by Lena North
“Promise?” he asked. “Maybe you’ll even marry me?” he added, and I could hear that he was amused.
“If hell freezes over, then yeah. Absolutely,” I said cheekily, but added, “Until then, I’ll go to Hawker for advice instead.”
He barked out laughter, and I had been serious, but he sounded so astonished that I giggled.
“I’ll never hear the end of that. Hawk, the relationship therapist… Who would have guessed.”
“Sloane is good for him,” I said.
“She is,” he agreed. “Finally having Wilder in his life again has made a huge difference too.”
I nodded and leaned my head back a little to watch the kite circle in the air above us.
“He’s guarding us?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Miller said. “Have tried to get him to relax, get some rest, but he won’t. Says that now that I finally stopped being a fucktard he needs to make sure I stay alive.”
I started laughing, and Miller did too.
***
I sat in the coffee shop with my sketch pad. I’d completed a few ideas for a floral design I wanted to put on some pillows for Bo and Carson and had started drawing up a set of cards that a florist down in Twin City wanted me to do for her. I’d started a small site on the net and sent the information around to a few friends from art school. One of them had gotten a huge commission for a mural in one of the government buildings and had asked if I wanted to do the cards instead of him. I’d been down to see the woman and had shown her a few ideas, and she’d been happy with my proposals, so just like that, I landed my first freelance job.
Miller was still not allowed to work full time due to his injuries, and Hawker had put him on badass hiatus, so he was incredibly frustrated and had gone absolutely crazy with the renovation of my studio. I’d planned for two simple windows in the roof, but he’d taken over, and now there were glass walls, a covered walkway connecting the house to the main building, and God only knew what else in the plans. I’d wisely decided to just nod and smile, and since the builders were busy tearing out the whole interior of the small house, I’d walked down to have coffee, chat with some of my friends, and get some work done. We were having dinner with Hawker and Sloane, and Miller would come and pick me up when it was time to go there.
Jack’s mother had brought in Miller-the-pig so I could meet her, and she was adorable. It still amused me to no end that Vera had named the pig after her favorite vet, but the old woman had the quirkiest sense of humor, and her neighbor, Mrs. McCullen, was just the same. Poopy-the-cat was apparently completely healed again and had objected to getting on a leash by giving Mrs. McCullen a long scratch across the nose, so I was told in no uncertain terms to come to her home the next day for coffee and cat-introductions.
“Jesus,” Jack sighed quietly, and I grinned at him.
“Do you want me to change the specials?” I asked and nodded toward the chalkboard.
“That’d be great,” Jack said.
“We’re all getting tired of Swiss on rye and potato soup so please, Mary, change the specials for him,” Vera said.
I turned slowly to Jack and raised my brows.
“You haven’t changed them in all these weeks?” I asked.
“Didn’t want my cousin to mess up the board and with Mill being injured I figured…” Jack said, looking uncomfortable.
“Miller is not that injured, and just changing the text will take me two minutes,” I said and got to my feet. “I’d be happy to draw another pattern around it too.”
“Elle isn’t a great artist, but she did fix up the board nicely enough, I’ll give her that,” Vera muttered.
“Elle?” I asked.
“Ma, you know you’re not supposed to call her that,” Jack said and looked around as if danger was lurking behind the colorful tees he had on a rack by the side. “She hates it, you know that.”
“Murielle,” Vera snapped. “We all used to call her Elle but then she married Magnus Johns, and suddenly that wasn’t good enough, and now it’s Murielle or get slapped.”
I snorted out laughter before I could stop myself but then I moved closer to the chalkboard.
“What happened?” I asked.
I squinted and looked more carefully at the drawing, and somehow it didn’t look quite like it had when I’d drawn it. The bottom left corner was… off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it was weird, but I could have sworn that I hadn’t drawn some of the lines.
“Somebody did something to the corner?” I asked.
“You’re the only one who has spotted it, though you would, I guess,” Jack said. “The girl cleaning the place splashed some water and part of it didn’t look so good after that.”
“Really?” I asked because it didn’t look touched up. It looked drawn from scratch.
“My cousin fixed it. I’d taken so many pictures, and she drew it from those. Took her forever but it ended up quite nice, don’t you think?”
It did, actually.
Oh, well, I thought. Maybe Murielle just wasn’t very creative, and the drawing I’d done had been simple enough. Then I changed the lunch specials to ham on rye and tomato soup, and neither Jack nor his Ma could understand why that made me giggle so hard I almost dropped the chalks. When the bell above the door chimed, I turned around and gasped.
Miller walked in, and I stared at him. He grinned at me.
“What have you done?” I asked weakly.
“I got bored, had nothing to do,” he replied and moved his hand across his jaw.
His freshly shaved jaw where there was no goatee anymore.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times, and he started laughing.
“You like?” he asked.
“Huh,” I said, stalling for time.
No. I did most assuredly not like. He looked softer and younger somehow, and it looked good, but he didn’t look like my Miller.
“No?” he asked, reading my face accurately and still grinning widely.
