Page 24 of After We Fall

“Bianca?” Luke’s voice gentles. “Have you talked to anyone from your family?”

A flash of pain crosses her face.

“You don’t need to ask her that,” Tanya snaps. “Or me.”

Luke waits a beat, then nods. “I’m glad to hear you’re both making healthy choices,” he says while he pulls out business cards and hands them to everyone. “This has my number on it. Program it into your phone. If anyone unsafe contacts you, use it. Immediately. If anyone receives a package, a letter, a special delivery—anything—hang on to it and let me check it out before you open it. In the meantime, if you remember something helpful, send me a text or give me a call.”

Bianca shoves a hand in her pocket and pulls out a long, silver-wrapped stick of gum. Without looking at Luke, she holds it out to him.

He takes the peace offering from Bianca, unwraps it, and trades it out with the stir stick.

Tears sting my nose while a warmth fills my chest. How did he do that? It took me weeks to gain her trust.

To step away from their moment, I zero in on Finley, raising my eyebrows in question.

“I haven’t told anyone, Miss Penelope.” She sinks into the couch cushions. “I promise. Not Marcus. Or anyone else.”

“I trust your word, Finley. Thank you.”

This is a dead end. I look at Luke.

“I appreciate your time, ladies.” He drops the stir stick and gum wrapper on the side table.

Finley finishes putting commands into her cell, and her head shoots up. “What about Miss Olivia?”

Luke chomps his gum. “Who?”

“Mr. Holcombe’s ex-wife,” she says a little too enthusiastically, bouncing on the couch cushions.

“I’ll need her contact information,” Luke says to me.

“It wasn’t her,” I say.

“What makes you think it wasn’t?” He stands and stretches his arms above his head. “I met her once and it wasn’t pleasant. I could see how she might have it in for Harlan.”

“Because that’s not her brand of chaos.” I gather Luke’s trash, grateful he gave up the stir stick but now concerned about the annoying smacking noise he makes with the gum. I glance up at him in time to catch his lips twitching and a sparkle in his eyes. “What’s so funny?”

“You are,” he says before he exits the room.

Am I? Am I funny? I’ve never been called funny in my life. Well, not since my mother. But I thought the memory was too hazy to be true—that I might have wished it instead of remembered it.

What does it mean that Luke thinks I’m funny?

Shaking my head, I smooth the already perfect crease on my pants leg. Nothing. It can’t mean anything, because he’ll leave when the job is done.

So why do I hope I’ll make him laugh again at lunch?

7

“I have some ground rules for this lunch,” Luke says.

Standing in front of the menu posted at Trivelli’s Hoagies, I peer at him out of the side of my eye. “You have rules? The kind you live by? Not just the kind you break?”

“Of course I have rules. We are, after all, trying to have a civilization here.” He throws my motto in my face and winks.

Ugh. That wink. That wink that will leave town soon.

The simple decor of the restaurant, located in the old Alexander Film Studio Building, mirrors the down-home feel. The walls are decorated with various pieces of antique projectors and black-and-white photos. History chinked with age, but perfectly placed all the same.