Mind Tricks (21 page)

She looked so forlorn that Jake wanted
to pull her on his lap and wrap his arm around her. “Rough to have your hopes
raised like that, then have nothing to come of it.”

“No kidding. And on Route One, I
thought I caught a whiff of Brutus’s thoughts myself, but it turned out to be
an excited German shepherd.” She laughed, but she didn’t sound amused. “You
should have seen me creeping around that house, trying to figure out if Brutus
was inside.”

Christ, was she serious? “Emma,
call me if you need any creeping to be done. Or call someone else, like Mickey.
Or Ian. But don’t do it alone. What if you do find Brutus—and the guy who took
him? I don’t think the guy’s going to meekly say ‘Sorry’ and hand the dog over
to you.”

“You’re right; you’re right. But I
was so hopeful….” She let the sentence trail off. “Tell me some good news to
perk me up. Do you have any?”

Jake searched his brain. “Well,
when I talked to my parents today about the offers on Woodhaven, I realized my
mom must be hanging out with retired longshoremen, for she was using curse
words that made my hair stand on end.”

Emma laughed, as he’d hoped she
would. “Like what?”

“Hey, I’m not going to repeat them.
I’m a gentleman. My parents rejected both offers, which was fine and I agree
with them, but it might be time for them to consider more seriously the idea of
selling the company.”

“Why?”

“Because the rumors about our cash
flow problems aside, the company is in really good shape. If they want to sell
at all, now is the time to do it, when Woodhaven is at its peak. They shouldn’t
wait until the company is sinking to try to sell her.”

“Why would the company sink?”

“Because I’ve been arrested for
murder.” He blew out a breath. Now wasn’t the time for a pity party. “Anyway,
I’m trying to avoid that.”

“Right.” Emma adopted a businesslike
tone. “Okay, ruling out a random stranger, who do you think might’ve killed
Ginny? Her ex-boyfriend?”

“My lawyer told me that her
ex-boyfriend has an alibi—he was at a bachelor party that night at the Foxwoods
casino, which is a good six hours away.”

“Well, that sucks,” she said
disgustedly.

Jake laughed. “You’re so pithy.”

“There’s no one else who might have
disliked her?”

“Oh, I think there were people who
disliked her. Some people at Woodhaven, for instance, whose jobs changed when
she came on board. But that was my decision, not Ginny’s. And killing her seems
extreme.”

“Yes, I agree. Hmmm… Did she date
anyone here in Maine?”

Jake glanced down the bar. Grif was
leaning on his elbows, chatting to a girl in hot-pink velour shorts and a crop
top. “I think she had a brief fling with Grif.”

Emma snorted. “Who hasn’t? The man
doesn’t even need to reel women in—they just leap out of the dating pool and
flop into his arms.”

“Have you?” he couldn’t help
asking. He was asking just out of curiosity. As a friend. Ha.

“Have I what?”

“Uh, flopped.”

Laughing, she said, “No, but I did
try once. My big plan was to come in on a Tuesday night, when I figured no one
else would be here. But it turned out that a World Series game was playing that
night, so the place was packed. I had a single drink and left.”

Good.

Grif removed himself from the
pink-shorted girl and topped off Emma’s Guinness, placing it in front of her
with a flourish. She gave him a smile in return, but Jake could see it was 95
percent automatic politeness.

Even better.

When she lifted her eyes to his, he
could tell he had her complete focus. “Did Ginny have any friends that she had
a recent falling out with?” she asked.

“She didn’t really have any friends
here, aside from a few people she worked out with at the gym. But even they
seemed to be purely gym friends. She never talked about seeing those women
outside of yoga or Pilates or whatever the heck she was taking.” Now that he
thought about it, he was probably the closest thing she had to a friend up in
Maine. “But she didn’t have any enemies, either.”

“A nice enemy or two would make
things easier. Well, let’s move on. Who are your enemies?”

Jake choked on his Guinness.
“What?”

Even though the hubbub around them
made eavesdropping unlikely, Emma leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Ginny
was killed that night, but you were drugged. Why? Either to keep you out of the
way—which could have been done easier by whacking you over the head—or to frame
you for Ginny’s murder.”

