Start Me Up (23 page)

For a few days there it had seemed almost a relief that she would be able to lay all her troubles at the feet of some nefarious stranger. Her father’s years of suffering, his death, her stagnant, stunted life, even her financial problems. But life was complicated. People were rarely felled by one grand blow of fate, rather they bled out slowly from hundreds of small, careless cuts. Just as she was bleeding now. It was slow and painless enough that you could ignore it for just the amount of time it took to become fatal.

“Bastards,” she muttered to no one. She switched off the radio and drove back to Tumble Creek in silence.

“She just pulled up to the police station. She’s coming in now and looks fine.”

“I’ll be right there.” He snapped his phone shut and walked out the door.

Quinn had spent a full hour going mad. After the night spent talking with Ben, finally getting the truth about what was going on, he’d tossed and turned all night. The little surprise he’d found on the kitchen table hadn’t helped his stress. The Anton/Bliss file from his home. And now that he knew about the riverfront land, he understood her strange interest in his business associates. Maybe even her interest in him altogether. After all, this affair hadn’t started until after Ben had begun the investigation.

It seemed there was a very good chance that Lori had been using him for more than just sex. For some reason, though it had felt fine to be used for his body, the idea of being used for information hurt like hell.

So he’d had a long night and had been running on very little sleep when he’d awoken to find Lori missing. Well…not “missing” according to Ben and his idiotically strict standards. Ben had maintained that Lori had simply gotten into her truck and gone somewhere, but Quinn hadn’t liked that at all.

What if she was investigating dangerous people? What if she was disoriented from the blow to her head and driving aimlessly on back roads? What if she’d taken too many painkillers and driven into the river?

Quinn had wanted Ben to at least have his men on the lookout for her as he refused to mount a full-on search. They’d argued about it, but it hardly mattered now. Quinn was jogging across Main Street, headed right past the back of Lori’s purple truck.

She was safe. She was alive.

He was going to kill her.

Ben was speaking when Quinn pushed through the door. “You should not have done that,” he told Lori in a stern voice.

Quinn reached her just as she was shrugging. “What did you do?” he demanded as he wrapped his arms around her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” she protested.

“What happened? Where did you go?”

Lori let him hug her but didn’t exactly respond. “Calm down. Everything’s fine. I just went to see Chris Tipton.”

The developer’s name brought Quinn’s brain back to reality. “I see.” He dropped his arms and stepped back. “Did you steal any of his files while you were there?”

Lori’s head snapped back as if he’d hit her. Her mouth worked as if she would speak, but she didn’t say a word. The response triggered a wave of guilt that tugged at his heart, but Quinn ignored it. “You should have at least hidden it,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Why didn’t you just
tell
me?”

She shrugged and looked at the floor. “I thought maybe you already knew.”

Quinn drew in a deep, deep breath, pretty sure he was about to start yelling, but Ben stepped between them, hands up.

“You two can hash this out later. Lori, I need to know what happened with Chris.” He jerked his head toward his office and Lori headed for it. She walked away without one glance back.

Quinn hadn’t even noticed the other people milling around the station, but there they were, eyeing him as if he were a stranger. And he was now. A stranger in his own hometown, and apparently a stranger to the woman he was sleeping with.

Odd that this casual, meaningless affair was driving a dull stake through his chest. Determined to escape the creeping feeling that his heart was suffering catastrophic damage, Quinn headed for Ben’s office.

“It’s the pass,” Lori was saying as he walked in and closed the door behind him.

Ben glanced up at him, then back to Lori. When she didn’t protest Quinn’s presence, Ben relaxed back into his chair. “What about the pass?”

“There’s talk that it might be maintained through the winter. The state is looking at the numbers.”

“What?” Ben’s chair screeched when he sat forward. Shock turned his face to stone. “Year-round?”

Quinn leaned hard against the closed door, the logic of it hitting him like a gust of wind.

Ben rubbed his face. “You’re kidding me. Right?”

“No. It’s nothing definite yet, but there’s enough of a chance of it going forward that people are interested in my land.”

Shock melting back to anger, Quinn clenched his fists. “So someone is trying to pressure you into selling before anyone finds out that your land is valuable.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I talked to Chris Tipton, and I honestly don’t think he’s involved. He didn’t think anyone else would stoop that low, either.” She looked over her shoulder. “They’re your friends. Do you think Peter Anton or Harry Bliss or one of the other developers would trash my garage?”

Would they? He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m perfectly willing to beat the truth out of them. At the very least, they tried to fuck you over.”

Lori smiled, and the sight of it set off an echo of pleasure inside his chest. He hadn’t seen her smile in days. “Thank you,” she said. “But I’m ready to give this all over to Ben—”

“Oh, thanks,” Ben chimed in sarcastically.

“I can’t deal with this anymore. It’s too much. I’ve got to sell that land, and I’ve got to do it quickly. If you can figure this out, Ben, I’ll be free to cash in without worrying I’m selling to a criminal.”

He nodded, then quizzed Lori on which developers she’d been looking into, taking the time to chew her out for not keeping him in the loop.

