Chapter 19
Bobby ‘Bit’ Nowacki
Bit was standing in front of the open refrigerator when his phone buzzed against the counter.
A plate with the last slice of pepperoni pizza from the box Sylvie had brought back from town sat on the counter beside him, and he smiled at the sight of Zoey’s name on the display.
The kitchen was warm despite the evening hour, the old appliances radiating heat that the house’s stone walls held onto long after the sun had shifted away from the windows.
“Hey, there.”
“Please tell me you’re coming home this weekend.”
“I honestly don’t know what day we’re headed back to D.C.
” Bit reached into the fridge for a soda.
The shelves were stocked with the groceries Porter had bought on his previous run into town, and the reminder hit Bit harder than he expected.
He pushed the sudden unease aside. “It definitely won’t be in time for the garage sales on Sunday, though. I’m sorry.”
The silence on the other end stretched into the kind of pause that meant Zoey was recalculating her weekend.
He hated that type of quiet. It was the kind that meant she wasn’t angry yet, but she was building a case, and by the time she finished constructing it, he’d be apologizing for things he hadn’t even done.
Men never won when women went quiet.
It was a universal truth that transcended culture, geography, and the fact that Bit could hack a federal database but still couldn’t figure out the right thing to say when his girlfriend stopped talking.
To buy himself some time, he listened in on Brook and Theo’s conversation drifting in from the dining room.
Their voices were muffled by the hallway but distinct enough to catch fragments.
The federal crash investigator was leaning toward an accident. Worn brake lines, a sharp curve, no evidence of a second vehicle. Porter Voss had died because his truck was old and the road was unforgiving, not because someone had run him off the pavement.
“Bit, I can’t spend an entire day with my mother without you. You know what she’s like. Last time, she reorganized the spice rack and told me my curtains were depressing.”
“Your curtains are a little depressing.”
“That is not the point.”
Bit grinned now that Zoey was complaining.
Complaining, he could work with. Complaining meant the silent phase was over, and he was back on solid ground.
He was about to offer a counterargument involving her mother’s lemon bars, which were genuinely exceptional and almost worth the unsolicited interior design critiques, when he caught movement at the far end of the kitchen.
He turned to find Gwenyth standing in the second doorway that led to the back end of the house.
His phone slipped from his fingers and clattered against the tile floor.
She stood motionless, both hands hanging at her sides, the gray cardigan draped over her thin frame like a shroud.
Her hair fell straight and uncombed past her shoulders, and she was staring directly at him with an expression that offered nothing.
The fluorescent light above the stove caught the sharp angles of her face, and her bare feet were pale against the dark threshold.
No greeting.
No movement.
“Bit? Bit, are you there?”
He slowly crouched and scooped up the phone, not taking his gaze off Gwenyth. He couldn’t seem to bring his heart rate down. How was it that none of the others found this woman terrifying?
“Zoey,” Bit managed to say after putting the phone back against his ear. “Um, I’ll call you back.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yep. Everything’s great. Hunky-dory.”
He ended the call before she could ask a follow-up question and slid the phone into his back pocket.
He gradually closed the refrigerator door, and the seal made a soft sucking sound as it shut, loud enough in the quiet kitchen to make him flinch.
Gwenyth was still standing in the same spot.
She hadn’t moved an inch, and the kitchen was suddenly considerably smaller than it had been thirty seconds ago.
Bit cleared his throat.
Brook had managed to have entire conversations with Gwenyth on the staircase and in her bedroom.
Sylvie had observed her from the dining room without incident.
Even Theo had been in the same foyer with Gwenyth during the Dale confrontation.
If the rest of the team could interact with this woman without breaking a sweat, then so could he.
He did his best to smile.
“I didn’t see you there.”
Gwenyth said nothing.
Bit gestured toward the second pizza box on the counter, the one with three remaining slices of cheese that no one had claimed. The lid was still open, the grease stains on the cardboard catching the overhead light.
“Feel free to have some. There’s plenty.”
Again, nothing but silence.
He’d take Zoey’s type of silence any day.
His palms suddenly became damp, and he wiped them on his shirt.
The kitchen clock ticked from the wall across the room, each second landing heavier than it had any right to.
The refrigerator hummed behind him with the low, persistent drone of an appliance that had been running since before he was born.
And somewhere behind him, down the hall and in the dining room, Brook said something to Theo that Bit couldn’t make out, and he found himself wishing very badly that she would say it louder.
Then Gwenyth tilted her head.
The movement was sudden, the kind of sharp, birdlike motion that preceded absolutely nothing good in Bit’s experience. He startled and took a full step backward, his hip catching the edge of the counter hard enough to rattle the dish rack in the sink.
“I, uh, really need to get back to work,” Bit muttered, reaching for his plate. His fingers closed around the rim, and he took a step toward the hallway that led to the dining room.
“Do you have my medication?”
Bit stopped. Gwenyth’s voice was flat and carried the same detached quality he’d heard the first time she’d spoken to him, when she’d inquired the same question in the foyer days ago.
“No, ma’am. I don’t.”
“Owen usually gives it to you.”
“I haven’t met Owen. I mean, I don’t know him personally.”
Gwenyth’s brow creased, and for the first time since she’d materialized in the doorway, her expression changed. The blankness gave way to something closer to confusion.
“I need my medication,” Gwenyth said with persistence. “Otherwise…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
The implication hung in the air between them, trailing off into a silence that Bit’s imagination was more than happy to fill. Otherwise, what?
Otherwise, she’d have some type of episode?
Otherwise, she’d wander the hallways at night?
Otherwise, the woman standing four feet away from him in a gray cardigan would do something that the medication was supposed to prevent?
He was beginning to think that Owen Pruitt had lied to Sylvie during their chat today. Vitamins? Bit was relatively certain the man was giving this woman more than mere supplements, especially given her insistence that she needed more.
Vitamins didn’t produce this kind of dependency.
Gwenyth abruptly stepped forward, and Bit went absolutely still.
She closed the distance between them with a slow, shuffling gait, her bare feet whispering against the tile. Once she was within arm’s length, she leisurely reached out and took his plate.
She actually took his plate.
Gwenyth lifted it from his hands with the casual authority of someone who had decided the conversation was over, and the pizza was hers.
She turned and shuffled out of the kitchen through the back hallway without another word.
The sound of her footsteps faded until there was nothing left but the hum of the refrigerator and the faint smell of pepperoni lingering in the air.
Bit stood in the empty kitchen, his fingers still hovering in the air where his plate had been, staring at the doorway through which Gwenyth Ellingham had just disappeared with his dinner.
He tilted his head and stared at the ceiling.
Why?
Why did this stuff only happen to him?