Chapter Nineteen
I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.
Winnie couldn’t get the voice out of her head as she crossed the threshold of her childhood home. The damn rubber seal round the door groaned loud enough to make her heart stop as the heavy wood closed behind her.
Winnie dropped her purse, recovered by the Cold Hollow Investigations team, onto the floral couch.
She’d been discharged from the hospital after two consecutive days of monitoring.
Seemed the hypothermia had abated, and the head would hadn’t even resulted in a concussion, but she’d been warned to return if confusion or headaches set in.
No matter how many years had gone by, the walls still smelled of light cigarette smoke in this room.
Her dad had quit the day her mom had announced they were having a baby, but thirty-six years later, she still caught whiffs.
Weirdly enough, she’d missed that smell.
It reminded her of him. And that pierced deep enough that she stormed into his office.
More now than before, when she’d believed he’d lived his full life and died peacefully in his sleep.
Not that his life—and the years they might’ve spent reconciling—had been stolen from him.
The death certificate was around here somewhere.
Winnie shifted papers across his desk—even more notes from the Lila Mercer case, more scribbled theories and copies of pointless documents that only seemed to distract from the original investigation.
If what the killer had said was true—that her father took an active role in compromising the case—then it was possible he’d send whatever investigators might take over the case in spirals just trying to get through a vast amount of crap. Excellent strategy.
She clutched a handful of papers and slammed them down onto the desk.
The bite of pain felt good. Something familiar to hold on to when everything else felt like too much to deal with right now.
She was good with pain. It made her feel like she was in control.
In the moment. Nothing else mattered when she hyperfocused on the pain, but it was only temporary.
Soon, all those feelings she’d been shoving to the back of her mind would come rushing back.
There was no stopping it, but she could put it off for a while and do this.
“It was right here.” Threading her hands through her hair, she tried to ignore the tangles and the smell of the lake, but she caught hints of body odor and other things she didn’t want to acknowledge.
Ugh. She really needed a shower, but she needed that stupid piece of paper if she wanted to find out the truth.
The medical examiner would’ve needed to state a cause of death on the final autopsy report.
The doorbell peeled from the mounted box right outside the office. Winnie retraced her steps, trying to contain the rat’s nest that’d become her hair, and wrenched the door open.
To Adrial standing on the other side.
“What are you doing here?” She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, not ready to face him yet. “You’re supposed to stay for observation in case your stitches get infected.”
“I had them prescribe me antibiotics.” He withdrew a small orange container from his jacket pocket and shook the bottle. “All set. Can I come in?”
I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.
She’d convinced her brain to stop playing his words on repeat while she’d searched for the death certificate, but now, they were back in full force.
Her hand shook as she stepped aside to let him pass.
“I’m not going to apologize for the mess this time.
I think you know what you’re getting yourself into at this point. ”
“More than you know.” Adrial scanned the living room just as he had the last time he’d set foot in this house. “You left before I had a chance to apologize.”
Swallowing the biting remark in an effort to strike first in their oncoming conversation, Winnie closed the door then bypassed him on her way to the kitchen.
Maybe she’d put the death certificate in the junk pile on the counter.
It couldn’t be anywhere else. She’d just gotten it in the mail before the mess with the Lila Mercer case started.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.
We’d both been through something traumatic, you more than anyone, and we said things we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. ”
He followed her to the arch leading into the kitchen, moving in that silent way of his that let her know he was taking in every inch of her.
From the mess of knots in her hair to her mud-and snow-caked boots.
Two BHPD officers she hadn’t recognized had taken her statement and offered their condolences in the minutes leading up to her discharge, but they hadn’t needed her clothing for evidence.
“Oh.” She moved onto the junk drawer, piling years of single screwdrivers, broken pencils, food menus and loose thumbtacks. It was all going in the garbage by the time she was done. “Well, thanks for clearing that up.”
I’m not going to let you pretend that we couldn’t happen again.
Pressure built under her skin the longer she felt his gaze on her. And she’d cornered herself in the kitchen with only one escape route. Through him. Damn it.
Winnie forced herself to take a deep breath.
It wasn’t like that kiss at the lake hadn’t altered her brain chemistry.
