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“What are you doing?”
Doyle strapped in. “Taking you home.”
Stein stared at him, then reached up and pulled his mask aside. “You can’t go home. You have work to do here. What about Hope House? And Tia?—”
“Hope House is fine?—”
“And Sebold?—”
“Dealt with. Put your mask back on.”
“What about Tia?—”
Doyle moved the mask for him. “She’s... I don’t know.” His mouth tightened and he looked out the window.
Oh no.“What happened?”
Doyle leaned back and pulled on headphones. Someone added earmuffs to Stein, and the chopper fired up.
Across from him, Dr. Aria and another guy, moving a little slowly, strapped themselves in. The guy leaned over to Stein. “We got you, brother. Hooyah.” He gave him a tight smile.
Oh, a former teams guy.
The door closed and the chopper lifted off.
Stein closed his eyes. And all he could hear was,“I left you behind once. I’m not doing it again.”
Yeah, well, right back atcha, Phoenix.
FOURTEEN
Two weeks putteringaround the King’s Inn grounds, getting ready for the summer season, and Doyle still couldn’t get Tia’s words out of his head.
“I can see when a man is searching for something.”
He sank his axe into the log, his body shuddering with the blow. The wood split in half, fell on each side of the block.
He picked up the pieces and parked them on the growing woodpile.
Maybe he shouldn’t be doing his brother Jack’s job, but he needed to sweat, to burn off the ache inside him.
Right. Wow,he missed Tia. As if he were missing a lung, every breath sharp. How she’d gotten so far inside so quickly, he didn’t know, but...
The early June air whisked off the deep blue lake, holding summer in its breath. Leaves on the poplar and birch trees rustled around him, and the scent of freshly mowed grass turned the inn’s grounds into a summer escape. Geraniums bloomed in pots seated on the steps of the main building, a vintage white-painted Victorian built in the early twentieth century, during America’s Gilded Age.
His brother Jack, now their maintenance guy, had applied a fresh coat of white paint to the Welcome to King’s Inn sign affixed to the main entrance, along with the pillars of the apron porch, now festooned with hanging floral baskets.
Frankly, it looked like the prodigal son was doing a better job at upkeep than Doyle had. Although, Jack seemed to be itching to leave, given the work he’d accomplished on his mint 1973 GMC forty-five-foot passenger-transit bus, turning it into a someday home for himself and future wife—hopefully—Harper Malone.
Who knew that the One for Jack had been next door all his life?
Doyle picked up another log. He could probably stop anytime, but the King’s Inn hosted a bonfire on the beach every Friday and Saturday night during the summer, so having an ample supply of firewood wouldn’t hurt.
He set it up, stood back. Sent the axe down. The crack split the morning air, reverberated in his soul, and raked up Tia’s words, again.
“Your future, your vision, your calling—it all died that night and left a hole inside you, and until you deal with that, you won’t have anything to give...”
He picked up the pieces, set them together on the rack. They still fit together, even after they’d been torn asunder.