Chapter Fifteen
Once that decision was made, Blake and Liam didn’t speak much.
It was understandable, they both were moving parts that needed to be moved.
Liam saw to the department, assigned jobs and made phone calls while doing both.
Blake wasn’t connected to his movements but was always near.
She had the kids, her and Lola packed in a flash.
In the next, she had them unpacked at the only house in Seven Roads that could be considered a secret.
At least, according to Price.
“A lot of people don’t know this, but I once tried my hand at flipping houses a few years before you showed up,” he explained once Liam and him had inspected every inch before ushering the Bennet clan inside.
“And by ‘tried my hand,’ I mean I’ve been renovating my aunt’s house for a long time. ..with a slow hand and thin patience.”
He pointed to the field behind the two-story home and then brought it around to the two houses on either side, though with a lot of space between all three.
“This backs up to the Becker Farm’s western pasture and no one’s home in any of these. They’ve been that way for ages though. One’s an inheritance to a city dweller who hasn’t set foot in town in years, and the other has another lazy renovator who hasn’t done much over the years.”
“And no one knows you own this place and you’re letting us all stay here.” Liam wanted to make sure.
Price nodded.
“Despite popular belief, there are some places in town that even gossip gets bored of. No one comes out here anymore. There’s no point in it.
” He clapped Liam on the back and smiled.
“That said, I’m not a man who just leaves an empty house sitting alone.
This baby has a security system and cameras around the outside and the inside of the front and back door.
If anyone comes by unannounced, you’ll know it quicker than a second sneeze. ”
Price didn’t add onto the fact that, unlike last night, this time Liam was also prepared. His service weapon, along with a bag he’d packed quickly, had definitely come along with them.
“Thanks for this,” Liam said once they had done another recap of what needed to be done next. “I know as sheriff I probably should be hanging around the department during a time like this but...”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to for Price to understand. Or for him to respond about the woman on his mind.
“Sheriff Trouble and her family have been through a lot already. If you can help ease some of their burden, I would think less of you if you didn’t try.
” Price smiled. That smile changed a little in the next moment.
“Plus, from what I know of her, Blake doesn’t often let people into her life so easy, never mind letting them help her.
Other than Lola, I can’t think of a single person she’d let get as close as you’ve gotten to her and the kids.
It’d be a waste if you didn’t use that to help her out. ”
Liam couldn’t deny that hearing those words meant a little more than they maybe should have. It felt like only yesterday that he had handed Blake his shirt, and yet at the same time, he realized he was as comfortable around her as if she had been in his life for a long while.
Though, his lack of information on her was a quick reminder that that wasn’t the case.
A question that had been in the back of Liam’s mind came out of his mouth.
“By the way, did anything else happen with Mater Calhoun? Back then, I mean. When he was arrested.”
Price’s eyebrow went up in question. Liam clarified his meaning.
“Anything else, that is,” he said. “When Mater was brought up, you and she just seemed to have a lot of anger directed toward him. A lot more than I thought there would be for the situation. I was wondering if there was part of the story I was missing.”
They were standing in front of Price’s cruiser, a good distance from the house and the family inside. Still, he lowered his voice a little when he answered.
“It’s not so much about what Mater did as what happened after he was arrested.
” He nodded toward the house. “Blake really undersold the fight she had with her dad. He was so mad at her for letting the sheriff in to take Mater that he kicked her out of the car downtown on the way home from the department. He yelled at her pretty badly on the sidewalk with an audience and everything.”
“What was he fighting with her for?” Liam couldn’t help but feel defensive.
Price sighed.
“Loyalty. And how she didn’t know what that word meant. There was more to it—I wasn’t there personally—but a few bystanders at the time stepped in to try to calm him down.”
“What did Blake do?”
Price shrugged.
“She took as much as she could stand. Then she yelled right on back about Mater being in the wrong, and, well, she kept going. They started yelling about her mom leaving them, and then suddenly she said she was going to do the same. She kind of dragged the town through it too, calling it small and noisy and a place she never ever wanted to come back to.” He shrugged.
