In the Clear (2 page)

Sean sighed and pushed the glass across the table, where her greedy hands awaited. “I can’t believe you took your clothes off at the table.” Before she could open her mouth to defend herself, he laughed and shook his head. “Never mind. I
can
believe it. And that’s why Fletcher refuses to reveal his secrets to you.”

“Because I lack finesse?”

“No. Because you’re
you
.”

She let out an irritated noise and promptly drowned every last one of her sorrows in her glass. She couldn’t count how many things in her life had been denied her by virtue of being herself. Success. Respect. Dates.

But after twenty-six years of practice and still not getting it right, who the heck else was she supposed to be?

Chapter Two

Fletcher’s alarm was set to the sounds of birds and waterfalls. Peaceful Awakenings was supposed to bring calm and contentment to the morning ritual, to ease the body into the day instead of propelling it, full force, into awareness.

But the sparrows didn’t take into account his late night. It had been four o’clock in the morning before his head hit the pillow, a good hour after that before his adrenaline level went down enough to allow him to fall asleep. And even then, rest hadn’t been easy, fraught as it was with vivid scenes replaying through his mind.

They were good scenes. Happily-ever-after ones.

Fletcher felt a smile stretch his face as he set about his morning tasks, albeit groggily. Good thing he had his routine to keep him on track.
Some twins
he knew might find his strict order of teeth-shower-clothes-coffee ridiculous, but predictability suited him, like a well-worn pair of pants, crisp with recent ironing.

Yes, there were times when his tendency toward obsessive-compulsion made him feel a bit too close to the creepy side of the sociopath spectrum, but if there was one thing Fletcher knew, it was that he was no good at breaking free of the habits that bound him.

He’d tried—so many times he’d tried. But no matter how much he let Sean drag him out at night or how often he stared at the college application that sat in the bottom of his desk, he always ended up right back where he started.

Home alone, waiting for his pager to go off so he could feel alive again.

Fletcher slid into his car and headed to work, doing his best to retain the feeling of euphoria from the night before. He would
not
dwell on the fact that eight long hours of hawking used cars stretched before him like a punishment from Dante’s
Inferno.
He would especially
not
dwell on what an idiot he’d been at dinner the night before, gawking at Lexie as she stripped down in the middle of the restaurant.

Smooth, sleek thighs right there next to the canapés. A flash of something lacy as she hitched her skirt up in clear view of the busboy.

His knuckles grew white where he gripped the steering wheel. There he went again, drawing uncontrollably closer to Creepyville. What kind of a jerk just sat there at the table and stared?

Me. This kind of jerk.

Fletcher was so focused on the movement of the car as he pulled in to the parking lot designated for employees—a good half mile from the actual used car lot showroom—that he narrowly missed plowing his boss over at the entrance.

“Hey, Gerald.” He made a quick check at the clock before rolling down the window. Ten minutes early, as usual—his commute was as well-timed as the rest of his morning. “What’s going on?”

“You are in some kind of trouble, Mr. Owens.”

Gerald, who looked a lot more like a kindly grandfather than the tight-fisted employer he actually was, made a motion for him to park the car. Fletcher complied, but slowly, taking his time pulling into his customary slot near the back. The extra seconds were helpful in schooling his exterior into a semblance of calm.

He was good at that, at making himself look as if nothing affected him. When you grew up several awkward feet ahead of everyone else and your best friend was the only gay kid in class, you learned coping skills. Some kids found humor. Others got mean. Fletcher simply turned inward.

Gerald waited for him at the end of his car, looking with a frown at the rusty bumper of the outdated Ford. A rolled-up piece of paper rested in one of his hands; the other held a knife which he used to scratch liberally at his mustache.

“You’ve been keeping secrets, haven’t you?” Gerald lifted the knife and gestured over Fletcher’s body with it. In any other man, the action might be taken as a threat, but the robust hunting apparatus was almost an extension of his boss. He kept it clipped to his belt at all times and pulled it out whenever he could—cutting up a cupcake in his lunch, ripping open bills, pointing out sights in the distance. It was a wonder he didn’t accidentally kill anyone with it. “Is there anything you care to share with me?”

