Page 45 of The Perfect Hosts

“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Lucy says, laying a hand on Wes’s arm, and he pulls her into a tight hug.

“Thanks for everything, Lucy,” Wes says. “And I’m having Madeline’s new phone delivered to the house today. Will you keep an eye out for it? And here’s a card to buy the things you need to fix up the nursery.” He slides the credit card into the front pocket of her jeans.

This could be fun, she thinks.

Lucy watches at the window as Wes walks to his truck. Mellie exits her cabin, and he tries to move past her, but she steps in his path. Lucy can’t see their faces but can tell by their body language that there’s tension between them. After a brief exchange, Wes skirts past Mellie who looks after him with a scowl on her face. “Now, what’s that all about?” Lucy murmurs to herself as Wes speeds away in Madeline’s car.

She waits thirty minutes to make sure Trent and Mellie are nowhere to be seen. She returns to the guest room, retrieves her backpack, and reaches into the inner pocket for the seven tiny surveillance cameras hidden inside. Each camera lens is only three-and-a-half millimeters wide, the entire device only as big as the top of her thumb. She would have brought more but thought she would be pushing it. She’s put a lot of thought into where to place the cameras and finally settles on the kitchen, the living room, the home office, Wes and Madeline’s bedroom, the stables, and the guest room where she’ll be staying—she wants to make sure she knows if someone is snooping around her things, sparse as they are. Deciding where the seventh and final camera will go is trickier. She’d like to find a way to get it into Trent’s bunkhouse so she can keep tabs on him, but doing so unnoticed will be tough. Instead, she’ll hide it in Mellie’s room.

Lucy is casual about it, keeping the cameras hidden in her pocket and nonchalantly situating them in spots where they won’t be noticed. There’s always the chance that Wes and Madeline have their own security devices hidden within the house, but Lucy doubts it. Because behind closed doors and all.

Chapter 21

Mellie

I rush to the bunkhouse and wait until I’m inside before allowing myself to cry. Wes totally brushed me off. He talked to me as if I was a nobody, like I was some random acquaintance of his wife. I know he was acting that way for the benefit of Lucy, who I know was watching us from the window. All I want is a few minutes. A few minutes to ask him what I did wrong. Why can’t he even give me that?

I lie down on the lumpy cot and press my face into the pillow. Maybe it is time for me to leave. If I can’t even get Wes to look at me, what’s the point? I hear a soft tap on my door and groan. I ignore it. I do not want to see Trent or Madeline’s creepy sister. The door creaks open, and Wes steps into the room. I sit up, prepared for the onslaught of anger I’m sure is coming my way.

“What are you doing, Mellie?” he asks, angrily. “What could you possibly think you would accomplish by coming here?”

I have a speech all prepared. I want to tell him that I am not disposable, that I can’t be simply tossed aside, but I know that’s not true. He already has. But that doesn’t mean I have to go down without a fight. “Your sweet wife invited me,” I say breezily.

“You stay the fuck away from her, do you understand?” Wes growls. “I want you out of here.”

“I guess that’s up to Madeline,” I say, examining my fingernails. “She told you, didn’t she, how much we have in common?” I lay a hand on my stomach.

A storm of emotion spreads across Wes’s face. I search for something that looks like happiness but don’t find it. Wes turns, and for a moment I think he’s going to leave without a word, but instead I hear the click of the dead bolt being turned into place. “I don’t believe you,” he says, turning back to me. I shrug, going for casual indifference, but my heart is ready to pound right out of my chest. “You know this isn’t the way to get what you want,” Wes says.

I give him my sweetest smile. “Oh yeah? Tell me the right way,” I say, getting to my feet and burying my face in his chest. I breathe in the scent of him.

“Mellie,” he murmurs into the top of my head. “Don’t.” His hands grip my shoulders, and he takes a step back, creating space between us.

I lift my chin to see his face, and there it is—the way I’m used to having Wes look at me. “Don’t worry,” I say, moving my fingers to his zipper. “I’m not going to say anything to her. I just want to be close to you.”