It had. It’d been good and enjoyable, and had made her feel things she certainly hadn’t felt from her husband in a good long while, because he was busy making his work wife feel those things instead of paying attention to her at home.
Okay. Maybe she really liked how that kiss had felt.
Maybe it really wasn’t just about the kiss but the man who’d kissed her.
“Winnie.” Holy hell. He’d walked up right behind her without warning, and she wanted to jump out of her skin for an entirely different reason than she was thinking about when Baxter had touched her.
She slammed a hand against her chest. “Don’t do that.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry with that quirk to his mouth. “Are you okay?”
“What?” She dropped her hand from her chest. Why did that question sound so…foreign? When was the last time anyone had bothered to ask? “Why are you asking me that?”
Adrial inhaled deeply enough that his shoulder rose, as though he was trying to get her to subconsciously follow his breathing patterns.
Holy crap, that was exactly what he was trying to do, wasn’t it?
Setting his free hand—the one not currently strapped into a sling—on her arm, he squeezed.
The breathing thing was something he used to do when her migraines hit.
What he’d done the other day, even. “Because you look like you’ve downed a case of energy drinks the way you’re darting from one counter to the other when I know you must be exhausted. ”
Well, at least he didn’t mention needing a shower.
Winnie found herself wanting to breathe with him, immediately noting how fast her heart was pounding.
“I’m looking for my father’s death certificate.
I got it in the mail the day I came back, and I was sure I left it on his desk, but now, I can’t find it. ”
His brow furrowed, and she fisted her hand to keep herself from smoothing them out. “You’re looking into his death.”
Not a question, and the fact he’d put that together so quickly told her he did know her better than most, as he’d claimed in the hospital.
That he could read her because he’d paid attention for so many years, because he’d cared enough to learn how her brain worked and tried to stay out of her way when her stubbornness kicked in.
And that… Nobody else had done that. Not her father, not Dan, not her friends.
She’d been too much when she talked for hours about why she’d wanted to be a therapist in Seattle or the hundreds of stories about her dad catching criminals.
She’d been too much when she’d asked her husband to stop working so many nights and then “overreacting” when she’d found out about the affair.
She’d been too much asking her friends to lunches and movie dates after the divorce and trying to cling to any semblance of human connection she had left.
But Adrial had never seen her as too much.
He’d been patient at her abrupt changes in subject, because if she didn’t sprout the next thought drilling through her head, she’d forget about it later.
And he’d guided her back to the original topic when she was ready.
He’d kept her fed with favorite snacks and Diet Coke when she was trying to focus on something for school or planning the wedding, and sometimes even took tasks off her plate altogether so she didn’t feel overwhelmed.
He’d defended her against snobbish bullies like Henry and Darby and ignored the comments from his parents begging him to find someone more marriage-worthy that would raise his status in the community.
He’d chosen her, time and time again. Even now, putting his own life at risk for the chance for her to get away.
It hadn’t worked, but he’d done it. He’d put her first, and she’d accused him of pretending she was worth more to him out of some misguided sense of guilt.
Winnie swallowed past the knot of emotion swelling in her throat. “Why would she lie about killing him?”
His hand slipped an inch, resting in the crook of her arm like he’d done it a thousand times before. “I don’t think she did, Red, but it will be easy enough to have the medical examiner’s office take a second look. There’s a dozen reasons why they might’ve gotten the cause of death wrong.”
Winnie nodded. In her head, she’d known that, but hearing it from him now broke one of those invisible glass shards she didn’t want to confront.
She shrugged as a new laceration cut through her.
“If she wasn’t lying about that, maybe she wasn’t lying about anything else, either.
” She didn’t want to think about it, but not thinking about it didn’t make it untrue.
“Maybe my dad stole that evidence because he… Because he had something to do with Lila Mercer’s death. ”
Adrial’s mouth softened. His thumb traced a heated path on the soft skin of her forearm. Constant. Dependable. Predictable. Just like him. “So what do you want to do, Red?”
“I want to prove she killed my dad.” She wouldn’t be facing this alone. She had him. “And then we’re going to search this house for that missing evidence.”