“Did you run here?” she asked. Then, before he could answer, “Do you live close by?”
Emily sucked in a breath as she hauled herself up the stairs and collapsed into the chair near the door. “I think what Olivia means to say is, Come in, Detective. She’ll get you all warmed up. I mean, dried off.” She extended her hand, grinning. “I’m Emily, by the way. The little sister.”
Olivia felt relieved when Deck kicked off his shoes and followed Emily inside. With his back to her, he couldn’t see her blush.
“So, yes and no. To answer your questions.”
Olivia blinked at Deck as he ran a towel through his hair, rubbing it dry. A small puddle had formed on the kitchen floor beneath him.
“Yes, I did run here. And no, it wasn’t that close. I’m renting one of the old cabins on Wolver Hollow Road, and I got caught in the rain. I saw your porch light. Well, I didn’t realize it was your porch light—yours and Emily’s—but…”
Deck wrung out the bottom of his T-shirt with the towel, revealing a sliver of skin. Then, he tossed the towel on the puddle, stood atop it in his socks, and dried his legs. Olivia peered over his shoulder into the living room, but Em had vanished. Probably eavesdropping, taking notes to torture her with later.
“We should get those clothes off you.” Her brain, one critical step behind her mouth. “That came out wrong.”
“I figured.” Deck laughed, and so did Olivia. She felt certain she heard Em giggling behind her bedroom door. She would never, ever live this down.
“What I meant was, I think I can find something for you to change into. Then I’ll toss those in the dryer, if you’d like.”
Deck hesitated, giving her a moment to watch a lingering drop of rainwater snake a trail down his neck toward the collar of his T-shirt and disappear beneath the thin fabric.
“I don’t want to intrude,” he said, finally. “Especially after this morning.”
“After you ripped my notes, you mean?”
“I was going to say, ‘made an ass of myself.’ But yes. That.”
Olivia smirked, settling into the easy back-and-forth. Banter, she could handle. Deck, dripping wet, clothes plastered to his hard-earned body, not so much. “Well, in that case, I like your description better. Let’s stick with that.”
“Fine by me. As long as the record reflects I rescued you from death by pepper spray first.”
“Fair enough. Though I’m certain I would’ve managed alright. I’m no damsel in distress.”
“And I’m no Prince Charming.”
“You can say that again.”
Olivia spun away, victorious, to retrieve another towel from the stack on the table. Emily had dropped them there before her convenient departure. “Prince Charming would never leave home without—”
The sight of Deck’s glistening bare chest, when she turned back toward him, stopped her from finishing the rest. He held the soaked remains of his T-shirt out to her, grinning shamelessly.
“You were saying?”
Groaning, she shoved the towel at him and pushed past into the living room where she could breathe again. She felt his eyes on her but she didn’t dare turn around. Instead, she pointed off the hallway to the first open door.
“You can change in there, Prince Smart Ass. Just give me a minute to find something befitting of your royal blood.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Will balled his wet clothes in a towel and searched out the dusty dresser mirror tucked among boxes in the corner of the room. The dresser itself had been shoved into the opposite corner, a sunk-in, yellowed mattress and bedframe leaning against it. The whole room was cobwebbed with neglect. The antithesis of buttoned-up, ducks-in-a-row Dr. Smarty Pants.
Through the thick film of dust, Will catalogued his new look with the exact amount of humiliation he figured Olivia had intended. Possibly, she’d even outdone herself.
One Hickory Pit T-shirt, size medium. The slogan printed beneath the logo: I Love Pig Butts and I Cannot Lie, stretched to its limits across his chest.
One pair of sweatpants. STANFORD emblazoned across his backside.
And the pièce de résistance, Christmas socks. With two fuzzy poms stitched to the back of each that tapped at his heels as he walked. He wondered if she’d knitted them herself.
Will stripped the socks from his feet and tossed them onto the floor. He had to draw the line somewhere.
