Chapter 24 Keys #2
“Sounds like you get it.”
The kid opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.
“What’s on your mind?” Shane prodded.
“Is that why Amy moved out on Mick? Because he yelled at her?”
“It was the final straw.” Shane tried to mask how relieved he was about her decision.
“It’s our job as men to protect our women and treat them right.
That’s something I learned from my dad, and I’ve never forgotten it.
” What Shane didn’t say was that he’d learned that lesson while watching his father mistreat his mother.
Shane had grown up knowing how not to act, vowing to never be like his dad.
That’s why he would never become a state trooper, and why—unlike his father—he followed the letter of the law.
“So circling back to the keys for one last question. You don’t have one. Anytime Amy loaned you one, you gave it right back. Did you ever see her pass a key to someone else, especially someone you didn’t know? Maybe someone came to the back door, and she slipped out or—”
Cade’s gaze shot to somewhere behind Shane. A strangled gasp sounded. Shane didn’t have to turn to know who had stumbled onto their conversation. His heart sank.
“I was just … I needed to use the ladies room,” Amy apologized.
Shane turned and gestured for her to move past them. “No problem. Cade and I were done here.” He gave Cade a pointed look. “Assuming Cade understood everything we discussed.”
Cade nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir. I did.”
Shane stood alone in the empty hallway after Cade left, leaning against the wall, waiting for Amy to emerge. When she did, he stood tall. “How much of that did you hear?”
She looked at him for a long moment, her features unreadable. “Enough to know you were passing along words of wisdom that you learned from your father.” A stilted beat passed.
“And?”
Her placid expression morphed into something akin to a thundercloud. “And enough to know you were drilling him about my keys. Tell me, Deputy, do you suspect me of sabotaging my own shop?”
He took a step back. “Sabotage how?”
“Like I’ve been moving things around and acting like someone else is doing it?”
“Are you?”
Her jaw dropped. When she spoke, her voice quaked with anger. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not. There’s shit going on, and your store seems to be at the center of it.” Fuck, he’d said too much.
Her eyes flew wide. “What shit? What’s it at the center of?”
He kept his face impassive. “You tell me.” How much do you know about what’s going on at your store, Amy? How deep are you in this thing, whatever it is?
Her face crumpled. “Shane, tell me! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was involved in a high-speed chase yesterday while you were at work, and—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried. “You said you had to take care of something at your office. Was that the reason? What aren’t you saying?”
He met her emotional outcry with a wall of indifference. “I didn’t say anything because you were in the middle of a messy breakup and a move, but that’s not the point. I found a map stuffed behind your bookshelf, Amy.”
She froze. “What kind of map? When?” Recognition winked on, and her fury flared. “Why were you going through my office?”
He dragged his hand over his jaw. “I found it by accident.”
“How do you accidentally find something behind a bookshelf? Is this why you volunteered to help me at my café?” The pitch of her voice climbed. “Was that some flimsy excuse so you could search through my stuff? You were pretending to help me, but you were really helping yourself!”
Damn it, this was not going well. Then again, he hadn’t planned on having this discussion with her. Not here, not now. He was blowing it. Big-time. His resolve wavered.
She stabbed a finger in his direction. “Is this because someone who threw drugs from their car happened to be in my parking lot?”
“There was also a text from Micky that didn’t make sense.” Her face contorted as though it was a question mark, and he went on to explain. “It said ‘Keep your mouth shut or you will blow this.’ What did he want you to keep your mouth shut about?”
Her mouth opened and closed, and thoughts—or were those excuses she was grasping for?—seemed to stream behind her eyes. Her expression shifted into one of regret. “He didn’t want me to tell you about Benny.”
Oh fuck. “Why not?”
Her demeanor transformed once more. “I don’t know why, Shane. Micky is … Micky.” Now she poked her finger against her chest. “So based on one text that made no sense and someone in my parking lot, you jumped to the conclusion that I’m somehow involved in whatever’s going on?”
He should have shut up, pulled her into his arms, and asked her to forgive him for doubting her. But he did doubt her, and the lawman in him couldn’t stop sniffing for the truth. He couldn’t turn it off. In a calm voice, he said, “What do you know about the map?”
