“Aw, shut up. What do you want with that backward hole, anyhow?” A thought struck him. He shot Miles a darkly suspicious look. “Isn’t Cindy up there, doing band camp? Don’t tell me you’re still—”
“Absolutely not. I am totally over Cindy.” Miles’s tone was stony. “She’s up there, but I avoid her like the frigging plague.”
Sean was unconvinced. Miles had been pining for Cindy Riggs, Connor’s wife Erin’s seductive little sister, since before the McClouds had met him. He’d finally gotten a clue, after a spectacularly public episode last summer at Connor’s wedding, but it had not made him happier. On the contrary. He’d been in a funk ever since.
“I’m sound and light technician for the Howling Furballs at the Rock Bottom Roadhouse tonight,” Miles told him. “And tomorrow, I start assistant teaching karate at the Endicott Falls School of Martial Arts.”
Sean was startled. “No shit. You’ve got, what, a brown belt now?”
“Nope. Passed the test for my first dan black belt last month. Got an honorable mention for my kata, too.” The pride in Miles’s voice was palpable. “Davy gave my name to a guy who runs a dojo in Endicott Falls. They need someone to help with the class while the regular teacher recuperates from knee surgery, so…it’s no big deal.”
“It’s a very big deal,” Sean said. “It’s great. Good for you.”
“Plus, my folks just bought a car. They’re giving me their old Ford. This is the last time I’ll have to blackmail you into giving me a ride.”
“That’s reason enough in itself to drive you up,” Sean said sourly. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Early nineties sedan, right?”
Miles looked wary. “So? What of it?”
“Beige, right? I’ll bet you my left nut it’s vomit-tinted beige.”
Miles jerked his shoulders in a defensive shrug. “So what if it is?”
“Fogeymobile,” Sean said. “The Invisible Car, for the Invisible Man. You gotta drive something with testosterone, my friend.”
“It runs,” Miles grumbled. “It’s free. I know you think of motor vehicles as fashion accessories, but it’s sexier than taking the bus.”
“Barely,” Sean muttered. “I thought you were working on Con’s nerd killer project.”
“I will be. Cyber stuff. I’ll work from up there.”
Sean grunted, and yanked a couple beers out of the fridge. He handed one to Miles, chug-a-lugging half of his own. “God, I feel like shit.” The red light blinked insistently on his message machine. He stabbed the button to see what the outside world wanted from him.
The first two calls were work-related; one about an invoice he’d sent for a consulting job he’d done a few weeks before, another from an independent film director in L.A. who was shooting a movie about GIs in Iraq. Sean punched the fast forward button over both of them. He’d deal with them later, when his brain was back online.
The next message rooted him in place, bottle poised at his lips.
“Yo, Carey Stratton here. Tried your cell. Fucker was turned off. I was doing a trawl for your long lost lover-doll. Computer coughed up some new data. Olivia Endicott has had a misadventure, pal. Somebody burned down her bookstore. Oh, and she’s moved. She’s in Endicott Falls, Washington, now. That’s pretty close to you, huh? This might be your chance. Go for it, buddy. The skulking from afar shit is not good for your health, even if it does pay my rent. I sent you an e-mail with the links. No charge for this service. Take it easy, OK? Later, dude.”
Sean was rooted to the floor. Mind blank, mouth slack.
“Sean?” Miles’s voice was cautious. “You’re spilling your beer.”
Sean jerked, startled, and righted the bottle. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to swallow. His throat was choky dry, like desert sand.
Liv. Back in Endicott Falls. The last news he’d gotten from the private investigator had placed her in Cincinnati, Ohio, working as a research librarian. The latest photos Carey Stratton had sent him had been taken there last December. Black and whites, long range lens. Liv, coming out of her apartment. Liv, petting a dog, smiling. Liv getting her mail, hair swirling around her head like a halo, patterned gypsy skirt billowing in the wind. Her socialite bitch mother Amelia Endicott had loathed those long, swishy, hippie-mama skirts.
So Liv was still a rebel. Thank God for that.
The most recent photos, plus his all-time favorites, were kept in a folder on the shelf over his computer. Conveniently near to hand.
They were dog-eared and battered around the edges.
