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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dinner wasn’t as strange as Sloan imagined. After Drea brought in the stewpot, set it on the stove, she surreptitiously pointed at Sloan, herself, then made a talking signal with her hand.

Yeah, we’ll talk , Sloan thought, then put it, and everything else, out of her mind.

Better, she decided, to just be there.

It proved easy enough. After all, she liked her sister, she liked Theo, and Nash. There were definitely feelings. And it certainly didn’t hurt to take a night off from focusing on serial killers.

They sat at a folding table on folding chairs in the not-quite-finished dining room.

“Good thing we got this,” Theo began. “Since we tore out the office, we figured we’d need temporary office space. Drea, this is really good.”

“Right in the Mom ballpark,” Sloan agreed.

“Sometime, when I don’t have piles of paperwork, I’m going to cook something spectacular on that amazing and intimidating stove.”

“Anytime,” Nash invited. “It’s a bonus to have somebody in the family who can cook.”

“Sloan can cook. When she wants to.” Drea’s engagement ring sparkled as she sipped her wine and smiled. “You should talk her into making her Kickasserole.”

At Nash’s questioning look, Sloan spread her hands. “Lesser beings call it lasagna.”

“The kitchen’s open for Kickasserole whenever you are.”

“This is like a double date.”

Theo’s cheerful statement had Sloan reaching for her own wine.

“We’ve been to a few parties and had dinner with some of Drea’s friends. Good times.”

“Your friends, too,” Drea told him.

“Yeah, mine, too, now. But this is nice, the four of us, at home and all. We should do it again when we finish the dining room table.”

Sloan grabbed the lifeline. “You’re building one?”

“Restoring,” Nash told her. “It’s something a client had. He was going to put it on Etsy or eBay. I saved him the trouble.”

“Needs some love,” Theo put in. “It’ll look great in here when it’s fixed up. Just old-timey enough. We’ll have to start hunting up things like that.” He reached over for Drea’s hand. “Once we find a house.”

“You’re looking for a house?” Sloan couldn’t say why that jolted, but it did.

“Starting to.” Drea sent Theo a look as dazzling as her ring. “Something we can fix up and make our own. After all, between the Fix-It Brothers and All the Rest, why not?”

“Or we could build one from the ground up if we can find the right property. Lots of options, but either way it’s great knowing we’ll be close to family, to work. Whatever we find, we’re not thinking about it as a starter.”

“A forever,” Drea finished.

Looking at them, Sloan felt her heart going warm. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

Like you knew each other.

While the brothers dealt with the dishes, Drea announced she and Sloan would walk the dog. And ignoring Theo’s claim he could go out on his own, she got their coats.

Five steps from the house, with Tic barking and racing, Drea said: “So?”

“So what?”

“You and Nash is so what! How long has this been going on?”

“A few weeks, I guess. Do you have a problem with it?”

“No!” She gave Sloan a sisterly shove. “But you don’t even give me a hint? The first time you were with somebody you told me.”

Sloan felt a wave of sweet nostalgia. “Mark Bowser. Homecoming, senior year, in the back seat of his secondhand Dodge Shadow.”

She ticked a glance toward Drea. “I was seventeen.”

“What difference does that make? I’m still your sister.”

“You’re still my sister.” Sloan gave her a quick one-armed squeeze. “It just happened. And maybe I’m still processing the fact I’m sleeping with the brother of the man my sister’s engaged to.”

“What difference does that make?” Drea repeated. “Nash is terrific. I already love him, especially since Theo’s told me Nash always, always looked out for him. Tried to protect him. You know they didn’t have a happy, healthy childhood.”

“Not know so much as surmised.”

“Nash always took the brunt.”

Sloan stopped while Tic found more spots to mark his territory. “Abuse.”

“Not physical, but in every other way. Our family? They already mean the world to Theo because all he had was Nash. That silly, adorable dog? Nash gave Theo that dog because he always wanted one and could never have one.

“He’s Theo’s hero, so he’s mine. I’m happy you’re with him because of that. And because it’s clear to me he’s making you happy.”