Not really.
Fletcher’s personal and professional lives were carefully compartmentalized for a reason. He didn’t like things touching.

“Was something wrong with the shipment we got from the impound lot?” He took a guess, figuring anything was better than letting Gerald build up more steam. “Because the woman I talked to said . . . ”

Gerald tossed his knife, catching it overhand in his fist as if he wanted to slash Fletcher’s chest open. “How do you think it makes me feel, sitting on an untapped gold mine like this?”

Fletcher backed away from the knife’s edge. “Um . . . not at all like you want to murder me?”

Realizing he was hunched for attack, Gerald laughed and slipped the weapon into its belt holster. With a hearty slap on Fletcher’s back, he nudged him in the direction of the lot. Their feet crunched on the five new inches of snow as they walked, and Fletcher knew without question that he’d be the one tasked with shoveling the sidewalks this morning. Which wasn’t so bad, truth be told. Mindless repetition was preferable to cornering unsuspecting couples browsing through minivans.

“You remember when Ben came home from Afghanistan, don’t you?” Gerald’s heavy hand remained on Fletcher’s shoulder. “How I put him out front in his uniform? Five cars he sold that first morning, and I don’t need to tell you how his sales figures have looked since then.”

“He seems to do well,” Fletcher said when it was clear some sort of response was required of him.

“That’s because people love a hero. Heroes are comforting. They allow us regular folk a way to touch greatness.” Gerald turned one squinty eye his way. “You get what I’m saying, Owens?”

“People love heroes.”

“Absolutely they do!” Gerald paused to look up at the car lot sign, which featured a twenty-foot blow-up version of himself waving to the street. The mud that inevitably kicked up off the wintery December streets rendered his larger self splotchy and dingy, but that didn’t seem to mar his admiration. “And even more to the point, they like buying cars from heroes. What feels safer than driving home with a car signed and sealed by one of Spokane’s finest?” It was a rhetorical question. “Nothing, I tell you. Not a thing.”

Fletcher stopped. The way Gerald was talking made it sound an awful lot like . . .

He slapped the paper into Fletcher’s chest and gave his hat—a sensible black knit with a bill to keep the worst of the snow out of his eyes—a tweak. “I can’t believe you’ve worked here for two years and somehow failed to mention that you rescue people in your spare time. You’re a goddamn superhero.”

Yeah. That. That was what it sounded like.

“It’s not really a big deal,” Fletcher said uncomfortably. “It’s just this thing I do.”

“It’s one hell of an extracurricular.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. Saving people, playing hero—it
was
a big deal. He knew that. He felt it every time he was called to help the local Search and Rescue team head out to find missing children, lost hikers, people trapped in adverse weather. But that didn’t make it any easier to talk about. If anything, it made it harder.

“Don’t look so scared. I mean that as a compliment.” Gerald winked. “You’re out front today. I want you to smile and wave and, if there’s an ounce of sense somewhere inside that head of yours, put on some kind of shiny badge or cape. Let’s see if we can’t blow Ben’s record out of the water, eh?” He chuckled as he realized he’d just let out a pun. “Ha! Out of the water. You should know all about that.”

Fletcher watched his boss’s retreating back, hunched in its puffy blue coat, and held the paper clutched to his chest. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see—

There it is.

He stared at the picture, grainy from the printer and streaked from the melting snow, seeing nothing past the odd expression on his own face. The two-dimensional image of himself wore a twisted grimace that made him look angry, but all Fletcher remembered feeling was cold. Numbing cold and a mountain of relief.

By the time the entire Search and Rescue crew had assembled, it had to have been ten o’clock at night, at least two hours more before they had the woman stabilized. How could a reporter have gotten there and snapped a picture without his knowing?

Of course.
The website lady. They’d earmarked some money to do an overhaul of the SAR crew’s existing website, and the woman they hired had wanted to get a few action shots so she wouldn’t have to rely on stock footage. But she hadn’t said anything about posting the pictures at an online news website—and she definitely hadn’t said anything about attaching his name to them, or he would have flatly refused. He didn’t like being the center of attention, especially out on the field. Crowing over his own contributions detracted from the real mission of the organization. And if he was being honest, he was also hesitant to shift the status quo.

