Chapter 16 Isobel #2
A tingling dread stole up Isobel’s spine.
Her sister was wild in a way few understood.
That night eight years ago had changed her too.
Eva refused to speak of it, but she revealed the loss in the violence of her flowers.
Her magic used to be gentle. Now it trembled, ripping buds into bloom instead of coaxing them.
“Eva’s emotions run high.” Isobel tried to keep her voice light, though it felt like a betrayal to speak this way. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t brought more buildings down by accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Isobel bit her cheek, refusing to let her stress show on her face. “Oh?”
“She meant to get him out.” Dane shook his head.
“What I don’t understand is why. I told Arthur I wanted to help.
I just wanted answers, and he was supposed to—” Dane cut himself off and lowered his volume, glancing toward the door to the hallway.
He took a deep breath. “He wasn’t supposed to run. Not again.”
Isobel felt frustrated too. If Eva had simply waited, or asked for help, they might not be in this situation at all, and the stories Isobel had fabricated for Dad could have actually been true.
Isobel had planned to post Arthur’s bail the next morning.
When she’d heard the alarms, she’d rushed to the scene, but had missed Eva and Arthur.
By the time she’d returned to the house, they were already gone.
“I’d given up, you know,” Dane said, letting out a mirthless laugh that sent a little chill across her skin. “On finding the truth of what happened that night. But then he came back.”
Isobel swallowed hard as her eyes dropped to the center of his chest. She knew the scar that lay beneath, a mirror position to her father’s tree.
“I have to know,” Dane whispered.
She was nearer the desk now, and Dane reached out and took the hem of her skirt between his first and middle finger. A seeking touch. A bid for comfort. Dane sighed. “I know you must want answers too.”
Of all Isobel’s secrets, this was the only one that made her feel like she might actually be a bad person.
She knew how this had haunted Dane, she knew it hurt, and still she buttoned her lips, family obligation clogging her throat.
“I do.” Her gaze dropped to the Band-Aids on his arms and neck.
Souvenirs from falling debris and thorny vines that had grown over the hole Eva made in the jail wall.
“He’s the last thing I remember,” Dane quietly said. “I don’t know what to do about that, Isobel.” When Dane met her gaze, the guard he usually kept up fell away. His expression was almost tentative. Questioning. “I know you care about him.”
It was more than that. Arthur belonged here. Her family had chosen him as much as he’d chosen them, and she couldn’t sever a bond like that.
Her breath came a little faster as she thought of what Arthur had done to her father, and for a moment, it was hard to breathe for the lump in her throat. But Arthur hadn’t meant to do that. He’d just made a mistake, and Dad?
Isobel swallowed her fear. He would pull through, like he always did.
Dad would want her to forgive Arthur for what had happened today.
He always said that just as scion cuts were grafted onto a damaged tree to preserve it, people sometimes came into your life who changed you forever, and healed you in ways you couldn’t anticipate.
Arthur had never been a charity case to them.
From the moment he’d shown up, he’d filled a hole in their family they hadn’t even known was there.
Still, when Isobel closed her eyes now, she saw Arthur snapping her father’s branch, the horrible sound so much like a breaking bone.
“I care about you,” she said to Dane, stepping closer so she could knit her fingers into his hair. “And I want you to get your answers.”
Wanting, she’d learned, wasn’t always enough. But sometimes it was all you had.
Dane dropped his forehead against her stomach, his shoulder blades squeezing together as he tried to hold back a wave of emotion. Dane Walker felt things in silence. In stillness. In strength.
If only she could siphon off this grief.
Isobel took a long, deep breath, scratching her nails lightly over the nape of his neck. “This is eating you up.”
“I have to figure it out.”
“I know,” Isobel said quietly. She closed her eyes. “But not tonight.”
Dane didn’t answer, but he leaned into her a little more.
“Why was Lenny at the cottage yesterday?”
He hadn’t answered her when she’d asked him before.
Arthur had distracted them when he’d offered himself up for arrest. Isobel wasn’t used to seeing Lenny around.
For years, he’d gone off with friends of his own, living somewhere down in the valley.
It was only a year or so ago that he’d started showing up here again on a regular basis, picking up odd jobs now and then.
Lenny had told his brother he wanted a fresh start.
Dane pulled back, an expression she couldn’t quite parse flashing across his face. “I asked him to pick something up for me.”
“Oh?”
For a moment, she didn’t think he would elaborate. Then Dane sighed. “Jack’s tea helps with my chest pains.”
