Page 18

Chapter Nine

T hey passed the Welcome to Pine Lake sign just after nightfall.

If Lexi hadn’t known the place so well, she might have let Romano drive right through.

Pine Lake was just a stretch of road with a few more houses than other places along the same route.

The general store was the focal point. It was a repurposed airplane hangar and carried everything from food to auto parts.

An ancient red gas pump tilted drunkenly to one side out front.

Romano pulled the RV off the narrow road but left it running.

“So now what?” Lexi was uneasy, and she knew he could hear that in her voice, but she’d never been very good at disguising her feelings. She just wasn’t sure why she felt as much dread as she did.

“Now, we go talk to your lawyer friend and get our hands on whatever your father was keeping in his safe deposit box.”

“There’s not going to be anything there,” she whispered. But she wasn’t as sure of that as she had been at the beginning of all this. There had to be some reason everyone from international terrorists to secret agents thought otherwise. Still, she wanted to believe it was all a mistake.

She didn’t want to look at Romano. Didn’t want him to see the doubt that must show in her eyes. So she stared up at the gray clouds skittering over the moon like ghosts, a shade paler than the dark sky. “It’s going to snow.”

“Probably.”

“We ought to go up to the house.”

“No.”

“If it snows, we might not be able to. It can come down heavy.”

“Snow melts, Lexi.”

She bit her lip to keep from arguing. Jax hadn’t been fed today. He’d be climbing the walls by now, if those thugs they’d left at her house hadn’t done something to him.

She knew she was worrying about her pet partly because it kept her from thinking about what had been in that safe-deposit box, or why her father had kept it even after breaking every other tie he'd had to his former life.

“Where does the lawyer live?”

Romano had a one-track mind.

“Just keep driving. It’s a big house at the north edge of town, on the right.

I’ll tell you when we get there.” Why was she having all these doubts now?

Her father was innocent. She knew that. There’d be nothing but proof of that at Jim’s office, which was no more than a converted spare room in his house’s basement.

Romano put the rig back in gear and pulled onto the road again. In a few minutes, they were turning into the driveway of James McManus, attorney-at-law. A light snow had begun falling, illuminated by their headlights.

Romano walked beside her to the front door.

She didn’t think he could tell how terrified she was of what they would find.

If her father had been working on something awful, that would explain his actions at the end.

She hated that it all added up. Then again, senility or stroke also made sense, she assured herself.

She didn’t realize she’d frozen on the top step until Romano’s arm slid around her shoulders, squeezed just a little. “It isn’t gonna matter what’s there, Lexi. It can’t hurt your father now.”

She lifted her chin, turning to look him in the eye. “It can hurt me, though.”

“You can handle it.” His hand cupped her chin, and his eyes searched hers as if he truly cared what she was feeling. “You’re tougher than you think, Lexi Stoltz. You’ve proven that. A couple of times.”

“Yeah? If I’m so tough, why am I shaking right now?” She gazed into his eyes, and noticed that they were staring at her lips, like he wanted to kiss her again. And she wanted it, too.

A dog started barking from the next place over.

The noise drew her gaze, and she saw curtains parting, then a face peering out at them.

The neighbor’s dog kept up his barking, which in turn made her wonder where the McManus’s beagle was, and why he wasn’t barking.

She turned, staring first at the door, and then at the rest of the house, noticing for the first time the darkened windows and the way the cold wind riffled the pages of three newspapers lying on the porch.

“I don’t think anyone’s here.”

He followed her gaze, then left her standing there while he ran down the steps and over to the garage to peer through the glass. “No car inside. Dammit .”

Lexi poked the doorbell with her forefinger, let up and poked again. But even when she gave up and started knocking instead, there was no response.

“Three newspapers,” Romano muttered, coming back to the porch. “Looks like they might be gone for a while.”

“They never go away for very long.”

“It’s the holiday season, though.”

“That’s right, it is. I forgot about that.” Romano frowned at her, and she shrugged. “It’s been a while since I’ve celebrated the holidays.”

His lips thinned. He was going to say something nasty about her father, she thought, but he bit it back. Instead, he just said, “I’ve skipped them lately, too.”

That admission made Lexi’s eyes sting. “We can check down at the store. Someone will know when they’re due back.”

