Chapter 19
Shane keeps his voice even. I know a man who thinks he’s being heard will tell you more than he intends. Avery is the one who decides if he gets that, and I need her to let him talk.
She didn't ask me to move but I'm now two feet to Avery's left. She noticed and hasn't said anything.
Pancake bumps into my heel, going still the way she does when she’s waiting on my next move. She reads a room better than most people I’ve worked with.
"I didn't know how big it was," Shane says, staying near the door. "Not an excuse. Just what it looked like from where I was coming from. And I want you to know that I didn't set the fire."
"I know," she says, easy and certain, like she’s giving him exactly what he needs to keep talking.
Pancake shifts her weight and sits down on my foot.
"I've been working in your store for three years," Shane says. "The mapping, the access, the questions I was asking. I know what that looks like."
Avery’s fingers tighten around the leash. She glances down at her hand, then sets it on the counter.
He doesn’t flinch. "But the fire wasn’t my call. Someone moved on that timeline without me and I didn’t know it happened until they released me on bail." He looks down, then back to Avery. "I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t do much from where you’re standing."
Avery studies him a beat. "Marvin Stein is your uncle."
"How did you—" Shane’s eyes shift, quick, then settle back on her. The practiced part slips for a second before he catches it. "You already know that," he says.
"I do," she says. "I’d really love to hear how you accidentally wandered into organized corruption in the first place."
He exhales once, deciding how far back to start.
"I used to work at Kellerman Industries as a warehouseman.
I did inventory, opens and closes, deliveries.
" He swallows. "When the owner started having problems, code issues, contractors walking, liens stacking up, I said my uncle might know people who could help. Kellerman shut that down. Said he wasn’t interested. "
I watch his hands, waiting for something to change, but I’m aware of Avery too, close enough beside me that her shoulder nearly brushes my arm every time she shifts her weight and still not moving away.
"I went to my uncle anyway." His hands stay open at his sides. "Then the place went up in flames and my uncle called me in and told me how it was going to look. Disgruntled employee. Access. Motive if anyone wanted one. He said investigators would land there if they needed a name."
He lets that sit. "He also said he could make sure they didn’t."
Avery doesn’t move.
"After that it wasn’t a favor," Shane says. "It was an arrangement. For years he didn’t ask much of me. Just passing letters or dropping documents at the county recorder."
He takes a breath. "There's going to be a deposition.
My attorney says they'll want a statement about what I can corroborate about my uncle's plans.
I'm cooperating. But some of it touches on you, your store, our conversations that I didn't come into honestly.
I wanted you to hear that from me before you heard it from someone who reads you a summary. "
He looks down for a second. "I know you're probably wondering how much of any of it was real.
Working here. Talking books with customers.
None of that was a job. Those were still some of the best parts of my week.
" His jaw tightens. "I don't know if that matters anymore, but I feel like you should hear it. "
He pauses again, and this is the part that changes the room. "I'm hoping for a character reference. I'm not asking you to lie for me or say anything you don't believe. I just thought if you were willing, it might help. You know me."
There it is.
Avery shifts her weight, barely a half-inch, and I know what it means. She doesn’t answer right away. She won’t. She doesn’t do reflex, she does real, and that takes a second.
I don’t give her the second, and I know as I do it that speaking for her is a line I don’t cross without consequence.
"She's not going to do that."
Shane looks at me for the first time since he walked in.
"You came into her store and built it back with her and the whole time you were participating from the other side. Asking her to speak on your behalf is putting the cost of what you did back on her, and she's already carried enough of this."
Avery looks at me then, quick and unreadable, like the force of it caught her off guard before she smooths her expression back into place.
I keep my voice level. "You need to leave."
Shane holds my eye for a moment, then looks at Avery, and whatever he finds there tells him it's time to go.
He nods and steps back toward the door. "I really am sorry," he says, to her, not to me.
"Goodbye, Shane," she says. "And for the record, this is officially my worst employee exit interview."
He stops with his hand still on the handle and turns back. "Please think about what I said."
Then he leaves.
The door closes and the glass settles in the frame.
I move to the window and check the street. He's walking toward the lot at a normal pace, hands in his pockets. I watch until his car rounds the corner.
Pancake pads over and puts her nose against the glass, fogs it, then sneezes on it and looks up at me like I've done something to cause this.
“She really believes customer service applies to emotional crises,” Avery mutters.
“Honestly?” I say. “She’s not wrong.”
Something in what Shane said doesn’t sit right. Not a lie. A gap. He put himself outside the fire, said he didn't set it. But I’ve had him inside it.
Avery's still standing looking at the door.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Emotionally? No," she says. "Structurally? Also no."
Pancake walks across the floor toward the brew bar and sits in front of the cabinet where her treats are kept. She looks back at us with the particular expression of a dog who has waited a very reasonable amount of time and would like this acknowledged.
Avery looks at her for another moment, then crosses to the cabinet and opens it, which is exactly what Pancake was waiting for. Pancake takes the treat with considerable dignity and retires to her spot near the window.
Avery exhales, not sharp or dramatic, just a steady release that tells me she’s already moved past the part where most people would still be reacting. "He practiced what he was going to say. The apology, not coming into the store past the threshold. The order he said it all in."
I'd spent the last ten minutes listening for lies while Avery had been listening for intent.
"That’s unsettlingly observant," I say.
She looks at me. "I own a bookstore. Pattern recognition is basically my entire personality." She turns, leans back against the counter, arms crossing loosely. "He wanted me to be his friend and make me believe something I know can't be the truth."
"I agree, but I also think it wasn’t all fake either."
"I honestly don't know what's the truth and what's a lie anymore."
"Did you mean it when you said you knew he didn’t set the fire?" I’m watching her closely enough now that I catch the way her fingers press once against the edge of the counter before she answers.
She thinks for a second. "No. I just needed him to trust me back. But questioning how much he knew isn’t the same thing as thinking he’s innocent."
"That was manipulative," I say.
She looks at me without blinking. "I prefer strategically persuasive."
Pancake crunches through her treat like she’s got no stake in any of this.
Avery pushes off the counter and walks past me, heading for the front again. She doesn’t reach for the door this time. She stops a foot short of it and looks at the lock, like she’s replaying the last hour in her head and trying to find the exact moment it shifted.
“Callum,” she says.
Something in her voice shifts, and I realize at the same time she does that whatever changed tonight didn’t leave with him.
My first thought is that Shane came back.
I stop assuming we’re alone.