“Shouldn’t I be in some dark, grubby room under bright lights for this interrogation?
” She cinched her arms across her chest, her jaw tight.
“I don’t know anything about a map. You want to give me some clues here?
What happened in this chase of yours? Sounds like you’re tying those together somehow. ”
“The driver threw a suspicious packet from the vehicle I was pursuing. I broke off the chase and went back to find whatever they threw out, but when I got there, it was gone. I marked the spot. That precise spot was drawn on the map in your office.” His tone was flat, just like the report he’d filed.
“The MO was similar to the vehicle that was seen in your parking lot.”
She gaped at him. Shock shaped her features. Neither of them moved, and suffocating silence hung like a heavy, wet curtain between them.
A sheen glossed her eyes, and she swallowed.
“What I do know,” she began quietly, “is that you suspect me of being some kind of criminal, and I don’t understand why.
You’ve known me for six years. Six years, Shane.
If you arrest me, do you get some kind of feather in your cap that’ll open doors so you can get that amazing job in some other county? Is that what this is about?”
The hurt on her face gutted him, shook him to the core. “No, Amy. It’s not like that. I was sworn to do a job here, and I’m doing it.” Trying to anyway.
Her chin inched up defiantly. “Well, that’s a convenient excuse to fall back on.”
A snarl long trapped beneath his sternum ripped loose with a violent snap.
He managed to keep his voice even, despite his rioting emotions.
“My dad was sworn to do a job too, but he used it for gain. He took an oath, but it didn’t mean squat.
He was a crooked cop, Amy. He took bribes, let people walk for the right price.
It was mostly small, petty shit like speeding tickets and possession and shoplifting, but he did it, and it was wrong.
He smashed his own moral compass for a few bucks, and he got busted for it.
He lost his job, his pension, his friends, his reputation.
Everything. He liked to say it was a ‘gray area,’ but it was as black-and-white as ink on a page. Broke my mom’s heart.”
This was why Shane never talked about this father. It was too gut-wrenching. But hadn’t she wanted to know the story? Well, he was giving her the whole ugly truth.
He was so caught up in his own storm that he gave up trying to read her.
His jaw muscles jumped. “He’d always been a drinker, but now he practically swam in the stuff, lying around all day while Mom worked her ass off to keep money coming in so she could feed us kids.
One day, she came home to him passed out on the couch, and she’d had enough.
They had a huge fight. The next day, Dad took off while she was at work.
She came home to a note that said he was done putting his family through hell.
And that was it. He was in the wind. We never saw him, never heard from him again.
Vanished, like we didn’t mean shit to him. ”
Shane’s heart jackhammered inside his rib cage.
He blew out a lung-clearing breath. “I can’t change who I am.
I don’t want to change who I am. But I want you to understand what’s at stake for me here.
I have a father to live down. I’m from a bloodline of corrupt O’Brien lawmen, and I’ve been clawing to change that since the day I took my oath.
That means that as a sworn deputy, I should have doubts when things don’t line up the way they’re supposed to.
” It doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart and that this isn’t shredding me.
More beats ticked by as he waited for her to respond. His pulse rate had settled since vomiting out the venom that was his complicated bond with his father.
She raised her hand and made a circle with her fingers and thumb.
“You gave me zero benefit of the doubt. Instead, you used me so you could search my office and try to pin something on me.” She let out a mirthless laugh and swiped at her eyes.
He hadn’t noticed the tears until now. “But that’s what I get for trusting another man. I thought you were different.”
He despised being lumped into the same category as Micky. He wasn’t perfect, but he sure as shit didn’t belong there.
A woman entered the hallway and brushed past them with an “Excuse me.”
When she closed the restroom door behind her, Shane took a step closer to Amy and lowered his voice.
“Can we go somewhere and talk about this?” He wasn’t going to beg, but he needed to try to make this right.
He needed to prove she had pegged him all wrong, despite what the situation might look like on her side of the lens.
She looked away, her shoulders sagging. She looked so … small, so vulnerable. He’d done that to her.