He slipped in the puddle of beer as he bolted for the computer room, downloaded Carey’s message, clicked the links. Read them all. Read them again. It was true. Arson, for Christ’s sake. His hands shook.
“So she’s the one, huh?”
Miles’s quiet voice from the doorway made him jump. He’d forgotten the kid was there. “What? She’s what one?”
“The one you keep that huge computer file on,” Miles said. “The reason you never stay with any one girl for more than four days.”
“What the hell do you know about my file?” he barked. “I never gave you permission to mess around in my private files!”
Miles dropped his long body into the other computer chair and gave Sean his long-suffering puppy dog look. “Remember those three days I spent trying to recuperate your data when your system crashed?”
“Oh.” Sean covered his face with his shaking hand. “Fuck me.”
Miles cleared his throat. “It’s, uh, real hard to keep secrets from your computer doctor.” His tone was apologetic. “Sorry.”
Sean stared into the screen. His face felt hot. Nobody was supposed to know about his hobby of keeping tabs on Liv Endicott. It was just a small, private insanity that did not bear close inspection. By anyone. Not his brothers, certainly. Not himself.
“You never said anything about it,” he muttered.
Miles shrugged. “Figured I had no right to point fingers. It was funny, though. Didn’t know you had it in you. To be obsessed, I mean.”
Sean winced. “I am not obsessed. And it’s no weirder than that vid clip of Cindy blowing a kiss that you used for your screen saver,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now that’s obsession for you, dude.”
“I trashed that screen saver,” Miles said, his voice lofty. “Now I have a flock of migrating birds. It’s very relaxing.”
Sean whistled. “Wow, sounds like a real dick-tingler. Relaxation, is not what you need, buddy. You need—”
“To get my bone kissed, yeah. You’ve told me that already, like, a thousand times,” Miles said impatiently. “So who is she, anyway?”
Sean buried his hot, throbbing face in his hands. “Hometown girl,” he said dully. “A direct descendant of our city’s illustrious founder, Augustus Endicott. His great-great-granddaughter, I think. You know that bronze statue of the pioneers in front of the library? The tall guy in the front who looks like he’s got a rifle shoved up his ass?”
“Oh, man,” Miles said, whistling. “Them? So she’s, like the heir to that huge construction company? Yowsa. Bart Endicott practically owns this town. And what he doesn’t own, he built.”
“Tell me about it.” Sean’s voice was bleak.
Miles studied him, slouched in the chair, his dark eyes heavy lidded and thoughtful. “Huh. So she’s the reason you do it, then?”
Sean gave him a wary look. “Do what?”
Miles’s eyebrow lifted. “Fuck everything that has a pulse.”
Sean was stung. “I do not fuck everything that has a pulse,” he said haughtily. “I have my standards. I limit myself to endoskeletal organisms. I always go for vertebrates. And I don’t do reptiles. Ever.”
“Aw, shut up,” Miles grumbled. “Man slut. It’s not fair.”
Sean gave him an appraising glance. Miles had changed since he’d started hanging with the McClouds. The results of two years of relentless martial arts training, dating from the historic battle of the Alley Cat Club, to save Cindy
from her pusbag pimp of a then-boyfriend.
Miles got pulped that night, but he’d developed a burning yen to learn to fight, just like the McClouds. Which was a tall order, but they’d made big progress. He had a black belt, for God’s sake. They’d finally gotten him to stand up straight, and his lanky frame and sunken chest had filled out nicely with all the weightlifting Davy made him do. He ate real food now, not just Doritos and Coke, so he no longer looked like an undernourished vampire. Sean’s tireless lecturing about grooming was beginning to bear fruit, too. Miles wasn’t a sharp dresser yet, by any means, but his T-shirt was clean, and his black hair was pulled back into a shiny ponytail, no longer lank, greasy wings framing a pallid face. He’d ditched the weird round glasses, and his big hooked nose looked better without them. He’d taken antibiotics for his zits, praise God. The resultant scarring gave his face a tough, weathered look.
Add in the big puppy dog eyes and the bulging biceps, and voilà. Not too fucking bad. If he would just lighten up, maybe even smile occasionally, he would look like a guy who could get laid with minimal effort on his part. About time, too. The guy was a volcano about to explode.
