Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
SYLVIE
“Ihaven’t…” He stopped. “It’s…” Another pause.
This was not like the Eli I knew. He was a lot of things, but hesitant wasn’t one of them. “Just rip the bandage off,” I suggested.
He raised his chin in agreement. “I grew up in Hollow Creek. My entire family was killed in a car crash when I was twenty-two. I haven’t been back.”
“Oh, fuck,” I said, the agony of what he described washing through me.
Tears filled my eyes, and I squeezed them shut, sensing Eli was having a hard enough time talking about this.
He didn’t need my sudden grief. But damn.
I was close to my family. My little brother.
I couldn’t imagine all of them gone in a blink.
I’d been avoiding them for the past few days, not sure what to say about my current situation.
Now I wanted to hear my mother’s voice, to feel her tight hug.
“Oh, Eli,” I said. I reached out and closed my hand over his, wrapping my fingers tight. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said, his throat thick. “It sucked. They were…they were great. They were really great. My little sister was… God, she was so smart. She was obsessed with chess. When that show about the female chess player came out a few years ago, all I could think was, man, Annie would have loved this. She was like the only girl in the high school chess club, and she did not give a fuck. She annihilated those boys and laughed. She was so awesome.”
His fingers tightened on mine, and I swallowed hard, trying to will myself not to cry at the way he described his sister.
“My mom and dad were just…cool,” he went on.
“I was never a A student, not like Annie, and they didn’t care—they encouraged me when I wanted to join the military instead of going to college.
They didn’t love the idea. My mom was a teacher, so she took it particularly hard, but they made it clear that they wanted me to be happy.
And they knew I was the kind of person who learns with his hands, not with a book.
They always had my back. And then they were just gone. ”
I didn’t know what to say. It felt like my heart was tearing open in my chest. “Thanks for telling me.” I squeezed his hand again before letting go.
He nodded, and I suspected his throat was as tight as mine.
“Do we have to go?” I asked. I hated to walk away from a lead, but if he hadn’t been back in so long, it was going to be tough.
“I can’t keep running forever,” he said. “And this isn’t about that. I don’t have anyone there anymore. Nothing except their graves. No friends, no family. It’s just a town. And we have a lead, so…”
“Eli, it’s not just a town, this is—” I felt my eyes well up again and blinked hard. “Maybe we can get somebody else to go.”
“No,” he said. “We’re not doing that. This is the only lead we’ve got right now. We’re going to follow it. I’ll deal.”
I narrowed my eyes on him, running through all the things I wanted to say, but Eli was a grown man.
He was incredibly capable and in control of himself and his environment.
Who was I to tell him what to do? This was his life, and it was our lead if he wanted to follow it.
But I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to see him hurting like this.
“Okay,” I said. “We go to Hollow Creek and check out the house.”
“We’ll ask around a little bit, see if anyone’s been there. We’ll figure out our strategy on the way.”
“When do we leave?” I asked, closing my laptop.
“First thing in the morning,” he said, setting the mic back on the table, half put back together. “I don’t have my soldering iron here, but Lucas’s department has a whole repair kit downstairs. When we get back, we’ll bring it down.”
“Okay,” I said, not really caring about the microphone anymore.
Eli had cracked open his shields and shown me a place inside so vulnerable and filled with pain I couldn’t just walk away with a cheery good night.
I rounded the table and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing him tight.
We weren’t exactly on hugging terms, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m sorry, Eli.”
His arms came up slowly before settling around me. He let out a rough breath and squeezed back, his head dipping until his lips grazed my temple.
“I’m okay, Sylvie,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”
“I know,” I said into his shoulder. “I’m still sorry.”
“Thanks.”
I stayed there for a heartbeat, maybe two, his breath warm on my skin, his heart thumping under my ear. I should let go and head down the hall to bed.
I’d wanted to offer him comfort, but now that I was here, the heat of him plastered against me, I wasn’t feeling entirely comforting. I was feeling like sliding my hands down his back, dipping my fingers under his T-shirt to stroke the taut muscle beneath.
I stepped back abruptly. “Okay, good night,” I said, hearing the awkwardness in my voice, not stopping to make eye contact.
