Chapter 30
GRIFFIN
“The trick is going to be the element of surprise,” Sasha says as she pops a piece of toast and honey into her mouth.
She runs her finger down her little clipboard, reading through her list for the hundredth time.
I sit across from her, sipping my coffee, wondering how feasible it would be to appoint a full security team to my place.
“It’s the only way he won’t turn us away,” she says.
She’s talking about Chester.
Sasha told me yesterday when she got home from work that she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Chester and his porch since she walked him home the other day. “Maybe that’s why he’s always over here. Not that I mind. I just think we should be able to go visit him on his porch sometimes.”
I nod. I’m listening to her, but my mind is still ticking over something else, too.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I say. I get up to pour more coffee while Sasha wonders out loud whether brown or beige stain would be better for Chester’s porch. She’s not talking to me, so I allow my mind to linger on the call I got from Ford last night.
It was midnight when my phone buzzed on the bedside table. Sasha was already asleep, wrapped up in my arms. I hated slipping away from her, but Ford wouldn’t have called at that hour if he didn’t have something important to say.
I slipped into my workshop to answer it.
“He was at her place,” Ford said. No preamble, which I normally appreciated. But right then, it felt like a fucking gut punch.
“Tell me.”
“The lock was intact,” Ford said. “It all looked good on the surface, but I got a bad feeling. Plus I saw the marks.”
Evidence that the lock had been tampered with.
I paced the grease-stained concrete floor while Ford explained how the drawers in the dresser were opened.
“Some of her underwear was scattered on top.”
I balled my fists so tight my knuckles cracked.
“Seemed weird that only that was fucked with,” Ford continued.
“What else?” I practically snarled.
“The doorman didn’t remember anyone strange going up, but when I got our tech guys to get into the camera feed just now, I saw what went down.”
I tell him not to leave out a single fucking detail.
“It was them. That big-ass ugly fucker was posing as a delivery guy.”
The guy from the restaurant.
“Started freaking out about a box. Pretty good acting, honestly. I’d have bought it if I hadn’t seen photos of the guy driving a van full of underage girls over the Ohio turnpike last year.”
I starting seeing spots. “Keep going.”
“The distraction was all it took.” While the doorman’s back was turned, Ford said, Creelman himself had slipped inside.
My stomach felt like it had been turned inside out. But it paled in intensity compared to the rage coursing through my veins.
“So yeah, you were right to do what you needed to, Griff.”
He meant marrying Sasha. He’d used fake credentials generated by McCrae to get into her building, McCrae technical support to make a key to her unit, and the McCrae data team to hack into the building’s security cameras.
Access to all of those company resources was only possible because of Sasha falling under Lionel’s Family Protection Program.
“Seems like a good idea to lay low up there a while longer,” Ford said.
I agreed. But it took a long time to fall asleep.
Now, with a full night’s sleep behind me—well, five hours, but good enough—and Sasha safe beside me, I feel less like I want to hunt Creelman down and more like it’s a good fucking thing we’re sequestered up here in Quince Valley.
I know the feeling won’t last, but while it’s here, I force myself to relax. To focus on being here, living a normal, happy life of domesticity with my wife.
Fake wife, but fuck if we’re acting like that right now.
I can’t stop thinking about what Sasha said that night I came back from the city.
How caring about someone doesn’t have any bearing on how well you can take care of someone.
Logically, I know that. But I can’t let myself feel everything, can I?
I shove these thoughts aside for now, reminding myself about that relaxing I was trying to do.
“Chester had some tools and wood out on the porch,” Sasha’s saying, “but it all looked like it’d been there a while. There’s a tarp over some of the wood that has puddles and moss growing on it.”
Guilt runs through me. “I should have pushed back when he said no to me fixing it.”
“You already fixed his roof for him.”
I grimace. “Yeah, but I put the hole through it.” I’d laid plywood down for Chester after I busted his porch so he could still cross over it to get to his chickens until I could come back to fix it, but Chester put up a huge stink.
He insisted he’d do the repairs himself.
Didn’t want me messing around on his porch.
I didn’t push it at the time, mostly because I’d just finished doing his roof.
It had been a painful experience. It was half doing the job, which would have been fine.
But the other half was Chester control. He kept trying to come up the ladder to help me, no matter how many times I told him I was good and that I needed him to stay on the ground.
He’s not steady on his feet, and I didn’t want to spend my time up there worrying he was going to fall off the roof.
Sasha sighs. “Must be so hard being self-sufficient your whole life and suddenly not being able to do things on your own.”
She circles something on her list—which I know is all the materials we’re going to need to fix his porch—then taps her pen against her plump bottom lip.
I’m getting to know that when Sasha gets something on her mind, she gets laser focused.
I love that about her, even if I don’t want it to be true right now, because God help me, even her checking off lists is sexy.
She stands up, coming over to the coffeepot beside me with her empty mug. It’s still brewing, so she sets her mug on the counter next to mine. I can tell she’s still thinking about Chester. “Getting old must be hard.” She looks at me. “What’s it like?”
I grumble, then hook my arm around her waist and pull her toward me.
It feels good to forget about everything hard in the world.
She feels like a good way to forget.
I lift her up off her feet. “I’m barely six years older than you, woman.”
She giggles, wrapping her legs around my waist. “Exactly. A whole child.”