“Making myself happy first is—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Drea just flipped both hands in the air. “But you’d already done that. You’ve made yourself happy. You pulled yourself out of the hole someone else put you in. You’re doing work that satisfies you, and as a sergeant. You bought a house and you’re making it your own—just like Theo and I intend to do.”

Drea stopped, turned to face Sloan directly.

“Now you’re with someone I love as a brother, I respect as a man. So yay.”

“Okay.” This time Sloan pressed her cheek against Drea’s. “Yay.”

It might have struck her strange to lie in Nash’s bed while she knew her sister lay in Theo’s.

When, just sleepy enough, she snuggled in, she said exactly that.

“A lot stranger if we switched that around.”

It took her a minute. “Okay, yeah. They’re already looking for a house. I don’t know why I didn’t take that next, major step in my head, because of course they are. They both want exactly the same thing. A place of their own. A place to start their life together.”

“I’ve stopped being surprised at how often they’re both not only on the same page but on the same paragraph. If they decide to go from the ground up, they’ll be living here, most likely, for a while.”

“They both know that. Would it bother you? Drea moving in here.”

“Why would it?”

“It occurs to me you bought this place, this tucked-away place, and moved into it alone. Then Theo moved in. Now possibly—and I’m going to say very likely—Drea temporarily. That wasn’t your plan.”

“Plans adjust. Otherwise they’re rules.” Absently, hardly aware he did it, Nash ran his hand along her arm. “You had something on your mind when you walked over here tonight.”

“A lot of things on my mind. I’ll overthink about them later.”

But what she’d pushed away came back.

She left Joel pumping gas into the truck and walked toward the mini-mart. Behind her, Joel, the truck, the pumps faded away.

The glass doors stood open, and she walked through.

Inside the bright lights she heard no sound. This time, no one stood behind the counter.

But this time, five people stood between her and the person standing in front of the counter. The five people she’d pinned to her wall.

Janet Anderson, Arthur Rigsby, Zach Tarrington, Celia Russell, and the last picture she’d put up, Wayne Carson.

They watched her, she thought, with both pity and pleading.

They spoke, first Janet, then each one in turn.

“You have to find us.”

“You have to find them.”

“You have to stop them.”

“They’ll take more.”

“You’re like us.”

And together, they said, “You could be next.”

The one at the counter turned. He had no face, but lifted a gun.

One by one, he shot them. One by one, they fell. Unable to move, Sloan felt the bullets strike her.

So she fell with them, bled with them.

Died with them.

When she dragged herself free, pressing a hand to her chest, fighting for air, Nash pushed up beside her.

“What is it?”

“I—I—nothing. Just… a dream.”

He switched on the bedside light, then turned her toward him. Cupping her face, firmly, he studied it.

“Flashback?”

“No. No, not really.”

When she started to draw back, he held on. “Then what, really?”

“Just a dream, Littlefield. I have hard ones now and then. Not as often as I did. I’m fine now.”

“If you were, those eyes of yours wouldn’t still look terrified. If I’m good enough to sleep with, I’m good enough for this. So tell me.”

“It isn’t that—” She stopped, realizing she was making it that. “The mini-mart. It’s always the mini-mart, though sometimes when I go in, it changes. The woods, at night, and someone’s hunting me. Or the light’s so bright I can’t see. But it’s usually just the mini-mart. This time the counterman wasn’t there, just someone standing in front of it, their back to me like that night. When I walked in, the five people missing stood there.”

“Five?”

“I found two more.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. I walked over here because I needed to walk, to think, to clear my head.”

His thumb brushed over her cheek. “You didn’t say anything about it.”

“It wasn’t the right time. I didn’t want to bring it here with Theo so revved up that Drea was coming. I just didn’t want to bring it into that.”

“Okay. You saw the five of them inside the mini-mart.”

“They spoke to me, each one of them. I had to find them—the missing. Had to find the ones who took then. Stop them. There’d be others. And I could be the next.

“Then the one at the counter—no face, not the one who shot me—no face. He shot each one of them. I couldn’t do anything. It was like being paralyzed and I just stood there while he killed them. And then me.”

