In the Clear

by Tamara Morgan

  Not really. Fletcher’s personal and professional lives were carefully compartmentalized for a reason. He didn’t like things touching.

  “Was something wrong with the shipment we got from the impound lot?” He took a guess, figuring anything was better than letting Gerald build up more steam. “Because the woman I talked to said . . . ”

  Gerald tossed his knife, catching it overhand in his fist as if he wanted to slash Fletcher’s chest open. “How do you think it makes me feel, sitting on an untapped gold mine like this?”

  Fletcher backed away from the knife’s edge. “Um . . . not at all like you want to murder me?”

  Realizing he was hunched for attack, Gerald laughed and slipped the weapon into its belt holster. With a hearty slap on Fletcher’s back, he nudged him in the direction of the lot. Their feet crunched on the five new inches of snow as they walked, and Fletcher knew without question that he’d be the one tasked with shoveling the sidewalks this morning. Which wasn’t so bad, truth be told. Mindless repetition was preferable to cornering unsuspecting couples browsing through minivans.

  “You remember when Ben came home from Afghanistan, don’t you?” Gerald’s heavy hand remained on Fletcher’s shoulder. “How I put him out front in his uniform? Five cars he sold that first morning, and I don’t need to tell you how his sales figures have looked since then.”

  “He seems to do well,” Fletcher said when it was clear some sort of response was required of him.

  “That’s because people love a hero. Heroes are comforting. They allow us regular folk a way to touch greatness.” Gerald turned one squinty eye his way. “You get what I’m saying, Owens?”

  “People love heroes.”

  “Absolutely they do!” Gerald paused to look up at the car lot sign, which featured a twenty-foot blow-up version of himself waving to the street. The mud that inevitably kicked up off the wintery December streets rendered his larger self splotchy and dingy, but that didn’t seem to mar his admiration. “And even more to the point, they like buying cars from heroes. What feels safer than driving home with a car signed and sealed by one of Spokane’s finest?” It was a rhetorical question. “Nothing, I tell you. Not a thing.”

  Fletcher stopped. The way Gerald was talking made it sound an awful lot like . . .

  He slapped the paper into Fletcher’s chest and gave his hat—a sensible black knit with a bill to keep the worst of the snow out of his eyes—a tweak. “I can’t believe you’ve worked here for two years and somehow failed to mention that you rescue people in your spare time. You’re a goddamn superhero.”

  Yeah. That. That was what it sounded like.

  “It’s not really a big deal,” Fletcher said uncomfortably. “It’s just this thing I do.”

  “It’s one hell of an extracurricular.”

  He didn’t know how to respond to that. Saving people, playing hero—it was a big deal. He knew that. He felt it every time he was called to help the local Search and Rescue team head out to find missing children, lost hikers, people trapped in adverse weather. But that didn’t make it any easier to talk about. If anything, it made it harder.

  “Don’t look so scared. I mean that as a compliment.” Gerald winked. “You’re out front today. I want you to smile and wave and, if there’s an ounce of sense somewhere inside that head of yours, put on some kind of shiny badge or cape. Let’s see if we can’t blow Ben’s record out of the water, eh?” He chuckled as he realized he’d just let out a pun. “Ha! Out of the water. You should know all about that.”

  Fletcher watched his boss’s retreating back, hunched in its puffy blue coat, and held the paper clutched to his chest. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see—

  There it is.

  He stared at the picture, grainy from the printer and streaked from the melting snow, seeing nothing past the odd expression on his own face. The two-dimensional image of himself wore a twisted grimace that made him look angry, but all Fletcher remembered feeling was cold. Numbing cold and a mountain of relief.

  By the time the entire Search and Rescue crew had assembled, it had to have been ten o’clock at night, at least two hours more before they had the woman stabilized. How could a reporter have gotten there and snapped a picture without his knowing?