“We shouldn’t,” he says, but there’s less conviction in his voice. “I have to go talk to the police, and then I’m going to my brother.”

“Ten minutes,” I whisper. “That’s all I need.”

Chapter 22

Jamie

Jamie wakes up on Monday morning with a start. He hates this, the disconcerting feeling of not knowing exactly where he is. Bleary-eyed, he takes in the bland surroundings, the drab curtains, the scratchy comforter that he kicked to the end of the bed during the night, the digital clock on the bedside table squawking obnoxiously at him. Six o’clock. Dread washes over him.

Not all the memories from his time in Nightjar are bad, but it’s difficult to sift through the horrible ones to latch on to any of the good ones. There were the times, when their mother was crashed out on the pullout sofa, exhausted from cleaning rooms all day and working the front desk all night, when Jamie and Juneau would flip on a flashlight and pull bags of flour and sugar from the cupboards and eggs and lemons from their dorm-size refrigerator in the tiny kitchenette. It was nearly impossible to be quiet in such a small, cramped space, but that was half the fun. They would hunch together, heads bent over a faded, limp recipe card trying to decipher their grandmother’s elegant handwriting, and toss together the ingredients for lemon squares without speaking. Inevitably, they would collapse into spluttering bursts of laughter and would present the overly browned, overly tart lemon squares to their mother when she awoke.

Jamie doesn’t linger too long on memories like these because they always lead to the night that Juneau disappeared. Instead, he replays the events of two days earlier in his mind, and he wishes he could have done something to prevent Dalton Monaghan’s death. Second-guessing himself is like playing a futile game of what-if. It does nothing but keep him from focusing on the case in front of him.

Wes and Madeline Drake, Dalton Monaghan, Sully Preston, Mellie Bauer—all pointing fingers at someone else. Then there is Lucy Quaid. The threads swirl around his head, none of them connecting, and leaving Jamie even more confused. He needs coffee.

He pushes himself up from the bed and checks his cell. A missed call from Tess. He should call her back, but Jamie can’t stand another conversation about how she hates their new home, hated giving up her career, and hated that Jamie had talked her into moving. He wants Tess to be happy, he really does. And in the end, he knows they will most likely move back to DC. But first, he knows he has to come to terms with his sister’s disappearance, to bury the ghosts that have been haunting him for twenty-seven years.

Today Jamie is going to visit the seven hardware stores in the area that carry the items found in the IED blast. It’s a long shot, but he’s hoping one of the clerks will remember someone purchasing double-headed nails, PVC piping, duct tape, and ball bearings in the weeks leading up to the explosion. He starts in Nightjar at the local hardware store. The clerk, who is also the owner, isn’t much help and explains that this is ranch country and everyone buys these items at one time or another. He moves on to Jackson City, and while more successful, he runs into the same roadblocks—dozens of each of the items on his list have been sold the two weeks before the gender reveal party but none to the same person. He gets back in his car, disappointed but not surprised. They are going to have to widen their search.

He drives back to the sheriff’s office, and the first thing Jamie does is cross-check the guest list with the names of possible men who might hold a grudge against Wes that Mia Preston sent him. They aren’t listed. Apparently, they didn’t get invited, or the husbands didn’t want their wives anywhere near Wes. Still, this doesn’t mean they didn’t plant the bomb. He calls one of the deputies over and sends him on his way to question the men and find out where they were Friday night and the days leading up to the explosion. “Be discreet,” he advises. “Just tell them we are interviewing everyone in the Drakes’ orbit. Verify their alibis, and let me know what you find out.”

Jamie turns his attention to the clear plastic evidence bag that holds the piece of paper with frayed edges that Dalton was holding when he was shot. Now it is black with dried blood, the writing nearly impossible to decipher. Dalton said that Johanna had written something down. Something that implicated Wes. But what did it say? Unfortunately, Dalton and Johanna Monaghan are both dead and can’t answer these questions.