“Was it giving you trouble before?” he asked.
“Um, no. It was fine,” I told him as he hooked the other end of the cables to the battery in my van. That wasn’t entirely true. The van had been giving me trouble for weeks, and I’d ignored the occasional odd noises and dimming lights, hoping they’d eventually disappear, just like the money in my bank account. I guess things could have been worse. This could have happened last night while Harris was passed out in the back.
“It’s probably your alternator. We’ll let it charge for a few minutes and get you back on the road, but you should swing by a mechanic on your way home and have it checked out.” Julian was closer now. Or maybe I was. Close enough to notice his face was smooth and he smelled faintly of shaving gel. And something intoxicatingly cool under that. “So what are you doing here anyway?” he asked with a lift of his brow. “The bar doesn’t open for a while yet.”
It was the fumes, I told myself. Or maybe the heat coming off the engine making the air feel thin. It was definitely not the way hesmelled. Or the way his hair fell over his eyes when he tipped his head. Or the way they glinted in the sun.
“I… lost something in the parking lot last night.” Like my common sense. Or at least my good judgment. “But I found it,” I lied.
“Oh,” he said with a wounded smile. “I was hoping you’d changed your mind.”
I blinked away an image of Julian in the back seat of my minivan. I’d had one too many men in the back of my van this week already, and look where that had gotten me. The only thing I planned to do in this van was vacuum it. Or set fire to it. “Maybe next time?”
“I’d like that.” The silence dragged out, unrelenting and awkward. He lowered his gaze, hiding a self-effacing smile. I tucked a lock of fake hair behind my ear as he checked his watch. He nodded once. “Go ahead and fire it up. It’s probably been long enough.”
I reached into the driver’s-side door and tried the key. The engine turned over, and I exhaled pure relief as Julian disconnected the cables. He dropped his hood, slapping his hands together, his fingertips colored by grease and grime. Remembering the crisp white shirt he’d brought with him for work, I grabbed a pack of wet wipes and a dry burp cloth from my van, checking to make sure it didn’t smell like sour milk and that there wasn’t any blood or hair on it before I handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, wiping the pads of his fingers.
“Baker!” Julian turned toward the bar. A balding man with a broad belly held the door open and tapped his watch. I ducked my head, the loose blond strands falling over my face as I moved behind Julian, letting his body obscure me from the man’s view. Julian acknowledged the man with a nod.
“That’s my boss. I’ve got to go. You sure you don’t want to stick around for a while?”
“I can’t,” I said quickly, gesturing behind me to the humming engine. “I have to get home. To my kids. And… you know… real estate stuff.”
“Right.” His mouth quirked up on one side. It was a great smile—genuine and warm. The kind of smile that made it hard for me to lie.
“But thanks for jumping me.” His sunlit eyebrows disappeared under his curls, and heat poured across my cheeks. “That… Wow, that did not come out the way I intended it to. I’m sorry. It’s just been a really,reallyweird day.”
“It’s okay. I know what you mean.” He bit his lip to keep a laugh from escaping. I wanted to crawl under the concrete as he handed me back Zach’s burp rag. “Still have my number?”
I nodded.
“Then I hope I’ll be seeing you around, Theresa.” He backed toward his Jeep, his eyes trailing over me in a way that felt totally innocent yet still managed to melt the skin from my bones. I climbed into the van and thumbed through my phone, checking to make sure his number was there as he swung his Jeep back into its parking space.
My fingers hovered over the keys as he sauntered into The Lush with his dress shirt slung over his shoulder. If I texted him, he’d have my number. And I was sure that would be a very,verybad idea. Harris was in the ground, and I’d just accepted fifty thousand dollars for murdering him. I should’ve been putting as much distance as possible between me and the place Harris and I were last seen together.
And yet…
Still okay with a minivan?I typed fast and hit send before I could change my mind. Clearly, I had not yet found my good judgment in this parking lot.
I dropped my head against the steering wheel, the seconds drawing out painfully long while I waited for his reply. What if I’d misread him? What if he was just being polite? What if the burp rag killed the moment?
My phone buzzed in my lap. I sat up and covered my eyes, barely brave enough to read his text through the gap between my fingers.
Pick me up anytime. You know where to find me.
I glanced up at the tinted windows of The Lush. I could just make out Julian’s white dress shirt on the other side, the subtle wave of his hand through the glass. I lifted my fingers from the steering wheel, wondering if he could see me wave back. Wondering if he saw through me—everything about me—the way he’d seen straight through me last night.
CHAPTER 16
Exhaustion washed over me as I stood in the garage thirty minutes later, staring at the space where we’d wrapped Harris Mickler’s body just yesterday. The concrete floor was wet and smelled faintly of bleach, the bay door left open to the afternoon sunshine to dry it. Vero must have hosed it out while I was gone. The little pink trowel had been washed and dried, returned to its usual place on the pegboard. Harris Mickler’s personal possessions had been wiped clean and locked in his car at The Lush. Steven’s shovel was back in his shed. And I’d just burned through twenty dollars in quarters vacuuming every trace of Harris Mickler from my minivan. I’d done everything I could think of to cover our tracks, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something.
Guilt. This gnawing, nagging feeling that kept pulling me back to the garage had to be guilt. And it would probably follow me around for the rest of my life.
A flutter caught my attention across the street, the subtle shift of Mrs. Haggerty’s kitchen curtain falling shut. I strode to the garage door, stretching up on my tiptoes to drag it down with both hands. It slammed closed, rattling the garage.
Stupid. I’d been so stupid. I sank down on the short wooden step to the kitchen as my eyes adjusted to the dark, all thewhat-ifsof last night crashing down around me, as heavy and jarring as that damn garage door.
