by Cora Seton
“Helping to put out the fire.”
He couldn’t read her expression in the dim light. “Of course,” she finally said, and kept going.
Clay wanted to go after her. Instead he ducked into his own tent, quickly pulled on some clothes and went to find Boone.
He found him huddled with the local fire chief, Walker and Jericho. Every cameraman in the place was filming something. Renata had cornered Kai on his way to the bunkhouse and was trying to interview him. “What do you know so far?”
“Come and take a look at this,” Ed Brookings, the fire chief, said. He led the way to the smoldering ruins of the small house, turned on a bright flashlight and pointed out the damage at several places around what was left of the structure. Cameramen swarmed around to document what he was saying.
“What does that show?” Jericho asked.
“Arson,” Walker said. “Multiple start points. Someone used an accelerant.”
“That’s right,” Brookings said. “You boys know someone who wants to shut you down?”
“Would you help me change?” Nora asked Avery when she found her friends talking near the tents.
“Of course. I need to change, too.” Avery held up her arms to indicate her filthy nightgown.
“We should just go up to the manor,” Riley said in a low voice. “Each of us could take a hot soak and we could wash our clothes, too.”
“Renata’s people would have a field day with that.” Savannah nodded toward Ed, who was even now filming the scene.
“You’d think they’d focus on the fire,” Nora said grumpily. A hot bath would be heaven right now. She didn’t relish the thought of scrubbing off the soot and sweat in a cold shower in the bunkhouse. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to get this dress clean again.” She pulled out one of her work gowns. It was in much better shape than either of her nicer ones.
“I heard one of the firemen say the fire was deliberately set,” Avery said.
Nora stilled. “It was arson?”
“Who would do that?” Savannah asked.
“That developer, Montague, maybe?” Riley asked. She was pale and knew what Riley must be thinking—their tiny home was a stone’s throw from the one that had burned down. What if someone had set it on fire? Would the alarm have roused them in time?
“Maybe,” Savannah said. “Or maybe your stalker decided to take things to the next level, Nora.”
Nora blinked. “I thought you guys didn’t believe he was here.” Of course she’d thought the same thing, but after what had happened this afternoon, she’d been afraid to bring it up.
“The glass, the book, the lemonade and now this? I think it’s at least time to investigate it,” Savannah told her.
“I think so, too,” Avery said.
“Something else strange happened earlier.” Nora filled them in quickly.
“You definitely had your notebook when you came down here,” Riley said. “I saw you carrying it. You’d better go talk to Boone.”
“I saw it, too,” Savannah said.
Nora wasn’t sure why tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back and swallowed the lump in her throat. She was so stupid; she should have asked her friends earlier if they’d seen her bring her notebook down to Base Camp.
“Okay.” She looked down at her soot-smudged dress and decided she’d deal with it later. “I’ll be right back.”
She wound her way through the tents toward the burnt skeleton of the tiny house, where Clay and the others still stood, talking, a couple of the cameramen still filming them. As she approached the group, she guessed none of them would sleep tonight. Their deep voices rumbled in urgent tones as they talked—the sound of men making a plan. She hung on the outskirts of their circle a little shyly at first, not wanting to interrupt. In the low light, with the smell of smoke still wafting around them, they were more SEALs than civilians, and she wasn’t sure if they’d welcome her.
Still, she had a piece of pertinent information they didn’t know.
“Kai, I want you and Harris to—” Boone was saying when she took a deep breath and pushed her way through the circle.
“Excuse me.”
Boone looked up. “Nora, we’ve got it under control. Let the women know—”
“I have to tell you something.”
He scanned her face. “All right. Shoot.”
“Something happened today. After we got back from the manor.” She described bringing home the notebook, stowing it with her other things in the tent and zipping up the flap when she left.
“When I came back from dinner the flap was open and the notebook was gone.”
“Are you sure you—”
“Riley saw me bring the notebook back. So did Savannah,” she said firmly. She was done being doubted.
Done doubting herself, too.
After a long moment, Boone nodded. “Okay. Someone was in your tent. I’m not sure it has any bearing on this, though.” He gestured toward the burned down building.
“The thing is… that lemonade glass and the notebook? Those aren’t the only strange things that have happened since I’ve come to Westfield.”
“You haven’t heard from your stalker since you left Baltimore, right?” Clay said. When she hesitated, his brows drew together. “Nora, are you serious?”
“He hasn’t called, if that’s what you mean. It’s just… there have been a couple of times…” She knew she had to bite the bullet and explain everything, even if it did sound ridiculous. “Once Avery, Savannah and I were in the kitchen up at the manor and a glass fell off the desk and broke in the parlor. I’d left it far from the edge, and there was no water at all on the desk afterward. Someone had to have picked it up and dropped it. We searched the house and didn’t find anyone.”
“You searched—” Clay shook his head. “Jesus, Nora.” The other men looked as concerned as he did, but Nora pressed on. After all, who were they to chastise her for not speaking up? None of them had believed her today, had they?
