Chapter 19
Nick was getting usedto Firelight Ridge residents knocking on his door and requesting his help with problems ranging from “get my missing chickens back” to “want to take a crack at identifying the dead body that washed up during last year’s jokulhlaup?”
That one had taken some explaining before he said “no.” Jokulhlaup was a condition that occurred when glacier-fed lakes flooded from rapid glacial melt in the spring. Smoky Lake underwent a jokulhlaup every couple of years, and it always left a mess.
But he had to admit he was surprised to find Charlie Santa Lucia joining the throng that wanted to ruin his vacation with work offers.
“What is it about the word vacation that isn’t sinking in?” he wondered as he ushered her into his little rental house.
“We’re already working together on the smoke bomb incident. This is even more important. I’ll actually hire you for this one.” With her long-legged stride, she’d already reached the sliding glass doors that led to the back deck. “Care to offer me a drink on that little patio out there?”
“It’s buggy,” he warned her. “The mosquitoes here are large and turbo-charged.”
“I have a spray. April says it’s so toxic it’s banned on her property, but it works. I’ll share it with you if you’ll at least listen to me.”
He sighed and grabbed a bottle of white wine from the fridge. His favorite thing to do here was sit on that deck, with its view of the magnificent mountain peaks, and sip a glass of wine. It would probably be even better with Charlie.
She wore a pair of low-slung dark indigo jeans and a crisp white striped shirt; it was a chic and elegant ensemble. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail at the base of her neck and she wore big dark sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames. How she always managed to look so put together even out here in the wilderness amazed him. A lot of things about Charlie amazed him, and he knew there was plenty that he didn’t even know.
She flung herself onto one of his deck chairs and stretched out her long legs. That was her habit, he realized. She never just sat down. It was almost more dramatic than that. “What have you learned about the smoke bomb?” she asked as he set the bottle of wine on the glass table between them.
He got the sense she was putting off the real thing she wanted to talk about.
“Not a lot, thanks to April’s speedy cleanup. I did some forensics work outside the restaurant and figured out where the perpetrators must have been standing.”
“Ooh, perpetrators,” she teased. “Are you sure you’re not a cop? Isn’t that official cop lingo?”
“That would be ‘perp.’ And you watch too many crime shows.”
“Guilty,” she admitted. “True crime is my jam. Not actual crime,” she added quickly. “Things about crime.”
He smiled sardonically. “Someday I will find out what you did to make Hobbs Financial want to hire me. Of course you could always just tell me yourself.”
She lifted her sunglasses to give him a taunting glance, then dropped them again. “I don’t think we’re quite at that level of trust yet.”
Fair enough. “I also checked around with the other lodges, and there have been no smoke-bomb throwing incidents anywhere else.”
“We’re just lucky, I guess. I found out a few things, too.” She summarized the results of her research—April’s family background and the mystery of Bulldog. “I wrote some notes in case you need them,” she added. “I’ve been asking around about who Bulldog was, but got nothing yet.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, there’ve been plenty other murders here since then. It was over forty years ago.”
“That’s what they call a cold case.”
She made a face at him. “Is that supposed to be a double entendre because he was found frozen?”
“Frozen? You said he was attacked by wolves.”
“And frozen. It was the middle of winter. There were also wolves. ID-ing him was a challenge.”
Good lord. He shuddered and took a sip of wine. “Sounds like the plot of one of Hailey’s horror movies.”
“Where is Hailey, anyway?”
“Hiking with Elias. Hopefully somewhere without wolves.”
“Elias was born in these woods, you don’t have to worry about him.”
He smiled at her, grateful for the reassurance. “Thanks. Good work on digging up that info about April.”
“Anything for the crime-solving superhero of Firelight Ridge,” she teased. “That’s your new rep around here. Hope you can live up to it.”
Lifting his glass to her, he said, “If it’s anything other than catching a runaway Charlie, I’m pretty confident. So what crime might I have the honor of solving for you?”
She ran her finger along the rim of her glass. He noticed that she’d barely had a sip from it. Nervous? “How much do you know about my father?”
He hesitated, since he knew a lot about her father—not from the file he’d been given, but from his own additional research. “Why?”
“Look, I saw you outside the prison. Just be honest.”
“Okay. I know about your father.”
“Well, he was innocent.” She flung up a hand. “Don’t argue with me. He was set up. And that’s not the point.” Before he could answer either way, she told him about her father’s release from prison, and the visit he’d gotten from an unnamed person from Hobbs.
“You said you were working for Hobbs before.”
He’d told her that in a moment of recklessness. “I broke my NDA to tell you that.”
“It’s okay, I knew it anyway. They were the only ones…who, uh, I mean, I figured it was them.” She let out a long breath. “We don’t need to get into the details. The fact that I’m even here means I sort of trust you a little bit. Not too much. Just a little bit.”
He would have given anything to be able to burst into laughter right then. Charlie was trying her hardest, he could tell.
