Dead Set

by Melissa Pearl

  He approached the doors to the gym and heard the telltale sound of sneakers squeaking on the wood floor, indicating the basketball team was already in there practicing. He hesitated, trying to think through what to do. He couldn’t just stroll in and approach Connor, especially not if they were in the middle of practice. Connor might not be out on the gym floor, but he was probably involved in some sort of team task, and there would be coaches in there, too, wondering why some strange guy was coming in to talk to one of their kids.

  He could wait outside in the hall and hope to catch him during one of the breaks. It seemed like a monumental waste of time, but Lucas wasn’t sure what other choice he had.

  He was just about to settle against the concrete wall when he saw a short, scrawny kid with bright red hair scurry out of the locker room, a clipboard in his hand.

  Bingo.

  He pushed off the wall and planted himself between Connor Desmond and the entrance to the gym.

  The kid was studying a page clipped to his clipboard and almost ran into him.

  “Sorry,” Connor mumbled, trying to sidestep Lucas.

  Lucas moved with him. “Hey, are you Connor Desmond?”

  Connor eyed him warily. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You’re the manager, right? Of the basketball team?”

  Connor gave a slight nod. “The JV team.”

  Lucas snapped his fingers, as if just remembering this fact. “Right, right.”

  “Who are you?” Connor asked bluntly.

  “Me?” Lucas grinned. “Just an old guy who likes basketball. I was a hockey player back in high school, but I always wanted to play basketball. Too damn short, though.”

  Connor looked at him. Lucas had a good six inches on the kid. “You don’t look too short to me.”

  “Trust me,” Lucas said wryly. “I am.”

  Connor shifted from one foot to the other, holding the clipboard against his chest. “Huh. Well, I sorta need to get in there.” He nodded toward the gym.

  “Oh, sure,” Lucas said. But he didn’t step out of the way. “Say, can I ask you a quick question about a friend of yours?”

  Connor frowned.

  “Noah Dans.” Lucas’s eyes were glued to Connor, waiting for any flash of recognition or other reaction to the name.

  Connor’s gaze quickly dropped to the floor.

  “Do you know him?”

  The kid wouldn’t look at him, but Lucas couldn’t help but notice that his complexion had paled considerably.

  “Look, I just have a few questions—”

  An elbow in his side made Lucas cut off his words. A trio of basketball players was jostling their way into the gym.

  “Sorry,” a kid mumbled. Probably the owner of the elbow.

  Another kid slowed. He was the tallest of the bunch, and built more like a linebacker than a basketball player.

  “You okay?” His question was directed at Connor, but his attention was on Lucas.

  “Yeah,” Connor mumbled. He brought his eyes back to Lucas. “I gotta go.” He spun on his heel and darted into the gym before Lucas could get another word out.

  “You need something?” the tall kid asked Lucas. He was good-looking, with a short buzz cut and cutting green eyes, and he knew it.

  Lucas met his gaze and said nothing.

  “’Cuz if you don’t, I suggest you be on your way.”

  Lucas arched an eyebrow. “Oh you do, do you?”

  The kid’s smile was thin. “Yeah. Yeah I do.” He glanced down the hallway. “Especially because I see a security guard heading our way. And I have no problem telling him you don’t belong on campus.”

  A muscle in Lucas’s temple pulsed, and he swallowed down the irritation he was feeling. If this had happened two years ago, when he’d had a badge and a title to go along with it? He would’ve given this punk-ass kid a piece of his mind.

  But the badge was gone. The job was gone.

  And he was just a man, hanging out somewhere he didn’t belong.

  5

  Tuesday, March 20th

  3:45pm

  Alaina was in hell.

  Paperwork hell.

  Stacks of papers and files surrounded her, radiating out from the spot where she stood in Lucas McGowan’s tiny office. There wasn’t an inch of clear space on any horizontal surface, and the floor was pretty covered, as well. If Lucas had walked in at that moment, he might’ve thought she’d destroyed his office on purpose. Made a bigger mess just to spite him.

  But she knew that forward progress often involved regression. And regression in Lucas’s office looked an awful lot like a hell made up of dozens of manila files and loose papers.

  She’d started with the easy stuff. It hadn’t taken long to clean up the items that were obviously trash—food wrappers, to-go coffee cups, empty boxes that had once contained paper clips and pens and staples and had somehow never made their way to the blue recycling bin by the printer—but the harder stuff remained.

  Alaina didn’t know how long Lucas had been in business as a private investigator, but she was fairly certain that he’d never filed a single piece of paper. This was confirmed when she opened the lone filing cabinet in the room, a four-drawer gray metal cabinet tucked in one corner of the office. She’d opened every drawer. All of them were empty, save for the hanging folders awaiting files.

  She had no idea how Lucas would want his files arranged, so she decided to go with the most obvious: alphabetical. Once they were sorted that way, he could sort them by year, too, if that made more sense to him.

