I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes. A blanket of deep blue had settled outside. “The sun is going down.”
“That’s what happens when your sleep schedule of days and nights are mixed up,” he said, sitting up next to me. “I guess in our case, it’s good that you’re more awake at night, since it’s probably the best time to go to the storage locker with less chance of being seen.”
“Right,” I answered, shoving to my feet. I turned in place, reacquainting myself with the provisions and moving to the window. My sister hadn’t shown up. The only reason she wouldn’t have is if she were in some kind of trouble or if she wasn’t physically capable.
Even on high ground, the water on the property had collected enough so that it melded and merged like one big puddle over the lawn. The pool had crested the concrete, and the wind was blowing some of the water down into the drainage anchor that had been installed for just this purpose.
“I don’t suppose there’s a car on the property that still runs?” he asked, rising from behind me and securing a blanket around his waist.
“No. The car was totaled in the accident,” I answered, walking to the light switch. I flicked it once and then a second time, a little more impatiently.
“The power never came back on,” he said, answering my unasked question.
“Perfect,” I said, walking to the linen closet. I grabbed the weather radio and used the hand crank to get it going. It didn’t work. No matter what I tried.
“You said your grandmother lives next door?” he asked.
“Sort of. Her house is next door, but she lives in the retirement home.”
“But does she have a car?” he asked. Moving to the window he stared outside while shoving his gun into the back of his jeans.
“Yeah.”
He grinned and glanced over his shoulder. “Can you get access?”
“Of course. I just need to knock on the door.”
He raised a brow. “She still maintains a staff?”
“She has a live-in groundskeeper who looks after things.”
“Great. We should go.” Hugh sounded excited by the prospect.
“I should wait for my sisters,” I said.
“The more time we waste, the closer Victor’s thugs will get. We should go now. Leave your sister a note or do whatever you have to, but we should leave.”
“I’m not wearing this robe out in public and you certainly aren’t going out dressed like that. We need to dry our clothes first.”
“And then we leave,” he said.
The clothes were nice, dry, and warm as I dressed. The thought of getting wet again send an expectant shiver down my spine.
I left Mercy a quick note telling her where she could find me and explaining my need to give Hugh the ledger just to get him to go away. She probably wouldn’t agree with my decision, but I was slowly running out of options, and the more time I spent with Hugh, the harder it was going to be to convince myself that I didn’t need him in my life. I not only didn’t trust him, but I didn’t trust myself around him. Any relationship would be a train wreck in the making.
I grabbed the umbrella and a coat from the closet and slid into it. Hugh wasn’t as lucky. I didn’t have any of Teddy’s things here. I’d never brought him here. My parents’ house was something I hadn’t shared with anyone outside of my sisters. It was sacred like that. Well, it had been sacred.
I walked out and flicked the umbrella open. Hugh took it and held it higher over our heads as I guided him through the connecting side gate and into my grandmother’s yard.
He took my hand and slipped his fingers through mine. I glanced up at him and frowned.
“If the groundskeeper thinks we’re together, that should keep him from asking too many questions.”
I stopped walking and turned to face him, slipping my hand free. “You're wrong.” I sighed. “Marcus would have a hell of a lot more questions if I brought a guy home. Especially when I shouldn’t be here at all.” I gestured to his arm. “I’m going to tell him you’re hurt, my place is flooded, and we need the car to get you to a hospital.”
“He’ll buy that?” Hugh asked, his look turning skeptical.
“He has no reason to doubt it. You are hurt, and my place is probably flooded.”
“Okay.” He sighed as if no other choice existed.
I led him to Marcus’s house. It was like our pool house, only bigger. It sat behind Gram’s place. Marcus had his own space that Grams had built just for him. There’d been a time when I thought he and Grams were secretly seeing each other. That thought had grown the way he’d taken care of her for years, and in the weeks before her decision to go into the nursing home, things had been strenuous between the two. Maybe that was her own way of hiding, just like my altered sleeping time. Maybe we were more alike than I cared to believe.
My Grams could be stubborn and had probably pushed Marcus away. But there was still love and light in the old man’s eyes.
Marcus pulled the door open as we approached, as if sensing someone on the property.
“Honor, what are you doing out in this weather?” Marcus said as his sharp gaze turned to Hugh.
“My place is flooding, and my friend was hurt. So, we hiked around the lake and spent the night in my parents’ pool house. I need to get Hugh to a doctor and was hoping I could borrow Gram’s car.”
“You mean you slept during the day?” Marcus asked lifting a brow.
“Day, night. You know I’m still on that weird sleep schedule.” I offered. “So, is it okay if I borrow Gram’s car?”
Marcus’s brows dipped as if he wasn’t totally buying my claim but if he had reservations, he thankfully kept them to himself. “Of course.”
He stepped back inside and grabbed his jacket and returned with a set of keys that he dangled for me to see.
“The roads are bad,” Marcus called out and jogged toward the garage. He jabbed the key into the lock and shoved the door open and then flicked the lights on.
