Chapter 22
Rhett
I trail off my custom rendition of “American Pie” by Don McLean, having changed the part where I should be singing the words “American Pie” to Bailey Jones.
A hint of amusement flashes in her eyes from the other side of the fire pit. Between us, two pan-sized trout I caught earlier off the dock while she read beside me are cooking on the grill.
Cooking outside instead of being cooped up in the house feels good. any more than we have been. I’ll always prefer being outside to in, and I think the most recent email from the guy is fairly solid evidence that he hasn’t figured out where we are.
The cameras I’ve installed around the cabin will alert us if he — or anyone — is snooping around. This place is now finally feeling a bit like Fort Knox, and I’m starting to feel like I can breathe a little easier.
Bailey repeats the last line of the song back to me — a line about dying. “Not the best choice of lyrics, hmm?” she asks.
“Didn’t think that one through until it was coming out of my mouth,” I admit. “You pick the next.”
“Do you sing to all your buddies or am I the only one you torture like this?”
“Do you care to know? Or are you asking just to distract me from starting another song?”
“Both.” She grins.
We’ve set up two fold-out camp chairs in the sand with our backs to the cabins, facing the water.
The chairs were buried and locked in the shed, so by the time I found them and got the fire started, it was already later than I would have liked.
Now, it’s going to be dark before our food is done cooking out here over the open flame.
Earlier, Axel called to check in.
“You better not be up to anything other than sitting around being bored as hell,” he warned. The fact that Axel has no control in this situation might be slowly killing him.
“Did you hack the access to these exterior cameras?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“How else would you know that’s all we’ve been doing?” I answered, sarcastically.
He scoffed and told me not to get distracted by anything else while there, and just hearing the reminder sharpened my nerves. As if they needed it.
“I trust you more than anyone else, but I swear to God, you’re not there to break her heart any more than you were back in the day. You two are still off-limits,” he’d said.
I almost reminded him that Bailey’s a grown ass woman now, just like she’d reminded me when we got here. But he’s her brother. I get it. I’d be protective of Hollis, too, if she needed it.
I grab a stick to poke the flames so they stay hot, then turn to my off-limits travel partner.
“No, I’ve never created song lyrics about anyone else. Only you.” I hum the next line I could have sung, and grin at her.
She watches the flames lick up toward the metal grate, just under the blackened pan, and her green eyes dance in the light.
She’s gotten more of a tan the last few days, and I swear her hair has stolen those natural blonde highlights back from the sun, just like it used to.
It’s odd being back here with her. One moment, she’s handling a video call with her publisher with the grace of a determined, self-made businesswoman, and the next, she’s reeling in a trout from that rock we used to fish off, whooping and challenging me to reel in an even bigger one, dancing around like she’s just made a touchdown.
Both sides of her exist in plain sight here.
“I don’t know whether to feel annoyed by that or see it like it’s some sort of weird compliment that you’ve only chosen to torture me with your singing,” she says.
“Well, you’re welcome to make up a song about me, and I’ll let you know whether it feels like an honor or an insult,” I tell her, with a sharp grin. “But watch it. You get one try, and one try only.”
Bailey’s side-eye is interrupted when she jumps from a loud thud on the Jones’ patio behind us. She turns to look over her shoulder.
“Pine cone,” I tell her.
“Those damn pine cones have been giving me a heart attack since we got here,” she says, spinning back to the pit.
Both exterior lights are on, and the porch behind us is littered with pine cones from the overgrown branches hanging above. Each time one of them drops, my phone pings with a motion notification from the camera app. Annoying, but worth the added peace of mind.
“I know,” I tell her. “My phone has been pinging nonstop. Except for when the internet randomly goes down.” Which is admittedly more than I’d like.
“Could you chop that branch down next? Every time one falls, I feel like I’m going to keel over,” she tells me, pointing.
“Maybe.” I eye the tree and the long branch extending overhead.
Her smile grows, like the possibility of me chopping it up makes her happier than it should.
“High marks for animosity toward the tree?” I ask.
“It’s just . . . the sound of your ax distracted me from thinking about the stalker situation for, like, forty-five minutes straight. Best forty-five minutes I’ve had since we got here.”
I eye her. “The sound of the ax was the best forty-five minutes you’ve had here?”
