“You didn’t know that.” He shook his head emphatically. “How could you have? I’ve read the report. There’s no way you would have seen him in a mess like that.”
By the time I’d recognized Sully, it was too late. My hands tightened on the wheel. He’d been shot ten feet away from me.
If I had just chosen the guy on the right, Sullivan would be alive. That was where Dad had stopped listening.
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“The back way is still open,” he said. When it became apparent that I wasn’t going to reply, he mumbled something about my stubbornness and shut the door.
I waited until he was clear, then started the engine. Instead of taking the road back to Alba, I followed the fading dirt road west, putting the Jeep into four-wheel drive and skirting the edge of the Bradley property line for a few minutes until I climbed the next ridge and turned north.
I crept through the open, rusted gate and crossed onto Uncle Cal’s land. Guess it really was mine now, according to the property taxes I’d been paying. Still felt like his, though. He’d died the year before Sullivan, and I’d been deployed again, unable to bury the man I’d loved more than my own father.
A few minutes later, I put the car in park.
In the sunlight, I’d be able to see what remained of the ruins at the hot springs down the ridgeline and the tip of the abandoned Rose Rowan Mine below those. But given the sight my headlights illuminated, maybe it was a good thing it was dark.
The landscaping had overgrown the sprawling single-story home, and the roof was missing so many shingles, it looked more like a suggestion than a reality. Uncle Cal had added rooms as he’d wanted, giving the house an unsymmetrical, eclectic feel that I’d always loved as a kid. Now that I was an adult, it just meant that there was a shit ton of roof to repair. I could only hope that the solar panels had fared better.
Yeah, it was going to be a massive amount of work, but at least I wouldn’t have to sleep in body armor. The same couldn’t be said for the house I’d grown up in.
I got out of the Jeep and headed for the front door, pausing at the porch. My thumb dusted off the markings Uncle Cal had carved into the upright stone he’d jokingly called his address.
“Elba,” I repeated, shaking my head with a little laugh at the joke no one in our family ever remarked on. Napoleon’s island.
Guess I was well and truly exiled now.
How the hell was I supposed to accomplish the one thing Dad had asked of me if he wouldn’t even talk to me?
Chapter Four
Willow
My cell phone flashed an alert for a front-door entry, and a video clip automatically started playing. I tugged my headphones down to rest around my neck, effectively silencing the BANNERS album I’d been listening to, and saw my best friend on the screen, juggling a carrier tray of coffee and my house key.
Another hour and this project for Vaughn Holdings would be finished, but something told me I was about to hit a major delay. Thea never popped in without a reason, and I had a sneaking suspicion that reason was Cam.
“Willow?” Thea called out.
“In the office!” I mentally kissed my productivity goodbye and set my headphones on the glass desk.
“There you are!” She gave me a smile brighter than the morning sun and a cup of coffee from Alba Perks.
I thanked her for the coffee, then took a sip of the chocolaty mocha and waited to hear why she’d dropped by so early. She liked to get to her yoga studio before nine, even in the off-season.
“I was hoping you’d be home.” Her eyebrows rose over light-blue eyes.
“Ha! It’s eight thirty a.m. on a Tuesday, so I’m working. Where else did you think I might be?” I took a sip and savored the mocha, wondering how long it would take for her to bring him up.
“Oh, I don’t know…over at the Danielses’ place?” she asked in mock innocence, blowing the steam across the lid of her cup.
Not long at all.
“Okay, what have you heard?” I leaned back in my chair as she plopped her butt right on my desk. The gossip wasn’t something I’d missed while I was at college, but Thea was someone I’d longed for every day at Rutgers.
“I know that I was dropping Jacob off at preschool and some of the other moms had a few fascinating stories about a very hot, very tattooed, very Daniels-looking man stopping in at the gas station before heading up the mountain. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, now, would you?” Her blue eyes sparkled as she tilted her head.
“Why on earth would I know who stops in for gas?”
“Oh, come on. Julie Hall was dropping off Sawyer before heading to the hospital, and she said—”
My cell phone alerted me to another entry, and a quick peek showed my mother walking in.
Work from home, they said. It’ll be fun and productive, they said.
“Mom! Boundaries!” I called down the hall.
“Thea! How lovely to see you.” Mom ignored my comment, her perky grin sending warning signals down my spine. What was she up to now?
“Mom, seriously? I thought we had the whole ‘the key is only for emergencies’ discussion?” Moving back last year had definitely challenged my mom’s hovering nature, but I knew she did it out of love. She was in her element with someone to fuss over, and lately that someone was me.
“Well, you get so grouchy when I interrupt your work, so I figured I’d just let myself in and see if you were here before bugging you.”
I wasn’t touching the lack of logic in that statement with a ten-foot pole. “Right. Mom, what’s up? I know you didn’t drive all the way up here to see if I was home. You could have done that with a phone call.”
She shifted an overstuffed canvas tote on her shoulder. “Is it a crime to want to see my daughter? I mean, you were gone for four years, and I feel like I’m still getting used to having you back. I love having both my girls home again.” Her tone was so exaggerated that I nearly choked on the syrupy sweetness of it. “But I do need a favor from one of you.”
“We both know that Charity is asleep, so out with it!” I demanded with a laugh. No doubt my older sister had gone back to bed after taking Rose to school. She usually worked the closing shift at her bar, since she lived right above it.
Mom smiled back, mirroring my own, and set the bag on the purple armchair in my office. When I’d bought what I’d lovingly called The Outpost, I’d repainted every wall and all the woodwork white, decorating in pops of bright color that I could easily change out when the mood struck. Art school had given me an appreciation of how color affected mood, and after losing Sullivan…well, I’d needed a lot of color. Now, I was good with just bits and pieces.