As he ran the last dry towel through his hair once more, he studied the pictures stacked on top of the box nearest him. He recognized a teenage version of Olivia right away, smack-dab in the center between Emily and an older woman he’d guessed to be their mother. They all shared the same eyes, a cool green but fiery all the same.
As he lifted the photograph, the frame’s ancient backing came loose, and another photo slipped from within it. Will snuck a glance at the closed door, listened for the sound of voices, before he took it in his hand and flipped it over.
Instantly, it struck him as familiar, though it took a moment to figure out why. Teen Olivia was there, with her kid sister under one arm. Both of them caught mid-laugh. A diesel truck of a man stood beside them, clad in a denim blue jumpsuit, prison-issued. Broad shoulders, arms like boa constrictors, and a beard concealing the lower half of his face. Only his eyes gave away his smile. Behind the three of them, the very same mural—the landscape of Fog Harbor—Will had spotted today when he’d peeked into Crescent Bay’s visiting room.
Something else caught Will’s attention, pricking his cop whiskers. He squinted down at the photo. Was that…?
With a sense of urgency, he searched the room for a lamp, a flashlight, anything. Only one dim bulb remained in the light fixture above, and his eyes had forty years on them now.
“Are you okay in there, Your Highness?” Olivia’s voice came from right outside the door.
“Just putting the finishing touches on my outfit.” He hoped she couldn’t hear his nerves, which seemed to crackle like live wires as he spoke, or his rustling to plug in the desk lamp he’d found toppled on the dresser. “You really know my style.”
After waiting a beat for her laughter to subside, he turned the switch and held the photo beneath the light, studying the man’s right bicep. He couldn’t say for certain, and yet he knew.
That photo was taken at Crescent Bay State Prison.
That man was Olivia’s father.
That tattoo belonged to the Oaktown Boys.
“Does this T-shirt make me look fat?” Will emerged from the bedroom with the best fake smile he could manage. He avoided Olivia’s eyes. He knew one of her secrets now. It sat like a hot stone in the pit of his stomach, and he had no clue what to do with it.
Emily burst into uncontrollable laughter. She sank down into the sofa and hid her tearing face behind a snowman throw pillow.
“It’s certainly form-fitting.” Olivia smirked as she exchanged the bundle of wet clothes in his hands for a steaming mug of coffee. She’d changed too, into jeans and a sweater. Let her hair down. He absolutely did not stare. He reminded himself she couldn’t be trusted. The daughter of an Oaktown Boy.
Emily regained her composure long enough to chime in. “Don’t worry. You’re just big-boned.”
“Glad I could give you ladies a laugh this evening.” Will found a seat in an oversized armchair, a safe distance from Olivia, and took a careful sip. Next to him, the lights of a small Christmas tree twinkled—Will could smell the fresh-cut cedar—reminding him of home. Not his cabin, of course, but the only place he’d ever considered home: the three-bedroom stucco in Bernal Heights his mother had filled with so much singing and laughing and chocolate chip cookie-making that her depression had been nothing short of a bomb. Her leaving entirely, Hiroshima. “And thanks for the clothes and showing up when you did. It would’ve been a long walk back home.”
“I’ll put these in the dryer.” Olivia’s voice carried, as she disappeared down the hallway. “They should be dry in a few minutes, and I’ll give you a rid
e back home.”
“Thank you,” Will said again.
“Thank you,” Emily blurted, once she’d gone. “It’s never this exciting around here.”
Will thought of scrappy Olivia, with her bold green eyes and her dimple and sexy-as-hell blue jeans. Her doctorate degree, always meeting him toe to toe. Her secret too. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Why do you think I spend most nights at the Hickory Pit?”
“You like pig butts and you cannot—”
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny, Detective.”
Will returned her sly grin, but the photo he’d found, the mention of the Hickory Pit, had tripped a switch. Full detective mode. “Hey, since you mentioned the Hickory Pit, did you see Hank Wickersham there the night Bonnie McMillan went missing?”
Emily deflated. “Uh, is this like, on the record or something?”