“Yes, the sound,” she confirms, chewing at her lip.
Right.
I’d noticed her sitting on the dock while I chopped up the last branch. She doesn’t know that I kept going, making the pile of wood much bigger than it needed to be for our time here, just to keep her smiling like that a little longer.
We grin at each other until another pine cone drops and she twists in her chair.
“I wish this guy would show his face so we could put you out of your jumpy misery,” I tell her, watching one of the squirrels we’ve seen a few times scurry across the deck to start ripping the pine cone seeds open.
This one is missing its tail. We nicknamed the little guy Bob — like a bobcat — when he first appeared the other day.
He’s been inspecting every pine cone that falls on the deck as if it’s his job.
I toss another one over to Bob, who freezes, mid-chew, cheeks puffed out to the sides, then he scurries over to inspect it. Earlier today, I’d told Bailey that if we’re here long enough, I might make him a tiny bunker to store all his seeds in for the winter.
When I swivel back, Bailey’s mouth is open.
“How could you say that?” she asks.
“About wishing this guy would just show his face?”
She nods with a wild look in her eye, like I’m out of my damn mind. “That’s not the goal here, is it?”
“It’s easier to finish someone off when they’re standing right in front of you,” I tell her, tossing one of the pine cones into the fire. It crackles and bleeds sap as it burns.
“I don’t want you to finish anyone off.”
“Even this guy?”
Her mouth drops open again, and that wild look returns.
“Yes, Rhett, even this guy. I don’t want you to have to do that.”
“At some point, it’s going to boil down to whoever blinks first,” I tell her.
“Like a staring contest? Except whoever blinks gets killed?”
“Whoever can suffer the longest in silence wins once the other one makes a mistake and comes out of hiding. That’s what we’re doing here. Waiting for him to make a mistake that brings him out. Or, in other words, he needs to blink before we do.”
Bob scurries after another pine cone I toss his way, like a dog chasing its ball.
Thud.
She jumps again.
“It’s freaking annoying,” she mutters, leaning back against her chair. She’s mentioned a few times how on edge she’s felt since the break-in, but this situation is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, I’m afraid.
Now might be a good time to take her mind off things. The food needs a few more minutes to cook through anyway, and those pine cones are just going to keep on dropping.
“I picked up a copy of your book at the store in town earlier,” I tell her.
Her head snaps to mine, but it works. She doesn’t jump the next time a pine cone falls. Only Bob does before he takes off to grab it.
“Which one?” she asks.
Bailey had popped in for a chat with Savannah at her lodge when we’d run into town for a few new drill bits I needed for putting up the cameras. While they were talking, I ran into the little bookshop next door, having seen Bailey’s book in the window.
“Just the first one. They already sold out of your latest release. Said you’re a celebrity around here, so everyone in town already grabbed all the other copies of Heartbreak when they first came in.
I asked them to hold a copy for me when more arrive next week since I left mine at the party when we ran. ”
She blinks, like she’s trying to hide her panic.
“Have you read any of it yet?” she asks, slowly.
“A few pages.”
Her face scrunches into a ball. “Couldn’t handle more than that?”
I laugh lightly. “It was that one scene . . .” I trail off, raising a brow. Making a point.
She looks down at the fire with her eyes stretched wider than usual.
“Which . . . one scene?”
I dip my face and curl my brows. Like she can’t guess.
“That scene, Bailey.”
“Oh,” she says, nodding. “But if you’re only a few pages in, how the hell did you get to that scene? It’s in the middle of the book.”
“I was flipping through it so I could start making sense of whatever this guy might try to do with messages from your books, when some choice words jumped off the page somewhere around the middle.” It was a lovemaking scene, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to keep reading to learn what types of fantasies Bailey has inside that head of hers, or if I was more compelled to nail the book shut and never look again.
“You could have at least stuck a warning in there,” I tell her.
She laughs.
“Dear friends and family of Bailey Jones,” she begins, as if reciting a warning label. “Please be aware that at ninety-six pages in, a very handsome, fictitious hero will be removing the shirt and pants of the heroine in order to . . .” she pauses, eyeing me with a smirk.
“Well, don’t stop on my account,” I deadpan, pretending not to care.
She laughs, but shocks me when she goes on.