In the Clear (3 page)

“Are you sure that’s him?” She peered closer at the screen. “That man looks so . . . mad. I’ve never seen Fletcher like that in real life.”

Fletcher didn’t get mad. He wasn’t like her and Sean, with their messy emotions bubbling over the surface and contaminating everything.

Sean snatched the phone away, swatting at her hands when she tried to get it back. “You’re missing the point. His secret isn’t a secret anymore—and chances are he doesn’t want to talk about it right now.”

“That’s not really him.”

“It’s him.”

“No.”

Sean threw up his hands. “Fine. Don’t believe me. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. That way we can all go back to our regularly scheduled lives without you getting in the way and mucking things up.”

“You’re serious?” Fletcher—
their Fletcher
—was some kind of superhero who saved women from lakes? “Gimme that.”

She tried harder to get the phone back, but Sean held it out of her reach. He only had two inches on her in the height department, but he’d always had freakishly long arms. Like an ape.

“Just go to work, Lexie,” Sean said. “I only mentioned the picture because I don’t want you to stumble across it on your own and call him. Promise me you won’t.”

“Why can’t I call him? He’s my friend, too.” She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t even let her voice wobble. Why was it, no matter how many years passed, she was still the outsider to their close-knit duo, the sidekick reject all alone in a cape and tights?

“Because,” he said with painstaking calm, as if he were talking to one of his freshman English students, “you’ll make him feel weird about it. That’s what you do. Whenever you get excited about something, you bounce all over him like he’s some kind of trampoline. But Fletcher isn’t springy like that—he just absorbs it. And you never see the dents you leave behind.”

She sniffled, and this time she didn’t try to hide it. That had to be one of the cruelest things Sean had ever said to her. She would never hurt anyone like that—especially Fletcher. “I don’t leave dents.”

“You don’t mean to, but they’re there all the same.” Sean sighed and, for the first time that morning, real kindness flickered across his face. He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, but it was like putting a Band-Aid on a knife wound to the back. “Look—can we talk about this later? I’ve got to get to campus, and I’m pretty sure you were supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh, crap.” She looked at the retro cat clock on the wall and groaned. They had a staff meeting starting in ten minutes.

After grabbing her purse and shoving her feet into the nearest shoes she could find, Lexie took one last look around the apartment—at the pile of her breakfast things, at the stack of recycling she kept forgetting to take out, at the Christmas tree she’d only halfway decorated before remembering that the box of her favorite ornaments was still in storage at their parents’ house.

There was no use pretending. It was a mess.

Her shoulders sagged as she carefully shut the apartment door behind her.
Maybe Sean is right. Maybe I do flail and leave dents everywhere I go.

But for some reason, she’d always thought Fletcher was the one person able to withstand them.

Chapter Three

“Someone’s here to see you, Mr. Owens.” The car lot receptionist, a pixie brunette named Clara he was pretty sure hadn’t known he existed yesterday, batted her eyes at him from the doorway of his makeshift office, which just that morning had been a storeroom for decades-old paperwork and car parts deemed too valuable to scrap. “Gerald says you can go ahead and take a long lunch if you want. He says he can do better if he puffs it off that you’re home resting after your big adventure.”

Fletcher let loose a soft laugh. Contrary to Gerald’s expectations and exactly on par with his own, he hadn’t magically transformed into a laidback charmer who could convince people to buy vehicles they weren’t sure they wanted in the first place. Even the suit he’d been wrangled into—he refused to put on Ben’s army uniform, even upon Gerald’s threat to fire him—did little to help. A few people recognized him and offered their congratulations, but the second he started telling them about three-point hitches and engine torque, they got the same glaze in their eyes that people always had when they talked to him. At one point, Gerald actually looked as if he might be crying at the waste of it all, wiping away his tears with his knife.

“Is it another reporter?” Fletcher asked, rubbing his eye sockets wearily. He’d gotten five phone calls and two visitors already. That was exactly five phone calls and two visitors he wished he could shove back under his cloak of secrecy. He could already feel the careful balance of his previous life slipping away. “I don’t suppose you could pretend I’m not here?”

