Page 62 of Tourist Season

“You don’t know shit about how to interview a witness. Or how to legally do … well … anything . Do you really think flying drones over Lancaster Manor or trespassing on private property or, I dunno, fucking kidnapping will stand up in court?”

“I don’t care about what you think .” Sam surges closer. He trains the muzzle of the gun on my smirking face. “I care about the truth .”

His thumb shifts. The safety clicks off.

“Tell me the fucking truth ,” he snarls.

“You want to know the truth?” My heart pounds so hard against my bones that they could break. “The truth is, I’m not the one you should be worried about.”

“ I am .”

The instant Sam turns at the sound of Harper’s voice behind him, I stand and spin.

The metal chair smashes against the backs of his legs.

He loses his balance, pitching forward. The gun falls from his hand.

A deafening bang crashes through the distillery when it smacks the floor and slides into the shadows.

I go down hard on my knees, my shoulder and face hitting the floor.

But my eyes never stray from Harper. She rushes at Sam, keeping her body low as she seizes her opportunity.

She slams into him while he’s still unbalanced and wraps her arms around his legs.

Her cry of fury echoes across concrete and metal as she uses every ounce of her strength to push him toward me.

Harper releases Sam with a final shove. He tumbles backward onto me.

And then I lift with my knees to catapult him over the railing.

His arms and legs wheel through the air.

I think we’re in the clear until one of his feet catches between the metal rungs and then twists.

His boot locks at a sideways angle against one of the cross rails.

The audible pop of dislocating bones and torn tendons fills the air, followed by his agonizing screams as he dangles from the landing.

“Fucksakes,” Harper says between panting breaths, her hands braced on her knees. “That must really hurt.”

Sam begs for help.

“Are you okay?” she asks me, ignoring Sam’s pleas for assistance as she helps me to my feet instead. Worry is vibrant in her eyes. She holds my face between her palms, skimming a thumb over the blood that drips onto my cheek from a cut above my eye. “The gun—”

“I’m fine. Just lost my balance. Are you?”

“Yeah. I’m good.” Harper’s gaze softens, dropping to my lips and lingering there. “I thought you left.”

My brows furrow. Harper’s eyes meet mine only briefly, her cheeks flushing crimson. “Left?” I ask, and she lifts a shoulder. “No. Of course not. Why would I leave?”

She doesn’t look at me, her attention caught on the shadowed corridor. “Why wouldn’t you?”

I know that whatever is happening between us might feel different to me than it does to her.

The only reason she’s had to trust me was because she didn’t have a choice, so it makes sense that she thinks I would cut and run if I had the chance.

But she doesn’t understand that she’s all I’ve thought about for the last four years.

Every single day, her presence in my mind has given me something to fight for.

It’s given me purpose. Maybe that obsession looked very different when it started.

But it hasn’t stopped. It’s just transformed.

“Harper …” I sigh when she looks away with a shake of her head, trying to hide the shine at her lashes. “First, how about you get me a key?”

“Right. Key.” She snaps out of her momentary crisis of confidence to head for Sam, where he flails from the railing, his panicked cries and furious expletives bouncing through the room.

She lies on her belly and reaches down to his pockets, letting out a triumphant squeak when she finds what she’s looking for.

When she returns with the key, she unlocks the handcuffs, and the moment they’re free, I let the chair drop from my arms and wrap her in an embrace.

“No,” I say, burying my face against her neck and crushing her to me.

I inhale the sweet aroma of her distinctive scent.

I relish every breath she takes against me, every touch as her hands slide across my back to hold me just as tightly.

“I did not leave. I told you already. You’re mine, and I’m not letting you go. ”

She nods. Maybe she thinks they’re just pretty words.

She might not realize that it’s a promise.

A vow that has no end. But when I pull back just enough to capture her mouth in a searing kiss, I show her.

I press my lips to hers and steal her breath and lavish her tongue with mine.

My hand threads into her hair and I hold her close.

I know she’s not ready to hear the words.

They hardly even make sense to me. But I love her, and with my touch, I prove it.

“ Fucking help me, you fucking psychopaths ,” Sam screeches, shattering our moment.

