Chapter 11
That night,Molly and Lila drove up for their semi-regular friends gathering—one of the best parts of this unusual summer. The four best friends had all been misfits in their own way. Molly because her family was so dirt poor. Ani because of her leg brace. Lila because of her witchy-ness, which she had trouble hiding. Charlie got teased for her height, and that was bad enough. Once her father went to prison, the teasing turned to mockery.
But now…he was getting out. She could still hardly believe it.
Over drinks on the deck, they toasted the incredible news about her father. Lila sipped her usual lemon drop through a straw, and Molly nursed a glass of red wine she kept refilling from a bottle that sat on their table. Even though it was past eleven, there was still plenty of light in the sky, and since they were halfway up Fire Peak, that light held a special fiery radiance, with tones of persimmon and crimson and mulberry in the misty clouds that drifted past.
The view was so stunning that Charlie never got tired of looking at it, and it pissed her off that she had to yank herself back to reality and talk about potential sketchiness.
“Have either of you noticed anything unusual over the past two weeks?” she asked her friends.
“Everything around here is unusual,” Molly pointed out. “Where would I even start? I just got a new client who wants to sue the guy next door because he walks around naked in the morning.”
“Ooh, sounds juicy, any names or identifying details?” asked Lila.
Molly shook her head. “Client confidentiality. Which is nearly impossible around here, but I have to try.”
Charlie turned to Lila. “Has anyone asked about me at The Fang?”
“Definitely. Pinky Barker wants to date you. He asked if you would prefer a homemade meal in his treehouse or to show you how to pan for gold in the creek.”
“Pan for gold, hands down,” Charlie said promptly. “But don’t tell him that.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I told them all that you’re unavailable because you’re nursing a broken heart.”
“All? Who’s all?”
“All. All the men. They all ask about you. Literally every unmarried man in Firelight Ridge has asked about the blond with the red car.”
“Red! How is Red?” she asked Molly.
“Red might need a new name. I’m thinking Dusty would work.”
Charlie pulled an apologetic face. “I’m going to get her detailed as soon as I get a break up here.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Molly waved her off. “You’re safer up here.”
“By the way, a few people know that you’re working here,” said Lila, “but most don’t. That makes it a pretty well-kept secret around here, all things considered.”
If a few knew, Nick could certainly find out.
Charlie sighed and shook out her hair from her hostessing twist. “Couldn’t you come up with something better than a broken heart? No one who knows me would ever believe that.”
“It was all I could think of.” Lila smiled at her in apology. “I’m very sorry, but your fiancé left you at the altar and you’ve sworn off men forever.”
“Never! Men are too much fun—at the right time, in the right place, and in the right dosage.”
“Yes, we know your motto,” Molly said dryly. “But we don’t completely buy it.”
Lila licked the rim of her Lemon Drop. “You know, recently I got to know a man who I thought might be perfect for you.”
Charlie brightened. A fling would certainly help ease the stress of being on the run. “Do tell.”
“You know who I’m talking about.”
Charlie flicked a droplet of wine at her. Lila kept insisting that she’d misjudged Nick Perini. “Why do you keep saying that, after what Nick did? And may still be doing?”
“What are you talking about?”
Charlie told them about the mysterious listening device housekeeping had found.
“How could that possibly be Nick’s doing? Maybe it was a jealous spouse trying to eavesdrop on their cheating partner.” Lila’s eyes went dreamy in that way that meant her imagination was going wild. “Or maybe some international spies are hiding out here.”
“April was kind of weird about it.”
“Well, there you go,” said Lila. “It’s obviously someone who has a crush on her. Oh, I bet it’s Solomon. He moons around after her like she’s the only woman on earth.”
Molly’s phone chimed. She flashed the name at them—Sam—and stepped away from the table to take the call.
“Remember the camera you found near the hardware store? I wonder if it’s related,” Lila mused.
Charlie tipped her glass of ice-cold gin to her lips. “That was Nick’s camera.”
“Are you sure? I checked the spot where you found it and there was an abandoned bird’s nest right next to it.”
“I know. They built their nest practically on top of the camera mount. So?”
“So the birds were building their nests weeks ago. I think it was a robin because I remember seeing them swooping around with little bits of straw.”
Charlie considered that. “I don’t know, he could have just wedged the camera under the nest.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Besides, wouldn’t you have noticed if a camera had been trained on you since the robins arrived?”
“I don’t know.” Lila’s shrugged one shoulder. “Usually I would know the second someone started watching me, but things are different here. All the things I usually hear and pick up on…it’s just less. I love it because I can think better. But I suppose I might miss something important, like a camera spying on me.”
“Well, let’s hope it was Nick, which it probably was. I’m assuming that until proven otherwise. Have any other strange things happened at the hardware store?”
“Oh, just a little light burglary, no biggie.”
“What?”
Lila laughed lightly. “A raccoon must have gotten in. He made a bit of a mess, but nothing was missing.”
“Jesus, Lila.”
Molly came back to the table, phone in hand. “You’ll never guess who Sam just ran into at the Costco in Anchorage. By the way, Lila, they’re out of jasmine rice.”
“Did they have my backup rice?”
“They did. You will not starve, my friend.”
Standard practice when anyone went to Anchorage was to collect shopping lists from their friends. Most people liked to include backup brands or sizes or varieties in case their first choice didn’t happen to be in stock. Charlie counted herself lucky that she didn’t have to feed herself here in Firelight Ridge, but she had asked for dental floss, which was absurdly expensive in town.
“Who did he run into?” Charlie asked, getting back to the point.
“Believe it or not, the man we were just talking about. Nick Perini.”
Charlie, who had been tilting her chair backwards, crashed it back to its proper position. “Seriously? What was he doing there?”
“Shopping?” Molly shrugged as she sat back down. “Sam didn’t talk to him. He had a teenage girl with him.”
A teenage girl…
“That must be his daughter Hailey,” she said faintly.
Charlie bit her lip as she thought of all the accusations she’d thrown at Nick the last time they’d talked. I don’t believe you have a daughter you only met recently. I’m not even sure if you rescued that bird.
Jesus. Now she felt like a complete asshole. Of course Nick wouldn’t lie about his daughter. The snapshots he’d shown her looked nothing like stock photos. And there were a lot better ways to get a woman’s attention than wounding a bird. He’d had her attention pre-Hector anyway, just from the way he looked in his jogging shorts.
“At least we know he didn’t plant that device,” said Lila with an incandescent smile.
Irritated, Charlie wondered why Lila liked Nick so much. He was nothing but trouble.
“Is he, uh, coming here?” she asked Molly, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Sam couldn’t say. But based on the way we all treated him last time, I’m going to guess no. It’s a big state, lots of places to go. They’re probably going to Denali or the Kenai Peninsula or McCarthy or Nome or someplace like that. What are the chances he’d want to come back here, to the scene of his greatest defeat at the hands of Charlie Santa Lucia?”
The chances weren’t zero, thought Charlie. Nick Perini didn’t seem like a man who liked to lose.