In The Absence Of Light (6 page)

“What was he to you?”

“Like I said…” He squished the chunk of bread between his fingers. “He was the closest thing I ever had to a grandfather, and I guess a father.”

“You knew him pretty well then?”

“Yeah. He helped Lori when she got sick.” There was something else in that statement, and it made his words heavy.

“Since you call Lori by her name, I take it she wasn’t your real mother.”

“If by that you mean, did she give birth to me, then no.”

“Where are your parents?”

Morgan polished off half his sandwich. “No clue.”

“So, how are you related to Jenny and Lori?”

“I’m not. Good thing too.”

“Why’s that?”

“You want some cookies? I made some killer pecan chocolate chips.” He was gone before I could answer. There was the rattle and thump of the fridge door, and he returned with a Tupperware container.  “They’re made from almond butter instead of flour so I keep them cold.” He took off the lid and set the container on the table.

A mound of lumpy cookies filled the bottom of the Tupperware box.

I took one.

“You need at least two.” He put a couple more on my plate.

“That’s three.”

“I know.” He took three for himself.

On the first bite, rich chocolate and mellow pecans hit my tongue in a taste explosion carried on the back of slightly sweet almond butter. A moan escaped from my chest.

Morgan met my gaze and grinned at me.

God, he was gorgeous.  “They’re good. You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.” He ate one.

“Humble too.”

“No need to be humble when it’s the truth.”

I could only smile.

“Hey.” He snapped his fingers. “You know if I go in early, Jessie might let me off early too. That way you won’t have to be out so late.”

“About that.” I finished off the last bite of chicken salad.  “You sure there’s not someone else who can give you a ride?”

Morgan kept his gaze down and somewhere at the edge of the table. He wiggled his fingers close to his ear. His knuckles whitened when he made a fist. Then with his other hand, he forced the wayward one to his lap.

His shoulder jerked a few times then stilled. Morgan drank some tea, put the glass on the right side of his plate, moved it to the left, and then back. “Sure. I can ask Marty. He washes dishes on nights I bus tables. Might have to wait a bit.  But hey, I’ll give him some gas money and make it worth his while to pick me up and drop me back off.”

Some of the tension left my body.  “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

It was the lilt in his voice that made me ask, “You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, why?”

“I just… I just wanted to make sure you’d be okay.”

Morgan lifted his head enough for me to see his smile. “I’ll be fine, no worries.”

“Okay, good.” I stood and reached for the dishes.

“Leave 'em. I’ll clean up.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’re a guest. Guests don’t do the dishes. Aunt Jenny would tan my ass if she found out. C’mon, I’ll walk you to the door.” At the edge of the porch, he offered me his hand. “It was good meeting you, Grant.”

“You too.” For some reason, exchanging handshakes felt odd. “See you around then.” I went to the truck. Before I could crank it up, Morgan had already gone back inside.

Chapter Two

I finished the porch.

Twenty years out of the country hadn’t impeded my ability to cut a straight line or hammer a nail. What began as grayed, warped planks was now a smooth surface begging for a rocking chair or bench swing. I couldn’t help but stand back and admire what I’d done.

Gravel crunched and a sedan came around the trees and up the driveway. It stopped behind my truck. In a small town like Durstrand, people only showed up at your house to visit or if they were lost.

If only I was so lucky.

Dressed in a nice suit, I almost didn’t recognize Agent Shaldon. He’d never worn anything beyond ratty jeans and a comfortable button-up around me. Even then, it wasn’t for very long.

I was willing to bet he’d even gotten rid of the jockstrap in favor of FBI standard issued tighty-whities.

“Long time no see, Grant.” He walked up. “How are you?”

“I was good…” I looked at my watch. “Until about thirty seconds ago.”

“Great to know you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“Who says I’m trying to be funny?” I hung the hammer off the edge of the porch. “Why are you here?”

“Because you didn’t do a very good job of hiding. Any pimple-faced teenager could have found you with your social security number and Google maps.”

“Who says I was trying to hide?” I knew how to hide. Trust me, I was the best when it came to making items big or small disappear right in front of the FBI’s best surveillance team.

Sometimes it was all about distraction, other times fancy accounting. I was good at both, and if by some chance, I took on more than I could handle, enough people owed me favors to cover my loose ends.

“So you haven’t skipped town?”

“Skipped town? They still use that lingo in the FBI?” I clicked my tongue. “How disappointing.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Why did you run?”

“Run?” I smiled and tilted my head. “Running insinuates I’ve done something illegal. Which I haven’t.”

“You seriously believe your own bullshit, don’t you?”

