Chapter 13
Thirteen
The subtle vibration of Holt’s watch had him wide awake in an instant. For a moment, he blinked in the dark before easing his arm from around Cayla so he could read the notification. She murmured in her sleep, shifting to cuddle closer.
When he saw the readout and the follow-up texts, he swore, sitting up and reaching for his prosthesis.
“Holt? What’s wrong?” Voice thick with sleep, Cayla pressed a hand to his back. “Did you have a bad dream?”
He wished it were a bad dream. That would be preferable to what he might be walking into. “Alarm’s gone off at the bakery. I’m gonna go check it out. Go on back to sleep.”
He’d already donned his leg and headed for the closet and the lockbox, where he kept his sidearm by the time she came fully awake and switched on the bedside lamp.
“You shouldn’t go up there alone.”
“I won’t be. The police should already be en route, and the guys are on their way.” He checked the magazine and the safety on the Beretta 92FS before sliding it back into the holster and clipping it inside the waistband of his pants.
Cayla’s eyes were wide as she tracked the movement.
“It’ll be fine. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m highly trained.”
Her cheeks paled. “I also haven’t forgotten someone tried to kill Mia up there a few months ago.”
“Brax got to him first. I swear, I’ll be careful. Try to go back to bed. You need more sleep.” He brushed a quick kiss over her temple.
She caught at his hand and squeezed. “There’s not a chance in hell I’m going back to sleep. Let me know what’s going on as soon as you can.”
“Promise.”
He pulled out of the driveway just in time to see Brax doing the same from up the street. They made it to the bakery in less than ten minutes. The alarm was still blaring. The cops hadn’t arrived yet, but Holt knew from prior experience that Stone County only had two or three deputies on duty at any given time. If they were at the ass end of the county, it might be a while. The vacation rental Jonah had snagged was a bit further out of town as well, so he’d take a few more minutes.
Holt slid out of the 4-Runner as Brax stepped from his truck. Mia sat white-faced in the passenger seat. After what she’d been through here, being held at gunpoint, having a man killed beside her, being here in the middle of the night was hardly going to bring up good memories. But Holt understood why Brax hadn’t left her home alone. While he’d shot the man who’d tried to kill her, no one had been able to track down who’d hired the thug.
Brax had his own weapon out. “We waiting on Jonah?”
“Doubt anybody’s still inside, but just in case. Split and circle around?”
With a nod, they broke apart, checking the perimeter of the building. The front door remained locked. They’d invested in a heavier door and locking system after events of the spring. But the lock on the rear kitchen door had clearly been jimmied. It hung ajar. Bracing himself for chaos, he nudged the door open and stepped inside for the sweep, Brax on his heels. But the kitchen seemed to be intact. They continued moving through the space, to the swinging door and out to the public area. The front was definitely not fine. But Holt bit back the curse and kept moving until they cleared the bathrooms and confirmed what his gut had already told him. Their perpetrator was long gone.
Holstering his weapon, Holt strode to the security panel and turned off the alarm.
Brax flipped on a light. “Son of a fucking bitch.”
The refrigerated bakery cases they’d nabbed for a steal from Nashville had both been overturned, the glass shattered. The floors beneath were likewise damaged, though it wasn’t clear whether that was separate or had happened in the course of flipping over the cases.
Jonah strode inside, letting fly a long string of some of the more creative curses Holt had heard during his military career. “One day. We’ve been open one fucking day for real, and now this?” He paced the room, hands laced behind his head, his boots crunching on pieces of glass.
“I thought we were done with this shit,” Brax muttered. “Why now? What purpose does this serve? Mia’s not even been on site since the renovation finished over a month ago, other than to pick up food.”
Holt stared at the damaged cases. “I don’t think this has anything to do with Mia.”
“What are you thinking? If it’s anything that’s gonna put my wife more at ease, I’m game to hear it.”
“This feels petty. Vindictive. A strike at us, not her.” He considered. “What if we were wrong about everything that went down before? What if it had nothing to do with Mia at all?”
“I’m sorry. Did you forget that asshole tried to kill my wife?”
“No, I’m not disputing that. But what if she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Everything we found was centered around this place,” Holt argued. “When he had Mia, Abruzzi kept talking about a flash drive. Somebody hired him to find some kind of information that he, for whatever reason, believed was here. Think about it. The supply theft slowed down renovations. The vandalism slowed down renovations.”
