by Raven Snow
Wyatt and I were on the ground in the next moment, and I pulled Connor down with me after that. He took a second to cover his face and head, where the Waresville residents had done it automatically, but I couldn’t fault him for his lack of experience.
The house seemed to shake like we were in a giant snow globe. Cups and bowls shook in the cabinets, falling to the floor with sickening crunches and crashes. One shard scraped my arm, and I felt the blood flow, but it was only a flicker in my mind.
After the longest moment, the house was finally still. I stood up and made estimates of the damage. As far as I could tell, Connor was down all his windows, doors, and shot glasses. The last would probably hit him the hardest.
I’d never seen my tan cousin so pale and shaky. Patting him on the shoulder, I looked to Wyatt to give some comfort—it was usually his department. His features were very grim, and he came over to put pressure on the sparse scratches I’d acquired.
“All vacations are going to be like this from now on, aren’t they?”
I gave him a little smile. “Still the best decision you ever made?”
Connor walked over and picked up a single broken bowl, putting it back on the decimated shelf. It was obvious to everyone in the room that he just needed an excuse to hide his face for a moment.
Clearing my throat, I said with relentless cheerfulness, “Well, at least we know it’s not all in your head.”
“Helpful,” Connor said stiffly.
“Careful up there on your high horse, Con. A fall like that might kill.” I handed him another bowl to put away. “You wouldn’t have believed me if the situations were reversed.”
Sitting down so Wyatt could fuss over my arm, I put my whole brain into the effort for the first time. “I need names of enemies—besides Hannah Workman, I suppose. You two friendly again yet?”
“Hardly. We had a prenuptial—to protect her, not me—but since I got rich after we were married...”
“She didn’t get a cent. Got it,” I said. “Being swindled by a Beck probably hasn’t left her in a good mood, either.”
“I can’t think of anyone else,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe I’m being naïve.”
“You are,” I said firmly, but my mind was elsewhere.
Wyatt answered his cell phone before anything else could be said, moving away from the two of us. That just intrigued the hell out of me. Wyatt wasn’t a secretive type of guy. Connor and I moved closer without any communication between the two of us; Beck blood ran true.
But the call was over as soon as it started, and Wyatt turned around to see both of us practically breathing down his neck. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t look particularly surprised. Likely, we weren’t very sneaky about it.
He held up the phone and said, “That was Miami PD.”
Making ‘oooo’ sounds, I wrang my hands. “They’re gonna lock my baby up.”
“They want me to consult on a case while I’m in town—ex-Waresville resident.”
“People are allowed to leave Waresville?”
Connor dropped us back off at the school, so Wyatt could get his car, then drove away looking just as pale as I was. I waved to him, but he didn’t return it, his eyes slightly glazed and his movements choppy.
“So, what’s this about the MPD?”
Wyatt shrugged. “Seems they called the Waresville station for information on Pete Landing.”
“Pot Pete!” He gave me a sharp look, and I amended, “At least, I think he sells pot—wouldn’t know myself.”
“Uh huh. Well, the Chief offered my assistance.” He didn’t look particularly pleased at that.
“Looks like I’m on my own for the Beck case.”
“Looks like it,” he said through gritted teeth as we made our way toward the car. “Any idea where Pete is?”
“This may or may not surprise you, but there are a lot of places for a weed seller to hide in Miami.” I stomped my foot. “I’m gonna have to spring for a rental if you’re going off to look for Pete.”
“No, you don’t!”
Like the devil hearing his name, Vic appeared a few spaces over to us, running over as fast as her large body would allow. I watched her with mixed horror and calculation.
Panting, she stopped in front of me. “I couldn’t help but overhear, and I’d be happy to give you a lift. What are friends for, right?”
“On second thought, maybe I do know where Pete is,” I said under my breath to Wyatt.
Smiling, he gave me a goodbye kiss that probably shouldn’t have been enacted in polite, public society. Vic fanned herself, and I couldn’t blame her. I was feeling a little hot under the collar myself.
“Be safe,” he said firmly, and then he drove off into the sunset, or he would’ve if it hadn’t been just after noon.
“Wow,” Vic said, her eyes as glazed as Connor’s had been. “My husband sure doesn’t look like that.”
I wasn’t looking to trade locker room stories. “Are you giving me a ride or not?”
She nodded vigorously, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the total 180 from high school. Sure, people changed, but they didn’t completely lose their memory. Why was Vic so hell-bent on pretending we were friends?
As a test, while climbing into her tan, economy car, I said, “Thanks, Vic.”
She flinched at the nickname I’d given her that she’d hated but said nothing, pulling out of the lot. The flinch was the only clue that she remembered we were supposed to hate each other.
A pop song came on the radio, and Vic said, “My daughter loves this one.”
It was about shaking booties and getting money, so I replied, “She must be a lovely girl.”
“She’ll be ten soon.” Her eyes were unfocused, which was slightly alarming, because we were driving. “They grow up too fast.”
Cooper didn’t have my permission to grow up, so her words didn’t apply to me. Motioning to the street that lead back to the Mustang, I directed Vic to where I wanted to go.