Of course. Her father had a remedy for everything. But why hadn’t he told her? An uneasy feeling sat at the back of Isobel’s mind. “Were you in pain yesterday?”
He grunted. “I’m fine.”
Isobel bit her lip, choosing not to call him on the obvious lie as she weighed what he’d said. Even if Lenny was sincere in wanting to turn over a new leaf, Eva wouldn’t like it if he started showing up on their doorstep regularly. Next time, Isobel would deliver the tea herself.
“You can tell me, you know.” She brushed a bit of lint off Dane’s shoulder. “When you don’t feel well.”
In response, Dane’s hand found its way under the flowing hem of her skirt, and he traced a line from her outer thigh all the way down to her calves.
The springs in his chair creaked as he pushed back and, one by one, eased off her pinching shoes.
He swiped a tissue from its box on his desk and wiped the mud off the heels.
“You’ve got a bit of a Prince Charming complex,” Isobel hummed.
“I know my job.” With a gentle tug, Dane pulled her into his lap. “And it starts with undressing you.” When she laughed, he nuzzled her neck with a little growl. “I fucking love that sound, Isobel.”
She craved him like this, needful and devoted.
It healed up something inside her to feel so wanted.
There was honesty in the push and pull of craving another person.
She had to lie about so many things, but she’d never lied about this.
There was truth in the way they lost themselves in a heavy-lunged kiss, truth in the way Isobel gasped at the scrape of his teeth down her earlobe, the soft bite sending a strobe of bone-melting desire between her legs.
This was better than Dawson’s. Better than whiskey, by far.
She loosened the knot of Dane’s tie and let her fingers linger there, gently brushing the curve of his throat, the skate of her nails raising goose bumps across his skin. A gravelly sound vibrated against her fingertips. “You will be the end of me,” he muttered.
“I think you mean ‘Get on the desk.’”
He grunted assent and reached behind her, gathering the witness accounts on his desk into a slender pile and slipping them into his top drawer. Then he lifted her by the hips and set her firmly on the smooth, hard wood of the desktop.
Anticipation hummed through her body as Dane planted the soles of her feet on his thighs. He kissed the inside of her knee, massaging a hand down a calf Isobel hadn’t even known was aching. It pulled a groan from her.
And a wicked grin from him. “You like that?”
“Shut up, Charming.”
When Dane stood, he brought her legs with him, wrapping them around his waist as his tie slithered to the floor. Isobel shivered as Dane brushed his nose down the line of her jaw and roughed a kiss to her chin, then dragged his thumb down her lip to coax her mouth open for deeper plunder.
Isobel loved when he touched her like this. When he made her feel like his. Opaque. Real. Keepable.
“Want to go upstairs?” he asked, breathless. Isobel thrilled with the power of it. Dane Walker was a stone, uncrackable, yet he cracked for her.
“No.” She urgently worked the rest of his buttons free and ran a finger down the raised pink scar on his sternum, right over his heart. Dane’s skin stippled with goose bumps as she craned her neck and loved her mouth against the ruined skin. An apology, to soothe the lie. “Here.”
A rumble of assent sounded from his chest. “I can—”
Someone pounded on the front door, cutting him off.
Dane swore under his breath and pulled back. His lips were slightly swollen, and colored by her lipstick. Isobel rubbed a red spot staining the corner of his mouth.
“Do you need to get that?”
“No,” he muttered, going back in for another deep and hungry kiss just as the visitor knocked again, more urgently this time. He growled in frustration. “Yes.”
His clear irritation warmed some baser part of her, but she nodded to the hall. “Go.”
He hesitated just a moment, then pressed a kiss to her lips. “Stay here.”
The order shivered up her spine. As he retreated into the hall, she tucked her blouse back into the waistband of her skirt. The drawer he’d set the witness accounts in was slightly ajar, and for a moment she went still, her eyes finding the edge of the stack of papers.
The intruder’s third knock was so loud it made Isobel jump, and her gaze shifted to the clock. It was late. What could possibly be so urgent? Unless… Isobel’s heart sped up a beat. Unless one of Dane’s deputies had news to report on the search?
But it wasn’t a deputy at the door.
“Len? What the hell—”
“We found Connoway.”
Isobel snapped to attention. She paced to the door, careful not to let her shadow spill into the hall.
Dane closed the door behind his brother. “What are you talking about?”
