1. Luke
Luke
Reid: When are you off shift?
Me: I’m off now. What’s up?
Reid: Can you come by my house? I need to talk to you.
That didn’t sound good. I hoped everything was good with him and Claire.
He and his girlfriend hadn’t been together long, but they were talking about building a home together.
Claire had quit her job and unrooted her life a few months ago to stay here in Calla Bay with Reid, and I would hate to see something happen between them.
Me: Yeah. I’ll be there in 10.
“Jules,” I called to my wife. “Reid needs me to stop by for something. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
I peeked my head into our bedroom, looking for her. When she wasn’t there, I went upstairs to her yoga room. For a long time, I wanted to make that room into a nursery, but Juliet wasn’t ready for that, so it stayed as an in-home yoga studio.
The door opened soundlessly to reveal Juliet, sweaty and glowing.
Her back was to me, but the mirror against the wall showed me she was taking a picture or a video of herself.
Her finger swiped down the center of her chest, her thumb caressing the top of her breast as she heaved in breaths from her exercise exertion.
A playful glint sparkled in her eyes as she watched herself in the mirror.
“What are you doing?” I asked from the doorway.
Juliet dropped her phone, her eyes finding mine in the mirror before she turned around to face me.
“Jesus, Luke. Did you have to sneak up on me like that?”
Her playful smile was gone, replaced with irritation and defensiveness.
Right. That sparkle wasn’t for me. She hadn’t looked at me like that in a while now. A long while.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just looking for you to let you know that I’m heading to Reid’s. He needs to talk to me about something.”
“That’s fine. I have a yoga class later, so I probably won’t be here when you get back.”
I looked around the room, cataloging all of the equipment. A yoga mat was laid out on the floor. Blocks, straps, and bolster pillows were still out rather than put away where they usually were.
“Did you not just do a yoga class?”
“This was just a warm-up, Luke. It wasn’t a class, where there are other people and socialization. I can’t be locked up in the house all the time.”
Anger tried to flare through me, but I held it back. Getting into a fight wasn’t going to solve anything. I should know. It was all we had been doing for years, and it hadn’t solved a damn thing yet.
“Right. Well, I’m heading to Reid’s. I’ll see you later.”
I spun around and made my way downstairs—through the mess of clothes, shoes, and empty boxes that I would need to clean up even though new shit just kept appearing anyway—without a backward glance.
I wasn’t one to relish in other people’s problems, but I couldn’t help but feel a little grateful to have something to take my mind off my own troubles.
Whatever my younger brother needed help with, I would be there for him.
The July sun glinted off the passing cars on my way to his house, staying high in the sky well into the evening. Claire’s SUV was parked in the driveway in front of Reid’s work truck. Wyatt’s truck was parked along the street outside his house.
That was a little surprising. Not so much that Wyatt was here.
Wyatt was the oldest of us Wilders and was usually the brother to lean on when someone needed to talk things out, but if Reid’s issues were relationship-based, then Claire being here might make open conversation more difficult.
We could always head to Harpoon’s if we needed to.
Harpoon’s Tavern was the best bar and restaurant in Calla Bay. Granted, there were only two, not counting Millie’s Pizza, which had a liquor license, but it was still my favorite place to throw some back when I had a chance.
I parked behind Wyatt and strolled up to the house, knock-and-walking my way in rather than waiting for the door to be answered. Wyatt and Reid both turned to look at the same time. Their resemblance was uncanny in the way they moved. Claire was sitting with Maeve at the small breakfast table.
“Hey, Luke,” Maeve said, everyone else chiming in after her in greeting.
“What’s going on? I didn’t realize everyone was going to be here. Where’s Jane?” I asked, looking around for my one-year-old niece .
“Josie’s watching her for a few hours,” Maeve said, referring to her mother.
Reid’s eyes shifted to Wyatt’s, the silence immediately putting me on edge.