I took off down the hall, wondering why a simple hug felt so loaded with meaning.
I was a little worried things would be awkward in the morning, but the ride to South Carolina was uneventful.
I pulled up my puzzle website and chose one that was story-based, so Eli didn’t need to see the screen.
I read him the confusing combination of plays on words and a locked-room mystery.
These were my favorite. No numbers involved.
We solved that one pretty quickly—it was the dog who could open doors with his paws—and tried another.
I could have spent hours like that, playing games with him.
We’d been companionable before the trip to Knoxville, but now there was another layer of connection, like all those heartfelt confessions had tied us together.
We didn’t talk business until we were pulling off the highway.
“Are we going to the house first?” I asked.
“I thought we’d check it out,” Eli confirmed, turning onto a country road lined with tall pine trees, their lower trunks bare and patterned in scales of bark like an alligator.
“Anything look familiar?” I asked as we turned right onto a road that bisected a neighborhood.
“Yes and no.” Eli scanned the one-story brick houses as we pulled down the street. “Everything’s familiar, but thirteen years is a long time, and I was away even before they died.”
“Did you live in this neighborhood?”
Eli shook his head. “No, the other side of town. Similar though.”
The street was wide, lined with sidewalks and old trees, the lots all around a quarter acre.
It wasn’t a wealthy neighborhood, but everything was neat—yards trimmed, flowers on concrete porches.
A dog barked from inside a chain-link fence.
A toddler pedaled a plastic tricycle in a driveway, his mother looking on with bored indulgence.
Idyllic. I liked it immediately. “It looks like a nice place to grow up.”
“It was,” he said. “Small town and everything that comes with that, but good people, good community.”
He pulled to a stop in front of a house that looked subtly neglected. Nothing overgrown, no broken windows, but the house looked lonely. There were no signs of life: no plant on the stoop, no basketball in the driveway.
“We’re just going to have a walk around,” he said. “If anyone asks, we heard from a friend that it was available for rent, and we wanted to stop by.”
“And who’s the friend if anyone asks?” I opened my door and followed him out.
“Emily Shaw,” he said.
“Okay. Kind of the truth. Makes sense. Got it.” We walked up the concrete path to the house, then turned left before the stoop and headed around the side. Definitely no sign anyone had been here recently.
“When was that spike in the power bill?” I asked, quietly in case any of the neighbors had their ears pricked through open windows.
“A week before Emily died,” he said in the same low tone.
“So, it could have been her,” I said.
“Could have. Or it could have been someone looking for her.”
A shiver went down my spine. I didn’t like that option.
“What are y’all doing walkin’ all over the Greens’ house?” The voice cut into the quiet, her Southern accent strong, her tone curious but sharp. A woman in a hot pink housecoat and hair so flaming red it could only have come out of a bottle marched across the neighboring lawn toward us.
She’d said the Greens’ house, not the Shaws’. I filed that away to ask about later. Eli didn’t seem thrown by the change of name.
“Emily said it might be available to rent,” he answered smoothly. “We’re thinking about moving to town, thought we’d stop by.”
“I’ll tell you like I told the man who came by already—I don’t know what the girl’s going to do with the house, but it’s not available to rent as far as I know.”
I kept my expression neutral and let Eli do the talking for now. Obviously, we needed to find out who the man was.
“How do you know?” Eli asked easily. “Did Emily tell you?”
“She was back here a few months ago and never said a thing.” The woman set her hands on her hips and looked us up and down. “You said you’re friends of hers?”
“Did you talk to her when she was here?” I asked, guessing that this neighbor did not know Emily Shaw was deceased.
“Did she tell you she wasn’t renting it out?
” I shifted to face Eli and tugged on his arm, playing into the part.
“I thought Emily said she definitely wanted to rent it to us. Do you think somebody else might get the house, honey?” Looking back at the neighbor, I added, “Someone was here asking about it? When?”
Eli slung an arm around me, smiling down indulgently. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll talk to Emily. And if this one doesn’t work out, if you really want to move here, we’ll find something.”
“I’m telling you,” the neighbor cut in, “I know everything that goes on in this street. All these years they’ve never rented the house, just keep it maintained.