“She’s young and cute,” Clara offered. She batted her eyes again, as if young and cute were the only requirements he had. When he didn’t say anything, Clara sighed. “She also said I had to let her in on pain of death.
Your
death, specifically, at the hands of overgrown newts. She seems kind of odd.”

Odd. Newts.
That sounded an awful lot like . . .

“Fletcher Patrick Owens, you have some serious explaining to do.” Lexie barreled through the door with a familiar printout in one hand, a greasy brown paper bag in the other. The smell of fried food hit his nose as she wedged her way into the tiny space. A tiny space, he might add, that seemed to be growing smaller by the second.

She stabbed a finger at the paper. “Why does it look like you just plunged into a lake to save that woman?”

He nodded once at Clara to show that although death was within Lexie’s extensive range of abilities, he was safe. For the time being.

“Because I plunged into a lake to save that woman.”

Lexie stopped in the act of removing her coat. She always seemed to have a thousand things on in the winter, what with all the sweaters and hats and gloves and scarves she needed to stay warm. He loved how efficiently the items went on and came off, her fruity perfume wafting up with each movement. He would have loved it even more if
he
was the one doing the removing, shucking layer after adorable layer, taking his time undoing the buttons along the front of her sweater, pausing to lift her hair from her neck as the scarf went . . .

. . . WHOOSH.

She snapped the scarf in his face and waved her hand. “Hello? Fletcher? I can’t
believe
this is your deep, dark secret. I can’t
believe
you didn’t tell us about this.” She barely paused long enough to pull in a breath. “And what are you doing? Eat. I brought food.”

Grateful for the distraction lunch allowed him, Fletcher took his time assembling their things. Burger and fries for him, milkshake on the side. A tiny green salad for herself. He arranged his food neatly in front of him, being careful to put the fries in the middle of the desk. For as long as he could remember, Lexie had a habit of buying herself rabbit food and then proceeding to eat most of her companions’ side dishes, never aware of her wandering fork. He usually ordered extra of the things she liked for that reason—she had no idea he didn’t actually care for chocolate cake.

She munched on a fry, watching him carefully.

“What?” he asked when the silence loomed long enough to make him squirm. Of all the social situations he’d mastered in this lifetime, the appropriate reaction to having his face spread all over the internet wasn’t one he’d had a chance to work on before.

“The time that family’s car went missing on Mt. Spokane . . . what was it, two years ago? You left my birthday party and no one heard from you for like three days.”

He ducked his head. That one had been hard. There weren’t a lot of celebrations he could be bothered to attend, but a Sinclair party always made the list. “We were lucky the mom thought to burn the tires for heat.”

A frown pulled at the soft corners of her mouth, a pucker in her brow. “And last month? The missing kid they found hiding in a dog house twelve blocks over?”

“Grid search,” Fletcher confirmed. He hated grid searches. He also hated the cases with children. Both made him feel ineffective, forcing him to take one step at a time even though blood rushed through him, hot and insistent, urging him to look harder, move faster, be better.

It was one thing to be careful in his own life, to avoid the everyday risks for fear of losing everything. When he was out on a rescue, none of those truths applied. Out there, risks were the only way to survive.

Lexie’s eyes widened. “How long have you been doing this stuff? Does Sean know? Did you even sleep last night?”

He shifted uncomfortably and decided to tackle her incredulity one question at a time. “About six years. He suspects but has never asked directly. A little.”

“Well, you should go take a nap. You look like crap. I mean . . . ” She waved her hand over his attire. The jacket was too tight across his shoulders and he could have gone for a few more inches on the pants hem, but it wasn’t as though he was winning any beauty contests anyway. She stopped, as if just noticing him sitting there. “You’re wearing a suit.”

“My boss thought it might sell more cars.”

Her lips twitched, and she reached over to take a drink from his milkshake. “Did it work?”

