their lines to make sure it’s been cut off properly. You’ll also need a licensed plumber to check the gas lines in the rest of the house and, if you should rebuild, the new lines in the kitchen.”
“Thank you,” I said, even though he’d just essentially told me I’d have to shell out thousands just to make my house safe to live in again.
Knox and I walked through the rubble, picking up little things here and there. One of Mattie’s baby bottles. A sippy cup. A piece of china from the plates my mother had hand painted and given to Colby on our wedding day. A shard of the coffee cup Stevie had given to me on Father’s Day last year.
It was gone. Part of the life I’d known the last ten years was gone. But, again, it felt like it’d been gone for ten months, ever since I found Colby in the hot tub. Maybe this was just a nudge in the direction I should have been going all along.
“I think we’ll sell when we rebuild.”
“Yeah?”
I looked around, my eyes moving up the stairs that were now visible in the gaping hole on the side of the house.
“I love this place. It was the first place I designed and watched come into reality. But I…I think we should have moved out a long time ago.”
“Then why rebuild? Why not just demolish the whole thing and move on now?”
I loved her practical mind. “That’s an option.”
I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her waist. She leaned back into me, leaning back to smile up at me. We were standing like that when a car pulled into the drive. I looked over, a different smile slipping across my expression as I watched Janis climb out of her car.
Janis was…she’d always just sort of been there. She was a few years older than me, petite, but so confident, so in charge all the time, that she seemed ten feet tall. She had blond hair that she kept slicked back from her face in a severe ponytail. I often wondered what it would look like down around her face. And she had a nice face…a little upturned nose and slightly upraised, green eyes. She might have been pretty if she wasn’t so…what did they call it these days? A bitch-resting face? That’s what it was. She had this perpetual look that suggested unpleasantness even though she was one of the kindest people I’d ever met.
I still couldn’t believe that Stevie thought Janis had feelings for me. It seemed absolutely absurd.
“Morning,” she called brightly.
“More like afternoon,” Knox corrected, pulling away from me.
“Yes, afternoon.” Janis walked carefully through the debris to where we were standing. “I’m glad to see you’re safe. The girls? They’re safe, too?”
“Fine. They’re with friends.”
She nodded, her eyes shifting to Knox for a second. Knox smiled at her, then turned and walked away, sifting through debris some yards from us to give us a few minutes alone.
“I’ve called the foremen and Anderson volunteered to bring his crew over here and check this mess out. They should be here soon.”
“Thank you.”
She touched my arm lightly. “Take all the time you need, Dunlap. Things are fine at the office.”
“Good. But I want to be kept abreast on that Parkway job, okay?”
She smiled, her eyes moving to Knox. “So, the two of you…?”
“We’re moving in together.”
Her eyebrows rose. “That’s pretty quick, isn’t it? You’ve only known each other a month, right?”
“A little more than that, but yeah, I suppose it might seem quick. But when it’s right, you just kind of know it.”
Janis nodded, this sort of sadness briefly touching her face.
“Okay. I’m going back to the office. I’ll call you later.”
I watched her go, wondering what the sadness was about. She must have had a lover at some point, someone who broke her heart. I felt for her. I knew that sort of loss.
“Hey,” Knox said, coming back over to me. “I guess we stay at my place tonight.”
I laughed, tugging her close. “And you have to cook.”
***
The crew arrived a while later, every one of them jumping right in and gathering the trash. Knox and I sat in the living room, discussing the pros and cons of rebuilding. I happened to look up and see him coming toward us. He was, again, the last person on earth I wanted to see. I jumped to my feet and headed him off.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
He seemed a little contrite. But I wasn’t buying it.
“I’m sorry, Dunlap. I know I promised I wouldn’t come back, but there aren’t that many jobs back East. Not like this one.”
“You signed papers.”
“I know. I didn’t come back for the baby, I swear. I have a wife now, a kid of my own on the way.”
He was sincere, but that didn’t soothe my fears any.
“Then why are you here? Why are you on my crew?”
He looked away, just for a second, but it was long enough to convince me there was something nefarious going on here. I shoved him hard against the chest. He stumbled back a few feet, causing Knox to get up and move between us.
“What’s going on?”
“This is Mattie’s biological father.”
She spun around, her eyes moving over this man—this cheater who took advantage of my wife and created a child when she wouldn’t let me touch her—a mixture of concern and curiosity in her eyes.
“Why are you here?”
“I needed work,” he said.
“Bullshit!”
I almost laughed as the profanity slipped out of Knox’s pretty little mouth. But it hit its mark. He focused on her for a long second, shifting in his heavy work boots like a child standing uncomfortably in front of an angry parent.