“Is what on the record?” Olivia appeared in the doorway, eyes on Will, and he wondered if she’d been listening. He quelled the urge to spill everything. To let her help him sort it out.
“I’m just curious what Wickersham is like. He came by the station today and mentioned seeing Emily at the Hickory Pit. I thought she might be able to tell me more about him.”
Olivia’s face darkened, the ghost of unease pinching her forehead, drawing her mouth into a hard line.
“Do you think he hurt Bonnie and Laura?” Emily asked.
“We’re just covering all the bases. Right now, to be honest, there’s a few things we know. And a lot more we don’t know.”
“I thought you already had your prime suspect,” Olivia said. “Did someone change your mind?”
“Nobody changes my mind. I go where the evidence takes me. That’s all.”
Emily cleared her throat, making eyes at both of them. “Hank seems harmless, but I don’t know him that well. Maryann and Melody live on the same street as him though, and they’re always at the Pit. Shauna too. Hank has a crush on her, I think. They’d be able to tell you more than I can. But go easy on Shauna. She just got fired.”
“And the evidence took you to an inmate at a maximum security prison?” Single-minded as a bulldog with a bone.
“It did.”
“Are you sure it was the evidence, not something more personal? Sometimes, our history with an individual prevents us from seeing things as they really are. In my professional opinion.”
Will thought of the man in the photo. The tattoo. The inmate number stamped on the jumpsuit he’d committed to memory. “Well, Doctor, I can assure you my eyesight is twenty-twenty.”
Emily stood and smacked Olivia with a throw pillow, laughing as she retreated down the hallway. “Jeez, you two. Get a room.”
Will sat in the passenger seat of Olivia’s BMW, a holdover from her big-city days, no doubt, while she drove them toward the cabin on Wolver Hollow. Her fancy car made about as much sense in Fog Harbor as she did.
His T-shirt felt warm from the dryer, shorts too. With the rain drumming steadily against the windshield, Olivia had cranked the defroster to full blast. Maybe that’s why his armpits dampened with sweat, as he watched her handle the steering wheel with one hand, massaging the back of her neck with the other. At least his feet were cool, shoved bare into his wet sneakers.
C’mon, Deck. She’s a shrink not a double agent. It’s just small talk. You can do it.
“Your sister seems nice.”
“Em? She’s a total brat. But she’s twenty-five and stuck here with me. I guess she’s allowed to be. After our mom got sick, she floundered a little. Dropped out of Oregon State, became a dental hygienist, took a job at Crescent Bay. She cleans inmates’ teeth all day, every day.”
“Yikes. That might be my new number one worst job ever.”
Olivia laughed, and he soaked it in, even as he doubted it. Finally, he’d done something right. “What was your old number one?”
“There’s been a few. I’m always revising the list. Road stop bathroom cleaner, cat food taste tester. Cop with a target on his back.”
Olivia went quiet.
He realized it had been too long since he’d talked to anyone about it. The thing that hung around his neck. Noose or badge of honor, he never could decide. “How about the armpit sniffers? They test deodorant.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Or the criminal profiler who cost the city of Oakland a few million bucks.”
“Seriously?”
“As a heart attack. Which, by the way, is exactly what happened to the guy the OPD falsely accused based on my profile. He needed a triple bypass.”
“So, that’s why you don’t do it anymore? Because the cops got it wrong?”
He recognized a familiar weight in the shrug of her shoulders. “Profiling is no more than an educated guess. It can’t take the place of good police work.”
“I get it now. You agreed to help me because you know what a damn good cop I am.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” The corner of her mouth twisted upward. “I agreed to help you because you’re so far off base you can’t even see home plate anymore.”
“Alright, alright. But do you really think Warden Blevins is behind this? The guy is a walking toothpick.”
“That’s the advantage of a garrote though, isn’t it? You don’t need to be strong enough to overpower your victim. Just crafty enough to get the thing around the neck. I think both women knew who attacked them. Trusted him. Or her. Or them.”