  Alaina almost smiled. She had a feeling Lucas wasn’t going to care how or where the files were sorted, as long as they were off his floor and off his chair and off his desk. She wondered how he’d managed to stay in business, seeing how disorganized he was…and then she wondered if hiring him—and paying him a thousand in cash—had been a good decision.

  She snorted. As if she had a choice. It wasn’t like private eyes were a dime a dozen in Aspen Falls. And she wasn’t about to hire someone out of the cities. She needed someone local, someone who knew the town. People in Aspen Falls were like all of small-town Minnesota: they kept to themselves and were wary of strangers. Sure, people were nice—Minnesota Nice, don’tcha know?—but they were guarded, too. Some folks said it was their Nordic roots that made Minnesotans this way: stoic, sturdy, hardworking folks. Others said it was because of the long, cold winters, when people spent so much time by themselves or only with close friends and family, that they sealed those bonds rather than seeking out others.

  Alaina didn’t know what the answer was, and she didn’t really care. She just knew that there was more to the story behind her brother’s death. And she was convinced that someone in town had the answers she was looking for.

  She scooped up a stack of files on Lucas’s desk to sort through. A folded-up, long-forgotten newspaper was underneath them. She rolled her eyes as she reached for it, wondering how dated it was. A week? A month? A year?

  It was in her hands, ready to be tossed into the large trash bag at her feet, when she noticed the story in the bottom right corner. Her breathing quickened and her fingers tightened on the thin newsprint she was holding.

  It was a story about Noah.

  A story she hadn’t read.

  Her vision blurred, but not before she saw the headline.

  Local Boy Gone But Not Forgotten

  The newspaper crumpled in her deathlike grip. Her heart thumped against her ribs.

  She hadn’t read it.

  After the… after, she’d been too shocked, too traumatized, to do much more than go through the motions. And then, with her own parents paralyzed by grief, she’d donned the armor necessary to guard her heart and had taken over planning the funeral arrangements. Because they hadn’t been able to do it.

  So this article, this little feature piece about the tragedy of suicide, these four paragraphs that purported to tell the story of her little brother…she hadn’t read it. How could eighteen years—e
ighteen years!—be told in a couple hundred words?

  It was simple.

  It couldn’t.

  Noah was more than a single column story in the C section of the local paper. His life was fuller, richer, more meaningful than that.

  Alaina swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Because she realized something. Like the article in the paper, she didn’t have the full picture of her brother’s life, either. Waves of guilt washed over her, so strong they almost sent her to her knees. A sob strangled her and she choked it back, reeling from the emotions racing through her. She reached for the stack of files on the chair and sent them crashing to the floor, papers cascading out of them.

  She sank down, her hands gripping the wooden armrests, and let the realization hit her full force.

  She didn’t know Noah, either. Not because they’d drifted apart. It would be easy—well, easier—if that had been the case.

  But the reason she didn’t know her brother was because she’d erected a barrier between them. Oh, he’d tried to stay in touch, to keep the lines of communication open. He was forever calling and texting. And Alaina was forever too busy. Too busy to call him back, too busy even to send an answering text.

  Tears streamed down her face. She remembered the last exchange they’d had. Early January, a couple of weeks after Christmas. He’d texted to thank her for the gaming headphones she’d given him, a gift she’d brought over Christmas morning.

  Thx for the headphones. They r awesome!

  She’d been in the middle of a walk-through at one of her properties, but she’d paused long enough to text back a quick reply.

  Glad u like them.

  And that had been it. The last thing she’d ever said to him.

  There had been texts and phone messages after that from Noah, but she hadn’t responded.

  Too busy.

  She was always too busy.

  She’d spent hours scrolling through the texts he’d sent after her last response committing them to memory. Each word was a tiny knife slicing into her heart, a reminder of just how distant, how unavailable, she’d been.

  Was it purposeful? Had she meant to cut him out of her life?

  She didn’t think so.

  The severing of ties had more to do with embarking on her own, of leaving the past behind so she could make a new life for herself. She’d had to focus, to put herself and her business first.

  She took a deep breath.

  Because it was more than that.

  It was severing ties with her parents. With her overbearing, judgmental, resentful father. And it had been far easier to write them all out of her life than to try to pick and choose what relationships and conversations she wanted to keep going.

  She wiped at her eyes, furious with herself that she was crying. It was a weakness, something she hadn’t indulged in in years, and she hated that tears had become almost normal for her.

  Alaina glanced back at the newspaper article. Her eyes zeroed in on the hotline printed in bold in the last paragraph. A suicide hotline.

  She shook her head. She knew she and Noah hadn’t been close, not since she’d moved out. But she also knew that there was nothing in the messages she’d received that indicated he was depressed. They were normal texts: about video game wins, about a horrible dinner their mother had made, about the weather. They were conversational, not cries for help.

  She set the paper back down on the desk.

  No, she thought, shaking her head.

  The newspaper could claim what it wanted, but she refused to believe it.

  She knew there was more to her brother’s death than suicide.