Lenny’s elation was palpable in every word. “His van was spotted on the north road,” he said, slightly breathless.
A wash of unease filled Isobel, who didn’t like the thought of Lenny Walker wandering in the dark in search of her baby sister. Not at all.
“Len.” Dane sounded pained. “We talked about this.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“I’m not looking for her,” Lenny said.
“For what, then?” When Lenny scoffed, Dane pressed harder. “For justice? Revenge?”
Isobel’s nails dug crescent moons into her palms as she held her breath.
“I’ll bring them in, Len. That’s my job. Not yours.”
“Then why aren’t you doing it?” Lenny shot back. “They could be anywhere by now! You should still be out looking—”
“I’ve been out all day!” Dane snapped.
Lenny went on as though he hadn’t heard him. “But instead you’re here, looking like…” Lenny paused. “What are you doing, exactly?” he asked, suspicion leaking into his voice.
Isobel’s cheeks bloomed with heat.
“I have Esther tonight,” Dane said evenly.
“June could take her.”
The mention of Esther’s mother was a bruise.
June had been her best friend, grafted to her heart from early childhood.
Later, Dane had been looped into their group, but from the beginning, it was June who’d held Isobel’s hand when she was scared, June who’d made her laugh so hard it hurt, June whom she’d promised to love forever.
And when the divorce put Isobel in an impossible place between two of the people she cared about most, it was June who’d walked away from all their history.
They didn’t talk now.
“Len,” Dane said gently, a different kind of exhaustion leaking into his voice. “You have to stop. This… this obsession isn’t good for you.”
Isobel looked up at the sudden, quiet shuffling of footsteps down the hall on the floor above them.
“You have a chance to be different,” Dane went on. “Don’t go down this path again.”
The stairs creaked at the press of a small foot. “Daddy?” a musical voice called from the top of the stairs.
Isobel peeked around the corner, catching sight of Esther rubbing her eyes, her unicorn stuffy tucked under her arm.
The little girl yawned. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing, baby. Come here.” Dane held out a hand, and Esther hurried down the stairs to his embrace.
It made Isobel ache. This was the kind of family she wanted to build. The kind she’d had growing up. Steady. Warm. Sure. But Isobel couldn’t belong to these two like that. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure she ever would be. And besides, they deserved someone more reliable than her.
Someone without secrets.
She thought of June again, and her chest went tight. That’s who should have been here.
“We’re going to find him,” Lenny said. “With or without you.”
Dane stiffened, but he didn’t let his smile budge with his daughter there. His voice stayed calm. “We?”
“Avi will come with me. I know he will.” Lenny pulled the front door wide, letting in a gust of wind that made Esther gasp. He ruffled his niece’s hair, eyes going soft for a moment.
Isobel held her breath and waited for Dane to stop him.
Instead, he simply watched Lenny flip up the hood of his jacket.
Don’t let him go, she silently begged. This was obviously going to come back to bite Dane in the ass.
Why, after so many years of being burned by his brother, could Dane not just say no?
“Please, Len.” Dane’s voice was rough. “Don’t be stupid.”
When Lenny’s eyes moved past his brother toward the shadows in the hall, Isobel yanked herself out of his line of view, heart pounding.
The front door clicked shut.
Isobel let out a breath and pressed her palms to her eyes.
“Daddy,” Esther said after a moment, “I’m thirsty.”
Isobel peeked around the corner again as Dane stood, his daughter wrapping her limbs koala-style around him. “Let’s get you some water.”
“Popsicle,” she said into his shirt, the sound muffled.
“Popsicles are for daytime, kiddo.”
Isobel waited until they passed the office where she hid before slinking back down the hallway, her shoes clutched in her hand.
She knew that after Dane tucked his daughter back into bed, he would come looking for her, but Isobel couldn’t wait when her sister was out there unaware of Lenny’s pursuit.
She retraced her steps to the door where she’d snuck in earlier, slipping one of Dane’s jackets off its hook. It was chilly after dark. As she quietly exited the house, she slid her arms into the sleeves.
Rows of Walker pear trees striped the field behind the farmhouse. Isobel squinted, her focus zipping to where someone moved, almost catlike, beneath the light beaming over the barn doors. The silhouette of a man cut a path swiftly down the street.
Isobel’s eyes narrowed.
Not this time, you bastard.
She set off in quiet pursuit, turning only once, when the flicker of a porch light behind her revealed Dane Walker framed in his doorway, peering out into the night.