Chapter 9 #2
Sarah veered off the path toward the water's edge without announcing it, and Gary followed. The sand here was cool and damp beneath the shade, the lake barely making a sound against the bank.
She stopped walking, turned to face him, and reached for his hand.
The kiss started easy — the same uncomplicated directness he was coming to associate with her — and then she pulled him down with her onto the sand and it became something else entirely.
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She was warm and immediate, everything about her unhurried and exactly where it was supposed to be.
Her fingers worked his shirt free while his hands moved to her waist, sliding beneath the hem of her top to find bare skin underneath.
She made a low sound against his mouth and pulled him closer, the cool sand of the shaded bank underneath them, the morning air still enough that the sounds of the lake were the only thing in the background.
He laid her back and pulled her shirt up and over, then freed her bra with the ease of a man who'd been paying attention, and she arched into his mouth when it found her — slow circles over her nipples while his hand moved to the waistband of her shorts and she lifted her hips to help him pull them free.
He settled between her thighs and put his mouth on her, and Sarah's breath went immediately sharp — one hand in his hair, the other pressed flat against the sand, hips rolling in small, instinctive movements toward him.
He stayed with her, reading the rhythm she set until it broke apart and she came against his mouth with a sound that was swallowed by the trees around them, her whole body shaking through it.
He kissed his way up her stomach while she was still catching her breath.
She pulled him up and into her without waiting, both of them exhaling at the contact, they found their rhythm in the shade of Dove Cove with the lake barely moving beside them — urgent at first, then slower, something more deliberate finding its way in.
She wrapped her legs around him and he drove deeper, her nails finding his shoulders, his face in her hair, until she came the second time and took him with her — his release rolling through him in long, unhurried waves while she held him and the lake stayed perfectly still.
Afterward they lay on their backs in the sand, breathing the cool air of the shaded cove, the tree canopy above them filtering the late morning light into something soft and diffuse.
Gary turned his head and saw it before she said anything.
A tear tracking down the side of her face, quiet and unannounced, the kind that arrives before the person decides to have it.
Sarah let it go without wiping it away. "We can't keep doing this," she said.
Gary waited.
"Brett doesn't know yet. About Friday." She exhaled slowly. "But he will. He always does." She paused, looking at the canopy above them. "You remember Bill from Sunday dinner?"
"The quiet one."
"Retired detective. Twenty-two years downtown, three different departments.
" She said it without particular emotion, the way you describe something you've known for a long time.
"He does private work now. Watches people for whoever's paying him — no particular loyalty, no particular code.
Just a service, rendered professionally, to whoever hires him.
" Another pause. "Brett uses him. Has for years.
I used him too, actually — about two months ago. "
Gary turned his head to look at her.
"I had him watch Jed," she said. "And Brett — they'd reconnected through Lou and started spending time on the property.
Something felt off about the money. Jed's sponsorships were mostly gone after Idaho, but he wasn't acting like it.
Still spending. Still moving around. I wanted to know what was happening. "
"And?"
Sarah looked at the canopy. "The old tunnels under the Steele property — the ones Lou showed you yesterday. They go from the farmhouse to the old barn, then down to the creek. They haven't been used for transport since the thirties."
Gary thought of Lou's tour. The limestone walls, the original layout, the careful way he'd described the history without suggesting any current use.
"Except," Gary said.
"Except they are being used now." Sarah rolled onto her side to face him, voice dropping to something more careful.
"Jed and Brett. Moving barrels through the tunnels to the creek, loading them onto a boat, selling them privately at prices nobody's been able to track back to the Steeles.
" She held his gaze. "Some of those older barrels — the ones Lou was careful with when he showed you — they're pricing out at twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars each. Maybe more for the oldest ones."
Gary was quiet for a moment, running the math on what that meant at any kind of volume.
"And the tunnels," he said. "Were they always that accessible?"
Sarah looked at him. "You know the Steele family history goes back to Prohibition."
"Lou told me."
"There's a part he probably left out." She paused.
"Harold Steele. Nancy's great-great uncle.
He was the one who built the tunnel system originally — designed it, supervised the construction, used it to move product during the height of Prohibition when the roads weren't safe.
" She looked back at the canopy. "In 1927, there was a raid.
Federal agents hit the property. Harold tried to get out through the tunnels with two other men and a cart of product.
Something went wrong in the section under the old barn — they think the timber supports gave way, or possibly a lamp was knocked over.
Part of the tunnel collapsed." A long pause.
"Harold didn't make it out. The other two did.
They sealed that section off and never spoke about it publicly. "
Gary thought about Lou's careful narration during the tour. The way he'd paused at the old barn's entrance and moved on quickly.
"Nancy knows," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Nancy knows everything about that property," Sarah said. "What she doesn't know — or what I hope she doesn't know — is what Jed and Brett are doing in those tunnels right now."
Gary stared at the canopy for a moment.
Belle handed cash. He'd registered it as unusual at the time and filed it without a category.
Now the category was forming, and it wasn't a comfortable shape.
Jed paying Belle — not a family allowance, not property income.
Jed keeping Belle in the arrangement, keeping her quiet, keeping her dependent.
Which meant Belle knew some version of this. Or suspected it. Or was more tangled in it than the version of herself she'd shown him last night.
And Bill — quiet Bill at the end of the table, retired detective, hired eyes with no fixed loyalty — had already been watching Jed and Brett for two months on Sarah's dime.
Which meant he'd seen what happened at Sunday dinner.
Which meant he almost certainly knew that Gary had arrived in Renton on Friday night, ended up at the Steele table on Sunday, left the property with a bottle of bourbon and a woman who wasn't his wife.
Both of them.
Gary looked sideways at Sarah.
"Bill knows about us," he said.
She met his eyes. "Probably. Yes."
"And if Brett is paying him—"
"Then Brett knows about Friday night." She said it evenly. "And possibly Tuesday morning at the lake."
Gary looked back at the sky.
He had been in Renton, Texas for four days.
He was already standing in the middle of something — a bourbon theft, a family secret with a body in it, a triangle of people watching each other through a retired detective who apparently watched everyone, and two women who had no idea about each other and were directly connected through a man whose divorce had apparently not resolved as cleanly as advertised.
He thought about the feeling on the campus path that morning. The eyes he hadn't been able to locate.
Not paranoia.
Just Renton, introducing itself properly.
"What do you want to do about it?" he asked.
Sarah was quiet for a long moment.
"I don't know yet," she said. "I just thought you should know what you might be walking into."
Gary looked at the lake, flat, enormous, going on for miles in every direction.
"Yeah," he said.
The water didn't offer any suggestions.
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