“What about the surveillance equipment in Mia’s office?” Brax demanded.
“We didn’t find jack shit when we searched her house. The malware Cash found on the Mountainview Construction computers would’ve given Abruzzi access to work schedules, which would have theoretically given him an idea of when he could search. The surveillance equipment here could have been an effort to keep up with whether that flash drive, or whatever it was he really wanted, was found by one of us or the crew.”
Jonah crossed his arms. “You’re suggesting that whoever hired Abruzzi hired someone else to pick up where he left off?”
“It’s a theory. We never got any true confirmation that everything centered on Mia at all. The evidence was circumstantial. The idea that someone would really come after her ten years after her father’s death never sat well with me, but we didn’t have any other explanations at the time. Brax had just found out about her past, so it was fresh in his mind, and we didn’t have any reason not to go along with it. What if we built the entire theory around confirmation bias?”
Brax stared at him. “Let me get this straight. You think Mia was never in direct danger except for the fact that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time that last night Abruzzi showed up?”
“Maybe.” Holt gestured at the busted display cases. “It doesn’t make logical sense that this would have anything to do with her. And what are the chances that we’d just happen to get targeted again by someone else mere months later?”
“I mean, I’d love to jump all over that theory because it would mean Mia’s safe. But I’m not willing to take any chances with her.”
Jonah’s brows drew together. “It’s a theory worth some consideration. But to play devil’s advocate, what if this isn’t a strike at us but is actually a strike at you? I mean, this wasn’t the slick security override we saw before. It was a basic jimmied lock and smash up job. I’m not buying that somebody hired a guy like Abruzzi and then sent a thug with no skills to finish the job. We have to consider that you have Cayla’s ex all pissed off that you’re in what he considers his territory.”
“Is this the kind of thing he’d pull, though?” Brax asked. “He went away for white collar crime, right? Busting shit up doesn’t seem to fit.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask her. Right now, I guess we can be grateful that whoever it was didn’t get very far into the process. The alarm did its job.”
“And so did the cameras. Look.”
They all crowded around Jonah’s phone to watch the video feed of the break-in. The perpetrator was dressed all in black, including a ski mask. It was hard to tell, but the build seemed right for Raynor. Then again, the guy was pretty average, so the same could be said of a lot of people. Whoever it was came straight in and tipped over the cases, squatting down to do something behind them.
“What’s he doing?” Jonah asked.
“Prying up the floorboards. Doesn’t know there’s concrete underneath, I guess,” Brax said.
The sound of tires crunching on gravel drew their attention out front.
“That’ll be cops. I’ll go meet with the deputy,” Jonah sighed.
“I’m gonna go reassure my wife.”
As Brax strode out, Holt pulled out his phone to do the same. He opted for a text in case she actually had gone back to sleep.
Had a little break-in. Some vandalism. Everybody’s fine.
The phone in his hand vibrated with an incoming call almost immediately. Definitely not asleep.
“Hey.”
“How bad?” Cayla asked.
“Not near as bad as what we dealt with before. Alarm scared him off before he could get too far. The bakery cases are toast, but nothing much else seems damaged. There are far more expensive things they could’ve targeted.” He strode back into the kitchen and flipped on the lights to make sure he wasn’t a liar. But everything was as spotless and ruthlessly organized as they’d left it. Same with the walk-in cooler.
“That’s something, I guess.”
“I have to ask, because the cops will. Is this the sort of thing you think Arthur might pull?”
She hesitated. “I wouldn’t have thought so. This isn’t the sort of thing he’s done before. He’s not one for getting his hands dirty directly. But maybe? With our credit locked down, he can’t get at us via his usual means. And maybe he couldn’t find an attorney who’d take a custody case seriously.”
Holt very much doubted that was accurate, but his priority at the moment was keeping her calm and making sure she didn’t fall into an unnecessary spiral of anxiety.
“Look, the cops are here. We’re gonna give our statements and hang around to clean this mess up, figure out what we can do in the meantime so we can still open for business tomorrow.” He checked his watch and grimaced. “Today. I’ll be in touch later.”
“Okay.”
“And try to go back to bed. I know your day’s pretty packed with everything you shifted around to be here for us yesterday.”
She sighed. “You’re not wrong. I’ll make a cup of Sleepytime tea and try to lie back down. I’ve got Maddie this morning, and if you need to be free to deal with stuff at the bakery in the afternoon, Mama can get her from school.”