I rest my forehead against Harper’s, leaving a bloody stamp behind when we part. “I guess we should do something about that asshole.”

Harper lets out a long sigh, her eyes fluttering closed for just a moment as though she’s still savoring my touch. “Yeah,” she says before she steps back. “You’re probably right.”

With a brighter smile, Harper pivots on her heel and heads for Sam, kneeling to slide her hands between the rungs of the railing on either side of Sam’s boot.

“W-what are you doing?” he stammers.

“Helping, clearly.” She tugs at his laces, loosening the bow. “But I didn’t say who .”

Harper rises and gives a swift kick to his boot. Sam’s foot slides free of the shoe. His screech is cut short as he lands on the floor one level below.

“ Christ . The silence is nice, isn’t it,” I say as we peer over the railing to look at his unmoving body. Blood seeps from beneath his head to creep across the concrete.

“Yeah, he was getting on my last nerve.” Harper grabs his boot to chuck it over the landing.

It smacks his face before bouncing off to the side.

“That’s going to be a bitch to clean up.

We’d better get to it. We’re pretty far out of town—the nearest property is old Mr. Talbot’s farm a half mile south, and he’s pretty hard of hearing, but you never know.

Someone still could have heard that gunshot and called it in. ”

“Hey.” I lay a hand on her wrist, stopping her progress toward the lights that still shine behind us.

She looks up at me with a question in her gunmetal eyes.

“I know you thought I could have left you, but you could have left me too. I’m not sure how you figured out how to find me. I’m grateful that you did.”

She nods. It takes her a beat before she finally says, “Sure. What are friends for, right?”

I give her a dead-eyed glare. “We are not ‘friends.’”

“Yeah, I think I remember you saying that already,” she replies, but I know she can tell what I really mean.

That she’s so much more than that. It’s in the way she flashes me a shy smile that lodges like a splinter in my heart before she turns away to start working on dismantling the lights.

I know we both went back to that moment when we first faced off in her garden.

It was supposed to be the defining confrontation that would seal our destiny.

Bounty and executioner. Crime and justice.

But maybe I’m just ready to leave that behind for the other memories that are starting to eclipse it.

Anger served a purpose for me in the beginning.

But in the end, it was a cage. And guilt is an equally vicious prison, one Harper is clearly still trapped in.

For the first time, I wonder if I can help her escape it when I had a hand in putting her there.

That thought haunts me as we pack Sam’s equipment, bringing anything that connects him with us to my rental and Arthur’s Jaguar where they’re parked at the back of the building, out of sight from the road.

After debating the best plan for the body, we agree that we should leave Sam here at the distillery, but take a final sweep through the space to ensure we’ve erased our presence so it looks like the unfortunate accident it was … almost.

If we remove him from the scene, it will only pique the interest of the Sleuthseekers.

They’ll be rabid for details, and they won’t stop until they unravel the mystery.

But if it’s an accident, we might have hope for fewer problems. And if Vinny wakes from where Harper clocked him in the head back at the inn, it will be his word against mine.

His wild story about his unhinged boss kidnapping me for an interview probably won’t hold much weight with the pragmatic Sheriff Yates, particularly not against my alibi of sleeping soundly at Lancaster Manor’s cottage with my girlfriend at my side.

We’re heading down the slope to the lower entrance of the distillery for a last check of the scene, still talking through the finer details of our plan, when we hear the sound of a car engine and gravel crunching beneath tires.

Harper and I both stop abruptly, holding our breath. But there’s no way we’re mistaken, not when we hear the engine cut out, followed by the creak and thud of a car door closing.

Someone has pulled to a stop at the main parking lot of the Lancaster Distillery.

“Maybe it’s the drone guy,” Harper whispers as we peer through the windows at the body just visible in the dim light.

“Maybe,” I agree, though I clasp a hand around her wrist, ready to pull her back toward the path that leads to the vehicles.

A flashlight sweeps across the windows at the opposite side of the building.

Slow, careful footsteps make their way toward the entrance, followed by the creak of the door as it opens and shuts.

We turn and jog toward the cars.

“But I don’t think we should wait around to find out.”