Chapter 18
Eighteen
LAYLA
I didn’t sleep well. That wasn’t news—I rarely did—but usually the reasons were the familiar ones.
The hypervigilance that had never fully unwired itself, the way my brain kept running threat assessments on every noise the house made, the dreams that weren’t quite nightmares but weren’t restful either.
This time a significant portion of the sleeplessness was Jace’s fault, and it had nothing to do with threat assessment.
My body was still lit up in a way that made the empty bed feel like a bad decision, and part of me—the part that had apparently lost its mind sometime between the gym and the shower—kept circling back to the fact that I could have asked him to stay.
He’d lingered in the doorway long enough to make the offer implicit.
But that way lay madness. Orgasms, but madness.
So I’d let him go, which was the right call, the sensible call, the call that preserved some functional boundary between what this was and what it wasn’t.
By five, I gave up on sleep entirely and pulled on my running gear in the dark.
The beach was cold and empty, the sky still the deep blue-black of pre-dawn, the sound running dark and flat to my left.
Koa settled into the pace beside me immediately, his big russet body moving in that effortless lope that could go forever.
Like martial arts, running was another way of putting my body to work so my brain could think without eating itself alive.
My feet found their rhythm on the hard packed sand along the waterline, and I let my mind off its leash to go wherever it needed to go.
I turned over pieces of the money trail, holding them up in my mind, twisting them this way and that, trying to find a pattern.
Mostly, all I found was more questions. This was one of the difficult parts of investigating cold cases.
A lot of the records simply didn’t exist anymore.
And by cold case standards, this wasn’t even that old.
But I had to believe there was something left to find.
Some way to prove who was behind Gwen’s kidnapping.
The sky began to lighten in the east, the horizon going from black to deep gray with the impending rise of the sun. Koa’s ears perked, and he slowed without my signal. I followed his lead and searched for what had drawn his attention. When I saw them, I stopped entirely.
The horses milled in the dune grass, perhaps fifty yards ahead.
Six of them, picking their way along the edge of the maritime forest in the early morning light.
The stallion was in the lead, black or dark gray, moving with the unhurried authority of an animal that had never once in its life needed to ask permission for anything.
The others followed, their breaths making small clouds in the cold air.
Something in my chest loosened, quietly and without announcement. Because their appearance felt like a gift. A beautiful welcome back from the island. An acknowledgment I was here. That maybe it wasn’t a mistake.
Slowly, so as not to spook them, I dug out my smallest camera, the one I could carry with me on a run, and lifted it to my eye, framing the scene. I fired off a dozen shots, then stood and watched them until they’d eased into the trees and disappeared.
When I started running again, my mind stayed quiet, and I reveled in the unusual silence. Just the easy movement of my body, my rhythmic breath, the pad of Koa’s paws as he kept pace beside me.
Only when I spotted lights ahead did I register where I was. Sutter House looked down from its imperious position on the highest point of the island. Also, the farthest north point of the island.
Eight miles. I hadn’t meant to go eight miles.
I caught movement and recognized a figure standing at the rail of the wraparound deck. I knew who it was before I was close enough to confirm it. Somehow recognizing the way he stood. I chose not to examine the corresponding lift in my chest too closely.
Jace raised a hand when he saw me coming. He drew me like a moth to the proverbial flame. I had approximately enough remaining self-awareness to notice that, but not enough to do anything about it.
“You’re out early,” he said when I reached the steps from the beach.
“Didn’t sleep much.”
“Same.” He looked at me in that steady, unhurried way he had. “Coffee?”
“If you’ve got some water or electrolytes I can get through first.”
He disappeared inside, and I kicked my shoes against the railing to knock off the worst of the sand.
Even in winter, it got into everything when you lived on an island.
I was nearly through my quick stretch routine when he returned with a bowl of water for Koa and a tall glass for me. I took it with gratitude.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Little cream, two sugars.”
With another quick nod, he went back inside, and I drained the glass, realizing I’d gotten far more dehydrated than I’d realized. Not like me. I was usually far more responsible.
Jace came back with two mugs and held one out. When my hands wrapped around one, he leaned in and laid his lips over mine. The kiss was unhurried and warm, with none of the urgency of the night before. Something in me hitched and sighed. Then he eased back, releasing the mug into my hands.
I stared at him a little dazed as he straightened with a lazy smile. “Hi.”
Yesterday had been heat and momentum and mutual acknowledgment of something that had been building since the beach.
This was different. This was a man who’d made coffee the way I took it and kissed me good morning like it was something he intended to keep doing, and I was…
not ready for that. My brain hadn’t budgeted for more than heat.
I didn’t know what to do with any of it, so I just said, “Hi.”
Someone cleared their throat.
Sawyer stood in the doorway in running clothes, Roy at his knee, with the expression of a man who had walked into something and was being extremely gracious about it.
“Mornin’.” He came out onto the porch. “Didn’t hear your car.”
“I didn’t drive.” I wrapped both hands tighter around the mug. “Ran up the beach. Sorry to disturb you.”
“Not at all.” He looked past me toward the waterline and back. “Wait. You ran all the way from town?”
I jerked my shoulders. There was no particular reason to explain that I kept myself in the kind of shape that could cover eight miles on a frosty morning without much trouble, or the reason I’d developed that habit in the first place, or what eventuality it was preparation for.
The dogs were in the midst of their greeting. Roy’s tail going at full speed, Koa dignified but receptive, his plume of a tail waving like a flag as the two of them circled each other with the ease of a second meeting between dogs who’d already decided to be friends.
The door opened again, and Willa came out in a robe, coffee in hand, stopping when she saw me.
Her eyes moved from me to Jace to the two mugs and back to Sawyer, and something passed between her and her husband in the wordless language of two people who had been paying attention to each other for years.
I watched it happen and tried to squash the sense of regret that I’d run eight miles directly into a situation I couldn’t walk back out of without being obvious.
I had not had enough coffee for this.
Apparently Sawyer had managed to communicate the kiss he’d witnessed to his wife, because Willa was now looking at Jace with an expression that contained an entire conversation, and Jace was drinking his coffee with the studied neutrality of a man declining to participate.
I fell back on the only safe ground available.
“I’ve been thinking about the money trail,” I said.
Everyone’s attention shifted obligingly.
“Given that the marina was sold a decade ago, unless Madden’s uncle kept records himself, we’re going to run into problems. Whoever prepared their taxes wouldn’t be obligated to keep records past seven years, and tax paperwork isn’t going to give us the operational detail we actually need.
What we need is whoever did the books. Whether that was a family member, an existing marina employee, or someone who came on after Miles was already under their thumb.
” I clutched the mug closer, as if it would steady me.
“The records are probably gone. But the person might still remember something useful.”
Willa’s expression shifted into something more focused. “I think it was Diane Crowell. She came to the ferry company a year or so after the marina changed hands. She didn’t care for the new owners. At least, that was the reason she gave for leaving.”
“She still works for you?”
“Yeah, she’s in our accounting department.”
“Might be worth having a conversation with her.” I looked into my mug. “She may not know that she knows something.”
“Finish your coffee,” Jace said, “and I’ll drive you back to town. Unless you’re keen to make it sixteen miles today.”
“I am absolutely not. Thank you.”