“You checked out James Webster?” Lori asked without enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” Ben answered in the same flat tone. “He’s got an alibi. I’m still tracking it down, but it’s pretty solid.”

While Ben was busy writing in his notebook and Quinn was trying to rub the tension from his neck, Lori let her head fall back and stared at the ceiling. “The land deal is obviously not a decade-old issue,” she said.

Ben sighed and set down the pen. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll check it out, just in case, but it seems unlikely. I did track down Hector Dillon, by the way.”

The name meant nothing to Quinn, but Lori perked up. “And?”

“He’d moved on to Arizona. He had a record there. But he died two years ago.”

“Oh. But you think he could have had something to do with my dad?”

“It’s possible. I don’t know.”

Lori slumped back into the seat. “Ben, I honestly don’t think my dad’s attack had anything to do with the land. I think it was random.”

Did Quinn have the right to kneel down next to her and take her hand? She clearly didn’t want him involved in her life in any meaningful way, but he couldn’t just let her sit there alone, talking about her dad’s skull being bashed in. He pulled the second chair close to her and took her hand in his as he sat. She didn’t pull away. In fact, her fingers curled into his as she closed her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Ben muttered. “It just doesn’t feel random to me. Something’s off.”

Lori shrugged, the gesture weary. “It was the middle of the night at a biker bar. What better place to find trouble?”

Ben said, “Yeah,” but the frustration in that word came through loud and clear. He wasn’t buying it and there was nothing he could do. Quinn understood, because he felt the exact same way. He’d do anything to help her, but what the hell could he offer? Aside from beating some business associates to a pulp.

“I could wear a wire,” he blurted. “I could wear a wire and ask Peter Anton what he knows.” His offer raised Ben’s eyebrows, but more importantly, it drew another smile from Lori.

“That’s sweet,” she said, as if he’d offered her a bouquet of flowers.

“Well,” Ben murmured dryly, “if it comes to that, I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

There wasn’t much left to discuss. Five minutes later, Lori and Quinn were walking out of the station, awkwardness like another person wedged between them. He got in her truck without asking permission, and they drove the short distance to Lori’s house in silence. His shoulders were burning with tension by the time he stepped through her front door, but he bit his tongue and let her go about her business.

Lori checked her messages and went to the bathroom. Then she got a glass of water and took a pain pill before pulling a paper-wrapped package from the freezer and putting it in the fridge to thaw. Quinn just watched, leaning against the back of the couch.

Finally, she rolled her shoulders and turned to face him. “Okay,” she said and took a deep breath.

“You thought I might be involved in all this?”

Lori shook her head. A curl fell over her forehead, resting there for only a moment before she pushed it back. “No. I didn’t think so, not really. It seemed like a possibility, once I realized you worked with Anton/Bliss, but I know you’re not that kind of person.”

“And you?”

“Me?” she finally breathed. “Am I that kind of person?”

His throat tightened as he waited for her answer. Had his body just been a perk? An added little bonus in her quest to solve a mystery? If so, he’d been even more meaningless to her than he’d thought.

“It occurred to me that maybe you’d know something,” she said, “but…after we were already dating. Not before. If that…if that makes a difference.”

It did. God, it did, but he was too relieved to make his mouth work.

“I’m sorry, Quinn.” Lori blinked rapidly. “I felt like I couldn’t tell you. But I knew what I was doing was wrong. When I used you to get close to Peter Anton and when I stole that file. I was just desperate…”

“If you’d trusted me and told me about it, I could have found out about the pass long ago.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “But those people are part of your work, Quinn. And your work means everything to you. What we had was just…it was just sex.”

What we had,
she’d said. Hell, he’d gotten used to the “just sex” part of it, but now it was past tense? Boy, he was inching down the ladder of pride, wasn’t he? At first he’d cringed at being dismissed as a sexual machine, and now he was praying she’d use him for a few more days.

“Ben agrees that you shouldn’t be alone at least until he’s interviewed each of the developers. I’d like to stay. Here. Or you can come to my place.”

It wasn’t a good sign when Lori looked at the floor. It was an even worse sign when she shook her head. “I think I’ll stay with Molly. Everything’s too confusing right now.”

She was right, of course. It was confusing. He was still pissed at her, and hurt, and now was not the time to talk about the future. And neither of them were in the mood for sexual fantasy. His work here was done, and Lori didn’t need him anymore. So why did he feel desperate to stay?

But he hadn’t sunk to begging yet. That was something. “All right. I’ll help you get your stuff together.”

It didn’t take long. The garage was already closed up. Lori only packed one bag. It seemed that mere seconds had passed and suddenly Quinn was standing next to the open window of her truck, saying farewell.

“Call me if you need information about anyone,” he offered.

Lori nodded.

“Or if you want to talk. About the land or about your dad.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful. Stay with Molly.”

“I will.”

He stood there a moment longer, fantasizing once again of rescuing Lori Love. She’d turned out to be a damsel in distress after all, but not the innocent, helpless kind. No, she was a damsel of a different sort. The brave kind who fought and lied and stole and did really dirty things with the knight in shining armor. Just before she sent him on his way with a pat on the back. And that was that.

