Lena opened her eyes to find him staring at her like she was the only person in the room.
A low, persistent buzzing filled her ears and, at first, she thought it was just the blood rushing to her head. It took a second to make her realize it was her phone. Frowning, Lena bent over and scooped it up, but it had already gone to voicemail. With a murmured apology to Joe, she unlocked the device.
Two missed calls. Three texts. All from Sasha.
She and Joe must’ve been chattering away the other time her phone rang and she hadn’t heard it. She dove into the text messages first.
No information there, just Pick up, and Call me right now, and Answer your phone!
“Useful,” she muttered.
Her phone buzzed again with an alert to the unheard voice message.
Lena pressed a button and held the phone to her ear, holding one finger up to fend off the obvious questions from the other side of the table.
“Lena, thank God y— Oh. Voicemail. Nice. Fine. Just… just call back.” Sasha’s texts had been pretty standard, for Sasha. Pissed and huffy, sure, but that was par for the course with her little sister. What had Lena’s hackles up was how frantic Sasha had been at the beginning of the message. But she couldn’t very well call her back with Joe sitting across from her. Who knew what this was all about?
“Problem?”
“Actually, I’ve got to go,” she said with a smile. “Seems like there is an issue with the pipes in the bathroom and my sisters can’t get ahold of the handyman.”
“Anything I can help with? I’m pretty handy myself.”
Lena shook her head and reached for her bag. “I’m good with a wrench myself. We’ll take care of it, but I appreciate the offer.”
She couldn’t help but notice the fleeting look of disappointment that crossed his handsome features.
“I’ll get the check and walk you out, then.”
A few minutes later, they were stepping out into the sultry night air. He walked her to her car in silence, only breaking it when they came to a stop beside the driver’s door.
“Maybe we can try this another time?” At her hesitation, he pressed on. “Not the same place, of course.” He smiled at her. “There’s this great little theatre over on Thurmund. They serve you a three-course meal during the movie.”
“I…” She evaded his gaze. If she looked into those bright eyes, she just knew she’d be lost. “I’m not sure, Joe. I don’t think I can,” she said, her voice sounding thin. “I had a great time, but there’s so much going on right now.” Maybe even more than she knew about, if Sasha’s frantic call was any indication. This had been a bad idea from the start. She’d wanted to spend time with him, and had given herself an excuse to do it. But it all seemed so flimsy now.
“I understand,” he said softly. “I guess I’d better do this now, then, in case it’s another forty years before I get the chance again.”
She was still trying to make sense of his words when he slipped his arms around her hips and pulled her close, slowly enough to give her a chance to pull away.
She didn’t.
A second later, his warm lips brushed against hers, soft and sweet. She could smell the caramel and cream on his breath. For a heartbeat, she froze, uncertain. Then she melted into him. The kiss was everything she remembered. His scent hadn’t really changed; his lips still felt gentle, yet eager. He wrapped his arms around hers, holding her close for another instant before pulling away.
“It was great spending time with you, Lena.”
He turned to go, but before he’d taken a step, he turned back, his eyes blazing with something she couldn’t name.
“Humans are creatures of habit, Lena. You ever think you’ve been running away from La Pierre for so long, you don’t even know what you’re running from anymore?”
He didn’t wait for her reply as he crossed the parking lot in long, sure strides.
Yep, no question about it. Dinner with Joe Fletcher had been a bad idea.
One she was pretty sure would haunt her for days…and nights to come.
Kate
A murderer’s got to pay one way or another. We'll be in touch.
Kate stared at the screen again, a ball of ice forming in her belly.
“This is going too far,” she said, folding her arms over her stomach as she tried not to panic. "I can deal with gossip and the like, but the threats? Even after Sheriff Joe warned them?"
Maggie raked a hand through her cap of dark curls and pushed away from the desk. "You'd think they'd be at least a little nervous. It's not like they have a whole bunch of money to keep bailing Tim out of jail. And last I heard, Serina's husband left her and she was shacking up with some loser in a seedy part of Memphis. Whatever they think they have on Maeve must be pretty damning to feel so confident."
The front door slammed a second later, and Lena's voice rang down the hall. "Why isn't anybody picking up their damn phone?" She thundered into the room, scowling at Sasha, who was seated behind the desk. "This better not be some silly nonsense like that time you called me home from working at the ice cream shop, saying it was an emergency and me coming home to find out Maggie had used one of your crayons."
"I was, like, five years old," Sasha shot back, her tone pure venom. "You need to stop dwelling on the past. But you know what, forget I called. We've got it all under control. Why don't you go back to your date and the rest of us will take care of this like we do everything else around here?"
"She's just scared, Sash," Kate admonished quietly. "Sorry, Lena, we all came rushing in when the email came and I didn't think to grab my phone. We've just been in here ever since, trying to figure out how to handle it."
"Oh, see, you must be under the impression that I have any idea what you're talking about right now." Lena shook her head and laughed without even a hint of humor. "Your sister sent me three texts saying absolutely nothing, followed by a voicemail saying even less. Someone want to fill me in?"
"We got another threat. This time it came to Sasha via email." Kate straightened and stepped back to make room for her oldest sister.