Unfortunately, when we arrived, she jumped out of the car before I could tell her to stay put, following me in. Her shapeless dress flowed in the wind as she sprinted after me, and we almost got into an all-out race because I was trying to lose her.
“So, how do you do this, exactly?” she asked. “Connor said that you solve mysteries. Are we going to beat somebody up? I could go for that.”
“Usually, I just stir up as much trouble as I can and see what comes from it,” I told her honestly, pushing open the door to the gas station.
Jack was sitting behind the counter, eyeing the pretzels as they rotated behind the glass. Vic, like Jack, was snared by food before we got two feet into the store. I left her to gaze longingly at the doughnuts, muttering under her breath that she was on a diet and couldn’t.
“Hey, Jack,” I said without any of the friendliness I’d had yesterday. Everyone was a suspect now—especially the doughnut lady behind me. “Connor sent me over to look at the security tapes.”
His eyes widened. “Wha−why would he want you to do that?”
“Some weird stuff has been happening to him,” I said casually, eyeing my old friend like a bug under a lens. “This is the closest store to his house, so we hoped we might get some clues.”
Nodding his head helplessly, he said, “Right.”
After a long moment, I held out my hand pointedly. “The footage?”
Jack was out of his chair so fast, you would’ve thought someone greased his butt. Stumbling over himself and knocking over displays left and right, he made a beeline for the front door, almost putting me on my backside in the process. A rack of juice spilled over the floor, making it slippery in an instant.
“Woo!” I said, trying to keep my balance. “Vic, we got a live one!”
Then, Victoria Casey, homecoming queen and most likely to die of a broken nail, pulled the biggest gun I’d ever seen out of her “mom” purse. Jack’s eyes bulged and his face turned red as he slipped on the old orange juice and fell wit
h a splat. Vic pointed the gun at him, and he crab-walked away from her, babbling and wide-eyed.
“Vic!” Professional roller skater that I was, I only slipped a few times as I slid over to her. “Where’d you get that cannon?”
“Bought it from my neighbor’s son at a garage sale,” she said, brandishing it proudly. “Never thought I’d get to use it.”
“I don’t think that’s legal.”
But damn if I wasn’t impressed with that piece of medieval weaponry. The thing looked like it could go one on one against the king of the gorillas and send that monkey running for the hills. I wondered if Wyatt would buy me a gun like that.
She grinned at me, posing. “Do I look like the women from those detective shows?”
She looked like a hit man for the mob in a mumu. “Definitely.”
“You two are crazy!” Jack said, staring at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
I dragged him into the back where they used to keep the tapes. Luckily, that hadn’t changed, and I grabbed the one from the last couple of weeks. Sitting Jack down in the chair in front of the old, beaten TV, we both leaned over him as we fast-forwarded through the boring stuff.
“I don’t know what you’re hoping to find,” he said desperately. “I didn’t see anyone suspicious hanging around.”
I put in the tape from a week back.
“I’m Connor’s best friend! I wouldn’t let anyone near who wanted to hurt him.”
“He sure talks a lot,” Vic said. “They don’t talk this much on TV.”
“They also get to eat whatever they want and drive brand new cars on TV.”
She nodded mournfully. “Guess I can’t expect this to live up to that.”
I stopped the screen when it came to the scene I was expecting to see. My stomach sank a little for Connor as I watched his best friend fishing money out of the register and stuffing it into his pants. I’d never have pegged Jack for the betraying type, but people change—especially if left to their own devices for ten years.
“Does Connor know his best friend steals from him?”
Gone was the nervous boy I’d once known. In his place was this cool and more than a little angry man. Shouldering past us, Jack turned back just before crossing the threshold.
Pointing at me, he said, “If you were smart, you’d stay out of this, Harper. You can’t just leave for a decade and expect to come back like nothing ever happened. Too much has changed.”
He ran then, sprinting faster than I would’ve thought him able to. Vic and I both watched him go with mild interest.
“I’d run after him,” she said, “but my doctor advised against strenuous exercise on account of my frequent migraines.”
I was without my skates, and running was a lot more work with no wheels, so I said, “Yeah, me too.”
Looking around at the empty gas station, she said, “Does this mean we have to close up?”
Chapter Six
With nothing left to do but break the bad news to Connor and wait for Jack to resurface, Vic and I headed back to the school. Suzy was working away at the decorations and cleaning, so she didn’t have time to chat. This left us with nothing to do but steal glances at the very drunk Hannah Workman—or was it Beck now?
“Hey, Ha−”
“You look just like him,” she spat at me, drowning out my hello. “All scruffy and pleased with yourself... I was voted most likely to succeed!”
She wandered away then, breaking off all attempt at contact.
“Nice talking to you,” I called after her, the gears turning in my head. To Vic—because I had no one else to share the revelation with—I said, “Looks like we’ve got two good suspects.”
Clapping her hands together, she jumped from one giant foot to the other. “Oh, let me guess! I’m real good at solving the TV mysteries.”
I sighed and waved her on, but it didn’t prove to be necessary. She barreled on with her conclusions like a bull at a red cape. Picturing her with horns, I was only half listening.