“Another time I went up to my room and found the door open. I thought I’d shut it. Nothing was missing. Nothing had been touched, except… a book. It was pulled partway out from my bookshelf. I hadn’t touched it in weeks.”
“What book?” Boone asked. She was grateful they weren’t all laughing at her. The incidents sounded so trivial.
“It was a textbook. It’s called, “The Teacher as Student.”
“Does that have any significance?”
Nora didn’t want to answer that. Not in this crowd of men forming a circle around her. Their testosterone was palpable—and it made her uncomfortable. “It’s something he used to say.” She forced the words out. “That I had nothing to teach him. But he had a lot to teach me. He liked to describe… what he’d do to me.” She was almost whispering by the time she finished. Saying it out loud made her skin crawl. She wanted to block the memory of the other things he’d said, but she failed.
“Anything else?” Boone prompted.
“That’s it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Clay said.
“Each incident by itself seemed trivial. Impossible to prove. Look at the way you all reacted this afternoon.”
“But that’s because—”
“None of that matters now,” Boone broke in. “The only thing that does is finding the man who set the fire and keeping Nora safe in the meantime. Clay, from now on, you’re Nora’s bodyguard.”
She almost laughed, it sounded so ridiculous, but when she turned to Clay, there wasn’t a trace of humor in his face. Instead, he was alert, concerned… focused. Clay nodded to Boone. “I’m on it.” He turned to Nora. “Until we catch this motherfucker, wherever you are, I am.”
Nora realized he meant it, too. Just like that, he’d take on responsibility for her safety. He’d spend every minute of his day protecting her.
Something clicked in Nora’s brain. Something so simple, and yet so important it was hard to put into words. She kept judging Clay
as if he were any man—someone like her father, or her stalker, even, but that wasn’t who Clay was. He was a man who made a decision and stuck with it. A man dedicated to service—to his fellow citizens, to his country—and, ultimately, to the world.
Earlier she’d laughed at his inability to see what was right in front of his face, as if being a SEAL should have made him infallible. But it wasn’t his skills or training—or some superpower he’d gained from his service—that defined who he was. It was his willingness to give his life to protect someone else.
And his willingness to give his heart to one woman for a lifetime.
Someone who maybe didn’t deserve his heart.
In a flash she understood that just like his unswerving dedication to service, he’d never deviated from his devotion to her. He’d told her he’d fallen for her the moment he saw her.
And he’d never wavered since.
It had nothing to do with Base Camp or the television show. He already loved her. He was already sure. He was ready to pledge himself to her, build a home for her, protect her—give his life for her if need be. She kept looking for complications and he kept handing her a single, solid truth.
No man had ever cared for her like that before. No wonder she hadn’t understood.
“I’ll take Nora and the women to the bunkhouse,” Clay was saying. “That’s the easiest place to monitor.”
“Sounds good,” Boone said. “We’ll start a search and keep a watch for this asshole.”
“Copy that.”
“Clay,” Nora began, needing to tell him about her revelation. “Clay, I—”
But as the group broke apart, the fire chief strode up again. “Found something. Anyone recognize this?” He held up something white. A T-shirt, maybe?
Clay, who’d been so warrior-like moments ago he’d made her heart race, faltered mid-stride.
“Yeah, I recognize it,” he said. He took the shirt from the chief and held it out to read the logo. A high school wrestling team. “It’s my dad’s.”
Chapter Twenty-One
‡
Clay couldn’t believe what the fire chief had pulled from the ruins of the blaze. Nor could he believe that Dell was nowhere to be found when they went looking for him. Despite the fact he’d been headed for Pittance Creek the last time Clay saw him, his truck was now gone.
Had he set the fire because of their fight?
Jericho took over as Nora’s bodyguard and rounded up the women in the bunkhouse.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Boone told Clay when they were gone. “This is your dad you’re talking about.”
But what was Clay supposed to think?
“Your father’s never broken the law before,” Boone said. “Besides, why would he set one of the houses on fire? He wanted to live here, right?”
“Only until Mom took him back.” But Boone was right. His mother would never take Dell back if she thought he’d committed a crime. And his father was no criminal.
Although he’d been under a hell of a strain lately.
Over and over again, Clay replayed their last conversation in his mind. He saw himself unzip the tent and tell his father to get out.
Had that been the final straw?
“Are you sure that’s his shirt?” Boone asked.
“It’s definitely his shirt,” Clay confirmed.
“Why would he leave it at the fire as evidence? It doesn’t make sense.”
“He meant for it to burn, obviously. He didn’t think there would be evidence.”
“Well, we’ve set a watch. There’s not much more we can do until the sun comes up. Time for everyone to get a little shut-eye. We’ll reconvene at first light and figure this out.”
There was no way Clay could go to sleep, though. Not until he knew if his father was involved.
He wanted to go to Nora, but what would she say now that it seemed clear his father had set the fire instead of her stalker? Could there really be two men creating mayhem at Westfield?
It seemed so.