There was no denying he was a man slow to change, that he clung to the familiar even after the rest of the world had moved on.

It was simple, really. He didn’t want to talk about his Search and Rescue group for fear people would start having unrealistic expectations about him. He didn’t fill out the college application for the EMT program for fear a rejection would close the door on that possibility for good.

And he never did anything—
anything
—that might upset his place in the Sinclair family. Friend, brother, almost a son. Ever since his father had died when he was eight years old, they’d been the most constant of all the constants in his life.

They were everything.

A car drove by at that moment, kicking up a huge spray of sludge and ice chunks. Fletcher felt the splash soak through his clean khakis, clinging to his legs in big, damp patches. It seemed a much more fitting start to the day than Gerald’s bizarre belief that he could suddenly become some kind of car-selling god just because of a chance snapshot by an indiscreet photographer.

“Don’t just stand there, Owens. Get moving.” Gerald gestured from the main showroom. “No one will recognize you in all that snow gear. I bet we can find one of Ben’s old war uniforms to fit you.”

# # #

“I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to freak out.”

Lexie looked up from her bowl of cereal and scowled at her brother. “I don’t freak out.”

“You do. Whenever you hear about something exciting, you squeal and hop and make all sorts of noises that shouldn’t exist before ten o’clock in the morning.”

She sat up straighter. Moving in with her brother had been one of the biggest mistakes of her life—not counting that one time she’d mistaken a woman at the airport for Sarah Michelle Gellar and maybe, possibly, just an eensy bit overreacted when she’d asked for an autograph.

When Sean was offered a position as an adjunct college professor six months ago and moved back to town, she’d thought it might be fun to cohabitate with her twin again. Not only would sharing an apartment save money—something she always needed to work on—but she’d also hoped it would bring them closer. Time, distance, and Sean’s oppressive sense of work ethic had made it difficult for them to connect lately, and she’d missed having someone around who made her laugh.

But Sean didn’t laugh nearly as much as she remembered. And he didn’t make her laugh much, either. Most of the time, she wanted to strangle the smug bastard.

“Squealing and hopping do not equal freaking out,” she said with a calm she was far from feeling. “I have appropriately excited reactions to situations that require them. It’s called happiness. You should try it some time.”

He ignored her and barreled on. “You also have to promise not to call him, email him, or otherwise intrude upon his life.”

That got her interest. Her spoon dropped into her favorite pink ceramic bowl, and a small squeal may have escaped her lips, but it was tiny. Infinitesimal, really. “Who can’t I call? What happened?”

Sean released a long-suffering sigh and leveled her with his best I-told-you-so look, eyebrows drawn tight. It was amazing how stern he could be when he wanted to. Some days, it was like looking at a younger, mirror image of their dad.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“If it wasn’t a big deal, you wouldn’t be so dramatic about it.” She snapped her fingers. “Is it Uncle Jerry? Or your friend with that weird obsession with red pants? Oh, I know! It’s that sandwich delivery guy you have a crush on.”

“I do not have a crush on the sandwich delivery guy.”

“We have a month’s worth of low-fat, organic turkey sandwiches in the fridge. You hate paying extra for organic food.”

Sean’s nostrils flared, a sure sign he was reaching the end of his patience. Also that she was right about the sandwiches. “Would it kill you to stay on topic for five seconds? It’s Fletcher.”

Lexie’s excitement fell flat on its face. “Oh, God—is he okay? What happened?”

“Not whatever tragedy is working its way through your pea-brain right now, I can tell you that. Here.” Sean shoved his smartphone in Lexie’s face, and she could just make out the pixelated image of a man with a woman in his arms. The caption on the picture read
Local Search and Rescue Worker Saves Woman from Frozen Lake
.

It took a second for the shock to wear away so she could get a better look at the picture. Honestly, she’d have bet good money Sean did that on purpose—made her imagine the worst only to reveal her for the foolish, weepy wreck she was. As if she needed regular reminders.