Page 6 of Winter

First his brother and now him. Inca was sure her face was burning.

“We have. My brother and I decided we needed to be in the States for the time being.”

“I would have thought high flyers like the Winters would be more New York-based.” This was Nancy, who was peering over her glasses at Tommaso. Inca groaned internally. Was Nancy about to go into one of her rants about the uber-rich?

Tommaso grinned at her. “Neither Raff nor myself are New York people. And besides, Seattle is at the forefront of business— Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Boing? It made sense.”

Nancy seemed satisfied with this. She gave Inca a slight nod—this one’s okay.Inca suppressed a smile. “Mr. Winter—”

“Tommaso, please.”

“Tommaso.” The name felt like a caress in her mouth. “Have you had time to get to know the town?”

He shook his head. “I was hoping to find a guide.” His eyes twinkled at her and Inca felt her stomach flutter.

Desire. God.

Scarlett nudged her.

“Inca’s an excellent tour guide,” she said brightly. “And she’s a total geek. She’ll tell you all about the lovely-but-dull-as-fuck little town we call Willowbrook.”

Tommaso snorted with laughter. “Well, in that case, if you’re offering, I’d like that.” His eyes settled on Inca’s in a way which made her feel like the only woman in the world.

“Of course,” she said, swallowing her shyness. “Just let me know when you have some free time.”

Tommaso considered. “Is tomorrow too soon?”

Inca didn’t look at Nancy or Scarlett. “Not at all; it’s my day off. Say ten a.m.?”

He smiled and took her hand, kissing the back of it. “Perfect. I’ll see you then. Thank you, ladies, for your warm welcome. I have a feeling this place will be something of a haunt for me.”

When he’d gone, Inca looked almost open-mouthed at her friends. “What the hell just happened?”

Scarlett and Nancy were both giggling like schoolgirls. “I think you have yourself a date.” Nancy looked beside herself with glee.

“With a billionaire …” Scarlett goggled at her and Inca rolled her eyes.

“It’s not a date; I’m being a good neighbor.”

“Good naked neighbor.”

“Scarlett?”

“Yes?”

“Get back to work before I fire your sorry ass.”

Knox Westerwick walkedthe half mile or so from the harbor to the police department. The station was as quiet as he’d found it yesterday. A couple of faxes sat on the machine and he glanced at them. Warnings about Lyme Disease and a flyer for a town committee meeting. He checked the answering machine. No blinking red light. Knox wandered around the building. The police department took up no more than four rooms in the big stone-built structure—a glance at the bell pad indicated the other offices were let to a surveyor and an insurance company. He wandered to the big window overlooking the back of the office to see the back of a firehouse to one side, and apartments to the other. He could see down to the water in the distance, glittering green against an azure sky.

Knox had to be honest with himself. He was bored. Bone-crushingly bored. Even scraping around, offering to speak to school kids about road safety or whatever small town cops talked to kids about these days, was a no-go. Olly had done all that recently, so Knox had accepted the grateful apologies of the principal and given up.

Knox glanced at the clock and wondered when Olly would make an appearance. He went over to the filing cabinet, searching for any old case he could follow up on. Nothing. He slipped the files back into the cabinet and sat back in his chair, toying with the idea of sneaking over to the teahouse to flirt with Inca and Scarlett. Instead, he picked up the phone to check in with Olly.

“Hey, boss. Missing me already?”

“Hey, Knox. Man … can you get whoever you can together and come out to the reservoir?”

There was the briefest pause and in that moment, Knox knew something was terribly wrong. “What is it?”