Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
The pencil hit the drafting table and skidded off the edge.
I didn't bother retrieving it.
Three days in a row, some neighbor's dog had started up just as I'd gotten into the zone on the Sadowski elevation drawings. Not a bark but a sustained howl, the kind that suggested either the owner never paid it any attention, or the dog hated architects—me in particular.
My house was everything I needed it to be, but I hadn't been able to work there the way I used to work in Nashville. The office there had been mine. Quiet. Wonderful.
I needed my own space here.
I'd been putting off Harvey's standing offer to set me up in a suite in his building.
It was generous. It was also not what I wanted.
I wanted something like I'd had before, a door I unlocked myself, a room that smelled like the coffee I'd made in my own home, not some sterile office, and no obligation to anyone else's schedule.
I promised myself I'd find something. After this was over.
My phone rang, giving me permission to stop attempting to draw. I was grateful.
"Yeah?"
"Good morning to you, too." Code Drakos. “Who pissed in your Wheaties?”
"Sorry." I leaned back in my chair. "Dog."
"Really? I was being sarcastic. When did you get a dog? Never mind." He paused. "I've got Renzo and Ford on."
"I'm here," Renzo said.
"Go ahead." Ford's voice had his flat pre-coffee tone. He wasn’t going to be any fun.
Code started talking and it was good news.
From an ATM camera along Route 9, then cross-referenced with a grocery store, they were able to get a license plate number for the SUV that had been at our construction site.
The SUV was close to the state line, but Nash had already put out an APB, so he was caught and brought back here.
"How cooperative was he?" I asked.
"Very." I could hear the satisfaction in Code's voice. "Once the word arson was mentioned. And potential manslaughter, given that Gus was in the trailer."
Apparently, the driver had rolled over on the whole arrangement, the contact in Sacramento, the payment structure, the specific instructions he'd been given. Code had connected him directly to a director at Pacific Rim's home office.
"That's enough?" Ford asked.
"More than enough for the sheriff. Nash is making calls." Code paused. "The director isn't the top of the chain, but he's high enough that whatever legal exposure he's looking at will have a significant cooling effect on Pacific Rim's appetite for this particular project."
My stomach unclenched. The heartburn I’d been having for days disappeared.
"Harvey," Renzo said.
"Yeah." I had my phone to my ear as I reached for my jacket.
We thanked Code and got off the line.
We found Harvey behind his big desk, that for the first time seemed to make him look small.
I let Renzo take the first pass. He knew the man much better than I did.
"I've been thinking about Missy," Harvey said, before Renzo could start. "And Tina."
His wife. His daughter.
"I know," Renzo said.
"If something happened to either of them." Harvey stopped.
"Code has the driver," Ford said. He wasn't gentle about it, but he wasn't wrong to cut to it. "The man they sent to torch the trailer. He's given up a director at Pacific Rim by name. Nash is involved. This is going to have a legal tail on it that Pacific Rim cannot afford to ignore."
Harvey turned from the window. "You're sure?"
"Code traced the plates through ATM feeds and traffic cameras all the way to the arrest," I said. "There's nothing circumstantial about it. The driver confirmed the Sacramento connection in detail."
He sat up, which made him look bigger.
"It's not over," he said.
"No," I agreed. "But the calculus changed. They came here to make the cost of staying too high. That calculation just reversed."
Harvey looked between the three of us like he wanted to be convinced but was still checking whether he was being handled.
"Think about the families in Jasper Creek," I said. "The ones who've been waiting two years for housing options that don't involve a forty-minute commute or half their take-home pay. You can keep going with it now."
A long silence.
Harvey picked up a crystal paperweight. "All right." He blew out a breath. "All right. I'm not selling."
Ford nodded. I let the relief settle quietly in my chest.
We didn't stay long after that.
The parking lot was warm for the time of day, like the early-May sun hadn't figured out yet that June and July were supposed to outdo it. The three of us gathered around the hood of my truck.
Renzo looked at me like he was going to enjoy saying entirely too much.
"So. It’s serious." he said.
"We’re not doing this," I said.
"You're already doing this," Renzo said. "You've been doing this since you moved here. I've just been waiting for you to catch up."
"She spent the night at his place. The whole night," Ford said to Renzo, as if I wasn't standing right there. "I drove past on my way to the site last week. Her Jeep was out front.”
Renzo turned back to me. "You're in love with her."
I could have deflected. There was a version of this conversation where I gave him something noncommittal and he let it go, because neither Renzo nor Ford were the type to push past a clear boundary.
I didn't feel like the noncommittal version.
"Yeah," I said.
Ford's mouth curved. Not a smirk, a genuinely warm smile.
Renzo pointed at me. "I knew it before you did."
"You absolutely did not know it before I did."
Both men sighed.
“Are we sure everything is done?” I asked. “With the director handled?”
Renzo nodded. "Millie doesn't go anywhere alone right now. But that’s normal for her anyway."
"Ruby's the same." Ford's jaw tightened slightly. "Told her it was temporary. She called it 'highly inconvenient and slightly romantic,' which means she's annoyed but she's doing it."
"I've made it clear at the daycare. Only me or Carrie Lancaster pick up James. They've got both our photos on file."
Both men nodded. “And Zoe?” Ford asked.
“I asked her to watch her back, and fucking lock her front door.”