“I don’t know how the day’s going to go, so let’s just plan on that.”
“I’ll see you later.”
As soon as he’d finished the call with his wife, he dialed another familiar number.
“Dude, do you have any idea what time it is?” Cash complained.
“I do, and I’ll consider it payback for you running your mouth and getting me in trouble with my sister.”
There was a beat of silence, then the sound of covers rustling. “What do you need?”
Cayla was grateful she’d already planned to clear the morning to work on her office. She understood how the gossip train ran in this town. If she’d had client meetings, talk would inevitably have turned to the latest break-in at the bakery, and people would want answers she didn’t have. She didn’t know who would spill the beans, but someone would. Likely customers who showed up to find the bakery closed for the day. Holt hadn’t been home since he left in the wee hours. He and the guys were hard at work on cleanup and repairs and whatever else was necessary to get them back to business as usual. Not that there’d been time to even establish a usual yet.
One thing she and Holt hadn’t discussed in terms of their marriage was finances. It hadn’t seemed necessary when they both thought it would be a temporary situation. But as it seemed like maybe it was building toward something more permanent, that meant problems with his business could ultimately impact their household, so she felt compelled to do what was necessary to keep hers in the black. That included making her office a warm, welcoming space for clients. She understood that comfortable clients were more likely to book her services. Plus, having real, professional office space made her look more legit.
The scarred wood floors hadn’t been refinished. That was more expense than she wanted for a space she didn’t technically own. But she’d found a nice carpet remnant from a flooring retailer in Johnson City and had it bound into a rug that covered most of the surface. Courtesy of Holt, she’d been able to refinish her flea-market sideboard. Redone in the same rustic chic farmhouse style as the dining set she’d repainted—because it was a finish that hid a multitude of blemishes—it now graced the entryway, just waiting for art and accessories to make it pop. The table and chairs had been placed in front of the biggest window. The giant marker board she wanted to hang on the adjacent wall was leaning against it, waiting for another set of hands to help complete the task.
Mia was supposed to stop by for that, but after last night, it was entirely possible she had other things to deal with. Another break-in probably brought up all kinds of terrible memories from what had happened there before. She hadn’t talked much about it with Cayla, but it didn’t take a genius to see she’d struggled a lot after. Who wouldn’t after being held at gunpoint? Thank God for Brax. He’d been Mia’s rock through all of it, and seeing the two of them rekindle their marriage after a decade of estrangement had done Cayla’s romantic heart good, even before they’d asked her to coordinate their vow renewal ceremony.
Assuming she’d be on her own, Cayla threw herself into finishing what she could without an extra set of hands. Needing the distraction from her own worry, she brought in an array of fun and funky containers she’d picked up for a song at that same flea market. Some would ultimately be repurposed to hold plants. Others would be used for office supplies or to hold business cards and fliers. Still others would be eventually clustered on shelves as examples of the sorts of containers that could be utilized for centerpieces. She’d do a rotation of those on the table from week to week, coordinating with Misty as cross advertising between their businesses. Art came next. Several months back, she’d hit upon a treasure trove of vintage women’s magazines from the 1940s. She’d pulled bridal advertisements from all of them and dressed them up with simple mats and black frames. They were unique and, she hoped, classy. She’d just hung the last of them in a grouping on the entryway wall when Mia strode through the door.
“Sorry I’m late. I was helping the guys repair the floor.”
“It’s totally fine. I kind of figured we’d need to reschedule with everything going on.” And given the shadows beneath her eyes, Cayla wasn’t entirely sure they shouldn’t.
Mia twitched her shoulders, shifting on her feet in a way Cayla recognized as a need to take control of something. “I said I would, and I need to keep busy. I’m too distracted to be on any of my formal job sites today.”
“Have they found out anything else since last night?”
She set her toolbox and drill case on the table. “Not really. The police dusted for prints, but there are prints everywhere. It’s a public space, and half the town went through there yesterday. Nobody expects them to get very far with that. Meanwhile, the guys have gotten the mess cleaned up and are working on coming up with some kind of alternative display until they can make arrangements to replace the cases.”
Cayla winced. “How bad was it? I haven’t been over to see for myself. I felt like I might be in the way.”
“Once the mess was cleaned up, not terrible. It looked worse than it was last night.”
“You were there with the guys last night?”