The anger drained from Lena's face and she rounded the desk. Sasha leaned away from her as she scanned the short message.
Kate could almost hear her gears grinding as she tried to figure out their next best steps.
"Is your email address public, Sash?" Lena asked briskly, slipping seamlessly from anger into calm, collected crisis-mode.
"I don't know," Sasha shot back sullenly. "I don't have it plastered on my bumper or something, if that's what you mean."
"Do you list it on social media, like Linked Up or anything, or would only the people you've given it to have it?" she pressed.
"I probably put it on my Facebook when I first opened my account, yeah. And who the hell uses Linked Up?"
To her credit, Lena ignored the jab as she leaned in and forwarded the message to her own email address. "I’m sure the email address it was sent from is a one and done, but maybe there’s another way to trace it. I need to talk to Alistair. Until I do, we say nothing of this to anyone. You understand?"
Maggie and Kate both nodded, but Sasha seethed. "I don't even know why I called you. There was a hundred percent chance you were going to come and try to take over the situation and boss us all around, like you always do." She pushed back the chair and stood. "I'm going to make myself a drink."
She stalked away, leaving the three of them staring behind her.
It had been a long few weeks for the three of them living in Louisiana, even before they'd all moved into the house. Maeve's health had taken a hard right turn and, just when it seemed like she was pulling out of it and might have another few months left in her, she up and died. As prepared as Kate had felt, nothing could truly have prepared her for how she felt when she'd gotten the call. Since then, it had been a non-stop rollercoaster that she would give her left arm to get off of. The threats were just adding one more layer to the shit sandwich they'd been served.
"I'm not interested in you Doctor Phil'ing me right now, Kate. I've got to think," Lena muttered, rubbing at her temples.
"Okay, well, I think it would be easier for us all to think if you two weren't at each other's throats all the time."
Lena forced out a sigh and nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry. I had myself all worked up on the ride home and had no clue what I was walking into. I shouldn't be taking it out on you." She turned her attention to Maggie. "Can you please not go off half-cocked and call the Sheriff's office right yet?"
Her tone was even and steady, with no hint of sarcasm, and Maggie nodded.
"I hadn't even considered it."
"Here's what I'm thinking," Lena said, flicking a gaze between Kate and Maggie. "Serina has something that makes Maeve look bad. It's not enough to take to the cops or she would've done that already. My guess is it's something circumstantial that could be viewed as either a motive or a threat. Maybe even something that might be cause for a civil suit against the estate, hence her coming back to La Pierre now, right after Maeve's death. It's likely something Maeve could've refuted when she was alive, or Serina would've come knocking with her hand out sooner. I'd like to keep what happened between us until I have a talk with Alistair about what the estate's potential liability in this is and get his counsel. The tone of the message is scary, but if they wanted to hurt us, they could've and would've. This is about money."
"You're sure about that?" Kate asked softly, studying her sister's expression.
"Sure as I can be," Lena replied with a curt nod. "Sure enough that I would risk us all staying in the house, myself included, while we figure it out. I truly don't think any of us are in physical danger."
"Okay. I'm with you, then," Kate said, cocking her head at Maggie. "You?"
Maggie nodded. "Okay. But can you try to talk with him in the next few days? I don't want this all hanging over our heads for the next week without having any direction."
"Now we just have to see what Sasha th--"
The sound of a door slamming cut Kate's words short.
"That can't be good," Lena muttered, rushing toward the door of the office, her pretty skirt fluttering as she moved.
Poor Lena. She'd been out with a handsome, funny, sweet man and it had been ruined by Blanchard family drama, like so many other things in her life. She wished she could take the burden away for even a little while.
Lena came rushing back into the room, her expression grim. "Sasha just peeled out of the driveway. Donuts to dollars she's heading over to Tim Lischio's house. We've got to go get her before she does something stupid."
Kate's heart pounded as she rushed behind Lena, Maggie hot on her tail, as they headed for the front door. Lena snatched her keys and her purse up and they were off. A few hundred yards in the distance, they could just make out the wink of Sasha's taillights.
"She's such a hothead," Lena muttered, pressing her foot harder on the gas. "Is there some point in the space time continuum where a person is so totally unpredictable that they round the bend again and become totally predictable?" she marveled under her breath.
"What does it say about us that we didn't think of it before she left?" Kate said with a short laugh.
Maggie was quiet in the back seat, and that was probably for the best. The less they talked right now, the better.
As if Maggie had heard her thoughts, she suddenly piped up.
"I know that Clyde was killed after being robbed, but Mama didn't like to talk about it much, and you know how the rumor mill gets everything mixed up, anyway. Did they ever have any leads on who did it?"