“Maeve, do you want to come see the house plans that Reid and I have been working on?” Claire asked.
“Yup. Sure do,” Maeve replied quickly.
After a solid thirty seconds of watching Maeve struggle out of her seat, her eight-month-pregnant belly throwing off her equilibrium and center of gravity, waving away Claire’s hand to help her up, the two of them made their way down the hall to the master bedroom.
“You want a drink? I’ve got beer,” Reid asked me.
“No, I’m good.”
“Take the beer, brother,” Wyatt offered.
“Am I going to need one?” My brows quirked.
Reid’s lips flattened into a tight line. Wyatt scrubbed at the scruff on his face. A single nod from each of them told me whatever I was here for wasn’t anything good.
I grabbed the offered beer and sat on the couch. Reid pulled up a chair from his dining table and looked at Wyatt again.
Using silence as a tool and waiting people out were tactics I was well versed in as a police officer-slash-junior detective for the Calla Bay Police Department. I let the tension grow as I sipped my beer.
“I’ve got to tell you something, and it isn’t good,” Reid started.
“Yeah. I kind of got that impression.”
“Yesterday, I was out getting coffees from Flour Power for Claire and I. Juliet was across the street. She didn’t see me.”
“Yeah. Her yoga studio is there. That makes sense.” Where was he going with this? Did everyone really think I had Juliet locked in the house while I was at work? She was her own person; she came and went whenever she wanted.
“She was with some guy.”
“Probably one of the trainers. Or someone from her class. There are more guys into yoga than you might think.”
“He wasn’t in workout gear.” Reid shook his head. “He held her by the waist, and when she turned around to face him…”
My heartbeat stopped. In the infinite time it took Reid to finish that thought, my mind conjured a thousand different endings. An instant headache bloomed in the front of my skull at the thought of someone else’s hands on my wife’s skin.
“She punched him in the face?” I asked.
Again, Reid shook his head, his lips in that tight line.
“Brother, let him get it out,” Wyatt told me, then turned to Reid. “Fuck off, Reid. Just tell him.”
“She kissed him,” Reid spat out.
My vision blurred. My arms went numb. My throat felt too tight to even swallow.
What. The. Fuck.
“Like, on the cheek?”
Wyatt looked at me, a mixture of unimpressed and pity.
“Come on, man,” he said, urging me to see the writing on the wall.
“Fuck,” I shouted. My feet hit the floor, propelling me out of my seat. I ran my hands through my cropped hair. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know.” Reid threw his hands out in front of him when I shot him a death glare. “Seriously. I don’t. I only saw the back of him. ”
“I can ask Wes to look into it. Find out for you,” Wyatt said.
“No. Abso-fucking-lutely not. If I want to have my wife followed, I’ll do it myself,” I huffed. “Christ. I didn’t think I’d ever say that sentence. Wes doesn’t do infidelity cases anyway.”
“He doesn’t. But he would if you needed him to.”
“I don’t,” I snapped.
I finished my pacing and sat back down on the couch, my head in my hands.
“She said she had a yoga class tonight.”
Wyatt and Reid both sat silently.
“She told me classes have been running longer and longer. Hours-long yoga classes. Multiple times a week.”
I scrubbed the back of my neck. My skin felt itchy with this new information.
“She’s not at a yoga class, is she?”
“Probably not, brother,” Wyatt sighed.
“Fuck.”
* * *
The drawer of the desk slammed shut.
Okay, maybe I slammed the drawer shut. Where was my folder with my notes from the Karrigan case? I put them in my desk drawer when I left yesterday. I know I did.
My chair flew back as I surged to my feet, determined to find the folder.
“Whoa, Wilder. You alright?” my partner, Matt Monroe, asked .
He and I were both uniformed officers, unless a case came up that required a detective, then we would work together as a team in the junior detective role for as long as it was needed.
That was the thing about small police departments.
We only had nine full-time uniformed officers and two lieutenants on staff, plus our captain and police chief.