  Of course. The website lady. They’d earmarked some money to do an overhaul of the SAR crew’s existing website, and the woman they hired had wanted to get a few action shots so she wouldn’t have to rely on stock footage. But she hadn’t said anything about posting the pictures at an online news website—and she definitely hadn’t said anything about attaching his name to them, or he would have flatly refused. He didn’t like being the center of attention, especially out on the field. Crowing over his own contributions detracted from the real mission of the organization. And if he was being honest, he was also hesitant to shift the status quo.

  There was no denying he was a man slow to change, that he clung to the familiar even after the rest of the world had moved on.

  It was simple, really. He didn’t want to talk about his Search and Rescue group for fear people would start having unrealistic expectations about him. He didn’t fill out the college application for the EMT program for fear a rejection would close the door on that possibility for good.

  And he never did anything—anything—that might upset his place in the Sinclair family. Friend, brother, almost a son. Ever since his father had died when he was eight years old, they’d been the most constant of all the constants in his life.

  They were everything.

  A car drove by at that moment, kicking up a huge spray of sludge and ice chunks. Fletcher felt the splash soak through his clean khakis, clinging to his legs in big, damp patches. It seemed a much more fitting start to the day than Gerald’s bizarre belief that he could suddenly become some kind of car-selling god just because of a chance snapshot by an indiscreet photographer.

  “Don’t just stand there, Owens. Get moving.” Gerald gestured from the main showroom. “No one will recognize you in all that snow gear. I bet we can find one of Ben’s old war uniforms to fit you.”

  # # #

  “I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to freak out.”

  Lexie looked up from her bowl of cereal and scowled at her brother. “I don’t freak out.”

  “You do. Whenever you hear about something exciting, you squeal and hop and make all sorts of noises that shouldn’t exist before ten o’clock in the morning.”

  She sat up straighter. Moving in with her brother had been one of the biggest mistakes of her life—not counting that one time she’d mistaken a woman at the airport for Sarah Michelle Gellar and maybe, possibly, just an eensy bit overreacted when she’d asked for an autograph.

  When Sean was offered a position as an adjunct college professor six months ago and moved back to town, she’d thought it might be fun to cohabitate with her twin again. Not only would sharing an apartment save money—something she always needed to work on—but she’d also hoped it would bring them closer. Time, distance, and Sean’s oppressive sense of work ethic had made it difficult for them to connect lately, and she’d missed having someone around who made her laugh.

  But Sean didn’t laugh nearly as much as she remembered. And he didn’t make her laugh much, either. Most of the time, she wanted to strangle the smug bastard.

  “Squealing and hopping do not equal freaking out,” she said with a calm she was far from feeling. “I have appropriately excited reactions to situations that require them. It’s called happiness. You should try it some time.”

  He ignored her and barreled on. “You also have to promise not to call him, email him, or otherwise intrude upon his life.”

  That got her interest. Her spoon dropped into her favorite pink ceramic bowl, and a small squeal may have escaped her lips, but it was tiny. Infinitesimal, really. “Who can’t I call? What happened?”

  Sean released a long-suffering sigh and leveled her with his best I-told-you-so
look, eyebrows drawn tight. It was amazing how stern he could be when he wanted to. Some days, it was like looking at a younger, mirror image of their dad.

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “If it wasn’t a big deal, you wouldn’t be so dramatic about it.” She snapped her fingers. “Is it Uncle Jerry? Or your friend with that weird obsession with red pants? Oh, I know! It’s that sandwich delivery guy you have a crush on.”

  “I do not have a crush on the sandwich delivery guy.”

  “We have a month’s worth of low-fat, organic turkey sandwiches in the fridge. You hate paying extra for organic food.”

  Sean’s nostrils flared, a sure sign he was reaching the end of his patience. Also that she was right about the sandwiches. “Would it kill you to stay on topic for five seconds? It’s Fletcher.”

  Lexie’s excitement fell flat on its face. “Oh, God—is he okay? What happened?”