“Why do you have lights if the pool house doesn’t?” Honor asked.
“Generator and solar panels. You know Molly was all about the environment,” Marcus answered.
“Grams was always trying to save the world.” I patted Marcus’s shoulder in passing and stepped into the garage.
“You have your pick, although I might suggest you take the SUV or something with four-wheel drive. Limbs and trees are down, and the roads are nasty.”
My gaze landed on the black sports utility at the end of the row. We’d teased Gram’s she wasn’t tall enough to see over the dash, but she’d countered with the fact that she wouldn’t be driving it.
“I’ll take the black-eyed monster,” I said.
Marcus turned to the hanging rack, grabbed a set of keys, and tossed them into the air. “Excellent choice, don’t forget we’re under curfew. You only have an hour to get to the hospital, and then you’ll probably be stuck there until they lift the curfew again.”
Curfew. I sighed and glanced at Hugh in understanding.
“I haven’t listened to the radio. How’s Mercy’s neighborhood faring?”
“Jimbo stopped by to check in on me. He told me that she’s got trees down, blocking in the subdivision. Most of your sisters are out of commission, but he’s checked on them all.”
“Thanks,” I said, heading toward the SUV as Marcus hit the garage door button.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and let out a shaky breath as Hugh climbed in. He probably would have been the better driver had it not been for an injured arm. Get the book, give it to him, and then drop him at the nearest corner, and he’d be gone. I could do that all within an hour, right?
Wrong.
The surrounding devastation hadn’t registered in my mind as we headed toward downtown. Downed power lines and trees were in the midst of repair and being moved from to the sides of the road. Work crews hustled on the sides of the streets and in electric company trucks.
There were only a few c
ars on the roads like ours. Sightseers, if I’d had to guess. Police were blocking different roads, creating detours. The five-minute drive to the storage locker took thirty.
I waved at the guard as I passed and drove straight up to the building that housed my locker.
“Do you need a key?” he asked.
“No, looks like the power is still on here. I can use the keypad to get in.”
He followed behind me inside the quiet building. The overhead lights flickered around us, casting shadows off the walls. The scent of things forgotten drifted in the air.
This is the place where things went to die. Like a cemetery for personal belongings.
I knew the route like the back of my hand, twisting and turning down the corridors until I came to my unit.
The lock keeping my things safe came from my high school locker. The combination through the years had been etched into my brain as useless information.
I twisted and turned the dial several times, hitting all the right numbers and turning it all the right times. I yanked hard, and the base unclicked, letting me in.
I slid the lock clear then lifted the door, shoving it above my head. Hugh pushed it higher, and I flicked the light switch.
Chapter Thirteen
Fluorescent lights buzzed to life over our heads, thrusting the room into view. Boxes were stacked neatly against the back wall. Teddy’s guitar was sitting in the stand covered by the blanket I’d put over it. That was his prized possession.
I pulled the blanket free as Hugh headed straight for the boxes. I strummed the string. The sound broke through the silence.
“He used to love that thing,” Hugh said as he ripped the tape off of one of the boxes.
“He used to claim the music was the real him, but that accounting paid the bills. He used to play it every weekend. That’s how we met.”
Hugh pulled item after item out of one of the boxes, examining, then setting each piece aside.
“Growing up, he wanted to be a singer. He claimed the guitar was going to be his claim to fame to help him get there.”
I put the blanket back over the instrument. “That’s an intimate detail to share with a jail mate, no matter if you’re a cop or not.”
Hugh pressed his lips together into a stern line but didn’t explain. I don’t know why Hugh knowing that intimate detail irked me. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Teddy had shared that with me as a secret. Had he been telling his secrets to everyone?
“Let’s get this over with. I’ll start at this end, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
Hugh was working through his second box while I was still digging through the first.
“It would have helped if you labeled these,” Hugh said.
I met his eyes with a glare. “Yeah, well, be glad I didn’t toss it all in the trash or set it on fire.”
Silence sliced through the room.
“If you liked the guy enough to let him move in, then why didn’t you ever visit him in jail? Did you not want to hear his explanation?” Hugh asked, turning one of the music books over and shaking it as if looking for something to fall out from between the pages.
“How dare you,” I growled, dropping the clothes in my hands. “Who are you to come in here and judge me after what I went through?”
“What you went through wasn’t anything compared to jail.” Hugh raised his gaze to meet mine. “Why didn’t you cut him loose? You didn’t love him.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growled.
“You stopped caring, apparently. You didn’t go to his trial. You just vanished from his life.”
“You think whatever you want,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was there,” Hugh accused, his deep voice lowering another octave. “I didn’t see you at all.”
I lowered my head and sat on one of the folding chairs that I’d put in storage on my last visit. “I tried. He wouldn’t see me. He kept sending me away. I didn’t understand why until later.”
Hugh shoved Teddy’s crap back into the box he’d just finished unloading.
“What happened later to make you understand?”