That would be a heck of an enemy.
He searched his memory but couldn’t come up with anyone he’d pissed off so
badly that they would frame him for a murder. “Maybe it’s not so personal as
deliberately framing me. The killer saw an opportunity to pin the blame on
someone else, and took it.”

“That is one possibility.” She
visibly braced herself, and he abruptly knew he wasn’t going to like the next
words out of her mouth. “This is going to sound extreme, but another
possibility is that Ginny was killed just so you would be accused of murder.
You were the real target of the crime, not her.”

The thought of a person out there,
hating him so much that Ginny died for it, made his whole body go cold. He took
another sip of his beer, trying to hide his reaction and to give him time to find
his equilibrium again. “That
is
extreme.” And far worse than merely having an enemy who took advantage of a bad
situation.

Emma touched the back of his wrist.
It seemed like an impulsive gesture meant to give comfort, but something
disturbing in his thoughts must have seeped through to her, because her eyes
went wide before she dropped them—and dropped her fingertips away. “That might
not be the reason,” she said. “The simplest answer is that drugging you was a
seized opportunity, not premeditated.”

Apparently whatever she glimpsed in
his head was still compelling her to reassure him, not to run away. That was
good.

But he had to push, had to know.
“What did you see just now? You know.” He pointed to his skull.

“Sadness. Guilt.”

He winced. Not emotions that
exonerated him from Ginny’s murder, if Emma was still considering that
possibility.

Then she added, “Anger.” After a
heartbeat, she said, “The anger is the most interesting.”

“If I did something that pissed off
someone, Ginny shouldn’t have paid for it.” Now that Emma had named it, he
could recognize the shudder under his skin as fury. He blew out a hard breath.
“It’s selfish, but I have to hope that her killing was random.”

Emma shook her head. “The problem
is, if Ginny’s murder had nothing to do with Ginny and nothing to do with you,
then we have almost no chance of finding out who did it and clearing you.”

We.
That magic word. Did she even realize she was saying it? He suddenly wished he
had a dose of Emma’s mind-reading skills. Were they partners? Strategic allies?
Or warily joined while they both tried to discover if he was innocent?

Her expression, as usual, gave
nothing away. He focused back on her comment. “A random killer wouldn’t go to
the trouble to drug me. As you said before, he’d just whack me on the head to
get me out of the way.”

“No. So the killer must be someone
you or she knew.” Emma swallowed the rest of her beer and set down the empty
glass. When Grif, a few yards down, tilted his head at her glass, she shook her
head. Date over. She said to Jake, “We have more questions now than we started
with.”

“We ruled out a random killing.
That’s a start.” And Emma kept referring to them as
we
. That was another start. Or a re-start.

She covered a yawn. “I have to go
home, do some stuff.”

“Thanks for meeting me.” He caught
Grif’s eye and signaled they were both done. Grif nodded and turned back to his
conversation.

Emma began to dig into the pocket
of her jeans, but Jake briefly took hold of her elbow to stop her. “It’s all
taken care of. Grif is keeping a boat he’s renovating down on the Woodhaven
lot, so I get to drink all the beer that’s equal to the rent.”

“Do you ever drink more than the
rent? And what if you don’t drink enough?”

He shrugged and stood. “Really, I
don’t think either of us keeps track.”

His shoulder occasionally brushing
hers as they slid through the crowd, they exited out into the summer evening. A
band of deep purple hemmed the western horizon, and streetlights lining the
main street flickered on.

Say
something to get her to stay a few more minutes.
“Hey, did you talk to your
sister tonight and manage to reassure her?” Smooth, Jake. What a brilliant
conversation to start while alone out in a bar’s dark parking lot.

Emma groaned. “You heard that?”

“Sure. Got the ears of a bat.”

“I’ll remember that,” she muttered.
“And yes, I reassured her. She’s not jumping on a plane tomorrow to rescue me.
But she knows all about you, Jake.”

