Chapter Eight
Franny did not go to the bakery the next day.
She had her pride, didn’t she? And since Royal had essentially caught her window peeping like some kind of stalker last night—even though she’d just happened to look over and see his lights on, and him pacing in the warm glow of them—she was staying far away from Royal Campbell.
So, she worked from bed. And by work she meant: updated her website, checked her social media properties, fooled around with a pitch that was not her book proposal, and did a quick internet search of Royal Campbell.
With only a tiny modicum of guilt about it.
She didn’t find much. The social media story posted by Bent County about his hiring. He also had no social media, no internet profile.
“What is with these people?” she muttered irritably. It was like they were all…hiding from something.
Which did give her a little trickle of an idea for her book. What if it wasn’t just one person hiding in Hope Town. One person with secrets. What if it was a town where people went to hide? And then one of the problems they were hiding from came knocking?
With the questions percolating, Franny actually pulled up her manuscript file and put a few sentences together. Then a few more.
When her stomach rumbled, she muttered about leaving her computer. She had a first chapter, a good idea of what would happen next, and she’d even incorporated some of her research about the history of Hope Town into her fictionalized version.
She ate lunch with some malice—it was hard to eat a packet of tuna without malice. She didn’t even have a bag of chips to balance out all this health.
Maybe she should go to the grocery store. But she could see the next scene play out in her head and she didn’t want to stop and disrupt her creative flow.
A cop with secrets. A jaded FBI agent. A town inexplicably populated by people who didn’t have pasts—that they’d let anyone else know about.
Since everything was clicking, after she finished eating she let herself keep writing in bed. The whole beginning took shape. Both main characters becoming real and three dimensional even if she didn’t know all their secrets yet.
Who would want to? Things would get boring. Finding the answers to the questions was a journey she didn’t want to end too quickly. But eventually the haze of creative clicking started to lift. Too many ideas. Too many different ways to go.
She blinked up, noted the sun was much lower in the sky than it had been. She glanced at the time. Nearly three. And she’d actually gotten some solid words in.
That called for a reward.
She had no such rewards in her kitchen, but downstairs there might be a cupcake if Lia hadn’t sold out. And since she had no expectation of running into Royal at this hour, she gave herself permission to head down to the bakery.
Everything was fine as long as she didn’t change her schedule in the hopes she might see someone.
Still, she didn’t head down in her pajamas and hair that was still a mess of bedhead. She got dressed and brushed her hair. “No makeup. You don’t usually wear makeup. Don’t be that girl.”
Besides, she wouldn’t see him in the bakery.
It was highly unlikely she’d run into him on the walk down her stairs and around the corner.
And even if she did, what did she honestly think was happening here?
She was a witness to a kidnapping. A woman who was still kidnapped. He was a cop investigating.
So.
She grabbed her purse and headed downstairs. There was only about twenty minutes to close, and there wasn’t anyone inside. Lia was already clearing out the bakery case.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a cupcake leftover?”
Lia nodded and plated it up. She handed Franny the plate. “I think your boyfriend missed you this morning,” Lia said.
Franny took the plate, trying to figure out what Lia was talking about. “Huh?” Confusion gave way to realization at the teasing glint in Lia’s eye. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”
Lia shrugged. “He asked about you.”
The little flutter she was trying to quelch did the opposite of quelch. “He did?” Before Lia could confirm, Franny waved it away in irritation with herself. “Oh, who cares. It’s not high school.”
“Have a lot of hot cops interested in you in high school, Franny?”
“I didn’t even have ugly criminals interested in me in high school, Lia.” Which made Lia laugh and Franny smile in spite of herself.
“Well, he had some news on the case,” Lia said, busying herself with cleaning out the baked goods case, but Franny could see the nervous energy in it.
“I guess they found the kidnapper’s car, but it was abandoned.
However, they’re hopeful that there didn’t seem to be any signs of blood or struggle.
It was in Idaho, so the Feds will start focusing their attention there. ”
“Idaho,” Franny echoed. Albennie had been taken across state lines—which explained federal involvement, she supposed. But hadn’t they been involved before they knew that? Or had they known that before?
“But you know…” Lia stopped what she was doing, looked at Franny over the bakery case.