I held a hand up, palm toward him, and pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“Hawk,” I barked out when he answered. “Miller is back on as of now. I can’t take it anymore, and when you see his latest quest to stave off insanity, you will agree with me.”
Hawker started laughing, but my mouth had fallen open, and I heard how he was saying something, but I suddenly had trouble breathing. I kept staring at huge the window facing the sidewalk and Main Street. Across the top, it said ‘Coffees, Shoes & Other things’ and at the bottom, it said ‘Proprietor: Jack Pearson’.
“Mary,” Miller said, and he sounded worried suddenly. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head and murmured, “Yes.”
Then I took a deep breath, trying frantically to sort out the thoughts running through my mind. Unless I were very much mistaken, I’d just figured out who was behind the shooting at Miller and me.
“Hawk,” I said weakly into the phone.
“Yeah,” he said, and there was no laughter in his voice anymore.
He’s clearly heard something was wrong. I forced myself to smile, walked over to grab my tote-bag, and sketch pad.
“Well, if we’re late then it’s Miller’s fault,” I said loudly into the phone. “We’re on our way over, tell Sloane we’ll be at your house in five.”
“Okay,” he said, and I closed the call.
“We’re late,” I scolded Miller and started walking toward the door. “Hawker is not happy,” I added and winked at Jack.
They laughed as we left, knowing how growly Hawker Johns could be when things didn’t turn out the way he wanted.
“What’s wrong,” Miller said as we got in his car.
“Get…” I choked up and had to swallow. “Get us to Hawker’s, Mill. I know who got you shot and it isn’t good.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Shit.”
He got us to Hawker’s house in less than
three minutes, and then we walked in without even knocking.
“What’s wrong,” Hawker said.
“We’re the only ones in the house?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“I know I'm silly but can we please check to make sure all windows are closed, and lock all doors?”
“Huh,” was Hawker’s not very eloquent reply, and he and Miller walked off.
Sloane just looked at me and walked over to the corner, got a bottle of whiskey and a few glasses, and put them on the low table in front of the couch. I nodded, and her mouth thinned.
“What’s wrong, Mary,” Hawker asked quietly.
“I hate this,” I said. “I need you to listen to some things, and it’ll be shit I know, and it might be nothing…” I trailed off and looked at Miller. “But it might be something.”
“Tell us any way you can,” he said calmly. “We’ll listen until you’re done.”
I nodded and turned to Hawker.
“That story about Willy and him having a lady love, the one with the poem about the red and the blue that you thought was funny. You told that to people, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“We’ve talked about this and found no leads. I told the family, a few friends. Jack, Sven, maybe a couple others, all men from around here that I’ve known my whole life.”
I nodded and swallowed. Okay, I thought. Here goes.
“I have been thinking about that day when we were attacked. They were all over the mountain. It wasn’t just one person, there were at least three. Someone shot Miller, and then when we stopped, I hit two of them. And I think there were more, many more.”
I paused, and both Hawk and Miller nodded, knowing what would have happened if I hadn’t kept my cool and gotten us out of there.
“It was planned, Hawker. It takes time to set something like that up, so they knew. They knew we were going to Thend. They knew what day, and maybe they even knew what time.”
Their faces hardened when they realized what I was saying, but they only nodded.
“So, I started thinking, who knew?”
I paused and then I started again.
“I was in Jack’s coffee shop again today, and we talked about the drawing I did for him. It had been messed up in the corner by the cleaning lady, but it was fixed. No one had noticed, and I could barely see it myself. It was very, very, nicely done.”
They looked confused then, so I barged on.
“Then I put it all together. Do you remember when we were in Carson’s kitchen that day when we found out that the painting in the library was a copy?” My question was for Miller, but I went on before he could answer, “I listed a few names of who could make replicas, but I didn’t really know. Did you get a list of names from the police?”
They both shook their heads, and I smiled, although not happily.
“I’m sure my name is on that list, I heard about the poem, and I knew we were going to Thend,” I said, and went on immediately because it seemed like Miller was about to protest. “It wasn’t me, but I realized that it had to be someone like me.”
They didn’t understand, and I swallowed again.
“There was someone they talked about in the art department, someone who was a master at creating copies but a totally unimaginative painter. I didn’t remember the name, thought it was Bella and something common like Anderson, but it wasn’t.”
Miller got it then, and he swore softly.
“Murielle studied art, didn’t she?” I asked.
“What are you saying, exactly?” Hawker asked slowly.
“Murielle is family so she’d have heard about the poem. She would have been known as Elle Pearson in Prosper, and she could have done the forgeries. She sure did an expert job of replicating my stupid chalkboard drawing. And she knew we were going to Thend that day. I told her myself, at that dinner at Gilmore’s, the night you got married. You were there too, Hawk. You heard it.”
They stared at me, and then Sloane slowly bent her head down, breathing heavily.
“It’s all nothing maybe, but it could be…” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Miller said. “It could be something.”
“Okay,” Hawker said hoarsely. “I’ll talk to Mags.”
