Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… right now, I’m not sure of that myself. Now, go on—walk the mutt. I’ll find you when I’m done here.”

  Stein hopped out of the back happily and Solomon clipped the leash to his collar. I swatted Sol’s ass as they walked away. She turned, rolling her eyes at me.

  “Watch it, slick.”

  “Oh, believe me—I am.”

  That earned another eye roll, but I noticed an extra switch to her step as she walked away.

  It was almost midnight. Neither of us had slept well in days. We couldn’t keep going like this—I knew that. Eventually, something had to give; I just hoped Cameron understood that. Whatever he had planned in Harrisburg, I hoped to hell it involved more than two hours of sleep and another meal of shitty convenience store sandwiches.

  “Nice looking girl,” someone said behind me. I started. I hadn’t even noticed the car that had rolled up at the next pump, the driver standing behind a column as he gassed up an old blue Cutlass. He stepped into my view: a husky guy, maybe 5’6”, wearing a trench coat and wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Uh—yeah,” I said. “She is.” The gas seemed to be moving at a trickle.

  “You two been together long?” he asked. “I’m assuming you’re married, of course—got a nice, comfortable way about you.”

  I forced myself to stay calm. This didn’t have to mean something. He could just be a bored, lonely businessman striking up a conversation.

  “We’ve been married a couple of years,” I said, thinking of the fake world Cameron had built for us.

  The man’s eyes never left mine. Beneath the friendly façade, I sensed something darker. More intense. “Well—you’re a good looking couple. Nice dog, too. You from around here?”

  I nodded toward our license plate, more uneasy by the second. “Oregon. Just in the area on vacation.”

  Solomon had disappeared with the dog. I focused on the task at hand: Finish filling the goddamn tank and get the hell out.

  “Where’d you go on vacation?” the man asked. “Seems like kind of a long way to drive, all the way out east here.”

  I’d meant to fill the tank, but there was no way I would make it that long. I stopped with barely twenty bucks in. Solomon was still nowhere to be seen.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “Sure. Sure.” He nodded. “Don’t want to let the little woman get too far without you. No telling what kind of trouble she could get into.”

  The words were delivered with his eyes still locked on mine, the pretense suddenly gone. He knew—I was sure of it. I grabbed the receipt from the pump and slid into the driver’s seat, forcing myself not to look back as I drove away.

  Solomon was sitting under a tree with the dog beside her, staring into the night when I found her. She stood when I pulled up, returning to the car without a word.

  “All set?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Just needed a little fresh air.”

  “Good.”

  She and Stein got in. I pulled away from the station at a fast clip, forcing myself to stay calm.

  Traffic had slowed for the night, with only a few cars on the road now—which made it easy to spot someone tailing us. Try as I might, though, I saw no one. If Trench Coat had suspicions about who we were, he wasn’t following up on it yet.

  In the passenger’s seat now, Solomon fell almost immediately into a listless sleep. Whatever was about to happen, I just hoped it happened soon. We were both too close to the edge to keep this up for long.

  We reached the Harrisburg rest area at two o’clock that morning. Cameron hadn’t called again, so we had no real option other than to sit tight and wait like he’d ordered. I reclined my seat back as far as it would go, and slept for the next four hours—an exhausted, dreamless sleep—with Solomon’s hand in mine.

  I think I would have gone right on sleeping through the next day, had I not woken when Sol got out to walk the dog at just after six a.m. My neck was cramped and my spine felt like it had been ripped out and put back in backward, but otherwise it was great to be alive. The sun rose over the rest station, washing the sky out to a pale pink. The air was refreshingly cool when Solomon opened the door.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  I got out of the car and stretched, my back popping in the process. “It’s not a problem. If I slept any longer in there, I think you’d need the Jaws of Life to pry me out.”

  “I was just going to take Stein for a walk. Up for a stroll?”

  “You sure you want the company?”

