“It’s been nearly a week now. Katherine had a vision about someone being buried in a shallow grave, and there’s blood at the scene. You ready to take the gloves off?”
Megan could tell she’d shocked him.
“What?” Nico blinked. “When did Katherine—?”
“The day before Drew came and talked to me about the blood.”
Nico said, “And you think someone in my family could be responsible for that? For murder?”
“I don’t think anything yet!” Megan stepped forward and got in his space. “But the only reason someone would rob you is if they knew the Poulsard grapes are special. And according to you, the only people who knew that information were Henry and a couple of family members.”
“So what are you saying? You think my own family stole from me? And murdered someone to cover it up?”
“Maybe something spun out of control! Maybe someone they hired got violent and they were defending themselves. For that matter, maybe they didn’t think of it as stealing.”
“How could you not think of it as stealing when you break into my greenhouse, take the project I’ve been working on for three years, and—”
“They could have thought they were keeping you from making a horrible mistake. They could have been trying to do something good and something went wrong. I don’t know, and neither will you if you won’t let me question them.”
Nico was silent, but he was no longer fuming.
“I need to question them” —Megan kept pressing— “particularly your cousin Kellan, because he sounds like someone we really need to talk to.”
“Kellan is my family. They’re all my family. And Dusis don’t steal from each other. I don’t know what kind of family you came from, but no one in my family would steal from me.”
She ignored the swipe at her family and turned toward her car. The wind had picked up, and the breeze coming off the ocean was thick with fog. She was shivering in her bright spring outfit.
“Okay,” Megan said, “you think about how you know I’m right while I get my jacket from the car, because I’m cold now.” She turned and walked to her Mercedes, but she heard Nico following her.
Megan shouted over her shoulder. “You don’t have to follow me. I don’t think I’m going to run into any vulnerable family members between here and my Mercedes.”
“You’re saying they don’t have faith in me.”
Megan stopped in her tracks and turned. “What?”
Nico’s jaw was set at a stubborn angle. “You think they don’t have faith in me and how I run the winery. That’s the only reason they’d interfere, and I refuse to think that.”
She didn’t stop walking. “That is not what I’m saying.”
“I knocked heads with my father for years over what direction to go and how to make that place really special. Not just making jug wine or house wine for Gina’s restaurant but going to the next level. I spent the first fifteen years of my career being questioned at every single turn, and I finally proved myself. I finally convinced them that I knew what I was doing, and I earned their trust.”
“Nico, all I have to do is talk to your family to see how proud they are of all the work you’ve put in and what you’ve made of that place. What I’m saying is—”
“That one of them could be trying to sabotage that.” Nico’s voice got quieter. “That’s what you’re saying.” He turned and looked back at the party, then turned his face to the ocean in the distance. “You should get your coat.”
Megan walked the last few steps to her car, unlocked it, and grabbed her jacket from the back seat. She threw it over her shoulders, grateful for the warm lining, and walked back to Nico. At the last minute, she turned and felt for the car’s energy, tuning into it as if a fine thread connected her hand and the car door. With a flick of her wrist, she shut it behind her.
“How do you do that?” he asked. “And if you can do that, why can’t you open the car door from a distance too?”
“Opening the door takes a level of focus I haven’t really gotten down yet. You have to press in the button and then pull it to open. It all has to happen at pretty much the same time, which makes it more like conducting an orchestra than playing an instrument.”
“But shoving something?”
“Like bangin’ on a big bass drum.” She smiled. “Brute force is easy.” Megan stood beside him, keeping her cold hands stuffed in the pockets and staring over the dark hills that stepped down toward the coast. “You know, for our fifth wedding anniversary, Rodney and I went to Disney World.”
Nico frowned. “Disney World?”
“Yep. Ask me why a woman in her twenties who just found out she was pregnant with her first baby would want to go to Disney World on what would probably be her last adult vacation in years.”
“I am genuinely curious about this.”
“I didn’t.” Megan looked up at him. “I wanted to go to New York. I’d always wanted to go to New York. Listen to the street performers in the subways. See a show on Broadway. Eat a hot dog in Central Park. Wander around the Met for hours. I’d never been before. I didn’t go until just a few years ago, in fact.”
“So why did you go to Disney World?”
“Because Rodney asked my mama where I’d always wanted to go for a trip, and even though my mama knew I always wanted to go to New York, she told him Disney World.”
Nico frowned. “Why?”
“Because she was scared. She’d read all these terrible stories about crime in the city and decided that it wasn’t a good place for me to go. Wasn’t safe enough. I’d probably get mugged in the subway or something.”
“I’m pretty sure there are more serial killers in Florida than there are in New York.”
“Well, she wasn’t thinking about that. She wasn’t thinking about me at all except for keeping me safe in the best way she could think of.” Megan pulled her hands out of her pockets and breathed out on them, trying to warm them up. “And if you asked her, she would have told you that I really wanted to go to Disney World. She’d be convinced of it. She would have sworn up and down that Disney World was what I always wanted because New York was dangerous and I was carrying a new baby and isn’t that a better idea?”
Nico was silent.
“It wasn’t because she didn’t love me. Or respect me. It was about her own fears. I know that now. But that whole trip, all I could think of was New York and how I’d always wanted to go. And if I’d said something to my mother, she would have been flabbergasted because she knew—she knew—she was doing exactly the right thing.”
“You’re saying family makes executive decisions for us sometimes.”
“And most of them are based in love. Even if it doesn’t feel that way.”
“So you think my cousin Kellan—”
“Oh no, I think that one might be a sneaky little shit. I’m not sure; I just have a feeling, and I need to question him first.”
Nico pursed his lips, and Megan forced her eyes away.
Down, Sugar.