“Nope. It turns out I don’t have a face people can trust.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’d trust you with my life. You’re the most dependable person I know.” She paused, her lips pursed where they hovered above the straw. It was amazing how animated she could be even when she wasn’t moving. “It looks good, though. Dashing. You should suit up more often.”

He couldn’t help a warm feeling of pleasure from creeping over him, but he quickly tamped the feeling down. The last time he’d gotten too flushed in Lexie’s presence, she’d decided he had a fever and offered to check his temperature
just like Mom used to
. Which, apparently, was code for a quick kiss to the forehead, soft, dry lips gauging his health.

The only thing that could have made that situation any worse was if her mom had also been fond of rectal thermometers.

“I’m sorry, Lexie.” He was unsure what else he could say. “I didn’t set out intending for my Search and Rescue work to be a secret. It just seemed easier that way.”

Her hurt expression flashed again, but she quickly hid it under a smile. “No, I get it. Quiet salesman by day. Superhero at night. Telling your friends about it would only ruin the fun.”

“I don’t do it for fun.” At least, that wasn’t how it had started. He’d joined thinking it would be a good way to work through his anxiety issues and squeamishness over blood, that putting other people first might wipe away some of his social inhibitions. It had worked, but only as a temporary fix. In the middle of a rescue, it was easy to forget everything but the task ahead of him.

Unfortunately, he was still himself once the adrenaline wore away. Hence the poorly fitting suit and the EMT application hiding in his desk. And the woman sitting across from him—a woman whose friendship he was so afraid of losing he’d put her up on a pedestal made of eggshells.

“Then why do you do it?” Lexie leaned over the table, drawing near enough to send his pulse skittering. “I have to say, Fletcher, we’ve known each other for practically ever, and this is the last thing I’d expect you to volunteer for. Staying up all night organizing mobile libraries, sure. Maybe even helping out at an animal shelter. But Search and Rescue? I’m impressed. That’s kind of a big deal for someone who hates the sight of blood, isn’t it?”

He hoped there was more compliment than insult in there, but he doubted it.

“Can we talk about something else for a while?” Maybe if he got the whole story out, they could get back to familiar footing. “I don’t think anyone has said a single word to me today that isn’t related to that poor woman. Her name is Jean. She went for a walk and thought the ice on the lake was thicker than it was. She got out pretty far before she heard the crack and, wisely, decided to stay put and call for help rather than risk falling out there on her own. We tried to lay wood tracks to get her back without breaking through, but it didn’t work. I was the closest one to her when it all started to go under, so I jumped in. That’s all.”

Lexie’s eyes sparkled and her lips parted. It was easy to see that she wanted to say something, ask questions, probe at his mushy insides. But as she always did when she sensed he’d been pushed too far, she refrained and turned her attention to her salad, taking a falsely keen interest in lettuce. That was a special talent of hers—knowing when to push and when to back away. Putting people at ease. Making them feel like the most important part of her world.

“How come you aren’t at work? Isn’t it past your lunch break?” he asked by way of changing the subject. It was a stupid thing to say, but it was all he could come up with on short notice. He didn’t want to talk about SAR. He didn’t want to talk about the car lot. But he also didn’t want to lose out on this chance to spend time with her.

“Funny you should ask,” Lexie said. Her normally direct voice wavered, and two spots of color appeared on her cheeks, which were smooth but for a tiny pair of moles along the outside of her right eye. She hated those moles, he knew, talked constantly about having them removed.

He wished she wouldn’t. He had intense fantasies about pressing his lips right there.

“I thought you loved your job.”

“I do love it.” Lexie dropped her head on her hands. “It just doesn’t love me back. There may have been a slight misunderstanding about the allocation of a recent donation, but it wasn’t my fault, I swear. It was an accident.”

Fletcher suppressed a smile. Accidents had a way of happening to Lexie—by his count, she’d broken no fewer than six bones in her lifetime, and her parents’ house was a monument of cracked vases boasting patchy repair jobs. And it wasn’t worth mentioning what happened when you tried to give her directions. That was what happened when you blazed through life with her level of joy and confidence. The details became a blur.

“What happened?” he asked gently.