"It was a year or two after I’d moved out west, so I only know what Maeve told me after the fact,” Lena said, expertly navigating the dark, windy roads as she followed the taillights in the distance. "Apparently, he’d gone on a bender and lost a lot of money that day on the horses. He pulled some sort of scam where he wrote one of his buddies a personal check, and his buddy wrote one to Clyde, so they could cash them and then use those funds to win their money back. Back in those days, nothing was online or all that, so it didn't matter that neither had the funds to cover them. Their plan failed, and buried them deeper in the hole. Clyde was afraid to come home and tell Maeve how much he'd lost, so he made one last bet on credit, saying he had a buddy in the stands with the rest of his cash. Naturally, he lost that, too, then tried to scoot out. There was never any proof, but word was that the bookie followed him on the way out, planning to rough him up some. Things took an ugly turn, a gun went off, and Clyde was found dead on the side of the road the next morning looking like he’d been robbed.”
"And what was the reason people thought Maeve had something to do with it?"
"She was hotheaded, like Sasha. Quick to anger, quicker to act, back then, especially," Kate explained. "You were pretty small at the time, maybe five or so, and after Clyde's passing, Maeve reined it in a little. Before that, though, things were volatile. She'd sent him to the hospital once after hitting him on the head with a frying pan."
"Wow," Maggie said, letting out a low whistle. "I'm glad I was only around for the tail end of that, then. Sounds scary."
"Well, lucky for you, you still get to witness her mini-me in action," Lena chimed in as she took a left turn onto Tim Lischio’s street.
They pulled up to a rickety shack a few houses down, just in time to see Sasha hotfooting it up the walkway, a crowbar in hand.
"Crap," Lena muttered, popping the car into park behind a rusty pickup truck and shoving open the door.
Kate struggled to do the same with shaking hands, watching in horror as Sasha took the steps up the porch in one stride and went for the front door.
"Oh my God. I hope no one is home or she's going to get herself shot," Maggie said, practically falling out of the car after Lena.
"Come on out, you evil witch!" Sasha screeched, smacking the crowbar against the door and denting the aluminum in the process. "You got something to say to me and my sisters, do it to our faces like a real woman."
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, and a second later, a light flickered on inside the house.
"Sasha, get back here, you idiot!" Lena hissed as she sprinted up the walkway. "What do you think this is going to prove?"
"It's going to prove that if Serina McFadden wants to mess with the bull, she's going to get the horns. Nobody threatens my family. Nobody. Now come on out, you spawn of Satan!" This time, she didn't just bang on the door. She wound up and took a full body swing at it, shattering the glass of the storm door in the process.
Kate's stomach dropped as she tried to think of what to do next. There was commotion in the house now, and she wondered what its occupants thought.
Lena didn't waste any time wondering, and she didn't bother trying to talk Sasha down again. Instead, she charged up the stairs, snatched the crowbar from her, and grabbed their younger sister's arm in a vice grip.
"Get your butt in the car, right now!" she hissed, half dragging Sasha back down the porch steps.
"Or you'll what?" Sasha demanded, trying to jerk away.
"Or else I'll leave, and this time, I won't come back," Lena said. Maybe it was her serious as a heart attack expression. Maybe it was the solemn delivery of her words. Whatever the case, Sasha believed her and stopped struggling.
Lena led Sasha back to her car and jabbed a finger at Kate. "You drive my car and take Maggie back with you. I'm going to make sure Mini-Maeve here gets home safe and hope that Tim and his auntie decide they don't want to involve the cops in this mess. See you at home."
The dog continued to bark and more lights came on in the house, but no one came to the door, not that Kate could blame them. Seemed beyond foolhardy to engage the crazy that was happening out here.
She would've preferred to take a pass on it herself, except she didn't have any choice.
Family was family.
She just hoped Lena and Sasha remembered
that, preferably sooner than later. Because, at this rate?
One of them was going to wind up dead or in jail before their three months was up...
Maggie
The beep-beep-beeping woke Maggie out of a fitful sleep, and she reached over to shut off her alarm with a groan. It had been a long, hellish night, and despite sleeping super late, she felt no more rested than if she hadn’t slept at all. Still, she had a big day ahead, and was anxious to get started.
She rolled out of bed and made quick, quiet work of getting ready for the day. It wasn’t until she was skulking down the stairs that she realized she was creeping through the house like she was some sort of cat burglar in someone else’s home.
She shook her head and began to walk more normally. It wasn’t like she was actually hiding anything. She was doing what any normal person would do before diving head first into a new business venture that could result in a tricky situation between family members. But there was no denying her relief when she found the house empty, save for Lena, who was behind the closed door of the study, tapping away at the computer keyboard.
Maggie stepped outside, closing the door carefully behind her, and then made her way to her car. The late morning air was cool for a change and she took the long way to Crystal Lake, letting the breeze wash over her face through the open window as she drove. She wasn’t in a hurry, and she needed time to think about all the stuff going on with her sisters, in any case.
Last night had been a mess. If it wasn’t her life, she might have even thought it was funny, in a dark comedy type of way. Dragging a forty-something-year-old woman into her car, after she bashed in a neighbor’s door, before it escalated into some modern-day Hatfield and McCoy-level stuff wasn’t exactly the norm for her. After Sasha had told them about the email, every instinct had been blaring that they should call the cops again. Serina was surely involved in this harassment and the email had certainly crossed the line from mere suggestion to outright blackmail. But now that she had more than just the vague idea of protecting Maeve’s legacy to consider, she’d thought better of it.
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