“He sent me a letter telling me he was sorry. That he didn’t love me. That if he had he wouldn’t have never stolen the money.”
“And you believed him?” Hugh asked.
“His letter was delivered by the mistress he was keeping on the side. A little barfly.”
“She could have been lying,” Hugh offered as he opened another box. “He could have asked her to do it as a favor.”
I lifted my gaze to Hugh’s and cleared my throat. “She wasn’t lying. The toddler she brought shared Teddy’s eyes. The kid was his.”
Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “He’d told me he had a kid and that it was before he ever met you. She was lying. For some reason, Teddy wanted you to stay away. If I had to guess, it was to protect you from Victor. Gena wouldn’t have done it for any other reason.”
“Gena?” I asked, pausing before ripping open the next box. “I didn’t tell you her name. How did you know?”
“Teddy told me,” Hugh answered after clearing his throat and returning to the box he was digging through.
I shook my head and moved across the room. “You’re lying. I want the truth, or this stops here and now.”
Hugh lowered his head and rested his hands on the box. “I know Gena’s name because that kid shared Teddy’s eyes… Well, he’s my nephew. Teddy is my brother.”
I stepped back.
“Were you ever in prison with him?” I gawked.
“No,” he said, lifting his chin. “But I did visit him, and he did tell me all about you during those visits.”
“You lied to me.” I shook my head. “Are you really a cop or did you lie about that too?”
“Yes, I’m a cop.” He said as if irritated he needed to explain.
“Did you lie about Victor?”
“No,” Hugh said. Abandoning the box, he moved toward me. “Everything else I told you is true. Teddy kept a ledger for the six months before he got busted. He told me he left it at your place. He said there was enough information in there to bring Victor down and that it contained a detailed listing of the accounts he’d used to launder the money. He didn’t steal it to pay for his retirement. He stole it as proof of what Victor was doing.”
My heart clenched. I don’t know why I was shocked that Hugh had lied. That Teddy wasn’t just the common criminal I believed, but he’d been trying to do the right thing.
“How can I believe you?” I asked, searching his gaze. “He never told me he had a brother. He told me his entire family had died.”
“To him, we had,” Hugh said and ripped open another box. “Teddy ran away at the age of sixteen. Did he tell you that?”
“He said he ran away from his foster family,” I said.
“My parents adopted him after his family died. They loved him like he was their son. They hired PIs to find him and bring him back, and each time he left again. It wasn’t until he was older that he reached out to my parents trying to put things back together again.” Hugh’s jaw clenched. “By then, my father had died, and I wouldn’t let him near my mom. He’d broken her heart and her spirit when he’d left. I wasn’t about to let him do it again.”
My heart ached at the thought. Teddy had been hurting all those years and was trying to make things right.
“It wasn’t your choice to make.”
“I agree,” Hugh said, tilting his neck. “I told my mother about Teddy reaching out, and she was mad I’d kept it from her. She wanted to see him, so I went to arrange it, and that was about the time Teddy was arrested.”
“Did she get to see him?” I asked, needing to know.
“She visited him in jail four times a week until the day he died. I visited the other three days when she couldn’t go. That’s when he told me about you.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. My stomach churned.
“He drove me away on purpose.”
“I already told you that he was protecting you.”
I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t protecting me.” I swallowed hard and crossed the room, ripping open a box. I took out one of my journals and handed it to him. “He was keeping me from meeting you.”
“I don’t….” Hugh said, opening my journal. His voice trailed off as he stared at the picture I’d tucked away inside. A picture of my future. A picture of a guy kissing me. A shirtless guy whose tattoo was visible.
“I’d told him once about the man in my dreams that I visit each night via astral projection. I showed him that picture of that man, which my sister drew and claimed I would marry one day.”
Hugh remained quiet even as he lifted his gaze.
“It’s you.”
Hugh lowered his gaze to the picture again and ran his finger over the tattoo that matched the one on his shoulder. “Teddy and I designed matching tattoos at the age of ten that we were going to get when we old enough to do it. I told him I was going to get mine, but he never did.”
“That explains the recognition on his face when I showed him the picture.”
“He must have known.” Hugh slapped the journal closed. “He must have known he was going to die. Why else would he send me to you after keeping us apart?”
“Hugh, maybe there is no journal. Maybe that was the only way he knew you’d come see me.”
Hugh shook his head. “I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t have—”
His words abruptly stopped when the overhead lights flickered off, thrusting my unit and the hallways into darkness.
“What just happened?” he asked, reaching for me and pulling me closer.
“They must have lost power,” I said. “I think I saw a flashlight in one of the boxes.”
“You wait here,” he said, stepping out into the hallway. “I’m going to go see if the attendant has a flashlight.”
“It won’t matter if he does,” I said with a sigh. “He had to buzz us in. The door is electric. I think they have a contingency set up if this were to happen. It triggers the manual locks to engage. We’re stuck in here.”
Train Wreck: Bennett Dynasty Book 6 Page 5