  She slid her hand into mine, giving me a sly smile. “What’s the matter, Diggs—starting to doubt your charm?”

  “I haven’t showered, I haven’t slept, and I haven’t had a decent meal in days… So, yeah. The old Diggins magic may be suffering.”

  “I can live with that,” she said. She leaned up and kissed me. “I’m not feeling all that magical myself, at the moment.”

  We let Einstein lead us to the edge of the woods, my arm around Solomon’s shoulders. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, but at the moment no people were in sight. The grass was covered with dew, birds singing in the trees. It may have been winter when we left Maine, but we’d migrated to full spring the farther west we traveled. We found a picnic table and settled while Einstein christened every bush, Erin’s head tipped to my shoulder.

  “How long do you think we should wait for whatever it is Cameron has planned for us?” she asked. I’d been wondering the same thing.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t like how exposed we are here. Eventually, we’ll need to move on.”

  “Yeah,” she scoffed. “Because it’s that easy. There’s a nationwide manhunt on for us. Who knew fugitives had it so bad.”

  “When this is over, we should start an outreach group,” I said. “An underground railroad for hoodlums.”

  “You’re in charge of writing the grants for that one,” she said. “You’re exactly the man to convince the government to fund a network harboring—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  I looked at her, following her gaze when she didn’t continue. On a hillside with the rising sun at his back, a man stood watching us. Solomon let go of my hand. The man took a step toward us. He was tall and lean, his gray hair dusted with strands of copper.

  Solomon got up from the table. Einstein headed for the stranger with no detectable malice, tail wagging.

  He took another step. Solomon remained frozen until he was within a few feet of us, then took a shaky step forward herself.

  “Dad?” she said, her voice suddenly not her own. All at once, I was looking at the girl she’d been—the terrified child who’d lost her father too young.

  Adam Solomon took another step toward us, his smile even in that moment haunted and hesitant. “Hello, honey.”

  Chapter Fourteen - Kat

  It was a listless night—which Kat had expected. The bed was huge and the mattress plush, the room quiet except for a fountain in the corner and the hushed voices on the television in the next room. Frankly, she would have preferred a little noise. A little chaos wouldn’t have been unwelcome, even. Over the years, Kat had found that the places she slept best were invariably the ones where she shouldn’t be sleeping at all: hospital break rooms, classes, movie theaters. The silence out on Payson Isle had nearly driven her mad.

  Eventually, when the thoughts and memories and worries got to be too much, she surrendered and turned on the bedside lamp. It was midnight; Diggs and Erin were probably still on the road. Unless they’d been caught—which was a distinct possibility. Kat got up and went to the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony. Below, a few people still splashed around in the hotel pool, their shouts nothing more than a murmur through the plate glass.

  She wondered what Cameron was watching. Maya always insisted they couldn’t have a TV in their bedroom at home, which meant most nights Kat ended up on the couch. Maya quoted study after study to her on
the disruptions electronics and blue light and white noise caused to the sleep cycle. Kat didn’t care what the studies said: The fact was, the only time she slept well at home was when the TV was on and she was too dead tired to do anything but lie there and let the meaningless noise wash over her.

  Gingerly, she pushed her bedroom door open. Cam was stretched out on the couch with a blanket carelessly tossed over his legs. The light from the television cast eerie shadows on the walls. Someone shrieked in the pool below. Kat tensed, waiting until she heard laughter to confirm that everyone was alive and well. The laughter faded quickly; her tension remained.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” Cameron asked without moving. She hadn’t even known he was awake.

  “I told you—I’m not much for it, usually.” She closed the bedroom door behind her and went to the couch. Some former child star whose name she couldn’t recall was all grown up now, and currently selling an exercise system on deep cable. Cam sat up, nodding to the end of the couch. He shifted to make room for her.

  “Have a seat.”

  She did, taking part of the blanket from him. “Nothing else on?” she asked, nodding at the television.

