Chapter Eighteen
Even with the arrival of daylight savings time, the sun was already dipping by the time they stepped outside the garage. Rachel shivered as the wind seemed to blow right through her coat and her clothes, the temperature having dropped at least ten degrees.
“I can’t believe I let it get so late,” she said, taking a peek at the time on her phone. Stacy had offered to keep the girls through dinner, but she hadn’t invited them for a school-night sleepover.
She rushed to lock the dead bolt but only ended up dropping her keys. Mick bent to grab them and handed them to her.
“Nobody forgot to lock up this time,” he said as she inserted the key.
Then his attention shifted toward something farther down the drive. He froze.
“What is it?” Her heart thudded in her chest.
Instead of answering, Mick wrapped an arm around her and pressed them both flat against the exterior of the garage as though to shield them from being seen.
“Try to get back inside,” he whispered, his voice tight.
But with the bolt set, it was too late.
A dark-colored sedan that had been right behind her minivan spun out, its daytime running lights flashing against the cell in her hand. Then it raced down and out of the driveway. As it turned onto the two-lane road, it fishtailed and raced away.
“What was that? What were they doing here?” Her whole body trembled, so she crossed her arms to hold herself still. “Did you get a look at the driver?”
Mick shook his head. “The windows didn’t appear to be tinted, but I still couldn’t see inside. We’ve got to get out of here.”
When he took hold of her arm, she jerked free and stepped back.
“But we don’t know—” Only she did. No one appeared to have been at her dad’s house since she’d taken Riley to rehab.
No tire tracks or plowed snow. Even the unlocked door didn’t seem as suspicious as it had earlier since nothing, other than a few boxes the Mick had looked in, appeared to have been touched.
And now, on her first time back visiting the house, someone had shown up there.
“Do you think they followed me?” A fresh wave of shivers took her as she suspected she already knew the answer to that. “I watched to make sure that no one did.”
His quizzical look reminded her that she’d pretended not to have been concerned earlier.
“Whoever it was just saw us together,” he said.
When he reached for her again, she didn’t pull back but hurried with him toward the minivan.
“They could have been following you instead,” she said once she’d reached the driver’s side door. “You did have the quote in the Informer. But you don’t think so, do you?”
“Neither do you.”
Rachel nodded, her knees wobbly.
When they reached the minivan, instead of immediately hitting the unlock button on her key fob, she tested the door handle first. Still locked. She leaned close to the windows to check behind the seat anyway before climbing inside.
“How long do you think they were out here?” She climbed inside and inserted the key into the ignition.
“Could have been a while.”
They exchanged worried looks over how they’d spent the afternoon. Rachel glanced back at the house first, then the garage. She’d checked her van lock, but they hadn’t looked around for boot prints that didn’t belong to either of them.
She blasted the heat inside the van, and frigid air shot to her face and feet, but the shivers that overtook her again had nothing to do with the cold. Could someone have been lurking just outside of one of the garage’s three automatic doors, listening?
“I hope it wasn’t long.” Her stomach felt rock-hard as she added, “That was also not a white SUV.”
Next to her, Mick dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. “And this time, we’re nowhere near a fire scene.”
* * *
Mick knocked on Rachel’s back door ninety minutes after she dropped him off at his truck.
He’d waited until the evening’s stranglehold on daylight finally eased, but he no longer knew why he bothered trying to visit her in secret now.
Whoever had been trying to frighten her already knew about him, and it would be more difficult than ever to keep her safe.
He adjusted the strap of the backpack he carried this time, his civvies folded inside for work in the morning. She would argue about his plan, but he would be spending the night on her couch whether she thought it was a good idea or not. He couldn’t leave her and the girls there, exposed.
She pulled open the door, wearing a knee-length robe, flannel pajama pants peeking out at the bottom, fuzzy slippers on her feet.
The towel wrapping her head announced that she, too, had showered.
He doubted that hers had been for the same reason—that he couldn’t concentrate with her scent still on him, threatening his senses every time he took a breath—but she’d washed him off all the same. She waved him inside and shut the door.
“Are the girls in bed?” he asked in a low voice.