It was a pretty small police force, but the general lack of crime in Calla Bay didn’t require us to have any more than that.
That was why the murder of sixteen-year-old Alana Karrigan had taken everyone by surprise. Resources were scarce, but Matt and I had worked together tirelessly for weeks, gathering all the evidence we needed to put that fucker, Ryan Redmond, away for good.
I needed that folder so that I could document all of my notes electronically and get that arrest warrant signed.
“Not really. Where the fuck is my Karrigan case file?”
A mug of hot coffee was placed on the corner of my desk by a dainty, porcelain hand. I lifted my gaze and caught Scarlett’s sky-blue eyes.
“You seemed like you could use it.” She smiled softly before walking back over to her dispatch station.
“She’s not wrong. You’re a beast this morning. Come on. We’ll find the case file. It couldn’t have walked away,” Monroe said. He and I looked all over my desk, in every drawer and every paper tray. We even emptied the trash in case it had accidentally fallen off and landed there.
“Fuck. I need that file,” I grumbled.
“Let’s make a stop by Downtown Diner. Maybe with fresh eyes when we get back, it’ll pop up,” he suggested.
“I want to be back here in thirty minutes,” I told him. “I don’t have all day to fuck around. ”
My bad attitude continued over breakfast. Sheila Rawlins, the diner owner and my father’s girlfriend, greeted us as soon as we walked in. The scents of sausage and maple syrup drifted through, making my stomach grumble. It pissed me off.
“What’s going on with you today?” Matt asked over the stack of pancakes he was devouring.
I debated about laying it all out there. It was eating me alive to keep this in, but I hadn’t had a chance to even talk to Juliet yet, and until I did, I didn’t want to say anything. There was still a chance this was all a misunderstanding. Maybe Reid didn’t see what he thought he saw.
“Just in a shit mood. The Karrigan case is almost closed, and I want that piece of shit off the street.”
That was true. It may not be the whole reason I was in such a shit mood, but it didn’t make it any less accurate.
Ryan Redmond had trouble written all over him since he was six years old.
He had some home life problems that probably contributed to that.
It was widely speculated that Dennis Redmond abused his wife, but never once had the police been called to their house for a domestic violence complaint.
It wouldn’t be a huge leap to assume he had probably laid hands on his kid.
We’d had the school keep an eye on him, at least until last year when he graduated, but there was never any evidence of abuse that they could see.
Even with his troubled youth, graffitiing buildings, stealing from Pine Street Market, a fistfight here and there, I didn’t expect him to escalate to murder.
“I know. I know. We’ve got him though. We had a solid case against him that no lawyer is going to talk their way out of. ”
I grunted my response. I hoped that was true. Alana deserved justice. Her family deserved closure.
All the talk of the Karrigan case didn’t distract me enough from what Reid had told me last night.
My wife. The woman I had made my vows to in front of everyone I loved. The woman I had given years of my life to. And some other man was putting his hands on her body.
As soon as Reid said it, I knew it was true. I think I had known for a while; I just didn’t want to believe it. Nine p.m. yoga classes? Two-hour sessions? It wasn’t just me who made those vows that day. Where the fuck were her vows now?
Matt and I made our way back to the station. Matt was needed on patrol officer duty while I was continuing in my detective capacity for the day. We couldn’t both be pulled from the case when we were so close to getting the arrest we desperately wanted.
“Stay safe,” I called to him absently. It was a mantra we said dozens of times a day. Matt pulled away in a squad car while I went back inside the station, greeting Brimley at the front visitor desk with a curt nod.
No case file had magically appeared on my desk while we were out.
I sorted and organized the documents that had become collateral damage in my quest to find the Karrigan file, straightening my desk and keeping my space tidy.
The single department stapler was on Matt’s desk.
When I reached for it, the corner of a manilla folder caught my eye.
I shifted the papers that were atop it away.
The Karrigan case file was sitting right there.