“Are these karate classes you’re teaching mixed?” Sean asked.
Miles snorted. “I’m working with little kids. Ages four to twelve.”
Sean shrugged. “There’s always hot and hungry single moms.”
“This might come as a shock to you, but some people actually do things for reasons which are not specifically aimed at obtaining sex.”
Sean widened his eyes. “Really? It worries me to hear a healthy twenty-five-year-old male say stuff like that. Either you’re ill, you’re pathologically screwed in the head, you’re a closet gay, or you’re lying.”
“I’m not—”
“Gay, yes. I know damn well you’re not,” Sean finished. “You’ve been obsessed with Cindy since I met you. You don’t look sick, either. That leaves screwed up, or lying. Take your pick. I’d buy either one.”
Miles’s mouth hardened. “I am totally over her. And I do not want to hear her name spoken for the rest of my natural life. Get it?”
Sean winced, pained. He’d overdone it again. He was used to kicking around his rawhide brothers. Sometimes their little buddy Miles was too soft for hard-core McCloud style teasing. “Fair enough. Sorry.”
“So, what’s the deal? Are you giving me a ride?” Miles gave him a crafty look. “You do want to check out this girl’s bookstore, don’t you?”
Sean let out a grim snort. Opportunistic, guilt-tripping little bastard. He turned back to the computer and read the articles again.
He wouldn’t, of course. He wasn’t that stupid, that masochistic.
But something inside him was buzzing, wide-eyed, totally zinged from hearing Liv’s name spoken aloud. He hadn’t felt that kind of buzz since he didn’t even remember. Maybe not since…
Since he’d seen her last? Oh, please. Give him a fucking break.
He’d do a thorough and exhaustive inventory of every single high point in his life before he’d admit to that. Talk about pathetic.
Still. Who was she, now?
Not that this burning itch of curiosity would be mutual. On the contrary. Liv hated his guts. She thought he was the embodiment of all evil in the known universe. Rightly so. And getting disdained, spurned, scorned, or otherwise dissed by Liv Endicott, well…damn.
That would suck like a vacuum cleaner.
Chapter 3
It was the bouquet of white irises that got to her the most. The sneering, in-your-face rudeness of it. As if the guy had spit on her.
Liv clenched her fists and tried to breathe. Her belly muscles were so rigid, she had to deliberately unknot them to let her lungs expand. That coffee she’d drunk some time ago churned in her belly, threatening to rush back up the way it came. She might be better off without it, but barfing made her cry, and the firebug who had torched her bookstore might be watching through a pair of binoculars.
Giggling evilly to himself. Licking his slavering chops. Watching her out of his cold, beady little reptile eyes, like a Tyrannosaurus rex.
She scanned the buildings around her, their outlines blurred by the haze of smoke. He could be watching from one of those windows. She shivered. She would not let him see her snivel like a hurt little girl.
T-Rex had left the bouquet on top of the kerosene, right out front. No attempt to hide what he’d done. He’d even attached a letter. For Olivia, with love, from You Know Who, was printed on the front. Same font he’d used for his previous e-mails. The ones she’d tried to ignore.
Evidently, T-Rex didn’t respond well to being ignored.
Well, hell. She was paying attention now. He’d gotten the big reaction he was looking for. The police were completely disgusted with her for contaminating the crime scene. She hadn’t thought about practical details like fingerprints, etc., when she’d ripped the flowers apart and stomped them into the ground, shrieking at the top of her lungs. She’d put on quite a floor show. Her parents had been mortified.
Ah, well. Nobody was perfect.
She forced out a breath. Her mind kept churning out platitudes about the virtues of non-attachment. All things must pass, blah, blah. The stuff she’d so recently stocked her Self-Help, Spirituality and New Age sections with. Big sellers, all that woo woo stuff. It made her want to smack someone. Who cared about the illusory nature of reality when you were staring at the ruins of your lifelong dream?
She wasn’t evolved enough not to feel like total crap about it.
And she was so angry. She wanted to hurt the guy who did this. Hurt him bad. Make it last. Make him sorry his parents had ever met.
This, from a woman who caught spiders and put them in the yard because she couldn’t bear to kill them. Even the big, freaky, hairy ones.