“Just. It won’t take them long to go to sleep. They played hard today.”
Her gaze flicked to his, hinting that she knew of two others who’d played with some enthusiasm of their own, but she looked away and padded into the dining area. He needed to forget about those things if he hoped to help her at all.
She’d tucked the messenger bag into one of the chairs at the table, but her laptop was open at her regular spot, a notebook and pen resting next to it. He set his backpack on the floor before removing his coat and hanging it on the same chair he’d claimed lately.
“What’s that?” She pointed to the backpack.
“Clothes. I should stay over.” At her wide eyes, he added, “On the couch. Just to make sure everyone’s safe.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
And later, he would convince her to let him stay, but he decided not to start an argument just yet. They still didn’t know what they would find inside those folders, including what he suspected whoever had been in the driveway earlier didn’t want them to see.
He pointed to the messenger bag. “Did you already…?”
She shook her head and then pulled the whole thing on top of the table. “I haven’t had the chance yet.”
Either that, or she wanted him to be there while she examined it. Since he suspected there would be something even more awful in those files, he was glad she’d waited. He wanted the chance to support her no matter what she found.
She pulled the first file out and tipped back the corner, hesitating.
“Last chance to put the whole thing away and pretend you don’t know anything while you still mostly don’t,” he said.
“I think we’re beyond that.” She stared down at her fingers for several seconds and then looked up at him. “Whoever that was in the car, they really didn’t want me to know what’s in these files.”
Her jaw tightened as the determination he’d come to love about her flashed in her eyes. She opened the file flat, angling the stack of papers so they both could read.
Mick heard the catch in her breath just as one word halfway down the page leaped out at him. They’d missed it earlier when they’d been so focused on her father’s name and title at the bottom.
“Murder?” She gasped and poked her forefinger on the paper while she tried to catch her breath.
He repeated the name in his head but was certain he’d never heard it. “Did you ever know any ‘Ben Morrison’? It doesn’t say there who he was or even when…he died.”
Her eyes were wild as her hands braced on the edge of the table.
“Were there any members of your dad’s crew who died while he was chief?”
“The department hasn’t lost a firefighter in seventy-five years. That was always a point of pride for D—” She cleared her throat. “I mean Stan.”
Though Rachel didn’t look at him, her pain coursed through him.
She’d lost her father twice now, both times in violence.
She couldn’t allow herself to mourn him now.
Refused to call him “dad.” As for the part about no firefighter casualties, Mick ruthlessly pushed that aside.
If he allowed himself to think about the crew members he’d lost, he wouldn’t be in the here and now for her. And she needed him.
“Then who was he?” he asked.
She shook her head and continued to read.
The confession was short and to the point.
It listed bribes, falsifying documents and not one but two murders, all for which Stan Hoffman took full responsibility.
Whether Rachel’s father had truly been involved in any of it, he couldn’t say.
But if he had, Mick would have bet his pickup and all his furniture in storage back in Chicago that he’d had help.
“That seems a little convenient, don’t you think?” Mick pointed to that part of the letter. He hated that he’d said something similar when Rachel had first come to him, claiming secrets and cover-ups. Even if they didn’t have all the details, he knew now that she was right.
“What does?” She looked up from the document.
“That your dad confessed to a one-man crime spree. Seems like even if he did all these things, he would have needed help with the heavy lifting. Particularly covering up a murder.” He tapped his finger on the words.
“It even makes a point of stating that he ‘acted alone.’ That’s at least a small red flag. ”
That she shook her head, refusing to consider the possibility, made him more determined to convince her.
“And look at it.” He lifted the letter to examine it more closely. “This isn’t even an ink signature. It’s a copy. Why would your dad have kept a copy of a confession he never turned in? And who has the original?”
She held it up, studying the handwriting. “None of this is making sense, but that’s my father’s signature, all right. I tried a few times to forge it when I skipped school, but I could never quite get it right.”
“Do you think this could be a forgery?”
Rachel studied the signature a little longer. “It looks real.”
Her sigh made his chest ache. He’d given her hope for a second only to squash it, so he tried again, like grasping for something solid in a downpour.