  “A couple of old movies. It’s easier to fall asleep to these, though.”

  “I like the cooking shows better,” she said. “The ones with the gadgets. I think I have every one ever made.”

  “I bet I’ve got you beat,” he said, almost shyly. “The Magic Bullet; Chop Magic; RoboStir; Chop Wizard; Slice-O-Matic…”

  “Do you even cook?”

  He actually laughed, shaking his head. “No—not at all. But my kitchen’s stocked, if I ever want to try.”

  “Maya banned me from the phone at night. She said if I bought one more useless piece of shit, she was staging an intervention.”

  “Susan used to throw mine away as soon as they came,” he said. “I was convinced the mailman was stealing them. Jenny always loved them, though. Whenever one actually made it to me, we’d do a demo—try it out, then grade it to see if it was as good as the infomercial.”

  He looked like he was a thousand miles away. Kat had only met his wife twice, when Cameron brought his family on a vacation to Maine in the ‘90s. That was nearly five years after Cameron had first introduced himself to Kat. Meeting Susan and Jenny, seeing their happy little family—all while knowing exactly who and what Cameron was—had left her unsettled. Angry, though she could never say exactly why.

  “I never really thought of you and Susan having a house,” she admitted. “Not one with an actual address and a mailman and a flock of pink flamingoes in the front yard.”

  “What did you think?” he asked, eying her curiously. “We just slept under rocks?”

  “Not you… but Susan, maybe. I figured you had a Fortress of Solitude somewhere. Where is it?”

  “The Keys,” he said after a minute. “So, we actually did have flamingoes in the front yard, sometimes. Real ones.”

  “Did you have a regular job, ever? Or did you just work for J?”

  “Does Special Forces count as a regular job?”

  “Not in any way, shape, or form.”

  He smiled faintly. “Well, then... No. I always worked for the Project. When I was younger, though, I used to daydream about other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Nothing important,” he said with a shrug. “A bookstore, maybe. Or a record shop. Just a quiet little hole in the wall somewhere… It would be a nice way to retire.” He wet his lips, that faraway look in his eye again. “I thought maybe if Jenny ever settled down, had kids… It would be nice, for them. They could come in after school sometimes, maybe help out.”

  She had no idea how to respond—especially since Jenny was a card-carrying psychopath now. Cameron ran his hand through his thinning hair, clearly embarrassed.

  “It’s not as though I thought it would actually happen—especially as Jenny got older, and…” He stopped abruptly. “They were just daydreams.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. We all have them.”

  “Do we?” He was teasing her, she realized. She hadn’t even imagined he was capable of it. “What was yours, then? What did you daydream about when no one was looking?”

  An ancient fantasy rose, blurry and surreal, from the days when she still believed in fantasies: Adam leaving that goddamn island. The two of them taking off for Europe, where he raised Erin and she became chief pediatric surgeon at one of the better hospitals in Vienna or Paris.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Nothing specific, really. I knew I’d never be Mrs. Brady, but I figured if Adam was willing to give it a shot, I could at least bring home the bacon while he played housewife.”

  “While you protected him from the big bad world, you mean?”

  She paused, studying him for a moment. “While I protected him from you, actually.”

  Hurt flashed in his eyes, but he didn’t look away. “You shouldn’t have to protect anyone. You’re not invulnerable—you shouldn’t be forced to pretend you are. You should have someone strong enough to take care of you.”

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” she said. And immediately thought of Maya. Why can’t you just let me in? Let me carry things once in a while.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I think you wish it was... But I think you realized a long time ago that you’re not as strong as you pretend.”

  She tilted her chin up, her chest tight. They faced off, gazes locked. Silence prevailed, light and shadow playing along the walls, flickering across Cameron’s face. Outside, she heard laughter, low conversation.

  And then, something else.

  Something scratching, the grate of metal against glass.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  Cameron heard it at the same time. He held his index finger to his lips, gesturing her to stay quiet. The scratching got louder. Tension changed to overt alarm in the space of a second. An instant later, he was on his feet.