“That’ll be a goddamned miracle,” Ford grimaced.
“She promised.”
“And being alone?” Renzo asked.
“She promised not to go out of her home or Gathered alone.”
“Good.” Renzo nodded.
We stood there for a moment.
"You've chosen well," Ford said to me. Not the teasing version. The straight version.
"I know that." I said it without hesitation, because I did.
Renzo crossed his arms and looked out toward the street. "She's smart. She doesn't rattle. And she lets you be yourself, which is not a small thing."
I thought about Zoe sitting on my couch with her shoes off, asking me what was actually wrong and waiting for a real answer. The way she'd said lean like it was a simple thing, like it was just physics.
"No," I agreed. "It's not a small thing."
I had no reason to drive past Gathered on my way to pick up James.
Carrie Lancaster lived north of town. Gathered was south. The direct route didn't come within four blocks of it.
I drove past anyway.
The shop was dark. The sign was flipped to CLOSED and the window display caught the last of the afternoon light, that pressed wildflower print from Miss Laughton that Zoe had rearranged last week catching a warm amber glow. The street in front was empty.
Good.
I didn't examine the relief that settled in my chest. I just took note of it and kept driving.
The Lancaster household was, as always, controlled chaos with a cheerful soundtrack. Carrie met me at the door with Cleo on her hip and what appeared to be a marker drawing on her left forearm. It looked like a cupid tattoo, if you squinted hard enough.
"He's in the kitchen," she said. "Austin's been teaching him a card game with completely made-up rules and they've both been winning, somehow. Coffee?"
"I'm good." I followed her through the living room, stepping over a backpack and around a stack of library books. "Thank you for this. Again."
"Adam." She gave me the look that only older sisters can give. "James is always welcome here. Go get your kid."
James was at the kitchen table across from Austin, a deck of cards between them, both boys looking quite serious.
James looked up. His face quickly brightened, and I felt that gut punch I always felt. Love.
"Dad." He held up his hand of cards. "I'm winning."
"Austin," I said, "are you letting him win?"
Austin, who was older by a few years, looked caught and said, "We're using different rules."
"Uh-huh."
“I’ve gotta go. Thanks for teaching me. I’m going to show Miss Zoe when she comes over next time.” James waved to Austin. I got him into his jacket, and James took approximately one hour to say goodbye to Carrie and the rest of the kids before I could get him out of the house.
The drive home was quiet for about fifteen seconds.
"Dad."
"Yeah, bud."
"When is Zoe coming for another sleepover?"
The center of my chest warmed. "I don't know yet."
James took this under serious consideration. "Because I want to show her something."
"What do you want to show her?"
"My Ankylosaurus. The one with the moving tail." He held up the toy took everywhere. "It has an armored skull and a club tail. Zoe didn't know Ankylosaurus was basically a living tank."
"Most people don't."
"She would want to know. She asks good questions."
I looked at the road ahead.
"She does," I agreed.
"And she's funny." A pause. "But not in a fake way. Sometimes Mrs. Hearly from back home was fake."
“Who was Mrs. Hearly?”
“She was the lady that Grandma Sharon kept saying she wanted you to be friends with. She came over sometimes. You met her once, and you were fake nice to her. It was funny.”
I racked my brain to remember who he was talking about, but I came up blank.
Instead, I thought about Zoe sitting at my kitchen table while James had been explaining the finer points of Cretaceous period taxonomy. He was right, she hadn’t been fake.
"No," I said. "Zoe isn’t fake."
James seemed satisfied with this assessment.
I drove home with the windows cracked and the radio off.
After James was asleep, I sat at the kitchen table with a beer I hadn't opened and my phone in my hand.
The elevation drawings were still where I'd left them, pencil still on the floor. I decided to pick it up tomorrow.
I called Renzo.
He picked up on the second ring. "Everything all right?"
"Yeah." I turned the beer bottle in my hand. "Question."
"Go ahead."
"Do you ever regret it? Settling here?"
Renzo paused as he gave the question real thought.
"No," he said. "But not because of Jasper Creek specifically.
" I could hear him shift, the low sound of a chair or a couch creaking on his end.
"Home isn't a place for me. It's Millie.
Wherever she is, that's where I want to be.
If she'd wanted to live in London, or Egypt, or bumfuck wherever, I'd have built my whole life there.
She wanted Jasper Creek, and now I can't imagine it differently. "
I was quiet for a moment.
"Adam." His voice was even. "Whatever question you're actually asking yourself, I think you already know the answer."
He was right, I probably did.
We talked for another few minutes, just shooting the shit.
After I hung up, I sat there in the quiet kitchen for a long time.
The Pacific Rim director's name was sitting in Code's files, connected to a paper trail that Nash Rivers was currently pulling apart. Harvey was holding. The project was intact.
It wasn't enough.
They could have burned a man alive. They had made a calculation about what decent people in a small town would and would not endure.
I was positive it didn't end with the director either.
The question was, would Pacific Rim cut their losses and move onto an easier target, or continue what they started.
The Ankylosaurus sat on the counter where James had left it.
Armored. Immovable. Completely unbothered by anything the world wanted to throw at it.
It was time to focus on what was really important.
My son in his racecar bed upstairs, and a snarky, beautiful woman who wanted me to lean on her.
A woman who’d told me she loved me.