“Anyway, whatever they want with me, I want to keep my dad out of it. He was really upset. He made me promise not to call them. But I need to know what’s going on, what they want. You still have contacts at Hobbs, right?”
“Well, they did fire me,” he reminded her, “Thanks to you.”
“Okay. So.” She thought about it. “What if I let you say you caught me?”
“Let me say?” He laughed. “You’re drinking my wine right now. I caught you fair and square.”
She waved that away with a flirty gesture. “We can argue semantics later.”
In bed, came the quick thought. Along with a sharp pulse of arousal.
“The point is, if you go to them with a breakthrough in the case—my case—maybe they’ll tell you what they want.”
“That’s doubtful. They didn’t tell me before.”
She propped her sunglasses on top of her head and leaned forward. “But you could try. I bet if you ask the right questions, you could learn a lot.”
Very true. That was his specialty.
“Please.” She held his gaze. In this clear sunlight, they were a lighter shade than the “brown” they were described as in her file. They were more of a tree bark color, a cinnamon shade, rare spice. “I don’t want my father to be stressed out about this. He should focus on getting better.”
He remembered the piece of insight that he’d passed on to Hobbs—that Charlie’s father was at the center of her life. “You’re willing to do a lot for your father, aren’t you?”
She drew back, as if he’d hit a tripwire. “What does that mean? What are you getting at?”
“Charlie…” He shifted his knee so that it brushed against her thigh. The contact caught her attention, and her lips parted in surprise. “Got any change on you?”
Silently, she dug out a quarter, a dime and three pennies from her pocket, and handed them to him.
“You came here to hire me, remember?” he said gently. “I’m working for you. All of this is confidential. Professional ethics.”
A smile flitted across her face. “You’re only charging me thirty-eight cents?”
“We can talk about compensation later. Now tell me about your father.”
Her eyes dropped. When they lifted again, he saw that they’d misted over. He held his breath; this was a Charlie he’d never seen before, vulnerable and nervous. This version of Charlie hit him right in the gut.
“I already told you my father was my best friend. From the day I was born until the day he went to prison, he was always there for me. I could tell him any silly little thought I had and he’d think it was genius. He used to hang my drawings up at work and tell everyone I was going to be a famous artist someday. Then I got into archery and he told everyone I’d probably go to the Olympics someday. Not in a pressuring way, just a cheerleader way.”
She stopped to take a breath, and another sip of wine.
“Anyway, the day they came and arrested him, I was at school. A neighbor took a video and posted it, and someone showed me. I threw up on his phone. Then I whacked him with it. It was the worst day of my life. And then the days kept getting worse and worse. I kept thinking they’d figure out it wasn’t him, and set him free and apologize and life would go back to normal. It never did. But my daddy always had a smile for me. I went to court every day of the trial. I visited him every week after he went to prison. So yes. I’d do a lot for my father.”
The pain in her voice, the fierceness, seemed to reach inside his heart and wrap around it like a warm fist. What would it feel like to be so connected to a parent?
He and his father had a distant relationship at best. He couldn’t remember much in the way of affection or hugs, and an injury early in his father’s career had given him chronic pain that always made him irritable. Nick had left home after high school and hadn’t stayed in very close touch. Luckily, his family had plenty of other kids who still lived nearby.
He’d stayed quiet for so long that Charlie lost patience and started to get to her feet. “You know, I don’t actually need you. I know how to contact the people at Hobbs, even if my dad doesn’t want me to?—”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?” She stood over him, arms folded across her chest, her sunglasses shielding her eyes again.
“We’ll try it. I don’t want you approaching them alone.”
“You don’t think I can handle myself alone? What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”
He leaned back in his chair and gazed up at her. Energy vibrated between them, tense and fiery. Why did he always feel so alive when he was around Charlie?
“Maybe you can. I don’t know. Who are you, Charlie Santa Lucia? Do you have weapons training? Operational expertise? Field experience? Someone told me you’re just a girl from Indiana.”
Her lips quirked. “Must have been some kind of idiot who told you that.”
“No. Someone brave. Someone with a lot of secrets.”
After a long pause, she sat down abruptly. “I don’t have any of those things you just mentioned. But I have a few skills you didn’t, and maybe they can help.”
He waited, thinking she might explain more about these hidden skills that were probably at the heart of this whole thing. But she didn’t. Still being cagey. He didn’t blame her for that.
“So how do you want to do this?” she asked impatiently. “If my dad’s in danger, I don’t have time to waste sitting around drinking wine and flirting.”
“Why, Charlie, are you flirting with me?” He flashed her a smile as he pulled out his phone and thumbed through his contacts to place a call to Mark Jones.
“Why yes, Nick, that’s why I ran all the way to Alaska so you could chase me, it’s been nothing but foreplay from the jump.”
Come to think of it, she might have a point.
“Dad!” Hailey shouted from inside the cabin. “Me and Elias are hungry, what is there to eat?”