“It still could be possible that someone else wrote the letter and forced him to sign it, maybe as a threat to expose him for lesser crimes.” He slid it closer to her again. “Look at the words. Does it read like something your father could have written?”
She frowned down at the page. “It doesn’t. He couldn’t spell to save his life, and grammar definitely wasn’t his thing.’”
“He wouldn’t have had AI available to him then, either.”
Rachel pushed the paper back at him. “Okay, so maybe he didn’t write it, but he still could be guilty.”
Her pained expression told him how much she wished that something in all those papers could have proven that Stan was innocent. He wished he could produce those documents for her as well.
Mick planted his elbows on the table and rested his head in his splayed hands, closing his eyes.
But as the memory of the car from earlier burrowed beneath his closed lids, he opened them again, his chest tight, his pulse pounding as hard as it had when he’d noticed it in the drive. Waiting for her.
“But if your dad had acted alone in all of this, why would anyone care if you and your brother found out the awful truth about him? It wouldn’t have hurt anyone else.”
Rachel straightened in her seat and pulled the file closer to her. “Why didn’t I think of that? If they had nothing to hide, or believed that whatever we found would implicate only him, then why the threats? Why set Riley up at work? Why any of it?”
“It’s de Cervantes’s quote, ‘I shall be as secret as the grave,’” he said.
She nodded several times, now on board. “They knew that even after his death, Stan had information that could still hurt them. So they wanted to ensure that my brother and I would be too scared to try to uncover it.”
“Or if you did find anything, they wanted to let you know what would happen to you if you told anyone.”
Rachel chewed her bottom lip. “Like that Fielding quote. Something like ‘not death, but dying which is terrible.’ They made that part pretty clear.”
“And, like you said from the beginning, the intentionally set fires around town are just a smokescreen to ensure that secrets stay buried.”
She tilted her head, studying him. “Did I say that?”
Mick lifted and lowered his shoulders. She hadn’t. He’d added that part all by himself. “Something like it. That someone was willing to burn down half the city to keep it quiet.”
“And now you believe me?”
He rubbed the back of his neck as he considered her question.
Had he gone from skeptic to lukewarm supporter to radical believer, all in a matter of days?
And had he let a leisurely exploration of her body inspire him to take that final leap?
But then he pushed back his shoulders and told her the truth.
“I believe you.”
Rachel blinked several times. Her eyes were damp, but she turned her head away so he couldn’t see.
An ache settled in his chest that she’d had no one on her side, and he hadn’t helped. “I’m sorry I didn’t from the beginning.”
She surprised him by chuckling. “Why would you have? We were strangers. And I was this angry woman in your office offering, like you said, ‘convenient’ excuses to protect my brother.”
“I should have at least not dismissed it so easily. I, of anyone, should know that stories aren’t as simple as they seem from the outside.”
“At least you believe me now.” She squinted down at the pile of papers.
Then her gaze snapped up to his. “But if the fires are connected crimes involving Stan…and whoever else, then why didn’t someone just burn down his house?
If he had any incriminating evidence against them there, it would have gone up in flames, too. ”
“I don’t know,” he said, the same question still bothering him.
“But maybe someone was smart enough to recognize that a suicide of one family member, possible criminal charges against another, and then a fire in their home might raise suspicions. Even from investigators who aren’t looking all that hard. ”
“So you can finally admit that—” She stopped when he offered a close-lipped smile.
“You were right about that, too. There might be a few who are searching hard for answers, but I’d say they’re in the minority. Some don’t want to know the truth.”
“But I do. No matter where it leads.”
He met her gaze and held it for a dozen heartbeats. “And so do I.”
She pulled the confession off the top of the pile and again angled the papers so they both could read.
* * *
As much as his heart ached for her in losing the parent she’d believed was an honorable man, he couldn’t help but admire her determination. Whatever his other faults, the former fire chief had raised an amazing daughter and likely a fine son as well, almost entirely on his own.
And, if he could admit it to himself, he was in grave danger of falling in love with Stan Hoffman’s daughter.