The impasse stretched.
“Amy, I want to explain. I need to explain.”
She didn’t respond.
“Amy, I love you,” he blurted out.
She looked up and gave him a suspicious glare.
Fuck it. He begged.
“Amy, please. Just give me a chance. Let’s go to your place, my place, the rec center parking lot. I don’t care where. I just want to talk to you somewhere private.” How he was going to untwist it all, though, he had no clue. The reality hadn’t changed. All he knew was he couldn’t lose her.
She stared at him as if she had more barbs to hurl his way but kept them locked behind a mask of indignation.
“Please,” he repeated.
A shuddering breath moved through her entire frame. “My place is still a mess, so it’ll have to be yours. I need to stop by the coffee shop first.”
He wanted to break into a backflip. “I’ll go with you.” He didn’t want to let her out of his sight for fear she’d change her mind.
“No, it’s fine. I was expecting a delivery that hadn’t come when I closed. The guy texted that he dropped it in back a short while ago, and I just need to swing by and grab it so it doesn’t go missing.” She stepped past him and headed for the bar.
A delivery? Red flags snapped at attention in his head, and he hated that they were there. He straightened and fell in behind her. “I’ll go with you anyway.”
She stood inside the tavern now and turned, a frown furrowing her forehead. “Shane—”
“Hey, O’Brien!” Noah yelled from behind the bar.
Annoyed, Shane called back. “What do you want, Hunnicutt?”
“You need to come here and settle something.” Noah pointed at Gunderson, who was grinning from his barstool.
“Go,” Amy hissed. “By the time you’re done, I’ll be done too, and we’ll meet up behind your apartment.”
The victory he’d won had been small but hard-won, and he decided not to push his luck. “If you get there before I do, wait for me in your car. And keep your doors locked.”
She walked away without a word.
Reluctance lay like an anchor in his gut, but he watched her go anyway.
Amy’s insides twisted like a springtime tornado tearing across the plains.
Why hadn’t Shane talked to her before jumping to conclusions?
How could he think she would take part in anything illicit?
Dealing drugs was morally reprehensible.
Did he really believe—even for a second—that she could be involved in something that heinous?
The thought made her sick. And wasn’t she the victim here?
Someone was using her shop, yet Shane was treating her like the criminal.
Didn’t he know her at all? Maybe that was at the heart of it.
He did know her, and because she always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, he’d used it to his advantage.
The betrayal cut bone-deep. They hadn’t even been together for two nights, yet it hurt so much worse than anything Micky had done because it was Shane—a man she had always trusted, always looked up to, always believed in.
Well, she would let him say what he wanted to say—maybe he could make her understand his side, even a sliver of it—but after that, she was done. He could move on to his fancy law enforcement job in some other county, and she wouldn’t even flinch when he walked out the door.
Good riddance.
Except she wouldn’t get to see him stroll into her shop every day, his broad smile lighting up his handsome face.
Her heart literally ached, as though someone had taken an ax to it and split it like a piece of firewood.
As she pulled into the parking lot behind her store, these frenzied thoughts streaked through her brain, like atoms in a supercharger. She couldn’t even remember climbing into her Explorer and driving here.
The dark, quiet lot jolted her back to reality. Someone, or possibly lots of someones, had been coming and going in her store. What if they were here now? But there were no vehicles in the lot, and none on the nearby street. The area was deserted.
She nosed her Explorer close to the back door and switched on the high beams, the static electricity in her veins making her jumpy.
The headlights washed over the door and wall, revealing the box she expected.
It was placed against the door where her vendor told her it would be, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank Gaia for small mercies.
Leaving her engine running, she hopped out to retrieve the box. She was mid-stoop, gathering it up, when the back door flew open. Startled, she jumped back, and the box flew from her grasp.
“Oh my God, you scared me! What are you doing here?” It occurred to her that Micky was coming out of her store.
“Wait. What are you doing inside my store?” Alarms blared in her head, but it took a second for her brain to communicate the warning to her feet.
Skirting the Explorer’s hood, she bolted for the driver’s door at the same instant she whipped her phone from her back pocket.
She was too late.