  And Lucas McGowan was going to help her figure it out.

  6

  Tuesday, March 20th

  4:10pm

  The first thing Lucas noticed was the mess.

  Pushing the door open to his office, he did a double take. If anything, his office looked worse than when he’d left it.

  His gaze moved to the woman sitting in the middle of the room, the chair she was on like a boat floating amidst a sea of papers. She was pale, her face drawn, her blue eyes filled with tears.

  Lucas strode toward her, his snow-crusted boots leaving wet footprints on the papers underfoot.

  Alaina blinked as she registered that Lucas was there. Her gaze drifted to the floor and she quickly looked back to him, her eyes rounding with concern.

  “The files,” she said, getting to her feet. “Your boots. They’re wet. You’re ruining the files.”

  He stopped within a foot of her. “I don’t care about the files,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  She took a deep, steadying breath and he watched as she carefully arranged her features, almost as if she were donning a mask.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “Except for the fact that you’re in danger of ruining dozens of files.”

  He stared at her. Her expression was now one of mild annoyance, and all traces of whatever had been bothering her were gone. Sitting there in a blue sweater and thick black leggings, her feet snug in her Ugg boots, her long hair brushed out and looking like a silky waterfall, she looked like a college co-ed who was slightly miffed at being given an extra assignment.

  He wondered how old she was…and why he couldn’t stop staring at her.

  He forced himself to turn away, trying to pick a path toward his desk. “You looked upset.”

  “I am upset,” she told him. “Your office is a pigsty.”

  “Is that it?”

  “No,” Alaina said. “I’m also thinking I got the short end of the stick here. You should be paying me.”

  Lucas shoved his keys in his pocket and shrugged out of his jacket, draping it across the back of his chair. “How do you figure?”

  She threw up her hands, and he marveled at her complete one-eighty. He’d walked in on a woman who looked fragile. Vulnerable, even. His instinct had been to go to her, to help. But just like that, she’d morphed. Gone were the tears, the anguished expression, and in their place was this spitfire standing in the middle of his office, her blue eyes narrowed, her expression haughty. She was like a chameleon.

  “Do you have any idea how big of a mess this is? How long it’s going to take to get this stuff organized?”

  Lucas had a pretty good idea. It was why he’d kept putting it off. Well, that and the fact that he despised paperwork. He was a detective. He figured things out…but that didn’t include where to put case files once he was done with them.

  He grinned. “Seems to me I got the short end of the stick here.”

  She planted her hands on her hips. Her eyebrows arched high. “Oh? How is that?”

  Lucas shrugged before sitting down. “You’ve done the impossible. You’ve actually made the mess worse.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t you know that you sometimes have to make a bigger mess in order to clean things up?”

  Considering cleaning had never been high on his list of priorities, he didn’t actually know. “Is that so?”

  “And this is going to take days.” She sighed as her eyes swept the room. “Maybe even weeks.”

  Lucas felt a pang of guilt. He knew he’d let things spiral out of control, but was it really that bad? He wasn’t one to shy away from deals, to take things offered to him, especially if he benefitted, but he also wasn’t one to take advantage. And he was sort of thinking that was what he might be doing.

  “Look, you don’t have to do this,” he began. “I mean, you probably have a job that you need to get back to. I don’t want you spending too much time on this.”

  She snorted. “Define too much time.”

  “Too much time means too much time,” Lucas said simply. “If it’s gonna get in the way of other commitments, then I don’t want you doing it.”

  Something flickered in her expression, and it was almost as if the mask she’d carefully crafted was cracking. But just as soon as it came, it disappeared.

  “I’m keeping my promises,” she said, wi
th such force and intensity that it took Lucas aback.

  “What about your job?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she clipped.

  “I’m not worried. I’m asking.” He cocked his head. “What exactly do you do? For a living, I mean.”

  She stooped to pick up a stack of files from the floor. “I’m in real estate.”

  “Real estate?”

  She nodded and straightened. The files were still in her hands and she transferred them to her side, using her elbow to hold them against her so she could brush a few loose strands of hair away from her face.

  “What did you find out today?” she asked, making it clear she wanted to change the subject. “You went to the school, right?”

  Lucas nodded.

  “And?”

  He thought about his brief conversation with Connor. He hadn’t gotten squat. And Carmen Garcia was nowhere to be found.

  But he wasn’t going to tell Alaina that. He could tell she wanted results.

  Immediate results.

  She was the kind of person who dove in headfirst, who demanded action and progress.

  Lucas was that way, too. But years on the police force had taught him that investigations took time. People hid things for a reason, and finding clues was like looking for buried treasure.

  It took time.

  Patience.

  He glanced at Alaina.

  He was pretty sure patience wasn’t a trait of hers.

  “Did you hear me?” she demanded. “I asked what you found out today.”

  Lucas smiled. “I heard you.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m making progress.”

  Alaina frowned. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  Lucas’s smile widened. “That’s all you need to know.”

  7

  Wednesday, March 21st