“Deputy Campbell comes in here and tells me the Feds are gone, then a little while later, this lady comes in. Pretends it’s casual, but it felt…
purposeful. I’d have pegged her for a cop, but she’s not Bent County. I’m not sure what she is.”
“Did you tell Royal?”
“First-name basis now?” Lia asked, still teasing, but she must have noticed Franny’s discomfort with it.
Because here they were talking about Idaho and abandoned cars and still no signs of Albennie, and Franny didn’t think laughing or rolling her eyes about Royal was the right thing to do in this moment.
Lia sighed. “Look, I’ve…been through my share of stuff. Danger and worry, growing up. You learn to…accept what is. Shove down all the fear, and if you deal in a little humor to distract yourself then, well, I don’t know if it’s healthy or not, but it works.”
Franny nodded, but she couldn’t quite buy in. Not right now. “I think you should tell him.”
Lia bit her bottom lip. “I was thinking about telling Zach.”
“You…trust Mr. Simmons?”
Lia eyed her in that way that was becoming very common. Like everyone knew what was going on but her. “I do,” Lia said after a while, but she was very serious about it.
“Then maybe you should tell both of them.”
Lia nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re right. Can’t hurt. What can hurt?”
For a moment, just a flash, Franny saw a kind of fear and desperation in Lia’s expression that Franny had never seen there before. But quickly, Lia blinked it away.
“I’ll tell Deputy Campbell about the lady next time I see him. And Zach. Hell, I’ll tell the sheriff if I see him. Whatever might help. But listen, I get through each day with the knowledge that Albennie’s tough. She’s had to be. She’s going to get through this. I have faith.”
But Franny knew what it sounded like when you were trying to convince yourself of something that wasn’t necessarily true. Still, she wasn’t about to disagree. “Me too.”
ROYAL DIDN’T ALLOW himself to develop a routine, and this morning at the bakery had been a good reminder he shouldn’t.
He still didn’t know what had possessed him to ask the bakery manager about Franny. Why should it matter if Franny Perkins was there or not? It didn’t. He was just observing.
So after grabbing his coffee, instead of doing a walking route around the town, he got in his cruiser and took a drive around the outskirts of Hope Town.
He still hadn’t figured out if the woman who’d been walking around yesterday was a Fed, and he didn’t know what kind of car she was driving, but he kept an eye out.
If the Feds were gone, she probably wasn’t here anymore, but he wanted to be sure. And he couldn’t help but think about Franny’s point yesterday. The Feds hadn’t asked about Albennie’s past.
Not that it mattered. Everyone he’d questioned that morning had basically said they didn’t know about Albennie Ward’s past. Not where she’d moved to Hope Town from, if she had family nearby or not.
They’d never seen family or a boyfriend.
She was a woman who’d appeared one day and mostly kept to herself.
He thought maybe Lia Blair knew more and wasn’t saying, along with the bookstore owner he’d talked to, but he kind of wondered if they were just keeping their friend’s secrets—not trying to impede an investigation.
He kept expecting the sheriff to pull him.
There was a time clock ticking on this—and since the Feds had announced they’d found the getaway car in Idaho, Royal just didn’t see how much longer Sheriff Buckley could justify him being here.
Royal kept chewing over that story from the Feds. It struck him as all wrong. If a guy was going to leave a car behind—he sure as hell wouldn’t leave it anywhere near where he was headed.
Royal should know. He’d left a few cars behind in his day.
After a morning of driving around and seeing a fat lot of nothing except what he always saw, he parked behind his building and got out for his foot patrol. Nothing, nothing and more nothing. Not even the odd stranger.
But the business owners he’d introduced himself to the first day tended to wave or nod or greet him.
Sometimes they introduced him to one of their staff.
He was considering going to the bookstore and seeing if they had any of Franny’s books.
What would be the harm in reading one, getting a sense of what she did?
But he heard his voice being called before he could make a move to walk toward the bookstore.
He glanced over his shoulder to find the woman who was dominating way too much of his thoughts lately—considering he was on special assignment and he barely knew her.
But she bustled across the street and up the sidewalk. He met her halfway. She didn’t look upset but determined. “Everything okay?”