“Jack’s a suspect, because he’s jealous of Connor, obviously has a drug problem, and might get some monetary gains from your cousin’s death.”
“I’ll have to check up on the last, but−”
“And then, Hannah is bitter from the divorce—humiliated, more like. She’s probably still in the will, so there’s her motive.”
I stared at Vic for a moment—mumu, blue eye shadow, double chin, and all. “Pretty good.”
Beaming, she fluttered at the compliment like a little girl, and my stomach felt uneasy. I turned away from her and caught sight of something that sent my already raw tummy reeling with an infestation of butterflies.
Jose Capello was standing in the entrance to the gym. His tan, Hispanic skin looked even creamier than I remembered, and my face heated at the memories of hours spent drooling over that skin.
He was in a suit, not quite as nice as Wyatt’s, but it looked good on him. His smile was just as I remembered it too: devastating and knee-weakening. Jose had been the soccer captain, class president, and object of my teenage fantasies.
When he spotted me, his smile grew, and he came over to where Vic and I were standing. “Harper Beck? Is that really you?”
Jose Capello knew my name. I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from screaming and doing that ridiculous dance that Vic had done a few minutes ago.
“Jose.” I went in for a handshake, but he drew me in for a hug, surprising the hell out of me and turning my already pink face red.
“What’re you up to now-a-days?” he asked. “I heard you moved up north.”
“I own a disco skate,” I tripped over my words in the rush to get them out. “The Funky Wheel. Not that you asked or anything.”
He grinned. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Swoon.
A throat cleared behind us, and I turned around to see Wyatt. Needless to say, he didn’t look amused. I skipped over to him after Jose excused himself to catch up with an old soccer buddy, kissing him on the cheek.
“Hi, honey,” I said against his faint stubble.
He slipped his hands into my back pockets even as he said, “Don’t you ‘hi, honey’ me. Who was that?”
“Old friend from high school,” I said innocently.
“Right. While you’re lying to me, do you want to go ahead and tell me you know nothing about reports of a woman holding up a gas station near here?”
“I know nothing, but if I did know something, and I don’t, I would know that she didn’t actually hold it up.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Anonymous caller said she had a gun.”
“For interrogation purposes only.”
Closing his eyes, Wyatt exhaled and pressed his forehead against mine. “I need to get you out of this city.”
“Catch Peter yet?”
He shook his head. “But I wanted to check back and make sure you hadn’t landed yourself behind bars—or worse.”
Connor walked in then, and some of the color he’d lost earlier had returned to his face. Walking over to me, he stuck his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth.
“You handled yourself really well in the kitchen earlier.”
I raised my eyebrows at him and leaned against Wyatt. “I know I did.”
“What I mean is, you’ve done this before,” he said. “You might actually be able to help me.”
“Isn’t that what you called me here for?”
Shrugging, Connor said, “I was desperate and had no one else to turn to.”
I pursed my lips, wanting to snap at him. After a moment, I held onto my temper and shook my head. I had bad news for my cousin, and it was best dealt with in private.
Pulling him aside, we went up a couple floors so as not to be overheard by the decoration volunteers. It was really a wonder how much work they were putting into this shindig, but that’s rich folks for you—their priorities are all skewed.
I rested my hand against a window as tall and long
as the both of us, enjoying the crisp coolness of the glass. “Bad news.”
“When is it not?” He sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Make it quick; I said I’d help out with the balloons.”
I opened my mouth to tell him about Jack but never got the chance. With a force eerily similar to what we’d witnessed this afternoon, the window was blown clear from its frame, and I, caught in the pull, went with it.
Hearing Connor shout, I tried to hold onto something as the ground rushed up to meet me. My fingers scraped against the brick, bloodying for a moment before I caught part of the ornate molding.
There wasn’t enough of it for more than a few fingers, so I dangled helplessly, looking up and down in disbelief. Connor was shouting something down to me about trying to pull me back up, though he couldn’t reach me.
With going up out of the question, I examined the distance to the ground. It wasn’t too great, but waiting for me at the bottom was hard, unforgiving concrete.
The choice was made for me a second later, when my fingers—slippery with blood and sweat—slipped from their hold. I screamed for a full second, and then I hit the ground with a jarring force, all the air knocked from me.
What felt like mere seconds later, Wyatt was looking down over me. His face was pale and drawn, all the color and emotion leeched from his usually expressive eyes. Warm hands carefully ran over my face, smoothing my hair back.
“Harper, can you hear me?” he asked, his voice rough. “Can you move anything?”
“I’d prefer not to,” I said in a small voice that barely sounded like my own.
My right arm was twisted beneath me at a weird angle, and I couldn’t really feel it at all. I knew, though, from past experience, that that could change in an instant, and I wasn’t keen on feeling what I was sure was a nasty break.
Jose and Wyatt gently lifted me to my feet, trying not to move me more than necessary. Despite my earlier attraction, I only had eyes for Wyatt. Staring unwaveringly at him kept the pain at bay for the moment, and I was rolling with it.