“Or we can break in and get what we need tonight.”

“No!” She was so shocked at his suggestion that her jaw fell and her eyes widened. “We can’t go around breaking into people’s homes.”

He shrugged. “Maybe you can’t?—”

“Romano, please. These people are friends of mine.” She glanced again at the house next door, pointed at the face still peeking through the window. “We can’t do it right now, anyway. We’d be seen. Let’s at least wait until later, when the neighbors are in bed.”

He sighed—in disgust at her reluctance, she was sure—but finally nodded. “Okay, all right, but it has to be tonight. We don’t have time for finesse, Lexi.”

“I know.”

Relieved, she turned and headed back to the RV.

He followed and soon they were driving again, through snow that fell thicker with every passing second.

Romano was looking for a hidden spot to park for the night, and Lexi was worrying about her cat.

So she directed him to an old fire trail cut out of the forest. He followed her directions but looked less happy about it the farther they drove.

The snowfall had already coated the narrow dirt trail, but not enough to make driving hazardous. Not yet, anyway.

“This seems like it’s taking us awfully close to your house, Lexi. Are you playing games with me?”

“No games,” she told him as he chose a spot off the fire trail in a little copse of pines, and drove carefully onto it.

“The house is nearby. If you follow the fire trail for a half mile, and then veer off to the right and cut through the pines, you’ll end up in my father’s precious backyard vegetable garden. ”

Romano shut the motor off, then the lights. “You say that as if you’re not overly fond of vegetables.”

“He spent more time digging in that dirt than he did with me,” she blurted before thinking better of it.

“But he was a saint, all the same, right?”

She lowered her head. “I loved him.”

“But he didn’t love you back, did he, Lexi?”

A single tear fell. It dropped from her cheek to splash onto the back of Romano’s hand, just as he reached out to cup her face. His thumb ran over her cheekbone, and he lifted her head to look into her eyes.

“You should have been disappointed in him, not the other way around. You need to open your eyes and see that one of these days. He didn’t deserve a daughter like you.”

“I thought I asked you not to talk about my father.”

“I was talking about you.”

She shook her head slowly, taking her gaze from his.

“I want to go home,” she whispered. “I want to go up to the house.” And for the first time, she realized why.

It wasn’t Jax. It was that the place had become a haven in her mind.

She’d run away from her entire life. Her father’s failing health had just been an excuse.

She’d been hiding there, had stayed even after his death. And she wanted to hide there again.

“We can’t go back, not just yet. Try to be patient, okay?”

She’d try. But, God, she craved space. Room, lots of it, between Romano and her.

It was killing her to be this close to him and pretend nothing had happened between them.

Which was exactly what he expected, even silently demanded, that she do.

She needed space, time alone, to come to grips with the very real possibility that her loyalty to her father had been sorely misplaced.

She’d always known he wasn’t a very nice person.

Not a very honorable person. He’d certainly never been a very kind person.

Your father is a great man.

That oft-repeated refrain played through her brain like a skipping vinyl record. So many people had said it to her, beginning with her mother.

But what if he hadn’t been so great after all? And what if she’d only loved him so, so much because she’d had no one else to love?

“Okay?” Romano repeated.

“Yeah. Okay.” She turned in the seat, looking back into the living quarters of the RV, squinting in the darkness. “So what do we do for light and heat?”

“Propane. The dealer threw in a full tank. I just have to go outside and hook it up.” He tilted his head. “Loan me my jacket and I’ll do it right now.”

She’d been wearing his jacket for lack of anything else. Chivalrous of him, and unexpected, but nice. She liked wearing his coat. It smelled like him, and it was almost as warm as being held in his arms.

She shrugged out of the coat and handed it to him. Romano put it on and went into the back, bending to one of the cupboards and emerging with a flashlight and an oversized pipe wrench.

“Where did you get that?”

“Pipe wrench came with the camper. I picked the flashlight up at the store while you were playing hide-and-seek with the goon in the diner. I grabbed some extra clothes, too. They’re in the drawer under the bunk. Sweatshirts, heavy socks, an extra pair of jeans for each of us.”

“That’s good. Tell me there’s a three-pound flannel nightgown in there, too.”