“It’s not bullshit. Everything I ever did is on paper. Even the IRS doesn’t have a beef with me. Hell, Jeff, I fucked you every night in my bed for over three years and you couldn’t find dirt under my fingernails.”

His smile turned brittle.

“Now, hurry up and tell me what you want. You’re messing up the neighborhood.”

“Nothing particular. I was just in the area and thought I would say hello.”

I laughed. “Jesus Christ, you people seriously need to update your FBI handbook of excuses. That’s almost as bad as, ‘I have some incredible art to show you back at my place.’”

“Worked for you.”

“Yeah, it did. Now I know why you were so quick to take the bait.”

He took a toothpick out of his inside pocket and stuck it between his teeth.

“Gonna have to do more than chew on a splinter, Agent Shaldon, if you have any hopes of blending with the natives. Might want to start with that suit. Nothing screams city boy like a three piece and Italian leather footwear.”

“Maybe I’m looking to introduce some variety.”

I picked up a box of nails and put them in the toolbox. “Go home, Mr. FBI agent, you don’t belong here.”

“You used to like having me around.”

I slammed the toolbox lid shut. “Yeah, well that was before I realized you were a shit-eating liar.”

He took off his sunglasses. “I never lied to you.”

“No. Of course not, Jeff. You just forgot to tell me you were undercover with the FBI. And the fact you copied shipping documents and reported my every move to your superiors was a figment of my imagination.”

“They thought you were involved in human trafficking.”

“Anybody with two functioning brain cells could take one look at my operation and know I wasn’t set up for that kind of thing. And you, of all people, knew I’d eat a bullet before I got involved with anything like that.” I lifted my shirt high enough to show the scar under my right pectoral. “In case you forgot.” Even after a year, the flesh was still tender and turned pink in the shower.

He looked away. “I lied about who I was, but I didn’t lie about the rest.”

“Truth built on a lie is still a lie.”

He opened and closed the earpieces on his sunglasses. I learned a long time ago it meant he had something important to say but wasn’t sure where to start.

And it could only be important if he came all the way from Chicago.

“You want something to drink?” I picked up the toolbox and carried it up the steps.

His gaze flicked from the door to me.

“Yeah, that means you’ll have to come inside. Unless you want to stand out here and work on your tan. Although it’s not exactly the best time of year to lay out in the sun, but at least the mosquitos won’t eat you alive.”

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t have asked.” I went inside. The porch steps squeaked, and the screen door whispered.

“Do you want me to shut the door?”

“Nah, trying to air out the place.”

Jeff stopped at the end of the runner where it met the dark cherry hardwood.

“It’s okay to walk on. The finish is dry; it won’t mess up your shoes.”

“It’s not my shoes I’m worried about.”  He took a tentative step.  “You did this yourself? Never mind. Of course you did.”

“You don’t know that, I might have hired me a couple lowlife FBI agents down on their luck and looking to make a few extra bucks.”

He shook his head. “If you’d hired lowlife FBI agents, they would have used the wrong color finish and tried to fix it by tearing the whole thing back up.”

“More like burn it down and get trapped inside in the process.”

He laughed, and I hated how hearing it made me miss him.

Him. The Jeff I knew. The guy from upstate New York who got kicked out when he told his dad that his new wife tried to make a move on him. The man with a gummy bear addiction that would land most people in a mental ward, couldn’t hold his liquor, was allergic to cats, and sang like a canary when I fucked him from behind.

And maybe he was still was that Jeff, but when he couldn’t give his people the dirt they wanted, he used me to try to get to the people who would make them happy.

That was my eye-opener. The moment that forced me to realize my style of business had gone out decades ago and I didn’t have the stomach to do what it took to not wind up a victim statistic on the list of FBI gun violence report.

“This will be a really nice place when you get finished with it.” He ran a hand over the wall. “Real wood.”

“Yup.”

“Must have cost a fortune.”

“It wasn’t cheap, no. But I wanted the place as close to original as possible.”

“So you must be doing pretty well then.”

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”

“It’s just a question.”

“Nothing with you is
just
a question.” Too bad it took me three years to figure that out. Never claimed I was the brightest crayon in the box. “C’mon. I’ll fix you a glass of tea.”

I took out the pitcher and two glasses. The sunlight hit the edge and made elongated triangles on the counter. I ran a finger through the spot of light.

“Something wrong?”

“Nah. You want lemon?”

“No thanks.”

I poured two glasses and brought them to the table. Jeff stood with his hand on the back of a chair.

“You can sit down if you want.”

