A muscle jumps in my jaw, and I look down at the ring again. It sits in my palm, catching the moonlight through the window. It shouldn’t be here. Not after everything. Not after all these years. “We need to find out who he is. And who might want him dead. They didn’t choose me at random.”
“No, they must know you from before,” Landon agrees.
“Is there anyone specific who might have a grudge against you?” Justus asks, as we finally reach a two lane paved road.
A bitter bark of a laugh escapes me. “It’s a long list.”
Landon takes the pictures from me and goes through them again. “Maybe it isn’t about that, just that they need the job done and know he’s capable of it. They don’t have to pay a hitman if they can trick you into doing it.” It’s hard to think. I can’t stop turning the ring over in my hand. The streetlights flash on Landon’s face as we drive under them. “We’ll help you figure out who’s behind this.”
“As long as you aren’t going to go after a guy because a damn letter told you to,” Justus adds.
“I’m not going to rush into anything stupid.” But the ring weighs too much in my palm to lie to myself. This isn’t over.
CHAPTER 10
SILVER
I don’t wantto hear anyone say women are the moody ones after the last few days with Lee. I’m not sure if something has happened or if this is his way to distance himself from me a little. Maybe things have started to feel too intimate for him. We have been spending a lot of time together.
Now, he’s barely home at all. When he is, he keeps to himself, out by his bonfire pit or closed up in his room. For the last two nights, he’s left to take a walk that lasts for hours. What’s stranger is he doesn’t even take the road or the trail around the lake but goes straight into the dark woods.
It’s been a long day, and I’m ready to go to bed, but the sight of him sitting beside the bonfire alone again tightens something in my chest. He looks so lost. Instead of changing into pajamas, I slip on a hoodie and walk down to join him. He doesn’t even look up when I sit in a lawn chair acrossfrom him. He stares into the flames that throw patterns on his tense face. Something flashes between his fingers as he fidgets with it.
“Lee.”
With a blink, he regards me as if I’ve materialized out of thin air. “Hm?”
“Are you okay?” The object in his hand catches the light as he holds it between his thumb and fingers. It’s a ring. A wedding band.
“I’m fine.”
He’s not. Obviously, he’s not and the ring is a pretty big clue why. For the first time, I try to approach the subject with him. “Is that your wedding ring?”
“No.”
That’s all he says. His terse manner is a warning to stop asking but not one I’m going to heed. If he’s upset, I want to help him. “Is it Isla’s?”
The sound of her name seems to wound him, judging by the way he tenses. He looks over the flames and into my eyes. His voice is hard as steel. “Don’t. Just leave it alone.”
The silence feels thick in spite of the sounds of the forest playing around us. The rattle of dead leaves in the wind, the call of an owl, the crackle of the fire. Finally, I find the words. “If that’s what you want. But you’ve helped me so much. If there’s anything I can do, or anything you want to talk about, I’m here.”
His features soften slightly. He takes a deep, steadying breath and nods. “I’m okay. I just need to be left alone for now.”
That’s something I can understand. Sometimes, all the kind words in the world don’t help. They just add to the noise in your head that’s already too loud. “Okay.”
He stares into the fire as I get up and walk back to the house. Once I’m in bed, I keep turning it over in my head. Has something happened to upset him that I don’t know about, or does this have to do with us? It’s been seven years since her death, and he’s slept with other women in that time. He can’t feel guilty about what we’ve been doing, can he?
No answers are going to come to me tonight. I’m just driving myself crazy when I have enough of my own problems to worry about. But I do worry about him and feel sorry for him because it’s clear that he’s hurting over something.
My thoughts drift to the fire marshal and his suspicions. The anxiety over how all of this is going to turn out has me tossing and turning for a good hour before I finally doze off.
A phone ringing before the break of dawn is never good news. It buzzes insistently, vibrating across my nightstand until I pick it up. My throat is dry, making my hello barely audible while I try to free my brain from the cobwebs of sleep.
“Silver? It’s Diana. You need to get down here.” An edge of panic coats her voice.
Now I’m awake. Diana is the morning shift manager at the diner, and she’s more than capable. She wouldn’t be calling me unless it was important. “What’s going on?”
“I just got here. The back door was broken in. Someone…Silver, somebody has destroyed the place. Smashed the windows and flooded the floors. It’s a disaster.”