She let out a breath. “I always feel it. I always feel the bullets.”

Now he drew her in, gently stroked her back. “I don’t think hard ’s the right word for a nightmare like that.”

“I haven’t had one in a while. This was on my mind. It was planted in there, and this… it’s what dreams do.”

“I’ve had my share.”

“Nightmares?”

“When I was a kid, so I know how real they can seem, and feel.”

“It did. They do.” But she could and did breathe out now, and breathe clear. “And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out I conflated what happened to them with what happened to me. I felt helpless when it happened. I had barely cleared my weapon before I was down. And the missing? They didn’t know what was coming for them.”

“You need to fix it. You need to help stop whoever’s doing this.”

“Yes. I can’t let it go. I don’t—”

“If you’d let it go,” he interrupted, “you wouldn’t know there were two more.”

And that settled her.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“You could tell me about them.”

More strange, she thought. She let herself lean on him the way she’d refused to lean on anyone other than family, or Joel.

And it didn’t feel wrong, or weak.

“It’s morning,” she murmured. “The light’s coming. I need to go home, get a shower.”

“I’ve got showers.”

“Yes, and I’ve seen the bathroom you’re currently using. No thanks on that.”

“But no offense?”

“Oh, lots of it.” She kissed him first, then rolled out of bed to get her clothes.

“Wait until you see the wet room when it’s done, with its steam shower.”

She pulled on her pants, paused. “I’m definitely going to keep having sex with you.”

“Come over here and say that.”

“But not now,” she said. “You’ve got built-ins to do and a student to teach.”

“I wouldn’t call him a student.”

She turned to him as she finished dressing.

“I’ve known Robo a long time. I don’t think he’s ever asked someone to show him more. In any case, I’m going down, getting some coffee, then walking home because both those things will set me up. And I’ll see you at dinner.”

“All right.”

“Maybe, after dinner if you’re up for it, you could come back with me. I could tell you about Celia Russell and Wayne Carson.”

“All right,” he repeated.

She started out, then paused, turned back.

“It matters to me that I can tell you, and know you’ll listen. At some point, there may be things you decide to tell me. I know how to listen, too.”

Took the brunt, Drea said the night before. She’d never had to do that for her younger sister because there hadn’t been a brunt to take.

Discipline, sure. Time-outs, groundings, restrictions. And plenty of those she felt were enormously unfair at the time. But she’d never had to stand in front of her sister and take an emotional lashing.

She wondered if he’d ever tell her what it had been like, what scars he carried.

And wanted him to, because it meant he felt able to lean on her.

She walked into the kitchen to find Tic chowing down his breakfast. He gave her a tail wag but kept chowing.

Theo, in Spider-Man flannel pants she found adorable and a faded Columbia sweatshirt, gulped coffee.

“Morning.” He gestured with his mug. “You want?”

“Yes, please.”

“Got you covered. Tic decided time to get up, and I guess it was, since we’ve got shopwork. Drea’ll be down in a minute. She wanted a quick shower before she put her makeup on. Not that she needs it—the makeup. She’s just beautiful.”

He turned back with the coffee and a smile. “You, too. Since she made dinner, I’m taking care of breakfast. I’m making waffles.”

“You’re making waffles?”

“Sure.”

He went to the enormous fridge and took a jumbo pack of Eggos out of the freezer. “How many do you want?”

In that moment, she tripped over the line of like and into love. Setting the coffee down, she walked over, put her arms around him.

“You’re a lucky man, Theo.”

“Man, do I know that.”

“My sister’s a lucky woman. I know that.” She kissed his cheek, then the other, then stepped back. “I’ll take two.”

Before she went home, she ate waffles at the same folding table, then walked out to the shop to see the table, the built-ins.

And found herself pleased and impressed with the systematic organization of tools, benches, lumber, supplies.

She might have drooled, just a little, over the table with its chunky trestle base. They’d stripped it down to its natural cherrywood.

“Don’t tell me you’re using a stain on this.”

“Why would we?” Nash countered. “Look at that grain, that color. It needs one more sanding, cleaning, then three coats of clear poly.”