Don’t know why Emily didn’t just sell it after her parents moved,” she grumbled to herself, pulling a cigarette from the pack in her housecoat pocket and lighting it.
“She never comes back, just has the lawn mowed, weeds trimmed. Someone walks through once a month to make sure there’s no leaks, and that’s it. Just sits there getting older.”
“Did you talk to her when she was here a few months ago?” I asked again.
“Meant to, but I got distracted getting supper started. And when I had a minute free, she was pulling away. Squealed the tires like she couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
” The neighbor shook her head, wisps of red hair drifting through the tip of her cigarette, the scent of burnt hair invading my nose.
Had Emily found something here?
“How long was she here?” I asked, then looked up at Eli. “I thought she was getting the house ready to rent.” I put a little whine in my voice, as if I was annoyed that the thing I wanted might be out of reach.
“I doubt it,” the woman said after a long drag on her cigarette. “She was in and out in less than an hour. Thought she was still living in Virginia, but that’s a long way to come to only stay an hour.”
“Are you sure it was Emily you saw?” Eli asked, not mentioning that Emily no longer lived in Virginia, but had moved to Knoxville.
“Of course,” she said, lifting her chin, eyes wide with affront. “It’s been years, but I’ve known that girl most of her life. Same dark hair, same eyebrows. It was her.”
“Well, that is weird,” Eli said. “I wonder why she would have told us it was available to rent. Who was the man who came by? When was he here?”
The woman studied Eli and me. I leaned into his side, trying to sell the young couple looking for a rental story.
She gave a nod as if she’d decided something and said, “It was a few weeks ago. Didn’t recognize him.
He was around my age.” I guessed mid-sixties.
“A little stocky, bald spot up here.” She gestured to the top of her head. “Saw it when he took off his cap.”
“Facial hair?” Eli asked, a little too abruptly to fit with our story. But the woman didn’t notice.
“Mustache,” she said. “Short one.”
That seemed to mean something to Eli. I was dying to know, but now wasn’t the time to push.
“He was interested in the house?” I asked.
“Had a lot of questions,” she said. “Just like you. Doesn’t matter if he was interested. I’m telling you, the house can’t be up for rent. Word would have gotten around if she was putting it up for rent.”
I gathered from her tone that the neighborhood wasn’t big on renters.
I’d grown up in a similar neighborhood, where most people had owned for years, and renters were considered interlopers because they were transitory.
Not very welcoming, but looking at this woman now, I was sure that was what was going on.
“Well, I guess we’ll see if we can find something else,” Eli said.
“Y’all should go check the post office. They’ve got a bulletin board up there. Sometimes people post rentals.”
“What about the man who was here?” Eli asked. “You send him to the post office, too?”
She shrugged, took a long drag off her cigarette. “Might have done.”
“All right, then. I guess that’s our next stop. Nice to meet you.”
She just grunted and stood in the driveway, hands propped on her hot pink hips, her cigarette burning down to the filter, watching as we got back in the SUV.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said, pulling up the address of the town post office on my phone. “Who’s the guy?”
“I don’t know,” Eli said.
“Yes, you do,” I shot back.
He shot me a sidelong glance. “How do you know?”
“I saw it. Your lips got tight, and you straightened your shoulders.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’m starting to think, Sylvie Calloway, that you’re too smart for your own good.”
“Too smart for your good,” I corrected. “Plenty smart enough for mine. Though not smart enough to have skipped over Emily Shaw’s case.” I thought of my exploded van and the number of times I’d almost died in the last seventy-two hours.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Eli said, clearly not wanting to tell me what he knew.
“Yeah,” I said, “we will. Later.”
Eli knew more about Emily Shaw than he was telling me.
If he was working her case for a client, I understood, even if I didn’t like it.
But I was starting to wonder—was this for a client?
Or was something about Emily Shaw’s murder personal for Eli?
Or for Sinclair Security? It was a lot for him to come here, and despite his explanation of why it was okay, I didn’t buy that unless it was personal on some level.
Sinclair Security had a big team. He could have sent someone else. It didn’t quite make sense.
Whatever was going on, sooner or later, I was going to find out.