Page 57 of Traces Of You

A fresh bundle of tears cascaded down her cheeks.

Even after everything Oliver did to her. Everything Oliver subjected her to, she didn’t want to break the law.

She couldn’t live with that guilt.

Ford pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. Reenie curled up into his body heat for more. “I know you’re conflicted,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but how did you find any of this out and do you think the break-in was tied to this? It would explain why Randy and Oliver didn’t want to call the police.”

“Clay has a Navy buddy in Florida who asked around. It won’t come back to Clay, me or you. Don’t worry about that. But he found out that word on the street was Randy lost a thousandpills. There are a few rumors and one of them is that Oliver’s girl has them and took off.”

She reared back fast. “I don’t. I really don’t. Go through my stuff. I mean it. Everything. My car, my clothes. I don’t have them, I swear. And that box I found in the closet, there is no way there was a thousand pills in there. Maybe a hundred or two, if that. I didn’t stop to count. Each baggy had less than ten in it, closer to five.”

She wouldn’t put it past Oliver to steal from his cousin. Unless that was his cut.

No, she didn’t know, she didn’t want to assume either.

“Take a deep breath, Reenie. You’re going to pass out if you don’t.”

This was going from bad to horrendous. “Are there drug dealers after me?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “The street value is around twenty-five thousand. That’s not enough to search for you. Not enough to risk anything. But you need to know everything we found and you have to promise to tell me anything else you remember.”

“I will. I swear. I’m not a bad person. I’m really not. I’m just trying to survive.”

“Shhhh,” he said, continuing to hold her. His hand was rubbing her back, his mouth to her head, his words muffled in her hair. “I know you’re not. And you are a survivor. Never forget it.”

15

LIKED HOLDING HER

“How much help do you need on Saturday?” Ford asked Clay on Thursday afternoon.

He’d taken a break for lunch and came out to the farm to talk to his brother at the mill. Machines were running, vats of hard cider ready for canning and shipping. It was not the farm he grew up on, but it was the one his family had now.

On Tuesday night, he’d left Reenie’s and returned to Clay’s filling him in on what he’d learned.

Yep, he was conflicted, as Reenie said.

First with his actions.

He was harsh with her. Or harsher than he’d been before. But he didn’t want to be played. He needed to stay open to all possibilities.

He knew genuine fear and he saw it on her face, chased with remorse over the actions she’d taken to help her escape.

The hardest one for him to handle was that she thought she let him down. That she was lying.

He had felt let down when he started the conversation. At the end, he was right back to where he was years ago, having empathy and a fierce sense of protection for his first love.

His brother was on the fence of what to believe and there wasn’t much he could do to convince him. It didn’t mean Clay wouldn’t watch out for Reenie.

“As much as I can get,” Clay said. “We’ve got our first event in two weeks. I have no idea the outcome, but I limited it to a hundred and fifty guests at once inside. Once we hit that number, I can’t let anyone else in or they have to wait. Not sure if that is a good thing or not, but the last thing I need to worry about is breaking any codes.”

Ford laughed. “Not with your two brothers you can’t.”

Ash was a code enforcer also. Not in this area, but he’d still report anything that needed to be.

And no one in the area needed to say Clay was getting away with something because his brother was the sheriff.

“Don’t remind me,” Clay said. “I’m not used to always playing by the rules.”