Page 39 of Deathmarch

“And?” Harper asked.

“He got me a used one, supposedly from Goodwill. I cleaned it up, decorated it with stickers, made it mine. I didn’t care that it wasn’t new. I loved that bike. He wasn’t the type to give me rides, so the bike meant I could get to places.”

“How does Brittany come into this?”

“She saw it and recognized it. It had been hers. She’d thrown the stupid bike out when she got a nicer one. My father picked it up at the town dump. Brittany told everyone at school. I was called Dumpster Girl for a year.”

Harper frowned. “I don’t remember that.”

“You were already in high school.”

She recounted the story without showing emotion, but the old humiliation bubbled up inside. “You know, for the most part, I didn’t care that everyone had more money than we did. But every once in a while, I desperately wanted to be like the other kids, to be able to afford that school trip or shoes that were popular.”

“Or a bike,” Harper said. He didn’t comment further on the story, but she thought his jaw was clenched, like he was angry. On her behalf? She doubted it.

“Is Shannon okay with me going back to the B and B?” she asked him as they walked out. “She’s not scared I’ll murder her in her sleep?”

“She’s a tough cookie.” He headed around the building instead of toward the cruiser that he’d left in the front parking lot. “My pickup is in the back,” he said. “Shannon believes in innocent until proven guilty. She says she saw what you were made of back when your father did gardening for the B and B, and showed up drunk more often than not. You would come and do the work.” He paused. ”I would have done it, if you’d told me. I cared about you.”

The words hung in the air between them. She didn’t want to have an emotional reaction, but she did. She clamped down on that real fast.

So what if he’d cared about her once? Ten years had passed since. None of that mattered now. Right at that moment, the thing that most mattered was that she was out of jail.

She wasfree.She could leave.

“I have a Martha Washington performance in Philly at the end of the week,” she told him as they stopped by his truck. “And then Betsy Ross in Harrisburg, three days after that.”

“You’re not going to make it.” Harper unlocked the doors. “Your bail is conditional on you staying in town. And your car is still impounded as evidence.”

Allie wanted to rail at him, but couldn’t find the necessary steam. He’d found her a lawyer. And he’d had his brother pay her bail.

She got into the truck. “Let’s just go.” She wanted a hot bath, wanted to sit in steaming water and scrub the feel of jail off her skin. “Do you know where my suitcases are?”

“Also in evidence.” Harper started the engine. “But I’m almost done going through everything.”

Frustration made her bristle at last. She wanted clean clothes. “How can it take this long?”

“I’ve been working on other stuff.”

Like having her charges reduced. Which made it so much more difficult to keep on hating him, dammit. Especially when he handed her phone back.

“Who is your favorite character to play?” he asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Calamity Jane. I like swaggering. And for certain audiences, I even get to swear on stage.”

The corner of his lips twisted. “Least favorite?”

“Betsy Ross. I have to sew while I talk, and I usually stab my fingers bloody with the needle.”

Harper remained silent for a while. Then he said, without turning to her, “I wish we’d met again under different circumstances.”

And how was she supposed to react to that? Allie thought as she stared at him.

Chapter Eleven

“How well did you know Old Man Lamm?” Harper asked his father as his plate was put in front of him Wednesday morning, a full Irish breakfast straight from the Old Country: pork sausages, bacon, fried eggs, a couple of slices of fried tomatoes, toast, and more.

“Black puddingandwhite pudding,both?” Harper looked at his mother, thinking this was the exact reason he didn’t pop over for breakfast every day. He’d never burn off the calories. Most police work was admin work these days.