“We’ve all said some mean stuff in a fight before but that’s where a lot of Seven Roads’s locals get their anti-Blake feelings from.
No matter if she meant it or not, the rumors and gossip were really bad after that.
For her, her dad, and Mater. A month later she was gone.
Honestly, I thought she’d never come home again.
” The deputy let out a breath. There was some defeat in it.
“Though, I guess she didn’t come back for really happy reasons in the end since her sister passed. Now...now all of this is happening.”
They let that sit for a moment.
Then they said their goodbyes.
Liam watched the deputy drive away with some residual anger still in his chest.
At Mater, at Blake’s father, at the men who had invaded the Bennet home.
When Liam had told the woman that he wasn’t leaving her side, he had meant it. Now, he somehow meant it even more.
Price’s house was furnished but only with the basics. Had it been just the two of them, it probably would have felt cold and empty, but when Liam finally went back inside, he was met with a slew of toys, mats and little knickknacks that came with the territory of children.
Breadcrumbs, he thought while scooping up a little alien stuffed creature by the door. He hadn’t had much time to interact with Bruce and Clem but had noticed the girl clinging to the stuffed creature earlier that day.
Liam was going to bring the toy to her when he spotted someone on the couch in the living room.
Blake looked ready to drop, but when she saw Liam, she gave him a little nod.
“Did Price leave?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm,” he confirmed. Liam spotted the baby monitor on the coffee table next to her. He could see Bruce and Clem on the display, both asleep on the main bed.
“Lola’s on the couch next to them. She’s using nap time to catch up on sleep herself.
” Liam was about to suggest Blake do the same, but a change overtook her expression so quickly that it momentarily made him pause.
She took advantage of the space. “I want to use this time to ask you a question. One I haven’t actually asked yet. ”
Liam felt his eyebrow rise.
“What is it?” he asked.
Blake, obviously tired and in need of sleep herself, had a voice that was suddenly as hard as steel.
Those eyes kept his entire attention as she spoke.
“Whether or not I’m being targeted, or you’re being targeted, I’m going to focus on the one thing we’ve had in common the last week or so.”
“Missy Clearwater’s death?”
She nodded.
“But now I want you to tell me—why do you really think Missy Clearwater was murdered?”
LIAM HAD TO be tired, but he didn’t look it. Instead, he somehow managed to exude an energy that sent a surge of steadiness up Blake’s spine. He was calm. He was focused.
He was very good-looking.
It had a cold-water-to-the-face kind of effect on her.
The drag of her cold meds and the aching exhaustion that had been pressing down on her since that morning temporarily disappeared.
“I guess keeping you in the dark isn’t going to keep you safe, like I once thought,” he said, a slight teasing in his words. It was another small break from the normally quiet man. She leaned into it with a snort.
“Keeping me in the dark just leaves me in the dark, and I’d like at least a flashlight beam in here,” she said in return.
Liam nodded to that. He let out a breath and sank onto the couch cushion next to her. Blake angled her body to be able to meet his eye the best she could, given how the man was just as tall sitting as he was standing.
“First off, are you familiar with Doc Ernest?”
“The medical examiner for the county? Yeah, I know her. More from when we were younger though. She’s a good egg.”
He nodded again.
“That was my impression of her too, despite not having many reasons to interact with her through the years,” he said. “So when she called and told me that she thought Missy was already dead before she hit the ground, I had no reason to not believe her.”
“Missy was already dead?”
If that was true, that was news to Blake. And apparently not common knowledge that many others had heard. After first meeting Liam, Blake had scoured the internet for news of Missy’s death. No sources had mentioned her taking a post-death tumble.
“It became a several-day conversation between us. One that the doc ended up walking back after having another look at the examination. She said she thought she’d become too emotionally invested since she knew Missy and had been wrong with her original report.
I would have left it at that, but I’d already found this.
That’s when the hunch I haven’t been able to get free of came in. ”
The man was wearing some nice snug-fitting jeans but managed to pull a small black case out of his pocket. He opened it to show a flash drive. It looked like it had seen better days. There were initials written in marker on its side.
