I narrowed my eyes on him, running through all the things I wanted to say, but Eli was a grown man. He was incredibly capable and in control of himself and his environment. Who was I to tell him what to do? This was his life, and it was our lead if he wanted to follow it. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to see him hurting like this.
“Okay,” I said. “We go to Hollow Creek and check out the house.”
“We’ll ask around a little bit, see if anyone’s been there. We’ll figure out our strategy on the way.”
“When do we leave?” I asked, closing my laptop.
“First thing in the morning,” he said, setting the mic back on the table, half put back together. “I don’t have my soldering iron here, but Lucas’s department has a whole repair kit downstairs. When we get back, we’ll bring it down.”
“Okay,” I said, not really caring about the microphone anymore. Eli had cracked open his shields and shown me a place inside so vulnerable and filled with pain I couldn’t just walk away with a cheerygood night. I rounded the table and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing him tight. We weren’t exactly on hugging terms, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m sorry, Eli.”
His arms came up slowly before settling around me. He let out a rough breath and squeezed back, his head dipping until his lips grazed my temple.
“I’m okay, Sylvie,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”
“I know,” I said into his shoulder. “I’m still sorry.”
“Thanks.”
I stayed there for a heartbeat, maybe two, his breathwarm on my skin, his heart thumping under my ear.I should let go and head down the hall to bed.
I’d wanted to offer him comfort, but now that I was here, the heat of him plastered against me, I wasn’t feeling entirely comforting. I was feeling like sliding my hands down his back, dipping my fingers under his T-shirt to stroke the taut muscle beneath.
I stepped back abruptly. “Okay, good night,” I said, hearing the awkwardness in my voice, not stopping to make eye contact.
I took off down the hall, wondering why a simple hug felt so loaded with meaning.
I wasa little worried things would be awkward in the morning, but the ride to South Carolina was uneventful. I pulled up my puzzle website and chose one that was story-based, so Eli didn’t need to see the screen. I read him the confusing combination of plays on words and a locked-room mystery. These were my favorite. No numbers involved.
We solved that one pretty quickly—it was the dog who could open doors with his paws—and tried another. I could have spent hours like that, playing games with him. We’d been companionable before the trip to Knoxville, but now there was another layer of connection, like all those heartfelt confessions had tied us together.
We didn’t talk business until we were pulling off the highway.
“Are we going to the house first?” I asked.
“I thought we’d check it out,” Eli confirmed, turning onto a country road lined with tall pine trees, their lowertrunks bare and patterned in scales of bark like an alligator.
“Anything look familiar?” I asked as we turned right onto a road that bisected a neighborhood.
“Yes and no.” Eli scanned the one-story brick houses as we pulled down the street. “Everything’s familiar, but thirteen years is a long time, and I was away even before they died.”
“Did you live in this neighborhood?”
Eli shook his head. “No, the other side of town. Similar though.”
The street was wide, lined with sidewalks and old trees, the lots all around a quarter acre. It wasn’t a wealthy neighborhood, but everything was neat—yards trimmed, flowers on concrete porches. A dog barked from inside a chain-link fence. A toddler pedaled a plastic tricycle in a driveway, his mother looking on with bored indulgence.
Idyllic. I liked it immediately. “It looks like a nice place to grow up.”
“It was,” he said. “Small town and everything that comes with that, but good people, good community.”
He pulled to a stop in front of a house that looked subtly neglected. Nothing overgrown, no broken windows, but the house looked lonely. There were no signs of life: no plant on the stoop, no basketball in the driveway.
“We’re just going to have a walk around,” he said. “If anyone asks, we heard from a friend that it was available for rent, and we wanted to stop by.”
“And who’s the friend if anyone asks?” I opened my door and followed him out.
“Emily Shaw,” he said.