“Julep Montgomery called me. She wanted me to come sue for custody of my daughter. I told her I gave up my parental rights, but she told me her lawyer would find a loophole. She paid off all my debts and offered to pay for my wife’s maternity care. I couldn’t…”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, resting a hand on Knox’s shoulder. “But why go to work for my crew?”
“Because I was hoping to run into you and warn you what she was up to.”
It seemed dubious, but again, I got the impression that he was sincere.
“When’s the last time you heard from Julep?” Knox wanted to know.
“A week ago. She said she’d served you with custody papers and she’d probably need me in court in a few weeks.”
“Anything since?”
“No.”
Knox gestured toward the kitchen. “You do that? You know anything about it?”
He turned and surveyed the debris. “No. I wouldn’t
even…I do dry wall. I don’t know how to mess with the gas lines.”
“What about your wife? She know how to do that sort of thing?”
I didn’t understand why Knox would ask such a question, but I let her do what she wanted. There was no stopping Knox when she was on a roll, anyway.
“No. She’s a kindergarten teacher. She doesn’t know anything about construction.”
He seemed almost outraged at the suggestion.
“Stay away from Mattie,” I said, pushing his shoulder again. “But thanks for telling us about Julep.”
He nodded. “I want nothing but the best for my kid. But Mattie’s not mine. She’s yours.”
I appreciated that. In fact, it was like a wave of relief, of peace, that moved through me at his words. I guess a small part of me had always worried that he would come back and stake a claim on my daughter. Hearing him say that, it killed a little more of that fear.
Knox and I went out onto the porch. The hot tub was in pieces now because it had sat behind the kitchen wall. It was almost a relief to see it gone. But there was something…Knox walked over to it, bending low to touch the pipes coming out of what was left of the bottom half of the wall.
“It was connected to the gas line?”
“Yes. It was heated by gas.”
“Really? I assumed it was electricity.”
I shook my head. “We’d always heard that the gas tubs were more efficient. And Colby had one like it at her mother’s house, so she wanted one here.”
“Julep has one like that?”
“Exactly.”
She shook her head, her attention focused on the lines, the debris, everything that had to do with the tub. Something was troubling her. I could see it on her face, in the tension in her shoulders. She wasn’t pleased with something.
“What?”
She shook her head. “It just…everything points to Julep.”
“It does.”
“But that seems too easy.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems too easy.”
I stepped up behind her, resting my hands on her shoulders. “Sometimes the evidence is what it is. Julep is a woman whose life revolves around her reputation. She would do anything to protect it.”
“I guess so.”
But she didn’t seem convinced. And, for some reason, I was beginning to have my doubts, too.
Chapter 19
Knox
I stopped by the house Alexander and Elliot were manning across from Dunlap’s, careful to walk out of my way and come in through the back door. Alexander smiled when he saw me, but Elliot was his usual sour self.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I just wanted to check in and see if you guys noticed anything unusual.”
Alex shook his head. “Not a thing.”
I moved up behind him and looked at the computer terminal they were sitting in front of. A dozen video feeds filled the screen, mostly feeds from the cameras Dunlap’s security company had installed. But there was also feed from cameras our people had put up when Dunlap first hired Gray Wolf. The cameras were pretty much recording nothing at the moment. The construction crew had sealed off the open space into the house and begun to clean up the debris, but they were gone now. They’d be back in the morning, but the job was likely going to take a week or more. And then Dunlap still had to decide if he wanted to rebuild or not.
“No sign of Julep?”
“No.”
I studied the screens a few minutes longer, then I squeezed Alexander’s shoulder lightly. “Okay, I’m out of here.”
I headed for the door. Elliot came up behind me.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
I turned, almost weary because of the tone of his voice. There was disapproval dripping from his lips.
“If it’s about this case, Kipling thought it would—”
“No, it’s about Dunlap.”
“What about him?”
He hesitated, going from studying my face to staring at the floor. Finally he cleared his throat and focused on me.
“I’ve known a lot of men like Dunlap Spencer. They claim that their wives cheated on them repeatedly while they sat at home and waited. But most of the time they were the ones who cheated first. And once a cheater, always a cheater, you know?”
“You’re worried I’ll get my heart broken?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I know it sounds stupid, but—”
“Dunlap is not a cheater. If either of us is a person of that sort of character, it’s me.”
“You’ve never cheated on a partner.”
“I’ve never had a partner. Not like Dunlap. But that doesn’t mean I’m the kind of person he needs in his life.”
