Chapter 34
Bram
“—No, I mean it. Next time you’re at Maggie’s, drinks are on me.” Pearl’s laugh crackles down the line. “I owe you one.”
I set the phone face-down on the desk and listen to the house for a second. The kettle ticking as it cools. Reed somewhere in the kitchen, opening cabinets and shutting them the way he does when he’s looking for a snack.
Then I open a folder on my laptop and pull up the files—a scanned counter slip from a parcel depot in Lakeview, and a police record with a picture.
“Okay, Wade Fenton,” I tell the photo. “Now I know who you are. And trust me—”
I hear tires on the lane gravel, slowing ahead of the pothole by the mailbox. Strangers find that hole at full speed. Family brakes for it.
They’re back.
The laptop’s shut before I’m out of the chair (Reed beating me through the front door by half a step).
We hit the porch as the car comes up with the windows down and Luna’s arm out the passenger side, riding the wind. Something behind my ribs unwinds a full turn.
Almost two days. That’s how long this house has felt wrong.
She’s out of the door before Ash has the key out of the ignition. Reed gets to her first. She hits him at a half-run and he hauls her clean off the ground and spins her, her shoes swinging out over the gravel.
“Missed you, Inspector,” he says into her hair.
“So did I, alpha,” she smiles.
He sets her down, she turns, and my arms are already open. She crosses the gravel and fits herself under my chin like we’re two pieces of a puzzle.
“Hi.” Honey and gooseberries, warm from the car, hit the bottom of my lungs and spread.
There. Everyone home.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I say.
“I missed you,” she says into my shirt.
“Missed you too,” I reply, my hand coming up to the back of her head.
Ash rounds the hood with two bags, and I look at him over her head. He looks good. Loose through the shoulders.
“Look at this,” Reed says, leaning on the rail. “We figured you two eloped. Tell us what happened out there!”
Luna pulls back from my chest wearing a grin.
“Oh, something happened.” She looks at Ash and he looks at her.
“Tell them,” he says.
“Warren Holt,” Luna says, “is putting two million dollars into Hollow Gold.”
Reed straightens. “What?”
“Two million.” She says it again, slower. “Against eight percent of cider revenue until he’s tripled his money, then five percent for three years, then done. And he’s walking us into Pacific Crest, his wholesale people, to put our bottles in front of every buyer in the country.”
The numbers land in my brain one at a time. “That’s not—” My voice needs a second. “Men like that don’t just hand orchards two million dollars.”
“He didn’t hand us anything. He ‘discovered us,’” Ash says, making air quotes with his fingers. “Big difference. We owe the whole thing to our Chief Inspector.”
“It was a team effort.” She waves it off, but her cheeks have gone pink. “There’s one catch, though. A thousand bottles must be delivered to Pacific Crest by December first.”
A thousand bottles by December first. The math starts running—bins, press hours, bottles, labor. We can make it.
“Is there some sort of formal agreement?” I ask. “Did he sign something, or do we only have a rich man’s handshake?”
“Funny you should ask.” Ash pats his jacket pocket.
Then the other pocket.
Then both at once, faster, and the ease goes out of his face all in one go. “Wait.” He checks his jeans. “Hold on. The agreement. Did I—”
Luna’s grin dies. “Ash.”
But his grin returns as he pulls a white envelope from his inside breast pocket. “Got you.”
“You son of a—” Reed wheels around with both hands out for his throat, and Luna’s already snatched the envelope and smacked it across Ash’s chest.
“All this hard labor,” she says. “I almost died!”
“Sorry,” Ash says, sounding zero percent sorry. “You should’ve seen your faces.”
Luna presses the envelope into my hands. “Here. Before he does an encore.”
I open it and inside is... a napkin? But wait, there’s handwriting on it.
I squint.
A date at the top. Three full names. Two million, eight percent, a six-million ceiling, a five-percent tail, the introduction, one thousand bottles, December first. Three signatures.
“Holy shit,” I hear myself say.
“That’s what I said,” Ash says.
“No, this is real. Date, parties, terms, consideration, signatures.” I look up. “This would hold up in front of a judge.”
Reed looks from the napkin to Luna to Ash, and then he makes a sound I haven’t heard out of him in a long time.
A whoop, full volume, straight up into the porch roof.
He grabs Luna and lifts her all over again.
“A thousand bottles! Okay, let’s do it! But wait, we have to celebrate.
The bottle from Gran’s year is still in the cellar—”
“Maybe tomorrow?” Luna laughs as he sets her down. “I don’t think I’ll be much fun tonight. I got—” her eyes flick to Ash, half a heartbeat, “—very little sleep.”
