Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
FORD
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I took the exit toward Norfolk. The rain that had chased us from the Outer Banks had finally given up, leaving puddles and wet asphalt in our wake. Through the rearview mirror, dark clouds stretched across the southern horizon like an angry bruise.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Rios shifted in the passenger seat, killing the classic rock station we’d been arguing about for the last hour.
“Mario’s?” The hole-in-the-wall Italian joint had been our go-to whenever we passed through Norfolk.
“Read my mind.” He checked his phone. “We’ve got time before check-in.”
I navigated through the streets on muscle memory, though it had been years since I’d been stationed here. The drive had been exactly what I needed after leaving the island—easy silence punctuated by bullshit arguments about Zeppelin versus Floyd and whether pineapple belonged on pizza. It did not. After so many years in the Navy, these moments of normalcy with any of my brothers felt like anchors, keeping me steady.
“You ever notice how Mario’s wife always calls you ‘too skinny’?” Rios grinned as I pulled into the cramped parking lot. “Even though you’re built like a brick shithouse?”
“Says the guy she force-feeds three plates of pasta.” I killed the engine, stretching my legs as best I could in the confined space. My six-foot-three frame never quite fit comfortably in these compact spaces. “Remember when she wouldn’t let Jace leave until he finished that entire tiramisu?”
“Man looked green for days.” Rios chuckled, shaking his head at the memory. “Swore off Italian food for a month after that.”
The neon ‘Open’ sign flickered in the window, and the smell of garlic hit us before we even reached the door. Some things never changed, and Mario’s was one of those constants—red checkered tablecloths, photos of Italy yellowing on the walls, and Mario’s wife, Lucia, ready to scold us for not visiting sooner. It was exactly the kind of predictable comfort I needed right now.
It felt good having this slice of normal with Rios. The kind of easy friendship where you didn’t need to fill every silence or dance around difficult topics. Where you could just be. After everything that had happened lately, I needed this familiar rhythm, this connection to simpler times.
“Ford! Rios! My boys!” Lucia’s thick accent carried across the restaurant as she bustled toward us, arms spread wide. “Where you been? Too long, too long!”
I’d long since stopped marveling at the fact that she seemed to know the name and face of every sailor who walked through her door.
She wrapped me in a hug that smelled of basil and warmth, then moved to Rios. “Both so thin! Navy no feed you?” Her weathered hands patted my cheeks like I was still that green recruit who’d demolish three plates of her spaghetti after a day’s training.
“We eat fine, Lucia.” I slid into our usual booth by the window, the vinyl seat creaking in welcome. “Just can’t compete with your cooking.”
She clucked her tongue, already scribbling on her notepad. “The usual? Extra meatballs for my hungry boys?”
“You know us too well.” Rios settled across from me, relaxing into the expected routine. “When you gonna leave Mario and come marry me instead?”
Lucia cackled, her dark eyes crinkling in a face that had seen decades more than we had. “You gonna have to do more to tempt me than that.” She swatted at him with her order pad, the gesture full of motherly affection.
She disappeared into the kitchen, returning moments later with two frosted glasses and bottles of Peroni. The scents of garlic and oregano followed in her wake, making my stomach growl.
Rios took a long pull from his bottle. “Remember that time Jace tried to convince Mario to give him the marinara recipe?”
I tipped my beer into one of the frosted glasses, watching it foam. “Got about as far as you did trying to sweet talk Lucia into sharing her tiramisu secrets.” Even back then, Rios had been smooth as silk, but Lucia was immune to his charms.
“Worth a shot.” He shrugged, his dark eyes dancing with amusement. “What about that road trip to Pensacola? When Sawyer’s piece of shit Chevy broke down outside Atlanta?”
I grinned and sipped. The beer was cold and crisp, washing away the last traces of highway dust. “We ended up sleeping in that sketchy motel with the neon cowboy sign?” The memory hit like a warm wave, taking me back to simpler times. “Place had magic fingers beds that ate quarters.”
“You and Jace spent twenty bucks making those beds shake.”
“Best waste of money ever.” I traced a ring of condensation on the table, remembering how we’d laughed until our sides hurt that night. “Think we hit every dive bar between here and Florida that summer.”
“Back when gas was cheap, and we were dumb enough to think we could live on beef jerky and Red Bull.” His voice held a note of nostalgia that echoed my own thoughts about those carefree days.
Lucia returned with bread still steaming from the oven, and the rich smell of garlic butter filled our corner of the restaurant. The aroma mingled with the scent of marinara and fresh herbs, reminding me of a hundred other nights in a hundred other places just like this. Some memories were better shared over carbs and beer, in places that felt like waypoints between the lives we’d built and the ones we’d left behind.
“It’s been forever since we had a real road trip with all the Wayward Sons. We should do that again next time we get the chance.” Because I felt more anchored after these past days with my brothers than I had in a long time. Something about having Jace, Rios, and Sawyer around made the world make more sense, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.
Rios huffed a laugh and shook his head, his beer bottle dangling loosely between his fingers. “Not sure that’s ever gonna happen again, bro. Not now that Sawyer’s married.”
I plucked up a slice of bread and slathered butter over it, savoring the way it melted instantly into the warm surface. “Willa would never stop Sawyer from doing anything he wanted to do.”
“It’s not that. He doesn’t want to get that far from her for that long. You saw how he was this week.”