I blinked and wondered if he hadn’t understood what I said.
“Oh, man,” Miller murmured. “Kills me. He’s… Mags. Your brother. My brother too in many ways.”
“What?” Hawker growled.
“He’s right, honey,” Sloane whispered. “Kills me too, but you can’t talk to him. He loves her, you know that. Loves her to death. So, you can’t ask him because either he’s involved or he’ll lie through his teeth for her.”
Hawker looked so defeated it hurt to watch him, but I couldn’t turn my eyes away. He kept looking at me, and then his face finally softened.
“The strength in you, little girl,” he murmured.
Then he got to his feet abruptly and walked over to stare out the window. Miller moved over to stand next to him, and I heard them murmur quietly. Miller put a hand on Hawker’s shoulder and then they were silent, watching the mountains outside.
“Not many would have come here to tell him that to his face,” Sloane murmured. “He’s right, you’re stronger than you look.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” I whispered.
“He wouldn’t,” she agreed. “Thank you for seeing that in him. Most don't.”
I nodded and turned to look at the men by the window.
“They’ll be fighting more than usual until this is solved,” Sloane said.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I hope Miller’s wounds have healed well enough.”
“Neosporin,” Sloane said laconically. “And butterfly bandages.”
“Yeah,” I repeated.
Then the men came back and sat down with us.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Some of us are going to have a huge shot of whiskey,” Hawker replied, “Then I’ll call d’Augustine, and get him up here as soon as he can come. He’ll read her mind, so he’ll know if she’s lying, but she won’t know that. I’ll lay it out, and see what she says. What Mags says…” He trailed off and leaned forward to pour two healthy portions of liquor. “I’ll absolutely kill him if he’s involved in this, just see if I won’t,” he muttered.
C
hapter Twenty-three
I’m special
Dante was on his way and the three days that had passed since I’d shared my suspicions had not been easy. Hawker had put the group on high alert, and they were silently pulling strings to find out as much as possible before the upcoming confrontation. Miller was unhappy, but he was at least busy again and left the remodel of the outhouse to me. I promptly made the builders happy by canceling all the strange additions he’d made. Miller had also come home with some fresh bruises every day, but they hadn’t been bad, and he’d assured me Hawker had looked worse, so I’d shrugged it off.
My phone rang as I was getting ready for the meeting, and since I’d just realized I couldn’t button my favorite jeans, I was busy cursing profusely. I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer and continued searching for something that would fit until I found a wide tunic that I liked.
“Uh, Mary,” a voice called out from downstairs.
I pulled the tunic down and adjusted my leggings, shouting, “Yeah?” as I walked toward the landing to look down.
A couple of the builders stood there, looking like they wanted to laugh.
“What?” I asked and started down the stairs.
“Got a call from Hare,” one of the men said, and when I raised my brows, he rushed on. “He tried calling you, but you didn’t pick up.”
I waited for an actual explanation, although I suspected that I knew what would come.
“There’s a brawl over at Johns, and he was wondering if you could come over,” he said.
Well shit, I thought.
“Okay,” I sighed.
“Immediately,” he added. “It’s not a good fight.”
I sighed again, told them to lock up and got into my old car that we’d finally picked up.
It didn’t start.
When I’d punched the steering wheel a few times, I got out and kicked the door.
“Crappy old piece of shit,” I yelled.
The men had exited our house and were watching me, so I turned to them.
“Well?” I snapped. “Who’s driving?”
When I got to Johns, I was not in a good mood and marched straight into the place feeling a distinct need to get in a fight myself. Hawker and Miller were facing off in the middle of the bar, as expected, and I could tell immediately that Hare had not been exaggerating. They usually seemed to enjoy the fight, and even though they ended up bruised, they were sort of jovial about hitting each other. This time it seemed for real. Wilder was there, and she was trying to separate them, but they pushed her back and then Hawk tackled Miller, so they ended up in a heap on the floor. I could tell that Wilder was getting angry too, and wondered if she would get into the fray.
I pressed my lips together, walked over to the bar and peered over it. Then I got up on my toes and grabbed a pitcher of water, walked back and pushed my way through the crowd and promptly emptied the content on the men on the floor. This got their attention, and they stopped fighting, but I got two glares for my efforts.
I did not care.
“Do you really think I enjoy dragging my sorry butt down here to make two grown men stop acting like idiots?” I shouted.
They both had identical looks of frustration and surprise on their faces.
“It’s not as if I get enough sleep, and now I can’t button my pants,” I snapped at Miller when he was about to say something.
He promptly closed his mouth although I could see that humor and softness slowly replaced the anger in his eyes.
“And my shitty old car didn’t start,” I growled and kicked Hawker in the shin.
His brows went up a little, and he got to his feet. There was no softness in his face, and as he moved toward me, I backed up a few steps. He followed me until I stopped, just outside the circle that had surrounded the fight. I had to tilt my head way back to look at his furious face, but I could also see the pain in his eyes and all my anger left me.