God, it hurt. She’d invested so much of herself into this place. Everything she had, and a whole lot more besides. She’d never cared so much. Ever, in her life. About anything.
Except for one notable occasion, her inner commentator piped up.
Oh no. Uh-uh. No way was she going to let herself think about Sean McCloud. One charred disaster at a time, thank you very much.
She scuffed through the ashes, mind churning. Who was this guy? What did he have against her? She had no natural enemies. She was Miss Compromise. Sweetness and light. What you reap is what you sow, wasn’t that how it worked? Wasn’t there a goddamn rule?
That New Age fluff she’d been ordering had done a number on her brain. Or maybe she’d done something horrible in a past life. She’d left a swathe of destruction in her wake. The Countess Dracula, or some such. She’d just get her inner evil countess to hunt this guy down and serve his balls up to him on a plate. Here ya go, buddy. Open wide.
If he didn’t get her first. She shivered, despite the August sun, and the heat waves that rose, shimmering, from the smoking coals.
She dashed the tears away with grimy hands and blinked madly, staring at the mess. All those months of work, reduced to nothing.
It had felt so good, bringing her dream bookstore into reality. Like she’d finally come home. Books & Brew was her baby. Her idea, her investment, her risk. Her own miserable, incinerated failure.
Be grateful it happened at night. The fire didn’t spread. The staff was home. No one got hurt, she reminded herself, for the zillionth time.
A hand clapped down on her shoulder. She jumped. “Don’t worry,” came a familiar voice. “It’s no big deal. It’s all insured, right?”
It was Blair Madden, the VP of Endicott Construction Enterprises, and her father’s right-hand man. Blair had never possessed much of what you might call tact, but this was a bit raw, even for him.
Liv turned. “Excuse me? No big deal? Don’t worry about it?”
“All I meant is that it’s replaceable.” Blair took his hand off her bare, dirty shoulder and wiped it discreetly on his perfectly creased tan pants. “It’s not like it was a cultural landmark. Keep
it in perspective.”
“Livvy? Good God! You’re still here?”
Liv winced at the razor tone of her mother’s voice. Amelia Endicott climbed out of the Mercedes idling on the curb and minced toward them, careful not to smudge her sandals. “You shouldn’t be out in the open!” she scolded.
“I’ll come when I’m ready, Mother,” Liv said.
The older woman’s hackles rose, visibly. “I see,” she said. “As always. You have to do things your own way. You must suit yourself.”
“Yeah, right,” Liv muttered. “As always.”
It took energy, opposing her mother. The woman had run her childhood like a dictator, picking her clothes, her schools, her friends.
Except for that one very memorable summer.
Yeah, right. Mother had cast the Sean debacle up to her for years as an example of what happened when Liv didn’t listen to her. For once, she’d actually had a point. It stuck in Liv’s craw even now.
She’d finally forced her parents to accept that she was an adult who made her own decisions. Enter T-Rex, with a can of kerosene, and suddenly her parents felt justified in bundling her into a suffocating gift box again. Tying her up with a big silken bow. Olivia Endicott, groomed to be a credit to the family name, if she would only: 1) lose that pesky fifteen pounds, 2) wear the right shoes, 3) dress like a lady, 4) marry Blair Madden, and 5) work for Endicott Construction Enterprises.
Blair chose this inopportune moment to throw his arm around her shoulder. She jerked away before she could control the reflex.
Blair folded his arms over his chest, affronted. “I’m just trying to help,” he said stiffly. “You’re being childish, you know. And bitchy.”
I’m under a wee bit of stress, in case you haven’t noticed. She bit the sarcastic words back. “I’m sorry, Blair,” she said. “I just can’t stand being touched right now.”
Her mother’s eyes flicked down over Liv’s body, mouth tightening. “I can’t believe you are out in public dressed like that.”
Liv looked down at her baggy pants, the shrunken tank top. She’d rushed to the fire right after she got the call, not bothering to change out of her jammies. She hadn’t had a belly flat enough for that look when she was twenty, let alone thirty-two. No bra, either. Woo hah, she could throw ’em over her shoulder like a continental soldier. And as for her pants, well…best not to focus on her big butt at all.
Edge Of Midnight (The Mccloud Series Book 4) Page 3