I open my mouth to give her a piece of my mind, but my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I groan, hating that I’m going to have to let go of her to get it. “I wish I was in a line of work where I could ignore calls.”
“That’s okay,” she says. Then, before I can process what she’s doing, she reaches under her leg and slips her hand into my pocket. “Got it,” she says, handing it over.
Or at least, she aims it at me, but she doesn’t let go.
I spot it at the same time Sasha does. She’s got the phone facing her. It’s Cass calling, which should make me relieved, since it’s not Ford again.
But it’s not the name that has Sasha going silent. There on my lock screen is that photo she sent me of her and my niece.
Heat rushes up my neck, right into my cheeks.
“You saved it?”
I try to set her down, but she clings tight, still staring at the photo.
“Why not?” I say defensively. “It’s cute.”
“You don’t like babies.”
“I like that baby.”
“So that’s why you have our picture on your phone?”
My eyes meet hers, my mouth suddenly dry. The phone stops buzzing. One missed call from Cass, it says in a little box on the screen.
“Give me that,” I grumble, taking the phone away from her as I lower her onto her feet.
She’s smirking at me, and I want to kiss it right off her face.
But the coffee sounds stop and she looks toward the machine.
“Do you have any travel mugs?” she asks softly.
I turn around to the cupboard. But my hand’s almost shaking as I pull the mugs down.
Because I know now it’s impossible for me to keep my feelings out of what Sasha and I have.
It’s no longer possible to be around her and pretend I don’t care about her more than any other client.
That night when I came home from the city, I tried my very fucking best to stay away from her.
Then I folded like a fucking cheap lawn chair.
So a few minutes later, as we put on our shoes and walk along the forest path over to Chester’s place, coffee in hand, I watch the way Sasha’s hair dances across her back as she laughs. I let myself fall into the joy of her happy teasing.
I let myself feel. I let myself, for the first time without resistance, imagine a future with Sasha, as terrifying as having that kind of hope is.
Because getting wrapped up in Sasha is the only thing that mostly keeps my mind off the danger outside this town.
The danger I can’t help but feel is creeping ever closer to us.
The old stone house Chester inherited from his grandfather—a small two-bedroom bungalow—looks slightly forlorn in the overcast day.
“Chester?” I call as we cross the yard.
Only his chickens respond from the back, clucking excitedly.
While Sasha goes around to the front to knock on the door, I check out the back porch.
It’s not big, and because Sasha’s insisting on doing it with me, it’ll probably only take a couple of days.
We’ll need to go to Greenville to get lumber, though.
That’s next on Sasha’s list after the measurements we’re here to take now.
“I don’t think he’s home,” Sasha says when she comes back.
“He must be out hunting,” I say. But when I check around the side of the house where he parks his ancient Buick—the one I come over and run every time I’m back home to make sure it still works—I’m surprised to see it’s gone.
“He didn’t answer.”
The concern in Sasha’s voice has me turning around. Her hand comes to her mouth in that nervous gesture, but she lowers it again. Her nails are perfectly shaped, and somehow they’ve changed color since yesterday.
She sees me looking. “Like it? I’d probably do better at this kind of work with shorter nails, but these make me happy. And it’s either these or nails bitten down to the quick, which doesn’t go so well with all my nice clothes.”
She’s babbling. She does that when she’s nervous. “I’m doing that talking a lot thing, aren’t I?” She taps her nails to her lips again.
“I like it,” I say. But then again, I like everything about her.
Her face is etched with concern as she walks over to look into the darkened windows at the back of the house.
“He’s not here, Angel.”
I tell her how his car’s missing, and she relaxes slightly.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” She sees my eyebrow lift and says, “I mean generally. He seems more tired than usual. And last time I saw him, he was breathing funny.”
I frown. “What do you mean, funny?”
“It just seemed a little shallow.”
Worry threatens to poke itself into my mind, but I stare it down. “He’s slowed down a lot since I first met him,” I say.
Sasha does the finger thing, and I beckon her over to me, opening my arms.
She meets me in a hug that feels so good my own breathing goes shallow.
Why does she have to find someone new to worry about when she’s got enough to worry about herself?
“I’ll check in with him next time I see him,” I promise. “If he’s not feeling well, I’ll get the clinic to send someone up here to check on him. They’ve done it before.”
She tips her face up to me, locking her arms around my waist.
I stroke her hair back from her forehead.
Fuck, she’s so beautiful. When she looks all concerned like this, it makes me want to break my leg so she’ll shine all that affection and worry on me.
I kiss her forehead. “I bet he’ll feel better when he can sit out on his porch aiming his shotgun at squirrels again. ”
She laughs softly. “Does he ever actually catch any of them?”
“I don’t think he really wants to.”
Eventually we pull apart and Sasha goes over to her clipboard. I pull out my measuring tape and walk around to the side to get started.
Something feels off with my neighbor, but I don’t dwell on it. Chester may be a hermit, but he’s been known to enter town when things get desperate and I’m not around to do errand runs for him. Plus, he’s getting old. He’ll be eighty next year, if I recall correctly.
There are a lot of people getting on in my life. Chester. Dad. Lionel.
But there’s no use in dwelling on any of that right now. Like I always tell my sister Cass, a chronic overthinker, worrying never made anything better.
Instead, we take measurements, Sasha writing them down on her little notepad while I try not to look disrespectfully at her ass as she bends over with the measuring tape.
When we’re done, Chester’s still not home.