  “Not whatever tragedy is working its way through your pea-brain right now, I can tell you that. Here.” Sean shoved his smartphone in Lexie’s face, and she could just make out the pixelated image of a man with a woman in his arms. The caption on the picture read Local Search and Rescue Worker Saves Woman from Frozen Lake.

  It took a second for the shock to wear away so she could get a better look at the picture. Honestly, she’d have bet good money Sean did that on purpose—made her imagine the worst only to reveal her for the foolish, weepy wreck she was. As if she needed regular reminders.

  “Are you sure that’s him?” She peered closer at the screen. “That man looks so . . . mad. I’ve never seen Fletcher like that in real life.”

  Fletcher didn’t get mad. He wasn’t like her and Sean, with their messy emotions bubbling over the surface and contaminating everything.

  Sean snatched the phone away, swatting at her hands when she tried to get it back. “You’re missing the point. His secret isn’t a secret anymore—and chances are he doesn’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “That’s not really him.”

  “It’s him.”

  “No.”

  Sean threw up his hands. “Fine. Don’t believe me. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. That way we can all go back to our regularly scheduled lives without you getting in the way and mucking things up.”

  “You’re serious?” Fletcher—their Fletcher—was some kind of superhero who saved women from lakes? “Gimme that.”

  She tried harder to get the phone back, but Sean held it out of her reach. He only had two inches on her in the height department, but he’d always had freakishly long arms. Like an ape.

  “Just go to work, Lexie,” Sean said. “I only mentioned the picture because I don’t want you to stumble across it on your own and call him. Promise me you won’t.”

  “Why can’t I call him? He’s my friend, too.” She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t even let her voice wobble. Why was it, no matter how many years passed, she was still the outsider to their close-knit duo, the sidekick reject all alone in a cape and tights?

  “Because,” he said with painstaking calm, as if he were talking to one of his freshman English students, “you’ll make him feel weird about it. That’s what you do. Whenever you get excited about something, you bounce all over him like he’s some kind of trampoline. But Fletcher isn’t springy like that—he just absorbs it. And you never see the dents you leave behind.”

  She sniffled, and this time she didn’t try to hide it. That had to be one of the cruelest things Sean had ever said to her. She would never hurt anyone like that—especially Fletcher. “I don’t leave dents.”

  “You don’t mean to, but they’re there all the same.” Sean sighed and, for the first time that morning, real kindness flickered across his face. He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, but it was like putting a Band-Aid on a knife wound to the back. “Look—can we talk about this later? I’ve got to get to campus, and I’m pretty sure you were supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Oh, crap.” She looked at the retro cat clock on the wall and groaned. They had a staff meeting starting in ten minutes.

  After grabbing her purse and shoving her feet into the nearest shoes she could find, Lexie took one last look around the apartment—at the pile of her breakfast things, at the stack of recycling she kept forgetting to take out, at the Christmas tree she’d only halfway decorated before remembering that the box of her favorite ornaments was still in storage at their parents’ house.

  There was no use pretending. It was a mess.

  Her shoulders sagged as she carefully shut the apartment door behind her. Maybe Sean is right. Maybe I do flail and leave dents everywhere I go.

  But for some reason, she’d always thought Fletcher was the one person able to withstand them.

  Chapter Three

  “Someone’s here to see you, Mr. Owens.” The car lot receptionist, a pixie brunette named Clara he was pretty sure hadn’t known he existed yesterday, batted her eyes at him from the doorway of his makeshift office, which just that morning had been a storeroom for decades-old paperwork and car parts deemed too valuable to scrap. “Gerald says you can go ahead and take a long lunch if you want. He says he can do better if he puffs it off that you’re home resting after your big adventure.”

