I laughed. “How’d she lose parts?”
“Lord, if I had the answers to solve the mystery that is my beloved wife.” He laughed and kicked a tire with his boot.
“Frank—oh, Winnie!” Rain poked her head out the door that connected the house to the garage, and when she saw me, she rushed out, coming my way to pull me into a hug. She wore an apron tied tight and was holding a meat tenderizer.
“Hey, Rain.”
I’d seen her a few times since I’d moved to Quincy, each on my trips coming and going to visit Pops. She was one of those lucky women who didn’t seem to age. Her hair was the same light brown as I always remembered, her skin smooth except for a few fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Her hug was as fierce as those I remembered from my childhood.
Mom had always joked that for a slender woman, Rain was as strong as an ox.
“Are you cooking?” I nodded to the tenderizer mallet.
“I am.” She shook it and laughed. “Chicken fried steak. Frank’s favorite. How are you, little bird?”
“Good.” I smiled at the same nickname she’d called me since I was a kid. “Frank was just telling me about a few missing parts for the Jeep. Did you go wild cleaning the garage?”
“Never.” She laughed. “This is his mess.”
“Then how’d you lose a part?” I asked.
“Driving,” Frank answered. “Somehow this summer, she lost a hubcap.”
A hubcap. The tire he’d kicked was missing the cap. My eyes darted to the front wheel. It was capped with the hubcap I’d seen in the back of Griffin’s truck weeks ago on a grocery store run. The one he’d told me Mateo had found on the road to Indigo Ridge.
“I saw a hubcap like this . . .” I locked my gaze with Rain’s. “I didn’t realize that you drove the Jeep.”
Her smile faltered. “Well, sure. It’s my only car.”
Why would she go on the road to Indigo Ridge? That was private property.
Something prickled at the back of my neck. An uneasy feeling. I didn’t need a mirror to see the color drain from my face.
Rain must have noticed it too. “Frank, close the door.”
It took me three seconds too many to register that sentence. It took me three seconds too many to look between my lifelong friends and realize what I was seeing. Because in those three seconds, Frank punched the garage door opener clipped to the Jeep’s driver-side visor.
And Rain lifted the mallet.
It took me three seconds too many to shed my personal bias and grasp that these people—neighbors, friends—were not as they seemed.
Three seconds too many.
Before the lights went out.
Chapter Twenty-One
Griffin
Hi, you’ve reached Winslow Covington. Please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1.
I growled at the voicemail greeting, checking the time again.
Seven forty-eight.
The summer nights were long in Montana and the daylight would last for almost another hour, but it was getting late. She’d missed dinner. She had agreed to dinner, right? I’d left her shellshocked this morning but Winn wasn’t one to ditch without a phone call first.
For the past hour, I’d assumed that something had happened at the station. Maybe an accident or an officer who’d called in sick. But as the minutes wore on and she still hadn’t returned my calls, the churning in my stomach was becoming unbearable.
I pulled up Covie’s number and called it for the third time. Four rings and it dropped to his voicemail.
“Shit.”
Bad news traveled at the speed of light around Quincy. If there’d been an accident or something else significant, someone in my family might have heard about it. So I started with the most likely source of news. Dad.
“ ’Lo,” he answered.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hi, how’d the creek look today?”
“Dry. Moved the horses down. All good. Listen, have you heard about anything happening in town today?”
“Uh, no. Why? What happened?”
“Nothing.” I sighed. “Winn isn’t home and she’s not answering. I wasn’t sure if something came up and I hadn’t heard about it yet.”
“No news here. Want me to make some calls?”
“No. Not yet.” If Dad started calling his buddies, there’d be rumor of an emergency before there was an actual emergency.
“Okay. Keep me posted.”
“I will. Thanks.”
“Call Eloise,” he said. “If there’s something going on, she’ll know before the rest of us.”
“Good idea. Bye, Dad.” The moment the line went quiet, I called my sister and asked her the same question.
“I’ve been at the front desk all evening,” she said. “There hasn’t been anything going on that I’ve seen.”
And if there’d been a streak of cruisers blazing down Main with their lights flashing, she’d have noticed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“You’re worried.”
“Yeah. I am.”
“I’m going to make some calls.”
“No, not—”
Before I could finish, she’d hung up on me. “Damn it.”
There was no stopping Eloise, and if I knew my father, he was on the horn at the moment too. If Winn was just out and about, she wasn’t going to like being hunted down.
“Then she needs to answer her fucking phone,” I muttered, hitting the number to her personal phone again. It rang and rang.
Winn had been good about keeping it close and charged since Covie’s heart attack. But when it transferred to voicemail for the tenth time since I’d called, I hung up and paced the kitchen.
She’s okay. This was probably just part of her job. A random, purposeful disappearance when she was too busy to answer my call. Chances were she was dealing with something important and my constant calls had been a distraction.
But damn it, I was coming out of my skin here.
We were going to have to come up with a system or something. A text, anything, for her to signal she was all right.
There was no way she’d give up being a cop.
There was no way I wouldn’t worry.
“Fuck it.” I swiped my keys and ball cap from the counter and headed for the door.
She was probably at her place, building that goddamn TV stand and freaking out about moving in. Yes, it was soon for this big of a step. But my feelings for her weren’t going to change. So why not live under the same roof?
She was practically living here already. She’d cleaned the house today and the scent of furniture polish clung to the air. Bleach lingered in the bathrooms.
Maybe I could have asked. Said it more eloquently. But ignoring my calls wasn’t the way. Was a text too much to ask for?
The trip to town took too long—I called each of her numbers two more times. My chest was too tight, my heart beating too fast. The sinking feeling in my stomach plunged to the floorboards when I turned down her street and her driveway was empty. Every window on the house was dark.
“Damn it, Winn.”