“M.C.,” Blake read aloud. “Missy Clearwater?”
“I assume so,” he said. “Considering I found this under the bridge when I was taking pictures there the day after her death.”
Blake didn’t reach for the flash drive but leaned in a little as if seeing it closer would give her more answers. The movement put her thigh up against his in the process. If he minded the closeness, he didn’t say anything.
“That’s a weird thing to have on you normally, never mind before your death,” she said. “What’s on it?”
At this, Liam’s expression grew thoughtful.
“One Notepad document,” he answered. “It’s a code.”
“Code? Like as in computer commands that looks like the green font in the Matrix movies?”
He nodded.
“Exactly that. But according to an old computer hacker friend of mine from college, it’s only a partial piece of a much longer series of coding. A copied and pasted snippet from something else.”
Blake smoothed over the fact that Liam had casually mentioned having an old computer hacker friend for later discussion and posed another question.
“Why was Missy carrying a flash drive with a partial computer code on it? Are you sure it’s hers? Though I guess if it wasn’t, it would be one heck of a coincidence. Ugh. I wish we could find her laptop. If she had that code, then the rest is probably there.”
Liam was watching her. It was the only reason she didn’t go on a stream-of-conscious rant with her thought process. Instead, she bottom-lined the answer to her own original question.
“So, it’s all suspicious,” she said. “A medical examiner who wavered on her belief that Missy was already dead when she fell and a flash drive with the unknown code on it near her body. That’s how you got your gut feeling that something is seriously off.”
Liam dipped his chin down a little.
“And now the missing laptop and the McClennan cousins last week and Ray, plus the three men who came to my house last night, a place that they either did or did not know you were inside of.”
Was this whole thing about Missy’s case? About the code?
That made more sense than everyone coming at her for no reason.
Blake didn’t know the answers, but she knew she wanted to help get them.
“I missed my meet-up with Missy’s ex-boyfriend Kyle at the coffee shop, so let’s reschedule for tomorrow, if we can, and that way, maybe we can figure out at least where Missy’s laptop is or why she might have had this flash drive and code.”
Liam was still watching her. Which made sense. They were talking after all.
Yet, Blake stopped herself.
Because, well, it didn’t exactly feel like they were on the same page anymore. Instead, it felt like Liam had gone to a different metaphorical book altogether.
Then, as if to prove that point, he did something that froze Blake to spot.
His gaze dropped to her lips.
Adrenaline shot through Blake. Her heartbeat started to gallop with its encouragement.
Slowly, like syrup sliding, he reversed his gaze and trailed back up to her eyes.
Heat, not warmth, but heat ignited within her.
It was surprising; it wasn’t surprising.
Liam Weaver was perhaps the only person who Blake had met in the last few years that she had felt this comfortable with. The only man who she had let into her home so easily. The only man who hadn’t made her occupation, her personality and her unusual life choices and circumstances feel less than.
He had helped her. She had helped him. He had a problem. She wanted to help. He wanted to help keep her safe. She wanted to help keep him safe too.
He was so very handsome.
And they were so very close right now.
Blake knew she probably could have helped it, but in that moment, she decided her actions were out of her control.
Liam leaned down, closing the distance between them, and Blake was ready to accept anything he gave. Her eyes almost fluttered closed.
But then a noise made them stay wide open.
“I’m hungry.”
Blake whirled around to see Clem standing at the foot of the stairs, eyes sleepy but tummy apparently growling.
Normally, that would have given Blake a laugh. Clem was quiet only until she was hungry, then she would chat the entire alphabet until she had food in hand.
However, when Blake saw her, she couldn’t stop the first thought that came into her head.
She looks just like Beth.
All at once, Blake remembered why she was in Seven Roads. Just as she remembered why she left.
And why she hadn’t come back. Till now.
Guilt and anger and immense sadness gripped her chest tight.
She got off the couch, not looking back at Liam.
It was for the better.
Blake wasn’t back in town for her life after all.