  Fletcher let loose a soft laugh. Contrary to Gerald’s expectations and exactly on par with his own, he hadn’t magically transformed into a laidback charmer who could convince people to buy vehicles they weren’t sure they wanted in the first place. Even the suit he’d been wrangled into—he refused to put on Ben’s army uniform, even upon Gerald’s threat to fire him—did little to help. A few people recognized him and offered their congratulations, but the second he started telling them about three-point hitches and engine torque, they got the same glaze in their eyes that people always had when they talked to him. At one point, Gerald actually looked as if he might be crying at the waste of it all, wiping away his tears with his knife.

  “Is it another reporter?” Fletcher asked, rubbing his eye sockets wearily. He’d gotten five phone calls and two visitors already. That was exactly five phone calls and two visitors he wished he could shove back under his cloak of secrecy. He could already feel the careful balance of his previous life slipping away. “I don’t suppose you could pretend I’m not here?”

  “She’s young and cute,” Clara offered. She batted her eyes again, as if young and cute were the only requirements he had. When he didn’t say anything, Clara sighed. “She also said I had to let her in on pain of death. Your death, specifically, at the hands of overgrown newts. She seems kind of odd.”

  Odd. Newts. That sounded an awful lot like . . .

  “Fletcher Patrick Owens, you have some serious explaining to do.” Lexie barreled through the door with a familiar printout in one hand, a greasy brown paper bag in the other. The smell of fried food hit his nose as she wedged her way into the tiny space. A tiny space, he might add, that seemed to be growing smaller by the second.

  She stabbed a finger at the paper. “Why does it look like you just plunged into a lake to save that woman?”

  He nodded once at Clara to show that although death was within Lexie’s extensive range of abilities, he was safe. For the time being.

  “Because I plunged into a lake to save that woman.”

  Lexie stopped in the act of removing her coat. She always seemed to have a thousand things on in the winter, what with all the sweaters and hats and gloves and scarves she needed to stay warm. He loved how efficiently the items went on and came off, her fruity perfume wafting up with each movement. He would have loved it even more if he was the one doing the removing, shucking layer after adorable layer, taking his time undoing the buttons along the front of her sweater, pausing to lift her hair from her neck as the scarf went . . .

  . . . WHOOSH.

  She snapped the scarf in his face and waved her hand. “Hello? Fletcher? I can’t believe this is your deep, dark secret. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us about this.” She b
arely paused long enough to pull in a breath. “And what are you doing? Eat. I brought food.”

  Grateful for the distraction lunch allowed him, Fletcher took his time assembling their things. Burger and fries for him, milkshake on the side. A tiny green salad for herself. He arranged his food neatly in front of him, being careful to put the fries in the middle of the desk. For as long as he could remember, Lexie had a habit of buying herself rabbit food and then proceeding to eat most of her companions’ side dishes, never aware of her wandering fork. He usually ordered extra of the things she liked for that reason—she had no idea he didn’t actually care for chocolate cake.

  She munched on a fry, watching him carefully.

  “What?” he asked when the silence loomed long enough to make him squirm. Of all the social situations he’d mastered in this lifetime, the appropriate reaction to having his face spread all over the internet wasn’t one he’d had a chance to work on before.

  “The time that family’s car went missing on Mt. Spokane . . . what was it, two years ago? You left my birthday party and no one heard from you for like three days.”

  He ducked his head. That one had been hard. There weren’t a lot of celebrations he could be bothered to attend, but a Sinclair party always made the list. “We were lucky the mom thought to burn the tires for heat.”

  A frown pulled at the soft corners of her mouth, a pucker in her brow. “And last month? The missing kid they found hiding in a dog house twelve blocks over?”

  “Grid search,” Fletcher confirmed. He hated grid searches. He also hated the cases with children. Both made him feel ineffective, forcing him to take one step at a time even though blood rushed through him, hot and insistent, urging him to look harder, move faster, be better.

  It was one thing to be careful in his own life, to avoid the everyday risks for fear of losing everything. When he was out on a rescue, none of those truths applied. Out there, risks were the only way to survive.