“Good to know, otherwise I’d have been forced to come back and steal it in the night. I have to go. Thanks for the waffles.”

She turned to Nash, took his face, rose on her toes, and kissed him.

“See you at dinner.”

“I’m leaving in a minute, Sloan. I can drop you off.”

“I need the walk. Tell Mom I’m making brownies.”

“Really?”

“I’m in the mood to make brownies. Keep Tic in here so he doesn’t try to follow me.”

“Sloan makes awesome brownies,” Drea said when she left. “And only makes them when she’s in a really bad mood or a really good one. I’d say these are good-mood brownies.”

Sloan walked home, and her mood rose just a little more as she caught some crocus peeking through the snow.

At home, she lit the fire, then made her good-mood brownies. While they baked, she picked up her crocheting and her first attempt at socks.

Once she’d set the brownies to cool, she checked the time. Just past ten seemed a perfectly civilized time to make calls on a Sunday.

She spoke with Carson’s widow, with Russell’s daughter.

She added to her notes, made more connections on her wall, and added pins to more locations.

When she’d satisfied herself she’d done all she could that day, she took a long, hot shower.

She dressed in jeans, and thinking of crocus, chose a purple sweater. Considering the idea of walking to her parents’—a little under a mile—she started to reach for boots.

The knock on the door had her leaving them to answer.

Nash stood on her stoop.

“I’ll drive you over,” he said. “Since I’m coming back anyway.”

“Oh, fine, thanks. I just need my shoes.”

When she went back to get them, he went over to the covered dish on her kitchen counter. The brownies did look awesome.

“Since your shower’s better than mine—currently—I’m going to shower and change for work here tomorrow morning.”

She came back out wearing gray sneakers.

“Okay.” From the closet she took a black vest and a scarf with gray and black stripes. “I need to get the brownies.”

“I’ll get them.” He picked them up, then stood for a moment looking at her. “We’re going to dinner at your parents’, and with your friends, so this isn’t the time for you to listen.”

“But?”

“But when it is, I know you will. That matters, too.”

“I will. I’m going to say this because we’re walking out the door. I’ve got a real soft spot going for you, Littlefield.”

“I’ve got one of my own going for you, Sergeant Cooper. Let’s go.”

It was a hell of a thing, Nash thought, to be surrounded and not feel squeezed. To find himself so casually and sincerely welcomed into a group that had its own history.

Theo, clearly, drank it all in like water.

No, not squeezed, he decided, but more absorbed.

Conversation primarily centered on wedding talk, and baby talk. And though neither were his areas, they managed to absorb him there, too.

They zeroed in on him during an amazing meal highlighted by honey-glazed ham.

“So, you’ve got a bachelor party to plan.” Elsie nudged another biscuit on him. “Any themes in mind?”

“I figured to go with the classics. Great quantities of alcohol, carefully selected porn, and a stripper.”

At Theo’s quick bark of laughter, Nash buttered the biscuit, and said, “No. Poker.”

“Yeah? Cool! Nash taught me how to play poker when I was about twelve. We’d smuggle in a jumbo bag of Skittles and play for them. Christmas Eve, I was like fifteen, we had a serious marathon going, and I went all in with trip aces. I mean, who wouldn’t?”

“Wiped you out,” Nash remembered with satisfaction. “Full house, deuces over treys.”

“You took pity on me and shared your winnings. And Skittles were major currency for us back in the day. Trouble was, the sugar high made us a little careless, and they found a couple of stray Skittles, or who was it—Maxwell did. Such a narc. And you got grounded for two weeks.”

“It was worth it. We won’t play for candy this time around.”

“Sloan’s a shark at poker,” Joel put in. “We’d get a game going every couple months, and she always walked away with more than she came with. And I ain’t talking Skittles.”

“You have tells.”

“If you’d tell me my tells, I wouldn’t have them. Anyway, shark.”

“Is that so?” Nash gave her a considering look. “Good thing she’s not invited. But some other time, we’ll have to see what you’ve got.”

“Let me know when and where.”