He doubted it. If Emma had told her
sister of her vision of a bloody car seat, she
would
be on that plane. “I’m shaking in my shoes,” he said,
ridiculously cheered. Plus, he and Emma had just spent the last half hour
trying to figure out who’d killed Ginny. His own name hadn’t come up once. In
fact, Emma was exploring the possibility that he might have been the oblique target
of Ginny’s death. That wasn’t the thinking of a woman who believed him guilty.

And all those
we
’s. Another sign they were on the same team, not battling each
other.

A man with brains would know there
was a big gap between being on the same team and being involved again. A man
with brains wouldn’t try to leap over that gap but would give it time to
naturally close on its own.

His brains had gone on vacation
when he’d met Emma Draper.

He cupped her cheek with one hand,
giving her plenty of notice of his intentions. But she must have lost
communication with her own brain cells, for instead of sliding away, she lifted
her face and closed her eyes.

It was a brief kiss, and she got
into her car immediately afterward, but that kiss haunted him long into the
night. For between the intoxicating flavor of Emma’s mouth and the hint of Guinness
had spun a sweet taste: Trust.

Emma’s eyes popped open. Darn it.
She’d fallen asleep again. But it had been such a nice dream, with Jake kissing
her like it was the only thing he wanted to do in the world.

But that hadn’t been just a dream.
Heat trembled through her, burning away the chill that had seeped into her
muscles while she’d slept and clearing the final bleary thoughts from her
brain.

She focused on the kennel walls
around her. The dogs. She had to check the dogs.

Getting to her feet, she groaned.
She’d thought that sitting on an overturned plastic bucket would be
uncomfortable enough to keep her awake—the plastic rim had dug deep into her thighs.
But then she’d rested her back against the nearby wall…and conked out like
she’d been whacked by a two-by-four.

Trying to walk softly so as not to
startle the dogs, she strolled down the kennel’s inner hallway, counting her
customers. Sixteen dogs. All the sleepy, furry occupants were where they were
supposed to be, and she let a breath of relief escape. Unfortunately, this
might be the last time she’d see the kennels so populated. Brutus’s kidnapping
was going to tear a fantastic hole in her business.

She reached the door at the end of
the corridor and pushed it open. Dawn rose up in a pink mist to the east.
Good—she hadn’t slept for more than an hour. And Ian had promised to come by at
nine to help again with the search for Brutus as well as check out their
four-legged guests to their owners.

And Jake would be coming by, too.
He hadn’t said so, but after last night, she knew he would.

Another circuit around the house,
checking for anything that looked out of the ordinary, and then she let herself
inside her home with a sigh. She’d snatch a bit more sleep before Ian arrived.
But she was pretty sure that even with two additional hours of shuteye under
her belt, she was going to be as incoherent as a stun gun victim.

She brushed her teeth, stripped off
her clothes, and climbed into bed.

And sleep refused to come.

Darn it, she had only two hours.
Sleep!

But her brain buzzed along, racing
from thought to thought.
Who had killed
Ginny?

Not Jake. Despite the shocking
images she’d seen in his mind, she could no longer believe that he’d killed
her. His arguments that the bloody memories didn’t prove his guilt had swayed
her, and his absolute confidence in his innocence had finally convinced her.

She flopped over to stare at the
ceiling, now smoke gray with dawn.

She’d shied away from the thought
all night, but it loomed in front of her, unwilling to be ignored any longer:
To prove Jake innocent to the police, she would have to read him again.

She flung her hand over her eyes.
It sounded simple enough. It shouldn’t inspire panic. But it did. Using her
mind-reading skills had only brought mountains of trouble down on her head—and
once it had caused the death of a friend.

What would happen if she meddled in
murder?

She sucked in a deep breath and let
it out slowly. It didn’t matter what the consequences were. She had to push
aside her fear and read Jake again. For his sake, for her sake, and for the
sake of any future they might have together.

• •

 
“You don’t look good,” Ian said when he came
through the back door. He accepted the coffee mug that Emma thrust at him. “Are
you getting sick?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted.
She didn’t admit that she’d also patrolled the kennels until the sun came up.
She knew Ian, and knew he’d feel honor-bound to help her by patrolling tonight
himself.