“You’re a good person, Knox. A little confused, but a good person.”
I smiled. No one had ever described me quite like that. I touched his arm. “Thanks. I appreciate your concern, but I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah, well, if you ever need someone to take his ass out and kick it, I’m the first in line.”
I chuckled softly. “I appreciate that.”
***
Ricki arranged a family dinner that night. Ingram, Bailey, David, Ricki, Kipling, Dunlap, me, and four kids gathered around the dining room table and laughed ourselves silly as we listened to little Chase explain to Stevie how things worked in the main house. He was trying so hard to be grown up, his four year old’s lisp undermining his attempts. To her credit, Stevie listened closely, smiling politely when he was finished.
“Thanks.”
Kipling wandered away from everyone as soon as it was polite to do so. I walked over to where he was standing by a set of windows that overlooked the back of the property. He had a beer in his hand, his fingers absently playing with the label wrapped around the thin neck.
“Difficult day?”
He looked at me, a smile catching me off guard. I think it was one of the first times I’d seen him smile.
“Every day is a difficult day.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
He shrugged. “People have survived worse than what I’ve gone through. I have my health. I have a safe place to sleep and good food for my belly. I think I’m pretty lucky.”
“With those criteria, I think we all are.”
He glanced back at the rest of the group. “That Stevie is quite a firecracker.”
“She is.”
“I knew a little girl like her once. A real beauty and smart as a whip.”
“Yeah? What happened to her?”
Darkness came into his eyes, a mixture of grief and anger and fear. “She’s not with us anymore. She’ll forever be three.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is. All I can do is learn to live with it. And that,” he touched my chin with the top of his fist, “is the hard part.”
I looked over at Stevie, trying to imagine waking up one day to discover that she was no longer a part of my life. I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around it because it was too much.
“Difficult day.”
He smiled again, this smile less joyful than the previous one. But it was a smile.
Dunlap put the girls to bed while I walked to my cottage and changed the sheets on the bed. I was suddenly feeling domestic for reasons I couldn’t begin to express. When Dunlap came into the cottage, I was on the bed wearing nothing but a smile. He sighed, exhaustion written in every line of his face. He pushed me back against the pillows and buried his face in my shoulder.
“Can we just lie like this for a while?”
“Only if it’s for the rest of our lives.”
He kissed me, tugging me into his arms as he settled down against the mattress. We didn’t talk, but we didn’t really need to. He was tired and worried about his kids, worried about his house, worried about everything but us, I think. Or maybe he was worried about us. I don’t know. Bu
t he lay there in silence for a long while before his breathing finally changed and he drifted off to sleep.
I lay with him until I simply couldn’t be still a moment longer. My head was still working the puzzle of what had happened at his house ten months ago and last night.
Colby chose, out of character, to stay at the house by herself while Dunlap and the kids were out of town.
On the night Dunlap was due to get back, Colby decided to hang out in the hot tub with a glass of booze—scotch, the coroner said. In the glass of scotch was enough Oxycodone to kill a person half her size. And the thermometer was broken at one hundred twenty degrees.
Julep was at the house at the same time Dunlap was arriving home with the kids, but she left without calling the police or informing Dunlap of Colby’s death. And then she accused Dunlap of murder even though the coroner ruled the death an accident. Had she done that out of grief, out of spite, or had she seen something that night that told her Dunlap was involved? Or was it her attempt to avoid the police looking too closely at her?
Did Julep kill her own daughter because of what her stepfather had done to her as a child?
Julep sued for custody of Dunlap’s kids twice, failing both times. She paid Mattie’s father off to come and make a claim on Mattie. She shot Tony in Dunlap’s living room, destroying all her plans.
Someone messed with Dunlap’s brake lines. Then they blew up his house, but only the kitchen.
How was that possible that only the kitchen was destroyed. It was an open floor plan. If it was just gas, wouldn’t it have contaminated the rest of the house? Wouldn’t the fire have spread? Did the person who did it know something about the house, know that it would be contained to the kitchen?
None of it made sense. It all pointed to clearly to Julep, making me wonder if someone else had a reason to do these things, if someone else was trying too hard to make Julep look guilty.
Who might have that sort of motive? Was it something personal against Julep, or was she just a convenient scapegoat?
My instincts told me Julep was just a scapegoat and I’d learned during my time with the CIA to go with my instincts. But if not Julep, who?
I looked over at the bed. There were still bruises clear on Dunlap’s face, on his chest and arms. They were reminders that this was a time-sensitive case. If I didn’t figure this out soon, I might lose the best thing that had ever happened to me.
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