“Maybe when we’ve finished the office, Nash, we should do the game room.”

“Maybe.”

“Video game setup,” Theo continued. “Poker table, maybe a pool table—still under consideration—and a vintage pinball. We haven’t started looking for that yet.”

“When you do,” Dean said, “let me know. I can help you out there.”

Nash turned to him. “Really?”

“Yeah, I know a guy.”

“Dean knows all the guys,” Elsie said with a laugh. “It’s why we have a regulation shuffleboard table down in the family room.”

“You have a shuffleboard table?”

“Drea’s the shark there,” Theo told Nash.

“It doesn’t get a lot of use since the girls moved out.” Dean gestured with his water glass. “We can try it out after dinner.”

So he played shuffleboard in the spacious family room with a fire crackling in the hearth, with Joel and Theo competing on Mario Kart on the biggest screen Nash had ever seen. And one he now wanted.

Elsie and Sari cheered them on when they weren’t huddled in baby and new house talk.

The dogs wrestled themselves into a nap.

Drea ended the game with yet another leaner, and her father shook his head.

“We’re not bad, Nash, but you never beat Team Drea and Sloan.”

“I’m a little rusty,” Sloan admitted, and Drea mimed polishing her nails on her shirt.

“I’ve still got it.”

“I should’ve gotten that pinball machine instead.” Dean tugged on Drea’s hair. “Maybe I still will, then you’ll be the loser.”

When her phone signaled, Sloan pulled it out of her pocket. Her expression barely changed when she read the display, but Nash saw it.

The slightest flicker in her eyes said: Trouble.

“Sorry, work.”

“If that’s Travis, tell him to give my girl a Sunday break.”

Sloan just smiled at her father, then wandered off, out of earshot with the phone.

“Do you have to go in?” Drea asked when she came back.

“No.”

“Good, because Dad wants two out of three.”

“Sure. We can taunt them a second time.”

“Don’t Monty Python me, little girl.” Dean shoved up his sleeves. “We found our rhythm.”

When they won, handily, Sloan and Drea exchanged high fives.

“I’m retiring undefeated.” Sloan gave her father a hug.

It took time, more hugs, insistence on taking home some leftover ham.

“Be safe.” Sloan clutched Joel hard. “And send more pictures of the new house. And you.” She turned to wrap around Sari. “It was so good to see you face-to-face. Wow,” she added as the baby kicked. “Goal!”

“Tell me about it. And I’d tell you not to work too hard, but I’d be wasting my breath.”

Nash waited until they drove away. “What was the phone call? It wasn’t good news.”

“No. I didn’t want to say anything, bring all that positive energy down. It was Detective O’Hara. There’s been another abduction.”

While they drove the short distance to Sloan’s, Sam wheeled Lori Preston’s remains, and Clara brought the bag of lye.

Together, in the chilly dark and moaning wind, they dragged the heavy safety lid off the old, abandoned well.

“It’s a shame she didn’t have a story to tell.” Clara took a moment to catch her breath as Sam began to toss the bags into the well. “I think this one was in denial, doll, and that might be because the story was a dark one.”

The sorrow weighed on her as she helped him drop the bags down. “I got a sense of that, a sense she’s one who’ll be paying for her sins in this life in the next.”

“Screamed and cried herself into puking.”

“Trying to rid herself of the fear of the punishment coming. Reap and sow, Sam. Reap and sow.” She started to lift the bag of lye from the second barrow.

“Don’t you go lifting that, babe. That’s man’s work.”

She stepped back with a sigh as he laid the bag on the lip of the well, trying to block the lye from the wind as he poured it down the hole.

Some of it flew up and away, and Clara saw it as a symbol of souls escaping the dark, or rushing into it.

“I don’t think she’s at peace yet, but we helped her take a step toward finding it.”

Sam tossed the empty bag of lye into the well, and together they covered it again.

“God forgives,” she said, “and in time God will forgive His daughter Lori Preston.” She rose, stretched her back. “How about we go wash up, then have some of those cookies I made this afternoon?”

Together, always together, they wheeled the barrows away.