“Yeah.” Mia flipped open the toolbox and pulled out a tape measure, automatically moving to the wall for the marker board.
“That had to be hard after… what happened.”
“It wasn’t great. But it was better than being left at home to wait and worry.”
“I hear that. Obviously, I stayed home with Maddie. Holt kept telling me I should go back to sleep. As if I actually could. So I took advantage of being awake and worked on plans for decorating this place.”
Mia scanned what she’d done with the space and nodded. “It’s coming together. Gonna look good when you’re done. How high do you want this thing?”
Between the two of them, they lifted the marker board, and Mia marked the height.
“Did the guys have any theories about who might have done this?”
She selected a drill bit and popped it in the chuck. “I’d heard your ex was being considered for this. Do you buy that?”
“Holt asked me about that last night. I mean, I have a hard time imagining Arthur doing something like this. It’s not his style. He’s all about trying to outsmart people because he likes to believe that he’s the smartest person in the room. This feels too… brutish? Which isn’t to say he doesn’t have a temper or the capacity to destroy things. He certainly looked pissed off enough when he left here and might want to do something to Holt. Although if this was about Holt and making the business fail, why not attack the ovens and equipment? The stuff they have to have to run the bakery? I mean, losing the refrigerated cases isn’t great, but they can work around that.”
“Fair point.” Mia drilled the pilot holes. “How is that whole situation, anyway?”
“Quiet. Too quiet. When Arthur showed up here, I was terrified. He made threats, and I was so scared and so sure he was really going to cause problems that I actually agreed to Holt’s lunatic plan of getting married. But other than one attempt to open a credit account in my name—which I can’t actually prove was him. I only suspect because of the timing—he hasn’t done anything. It’s been nearly a month, and it’s making me twitchy. He's not a man who makes idle threats.”
Humming a noncommittal noise, Mia pounded in the wall anchors before turning to face her. “This is not really my business, but I’m gonna ask anyway. Feel free not to answer.”
Cayla tensed, wondering where she was going with this. “Okay.”
“Are you regretting marrying Holt?”
She relaxed again. “No. He’s wonderful. He’s great with Maddie, great with me. He feels like a frickin’ unicorn. This perfect guy who’s suddenly in my life.”
“And your bed?”
Cayla tipped her head in acknowledgement. “You know I’ve wanted him for a long time. Being consenting married adults, it seems like that was an inevitability. Definitely no regrets there.”
Mia studied her. “I sense a ‘but’.”
Was it fair to get into the ‘but’ when Holt had been trying so hard to reassure her? She’d felt better in the moment. Always better when she was with him. But when they were apart, the doubts always seemed to creep back in. Maybe it would help to discuss it with another woman.
“I’ve had concerns because, with his background, taking on an instant family was not something he wanted to do. It was the primary reason he didn’t pursue me before. We’ve talked about it, and he says he was wrong about that, and he wants to be here. I know he believes that, and I do believe there’s definitely something between us.”
That something was very much love on her side. But how could she say anything to Mia about it? If it got back to Brax, it might get to Holt. He needed to be the one to hear it first, and she wasn’t ready for that step.
They lapsed into silence as they wrestled the marker board into place, and Mia put in the screws. As she stepped down from the stool, she set the drill aside. “You went into this marriage to him with an idea that it was temporary. Are you thinking now that maybe it won’t be?”
“I don’t know what it’ll be. I know what we have is good. I know we’re building something. And I know I don’t want to let that something go. But I just don’t think we can really trust whatever is between us until the situation with Arthur is resolved. Because I’ll always have that question in the back of my mind of whether that’s the only reason he’s still here.”
“Makes sense. It’s a reasonable concern. He’s a caretaking kind of guy. If it makes you feel any better, by all observations from the rest of us, he adores you both. He’s happier, more relaxed. Easier than when he first got to town. I think you’re good for him. I think the family life is good for him.”
It made her feel better to hear it from people who knew him better than she did. “I know he’s good for us.” She bit her lip. “Is that crazy? The idea that we jumped into this—not exactly on a whim, but under duress—and it’s actually… right?”
“Crazier things have happened. Brax and I certainly didn’t have a traditional courtship. Hell, we didn’t even date before we got married. Not until we’d been estranged for ten years and came back together here. So I’m the last person to say that there is a single path to love and happiness. As far as I’m concerned, if you two make each other happy, then do whatever you have to in order to protect it.”
That was exactly what Cayla planned to do.