Ash doesn’t say a word. He just smiles, slow and private.
Oh, that lucky bastard.
“Shower, sleep, and tomorrow I’m good for anything,” she adds. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Reed and I say in unison.
She starts for the door. Stops with her hand on the screen and turns around.
“Actually, before that... come here, all of you.” Arms out. “I’ve been thinking about a group hug for six hours of interstate.”
Nobody needs telling twice. Reed folds in from one side, I come in from the other, Ash closes it across from me, dropping his bags, and for a minute the four of us stand there in one knot with her face in the middle of it, three scents closing over honey and gooseberries until you can’t tell where anybody starts.
She makes a sound into Reed’s shoulder, small, content, fraying at the edges into a purr.
My eyes find Ash’s over the top of her head. Then Reed’s.
Two million dollars, I think, and this is still the best thing on this porch.
“Okay,” Luna says, muffled. “If I don’t go now, I’m sleeping standing up in this exact spot.”
She pulls back and kisses Reed full on the mouth. Then me, leaving me wishing I could keep her lips on mine for the rest of the night. Finally, she kisses Ash before slipping inside, the screen door clapping shut behind her.
Reed exhales a week’s worth of air and drops into a porch chair. “Two million dollars.”
“Yeah.” I put both forearms on the rail, and breathe the orchard for a minute.
Ash laughs at the pair of us, hooks the bags off the boards, and tips his head at the door. “Alright, let’s get inside. Help me with the luggage?”
The question pulls me out of my stasis. “Actually, guys. There’s something you both need to hear first.”
Ash sets the bags back down, slow. Reed sits up out of his slouch.
“I might have cracked the mystery about Luna’s bag,” I say. “The one she got back unexpectedly.”
Reed’s jaw sets. Ash goes from tired to still.
“Somebody walked that bag up to a parcel counter in Lakeview about a week ago and shipped it to this house. Prepaid, cash, no return address. But the depot keeps its counter slips, and my colleague from the station, Denny, managed to get one of his contacts to find it.” I pull my phone out of my pocket, tapping the screen to bring up the scanned slip.
“The sender is a man named Wade Fenton.”
Reed’s out of the chair. “Who the hell is Wade Fenton?”
“That was my question when I got it earlier today. Then I had the county run the name, and I heard back from them this afternoon.” I swipe the screen and show them the mugshot.
“Skip tracer, works out of Ridgeville most of the time. He’s got a record—impersonation pled down to a fine, trespass in two counties, and a fraud complaint that didn’t stick. He finds people for money.”
“A PI,” Ash says.
“A PI needs a license. This is what lives underneath a PI.”
Reed’s still looking at the screen, and I watch him get there. Brown hair. Thirties. A face nobody would remember.
“The teen’s guy,” he says. “Alpha, thirties, brown hair, never seen him around town.”
“Exactly,” I say. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Fenton’s the one who paid that teenager to sabotage us. It fits the pattern.”
“Which brings me to the other thing,” I add.
“After you and Luna caught that kid, I asked every front desk in the valley to flag anybody suspicious. And I got back maybes. A fella in room four at the Creekside. Two guys at the motor lodge on Route 9 the manager didn’t like.
A salesman nobody could place. But I mean, it’s leaf season so there are strangers everywhere, and nothing I could do with any of them.
” I tap the booking photo. “So as soon as I got Wade Fenton’s info, I sent his face and name to all of them.
A little before you pulled up, Pearl Hutchins called me back.
The man in one of her rooms is Wade, although he signed in as Cole. He’s staying until Sunday.”
“Cole,” Ash repeats, flat.
“The fake name tells you everything,” I say. “Honest men don’t do that.”
Nobody says anything for a beat.
“It’s Derek.” Reed’s voice has gone low. “It has to be. He paid this Fenton to find her, and then to start messing with us.” He looks between us. “So how do we make that fucker pay?”
“Reed—”
“I’m serious.” He’s down the steps, keys already out and swinging around one finger. “He’s just a few miles down the road. I’ll drive right now.”
“I’m with Reed on this one,” Ash says, his voice dropping into a low, chest-deep rumble. “We know where the guy is. We know how long he’s paid through. Now’s the time to move.”
“Agreed,” I say, and they both look at me in surprise. “And as tempting as a good old-fashioned beat-down sounds, I have a plan that’s a hell of a lot better than violence. And it happens tonight.”
Reed frowns. “Walk me through it.”