“Sorry.” He took a seat. “I was just admiring the place.” He nodded at the stove. “Does that use wood?”

“Yeah.”

“And you plan on cooking on it?”

“Hell no. Not only would it take an hour to heat up a bowl of soup, I’d die of heat exhaustion in the summer. I’m using a countertop hot plate until I find a used stove I can afford.”

He cut me a look. “You can’t afford a stove?”

“I’m sure you’ve seen my savings accounts by now, so you know the answer to your question.”

Jeff took a swig of tea and almost choked.  I grabbed a napkin and handed it to him.

“You act like you’ve never had iced tea before.”

“Yeah, tea, not syrup.”

I raised the glass. “Sun brewed, thank you very much.”

He wiped his mouth.

“C’mon, it’s not that bad.”

“I didn’t say it’s bad, it’s just really sweet. Caught me off guard.” He looked in his glass.

“Just water, sugar, some dead greenery, and a day’s worth of sun, promise.”

He managed to keep the next mouthful down but still scrunched his nose up. “And you drink this?”

“Every day, by the buckets.”

“I guess it’s an acquired taste.” He set the glass down on the napkin.

“I sure hope they don’t try to put you undercover anywhere past Virginia, you wouldn’t last a day before you wound up as feed for someone’s hogs.”

“They don’t really do that.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“Okay, so there’ve been a few rare instances.”

“Rare instances? Or just rarely caught.”

He tried to laugh, but it fell short. “Quit fucking with me.”

“If I was fucking with you, I’d have you bent over the counter.” His cheeks reddened, and I didn’t even attempt to hold back my smile. “As for the rest? Pigs do eat anything and everything. Kind of hard to prove there’s been a crime when there’s nothing left.”

“There’s always something left.” He said it like a challenge. “DNA, hair, blood, skin.”

“Good luck trying to dig all that out of three feet of pig shit.”

The flush in Jeff’s cheeks faded as quickly as it had appeared.

I rattled the ice in my glass. “What the hell attracted you to the FBI? You’ve never had the kind of stomach a person needs to deal with the kind of shit they see.”

“It wasn’t my first choice.”

“Really?”

“You’d know that if you’d stuck around long enough to ask.”

“I don’t make a habit of rubbing elbows with pit vipers.”

“They knew you were innocent. They had the proof in years’ worth of intel. You didn’t have anything to worry about.” He fumbled with his napkin.

“You never were a very good liar.”

“I fooled you.” He clenched his eyes shut for a moment.

“Yeah, you did. But only because I broke the rules and let myself get led around by my dick.”

Jeff started to take a sip but put the glass back down. “How did this happen?”

I shrugged. “Which part? You backstabbing me, me getting shot, or trying to fix the mess you and your buddies made that almost got a lot of people killed? Take your pick. And if you don’t like 'em, there’s more, those are just the first three off the top of my head.”

“I meant what I said about how I felt.”

I leaned back in my seat. Jeff Shaldon, or Jeff Myers as I knew him. Dark hair, blue eyes, pretty, but built on testosterone and sculpted by a high-dollar gym membership. There wasn’t a damn thing out of place. Even the scars he’d earned made him all the more desirable. He was the first guy I’d ever considered bottoming for, but for some reason, I could never go through with it. My subconscious must have known something I didn’t.

It was rare to see him with his shields down. Rarer to see him vulnerable. Sitting across from me at the kitchen table, he was a gaping wound.

That wasn’t like him either. He was either truly sorry or… A much better liar than I ever gave him credit for.

“So where do they have the mic? On your chest or your crotch.”

Crow’s feet appeared at the corner of each of his eyes.

“Maybe I should get on my knees, you know, to make sure they get everything loud and clear.”  I looked under the table. “Can you hear me now?”

“I took it off.”

I propped my elbow on the table.

Jeff ran his hand over the top of his head. “I told them you’d make me in five minutes and putting a wire on me wouldn’t help.”

I checked my watch. “I must be slipping, that took at least fifteen.”

“You were distracted.” He shrugged.

“And you give yourself too much credit.”  I emptied my glass. When I stood, I took Jeff’s untouched drink with me to the sink. “What were they hoping for? That I’d confess my love in between rattling off my imaginary black book and bank account numbers?”

“Probably. But they learned a long time ago you were too smart for that.”

“See, now you’re giving me too much credit.”

“Like you said, there isn’t a grain of proof you’ve ever done anything illegal.”

“Maybe because I haven’t.” I held his gaze when I said it. The confidence in his eyes dimmed a little.  I gestured toward the front door. “You know the way out.”