Will mulled it over as he directed her past the vacant cabin nearest his own. Its screened porch lit with a single naked bulb that flickered off and on like a blinking eye. “You keep saying that. Him or her or them.”
“The first rule of profiling. Don’t make assumptions.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” But he was making assumptions. Always thinking the worst and hating himself for it. What if Olivia had a dog in this fight? What if she’d intentionally steered him from Drake to Blevins? The Oaktown Boys wouldn’t mind getting the warden out of the way.
Crazy, Deck. Look at her.
Olivia rolled her eyes and shook her head at him. He saw how the moonlight caught the raindrops on the window behind her, making it into a starry sky and her into Cassiopeia.
Shit. Don’t look at her.
Olivia turned into the driveway, oblivious to Will’s silent warring, and pulled alongside his truck. He searched for a reason not to get out.
“Also, don’t rule out Wickersham,” she said, putting the car in park. He wondered if she felt it too. The rain, a curtain around them. The fine wire stretched between, crackling. “I don’t know what you’ve got on him, but he has issues with women and Drake. I caught him at the lighthouse with Shauna and my sister. Drunk and about to go skinny-dipping.”
He matched her frown with his own, skinny-dipping echoing in his head longer than it should have. “Really? Your sister? She seems smarter than that.”
“When she wants to be. But hanging out with Shauna doesn’t help. She’s the kind of girl who’ll get herself walked off prison grounds one day for something. And Hank is the kind of guy to help her do it.”
“Alright. I won’t rule him out.” And he hadn’t. No matter what JB thought.
Olivia lowered her head, fidgeted with her hands. “Or Drake,” she added, reluctantly. “Maryann told me he’d researched homemade weapons, and he had a close relationship with both victims.”
“But I thought you said he didn’t fit the profile. The refractory period, the UCLA study. Remember?” He raised his eyebrows, teasing her.
“Profiling isn’t science. It’s like matchmaking. You get a feel for people. What they’re like, how they’ll act in certain situations.”
He nodded at her, building up his courage. “If I tell you something…”
“My lips are sealed.” He couldn’t stop his gaze from going there. Rosy and kissable. He felt guilty for pushing but he needed to know. “You already know how ethical I am.”
“These murders could be gang-related.”
“Oaktown Boys. Their symbol has turned up a few times. First, in Bonnie’s car. Then, at James’ house. Now, at Laura’s. One of their guys was there last night. That’s how I got this.” He touched the bruise on his jaw carefully. As carefully as he studied her eyes. Doing both ached in exactly the same way. A dull throb behind his breastbone.
She looked away, at her hands in her lap. Barely smiled. “And here I was thinking JB hit you.”
With the wipers off, Will could just make out the door to the cabin. A beam of light glowed from the hole in the garage siding. He wished he hadn’t said anything. Had never seen that photo at all. Had simply enjoyed the ride with a beautiful woman.
“Do you want to come in?” He blurted it out, practically spit it. For no reason he could explain. It sat there between them. A raw hunk of his heart. Disgusting.
“I can’t.”
He reached for the handle, ready for the assault of the wind and rain in his face. To put him out of his misery. Or rather, smack-dab into the middle of it. He hoped Cy had stuck around at least. He needed a warm body to talk to, and a one-eyed cat would do just fine.
Her fingertips, ice-cold on his forearm, started a small fire inside him.
“Wait.”
Chapter Thirty
Olivia stared at the hand on Deck’s arm. Her hand, she realized. His skin, fever-hot beneath it. But how did it get there? Why was it still there?
“The Oaktown Boys…” She returned the offending hand to her lap. Told it to stay put.
“You know them, right?”
“Well, I work in a prison. So, yes. I had the mandatory gang training when I took the job. The Oaktown Boys are a white supremacist motorcycle gang, primarily in Northern California. Their symbol is the oak tree, a warped version of the one used to represent the city of Oakland. Most of them have tattoos. Like the old guy in the wheelchair I tried to help today. Morrie Mulvaney. He’s former Oaktown.”
Watch Her Vanish: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Rockwell and Decker Book 1) Page 17