  “Get down,” he said. Before she could comply, Cam shoved her to the floor—none too gently, either. “Stay there,” he whispered.

  He left her crouched between the wall and an arm of the sofa, peering out as he went toward her bedroom. His gun was already in hand, which made her wonder where the hell he kept it when he slept—or didn’t sleep, as the case may be. The hotel suite was dark except for the flickering light of the television, now muted and onto the next infomercial.

  “Cam?” she whispered.

  He held his hand up to keep her quiet. She couldn’t hear the grating sound she’d heard before, but she knew he was headed in the right direction—it had definitely come from her bedroom. She thought of the balcony and the sliding glass doors with dread.

  Cameron moved as silently as a shadow. His hand fell to the doorknob, ready to push the bedroom door open, gun raised. An instant before he made his move, the front door of the suite burst open. In the dim light cast by the television, Kat saw the same tall, thick-bodied man they’d seen on Raven’s Ledge push his way inside. He led with a sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun. Cameron pivoted, aimed, and fired in the space of less than a second, catching the man in the side. Before he could fire again, a second figure sprang from the bedroom, her own gun raised.

  Jenny.

  The girl flipped on the light switch. Light flooded the room. Kat blinked in the sudden glare, adrenaline flooding her veins.

  Jenny’s partner stood tall, apparently none the worse for Cameron’s attack. Cam stood there in his t-shirt and pajama bottoms, his own gun still raised. Jenny barely glanced in her friend’s direction.

  “Okay, Lee?”

  “Just grazed,” the man said. Jenny looked at Cameron, anger touching her face for an instant before that eerie calm descended once more.

  “Put down the gun, Dad,” Jenny said. “We’re going on a little trip.”

  Kat held her breath, still crouched behind the sofa—waiting to see what he would do. Trying to figure out what the hell she
would do, if it came down to it. Jenny took a step toward her. She didn’t even bother to look at Cameron. Kat wondered at the girl’s faith in her father, that she would turn her back on his gun without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Get up,” Jenny ordered.

  Kat remained where she was, biding her time, until Jenny was close enough to grab her arm. Before she could yank Kat to her feet, Kat reared up fast, focused on the gun. She caught Jenny off guard when she brought her left hand down, hard, on the girl’s wrist. She was dimly aware of Cameron as he sprang into action at the other end of the room. Otherwise, her focus remained on Jenny, and the crash of the pistol as it hit the floor.

  Jenny didn’t make a sound. Her foot came up, catching Kat in the ribs as she dove for the gun. Kat kept moving, ignoring the pain, the thought of cold steel and a powerful, burning hatred propelling her forward.

  Her fingers closed around the grip just as Jenny caught her, Kat down on the ground with her belly on the hardwood floor. Jenny grabbed her by the hair and pulled hard, sitting astride her like a damned cowgirl. But Kat had the gun—she had it. She twisted her body, moving fast and hard, working the safety on the Glock the way her father had taught her years ago. Somehow, she managed to flip to her back, Jenny still on her. Kat leveled the gun at the girl’s face, now flushed, her eyes wild.

  “Get the hell off me,” Kat ground out.

  Jenny made no move. Kat scrambled backward herself, her hands steady, gun still pointed at Cameron’s daughter.

  “Put down the gun,” a voice behind her said. Lee’s voice. Kat didn’t even look, eyes still trained on Jenny.

  “You put it down, or I’ll kill her,” Kat said.

  “Put the gun down now,” Lee said again. “You’re not leaving here if you don’t lay it down.”

  “Katherine,” Cameron said. Jenny’s eyes darkened. The girl kept her chin up, nostrils flared as she struggled for breath.

  “Drop your gun, or I’ll drop her,” Kat said evenly. “We’re getting out of here, and we’re sure as hell not going with you.”