“You don’t think that’s just the newlywed talking?” Damn, if the pair of them didn’t have the glow. It was probably the regular mind-blowing orgasms. Hard not to be a little jealous of that, especially given how long it’d been since I’d had anything resembling a real relationship.
“Some of that, sure. But that break-in at O’Shea’s old office has Sawyer and Willa both rattled.”
I paused. “It’s not his office anymore. That new guy was appointed by the state to take over all O’Shea’s cases. Are they even called cases with family law? Anyway, what’s his name?”
“Matthew Alward. Yeah, he was. And if the police found anything to suggest this was related to what happened last summer, they aren’t sharing.” Rios grabbed his own hunk of bread, ripping off a piece. “But I think, for all his good humor about it, Sawyer’s still playing guard dog. Can’t really blame him after everything that went down.”
That sobered me up right quick. “You don’t think there’s somebody else out there who wants to kidnap her, do you?” It had been more than six months since Roland O’Shea had tried to silence Willa, who still didn’t remember everything that happened that night. More than six months since he’d been killed in the process. The memory of that night still gave me cold sweats sometimes, and I hadn’t even been directly involved.
“I hope to God not.” Rios’s jaw tightened, and I recognized the look of a man ready to throw down if necessary. “But O’Shea wasn’t working alone. By his own admission, he was a middleman. There are still the other folks who were involved out there somewhere. What if something about the operation was hidden in that office?”
“It’s been six months. Why would somebody wait that long to try to retrieve it?”
“Police presence for a lot of it. Then renovations. That new security system. There could be reasons. Either way, I think Sawyer’s right to stick close. Just in case. If for nothing else than her peace of mind.” He took another bite of bread, chewing thoughtfully. “Hell, if it were me, I probably wouldn’t let her out of my sight, either.”
Now that we were off island, I dared to breach the subject I’d been wondering about the whole time we’d been back in the States. The question had been eating at me since we’d left Hatterwick behind, but I hadn’t wanted to bring it up where the wrong ears might hear. “Did it make a difference?”
Rios sipped his beer and arched a brow, his expression carefully neutral in that way that had been drilled into all of us during our time in the Navy. “Did what make a difference?”
“What Willa remembered about being the last person to see Gwen alive.” I kept my voice low, though we were the only ones in this corner of the restaurant. Some habits died hard, especially when it came to a case that had haunted our island for over a decade.
That long ago summer, Rios had gone to Chief Carson and reported everything he remembered about seeing Gwen Busby at the end of that party. When no other trace of her was found, he’d turned Rios into a scapegoat, implying that Rios had done something to Gwen. There had never been a shred of evidence, but the implication had been enough for an island of people who’d been desperate for answers. Rios had been convicted in the court of public opinion. He and his sisters had suffered from those accusations for years. Another man might have fled, but Rios had stuck it out, in order to look after his sisters against their abusive father. But after Gabi had left for college and Caroline had found Hoyt, Rios had joined us when we all enlisted in the Navy. He’d wanted the chance to start a new life out from under the shadow of those false opinions. It had worked. He’d thrived in the Navy, and as such, he’d come home the least of all of us.
One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Nobody said anything to my face this time. But people still eye me with distrust. Wondering if I’m cut from the same cloth as my father.”
He said it easily. As if he weren’t bothered by the fact that people thought he could murder someone the way Hector Carrera had murdered their mother and covered it up for years before coming after Caroline when she’d dared to move out and start her own life. The casual way he spoke about it made my gut clench. I’d seen what that kind of suspicion had done to him over the years, and I knew this careful neutrality masked deeper hurts.
Anger rose quick and hot, as it always did when this subject came up. “Man, fuck them all. No one who knows you believes any of that.” He’d been one of my brothers since childhood. The idea that anyone could think him capable of hurting Gwen was ridiculous.
“Most of that island never knew me to begin with. That was the problem.” He glanced toward the water, jaw tightening. “So it’s going to take a lot more to clear me than the memories of someone a lot of folks believe is an unreliable witness because of her own trauma. For some people, the only thing that’s going to change their mind would be Gwen showing up in the flesh to tell the story of what actually happened that night. I don’t see that happening after all these years.”
Because Gwen Busby was dead. If she’d been able to contact her family, she would have by now. After more than thirteen years of silence, that was the only logical conclusion, even if no one had ever found a body to prove it.
I hated all of this. Not only because my friend had suffered enough at the hands of prejudiced assholes, but because I was starting to grasp the fact that he truly might never come home. And under the circumstances, I couldn’t blame him. Hell, if I’d been treated the way Rios had, accused of something so heinous, with nothing but whispers and sideways glances to back it up, I probably wouldn’t come back either. The whole situation made my gut churn with guilt and anger.
Lucia sashayed over, carrying two bowls of spaghetti topped with enormous meatballs. “For my starving boys!” she declared, presenting our plates with dramatic flair.
Her infectious enthusiasm and incredible cooking made it hard to hang on to a dark mood.
“God, this looks incredible, Lucia.”
Rios speared one of the giant meatballs and took a huge bite, his eyes drifting shut in exaggerated bliss. “I’m telling you, you should just marry me. I’ll do anything for these meatballs.”
“You visit me again before you go, then maybe we discuss.” She gave another playful wink before bustling off.
“Pretty sure I’m wearing her down,” Rios commented.
I grinned, happy to see him back on an even keel, and dug into my food. “You keep telling yourself that, pal.”