Instead of returning to the bunkhouse, he sat on a log near the fire someone had kindled and waited for dawn’s gray light to replace the inky darkness of the night. Once they’d found out for sure who’d done it, he’d have to start all over again to build the second house. Just when he thought he’d been getting ahead. Whoever had started the fire had hit him where it hurt.
Which made him doubly suspicious that it could be Dell.
It was nearly dawn when an engine in the distance roused Clay from a half-slumber. He shook himself awake, and when Dell’s truck pulled up, he got to his feet and went to meet his father.
“Where were you?”
Deep lines grooved Dell’s face, and he stooped a little as he got out of the truck and closed the door. Clay didn’t care if he was tired. He wanted answers.
“I said, where were you?”
Dell frowned. He must have caught a whiff of the charred building because he swung his head around to survey the building site. “What happened?”
“You tell me, old man. Why did you set that fire?”
“I didn’t set any fire.” When Dell tried to push past him, Clay stepped into his path.
“Tell the truth! Now!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dell tried to elbow him aside again.
Clay stood firm. “Are you sure? Because someone set that fire. Took out the house I started. I want to know who did it.”
Dell finally seemed to register the severity of the accusation. He looked at the housing site again, took in Boone’s house and then the burnt out skeleton nearby. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. So the question of the hour is, where were you when the fire started?”
For a long, horrible moment, Clay thought Dell would refuse to answer. When he finally did, his head hung low and he couldn’t look Clay in the eyes. “I went home. Tried to get your mother to take me back. She refused.”
Clay almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
It could easily be a cover story. If he woke Lizette in the middle of the night and begged her to take him back—or argued with her, more likely—she might get muddled on times when she was questioned later.
Or maybe she’d cover for him no matter what; they were husband and wife.
Dell had been furious that Clay hadn’t followed his lead on the house. He’d been even angrier when Clay had assigned him the job of building the tool shed. They’d fought last night. He certainly had a motive.
So did Nora’s stalker, though.
“I said, she refused,” Dell reiterated.
Clay sniffed the air. Dell didn’t smell of alcohol. He’d never been much of a drinker. More his style to drive for miles when he was angry, wasting fuel and polluting the air—
But that didn’t matter tonight.
“Dad, the fire chief found your shirt in the wreckage. How do you explain that?”
“My shirt?”
“Your Chance Creek High wrestling shirt. You know the one.”
Dell shook his head. “I looked for that shirt last night. I was going to wear it and remind your mother of the past—all the time we spent together. I couldn’t find it.”
All that T-shirt would remind his mother of is how stubborn Dell could get. “Are you saying someone took it?”
“I had it yesterday.”
Clay paced away from him. Was it coincidence that both Dell and Nora were missing items? Was his father being framed? Maybe some of the film footage could clear up some of these mysteries.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“To the fire station. You’d better tell the chief everything you know.”
“I’m glad you told them everything,” Avery said to Nora as the women worked to clean up after breakfast. They’d taken over the job from Kai, but kept things simple. Eggs, toast and cereal.
Nora nodded, scrubbing down the battered counter of the bunkhouse kitchen with a dishrag. She felt numb. The even
ts of the past few weeks had taken on a surreal quality in her mind and she didn’t know what to think anymore. Had a student—a teenager—actually followed her to Chance Creek? Why not transfer his ire to the new teacher grading him? Had she been wrong all this time? Was it about something other than grades?
“Don’t expect sanity from a psychopath,” Cab Johnson, the local sheriff, had told her early this morning when he’d come to take her statement. She supposed he was right. Still, even though she’d taught seventeen and eighteen year olds who definitely had the bodies of full grown men, they rarely had much spending money, or cars, or the means to travel all this way and watch her for weeks. It was hard to believe any of it in the light of day.
Still, the tight coil of dread in her belly wouldn’t loosen, despite the fact that she and her friends had spent the night together in the bunkhouse with Jericho watching over them, and the knowledge that some of the other men were guarding the ranch outside. Nora wondered how the men could continue to function on so little sleep, but Savannah reminded her that as Navy SEALs they had survived far worse.
Jericho entered the kitchen. Walker came in behind him. “The sheriff and the fire chief are back for another look around. The place is crawling with law enforcement, and some of the men from local ranches are here, too. So the good news is you won’t have to spend the day cooped up in here. We’re going to reassign people today. Riley and Savannah, you’re going to help me out on the solar project. We’ve got to get it up and running pronto so we can have more lights in camp. Boone and Clay will deal with Cab and the fire chief. Walker, you take Avery and Nora to town. Stock up on everything while you’re there. With the extra men hanging around, we’ll be feeding a crowd tonight.”
“We get to go to town?” Avery echoed. “Thank God. This place is giving me the creeps right now.”
“But shouldn’t Nora have more people to guard her?” Riley asked. “No offense, Walker.”
Walker shrugged.
“We’ve got that in hand,” Jericho said. “You’ll have a unit following you to town to see if you pick up a tail.”
Nora didn’t like the sound of that.
“You’re using Nora as bait?” Savannah said.