Page 14 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

I wasn’t sure I liked this new, aware version of myself. I needed to return to closed off and emotionless. I answered him because he stood there waiting for my explanation.

“Last time it was a cat smoking a cigar, this time it’s a beer can with an awful pun. You don’t strike me as a guy who wears corny T-shirts, and yet, here you are.”

“Levity, Miss Lorne.” Reuben stood to the side and waved me into his place. “We all need it.”

And that was the only explanation I was going to get. I wondered how many more ridiculous T-shirts the guy had.

“So if it’s not my supper, then what brings you here with your supper in hand?” Reuben wove his way toward his kitchen. Tacos were on the menu in his house. I could smell them. Sure enough, he had a half-made taco on plate on the kitchen island.

“I have questions.” I slid onto a stool and set my food on the countertop.

Reuben snagged a plate from the cupboard, letting the door slam into place. He slid it toward me. “Questions about?”

I proceeded to unpack my dinner. “The other missing women.”

Reuben raised his brows and waited.

I reached into the bag and pulled out French fries. “So—what ties them to Sophia. Besides each of them being taken from their rooms and a dead snake left behind. ”

“Ahh.” Understanding flashed across Reuben’s face. He turned his back to me after grabbing his plate and taco shell and moved to the stove where he scooped meat from a pan. “You want to be a detective, huh?”

Sometimes I really didn’t like Reuben Walker’s sense of humor.

“No. I—want to help.”

“And I appreciate that. But, I’m not in a position to discuss?—”

“Fine.” I interrupted. “Don’t discuss what you can’t discuss. But what is public knowledge that you can share with me?” It’s not like I’d been following the missing women cases until a few days ago when Sophia upended my life.

“Ok.” Reuben added toppings. Really? Who put green olives on tacos? “Three women vanish over the course of the last several months. One of whom, was Sophia. She was the latest to disappear, but the only one to wind up dead.”

“Who were the other two?” I bit off a French fry.

Reuben slopped a spoonful of sour cream on his taco.

“Lilian Thomas, age sixty-four, abducted from her bedroom last November. She is widowed and at the time she was taken, she lived alone. The second was this April. Rosalie Fiends. She is forty-eight, married, but her husband was out of town on a business trip when her abduction went down.”

“Now it’s August, four months later, and Sophia went missing.”

“Correct.” Reuben folded his soft taco shell.

“Four months between each of them.”

“You noticed that, huh?” He widened his mouth and moved in for a bite.

“Is it significant?” I asked.

“You tell me.” He replied around his mouthful. He chewed and then swallowed. “I haven’t found anything significant per se, but then, it feels calculated.”

“Three different women,” I ventured, “of three totally different age groups.”

“Right.” Reuben nodded and leaned back against the counter behind him, balancing his taco in his hand. “The only similarity in demographics is that they were all female, all between 5’6 and 5’7, and all under 150 lbs.”

“Easier to carry,” I muttered to myself, more than to Reuben.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Eat cake. That’s the conclusion I drew.”

I glared at him. Heartless idiot.

He seemed to realize his flippant remark and its insensitivity. At least he had the good sense to mumble an apology.

“What else?” I pressed. My burger was subpar and I was struggling with disappointment.

“Well. I can also tell you that the ME confirmed drowning as the COD.”

“Cause of death?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Have you found anything that puts the three women together?” Another fry found its way to my mouth. I discarded the half-eaten burger on its wrapper.

“Nothing of import. No. Aside from living in the same town, they all attended different churches or not at all, had different places of employment . . .” Reuben wiped a drip of taco sauce from the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

“Social media searches came up with no direct connections. Mutual friends, but acquaintances and nothing solid.”

I was sure there were probably things Reuben wasn’t telling me. I could respect that. I wasn’t under the impression I had a right to all the case information. But I couldn’t help but ask one more question.

“Sophia’s boyfriend, Dereck.”

Reuben stopped chewing. “What about him?”

“Would he be a common tie?” I felt like I should tell Reuben what I’d overheard at the warehouse. Dereck’s emphatic denial of having anything to do with Sophia’s death—it had to count for something considering he was denying it to a friend and not the police, right?

“We already checked him out. In fact, we interrogated him for several hours.”

“Six,” I muttered.

Reuben tilted his head. I could sense his question.

“I overheard Dereck where I work. He’s friends with our warehouse manager. He was desperate to deny he had anything to do with Sophia’s death. But he was telling Alan he didn’t have a clear alibi.”

Reuben studied me for a second and then set the rest of his taco on his plate. “Where do you work?”

“You know where I work.” I wasn’t sure why he was baiting me. “Archer’s Heating and Cooling, for all your home energy needs.” I quoted their slogan.

“How does Dereck know your warehouse manager?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Mm, k.”

I didn’t want to discuss my job, or Dereck and Alan’s friendship.

It had no bearing on Sophia’s death. I also got the strong feeling Dereck was no longer a suspect.

It’d be nice if they told him that so the poor guy could stop hyperventilating over cigarettes with Alan.

He was staring down a life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.

“So there’s nothing to tie the three women together?” I pressed.

Reuben’s gaze was kind when it settled on me, and for a moment, I remembered feeling safe here.

I could imagine curling up on the couch in his living room for a nap and wondered how amazing it would be to just sleep.

Sleep without worrying that someone was still out there—could still come back.

The Serpent Killer haunted me, and in a way, I wished he was connected to these three women.

To Sophia. That by solving Sophia’s death, I’d solve my own mystery.

But I still held fast to the conviction that there were two different killers at play. One present, and my own, in the past.

“Noa.”

Reuben’s voice snapped me back into reality. He watched me intently, and my guess is he’d been saying my name a few times before it’d gotten my attention.

“It’s better if you don’t keep digging into this on your own.” His statement swept away my momentary lapse of common sense that he could be a safe place.

“Why?” I stiffened.

“Because we don’t know who we’re dealing with.

” Reuben rounded the island to stand beside me.

Maybe coming closer made him feel more authoritative?

More caring? I wasn’t sure how to interpret it.

“You have already brought us some helpful insight, and by no means do I want you to feel you can’t tell me something if you remember anything—anything at all.

But, if this is unrelated to your case, as you claim and as it appears it probably is, then .

. . you’re safer if you leave the investigation in the hands of the department. ”

He was right.

I knew he was.

But aside from the fact I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right, I also didn’t want to let Sophia down.

“She needs me,” I mumbled under my breath and instantly wished I hadn’t.

“Who needs you?” Reuben didn’t know how to let anything slide.

“No one. Never mind.” I slid off the stool, regretting coming here in the first place. I think I had envisioned Reuben laying out the case file notes, engaging me with the theories and even minute possibility of ties between the women.

I could see now that he wasn’t going to do that. Probably couldn’t do that.

We’re on our own, Sophia . She could hear me. I was sure of it.