Quinn stepped back and gave Lori Love a little wave. Her lavender truck pulled out of his life in a cloud of dust.

He’d let her go. But only for a little while.

“Yeah,” Lori snorted. “That’s me. Anyway, it’s hard to cook a roast on a paper plate.”

“Lori, look at me,” Molly ordered. “
Stop cooking.
I’ve found that’s the easiest way to avoid dirtying pots
and
pans. Not to mention utensils. And real silverware.” She grabbed a plastic spoon, pulled a carton of ice cream from the freezer, and dug in. “Mmm. It’s even more delicious eaten on a spoon you don’t have to wash.” She licked the spoon clean and dug right back in.

“Remind me not to try the chocolate.”

Molly growled, baring her teeth. “It’s all mine. Stay away from my precious!”

Laughing, Lori turned back to wiping down the counter. She didn’t cook this often at home, but the past three days had been hard for her. She didn’t like staying at someone else’s house, taking up their space and privacy. She felt Molly deserved some home-cooked meals in exchange, at the very least.

Harry Bliss was out of town and not returning Ben’s calls, and Ben insisted she not return home until Bliss showed up. Though she loved spending time with Molly, Lori desperately wanted to be in her space, in her own home. Truthfully, she wanted to lie in bed for a few days and just think. And cry. And eat her very own carton of ice cream.

“I’m going out,” she said as she passed Molly and went to slip on her tennis shoes.

“You’d better tell me where, or Ben will have no choice but to spank me. That man is a
hard
taskmaster.”

Lori snorted. “Good Lord, you’re not even subtle anymore. I don’t think you can call it a double entendre if the first entendre’s not even there.”

“Sorry. This new book I’m reading is super naughty. I’m distracted.”

She rolled her eyes and headed out the back door, but Molly cleared her throat.

Lori stopped. “All right.” She sighed. “I’m going out to my dad’s land. It’s all I’ve been thinking about for weeks, and I haven’t set foot on it all summer.”

“Okay, but…” Molly’s voice sharpened with caution. “Just don’t go near it if you see any rich developers hiding in the bushes with nets. They’re not hunting deer. They’re after you, little girl.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She let the door close behind her as she muttered, “I’m more worried about bears.” Rich developers, after all, didn’t like to get mud on their Italian loafers.

As she pulled out of Molly’s driveway, Lori rolled down her window and took a deep breath of air. It was cool and a bit humid, strange weather in the mountains. The air was usually bone-dry here, the sun like a brutal heat lamp on summer afternoons. But today clouds strolled languidly across the face of the sun, dulling its power, and the air was cool with moisture. It felt like the spring mornings when she used to go fishing with her dad.

Over the past twenty-four hours, Lori had come to the slow realization that she’d never really mourned her father. He’d died gradually and she’d shifted her expectations over that time. Then one day, finally, he’d been gone, as natural as if he’d faded away in the sun.

Right after his injury there had been shock and sorrow. That had been followed by hope and fear and adjustment and resignation and lots and lots of hard work. There’d been grief, too, both before and after he died, but only when she had time for it. And only when she’d let herself feel it.

She wanted to find a way to be with him now, and grieve his loss.

Despite the rutted dirt road, the ride along the river was soothing. She wouldn’t think about what it might look like lined with huge houses that would stand empty for months at a time. She’d only think of her dad standing hip-deep in that cold river, stained fishing cap pulled low on his brow, hands flicking the delicate fly in and out of the water.

She could almost see him, so at first she wasn’t surprised to see an ancient pickup pulled off to the side of the lane, its tires nearly hidden by deep grass. For a moment, as she slowed and pulled her truck in behind it, she thought that she would get out and really see him there. Not a visiting ghost, but real life after a bad dream.

But when she switched off the ignition, she came back to herself. It
was
his old truck, but he hadn’t driven it here. She’d given Joe that truck five years before and he’d been driving it longer than that.

Lori stared at the open tailgate in surprise. When she’d had to shut down the garage, Joe had told her he was going camping. No surprise. Joe camped a lot. But she had no idea he’d been camping here.

She slid out of her truck and walked on down the road until it narrowed to nothing more than a trail. The narrow path through the grass rose up a hill before curving out toward the river. Thunder rumbled as she edged carefully along the cliff. The water jumped and swirled below her. About a hundred feet on, the land opened up again and the trail dipped back down to the meadow that stretched out from the riverbank. When Lori spotted the small tent near the water, she felt her throat close up. She was glad Joe had been spending time here, since she hadn’t.

A narrow spiral of smoke drifted up from the side of the tent. As she drew nearer, she saw Joe, hunched over the fire, a whole fish roasting on a stick.

He glanced up at her approach, eyebrows not even rising in surprise.

“Lori,” he said. “What are you doing out here?”

“I didn’t know you camped here, Joe.”

He shrugged. “It’s a beautiful place. Your dad sure knew this river. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. I’m glad someone’s getting pleasure out of it.”

Joe pulled another stump close to the fire and motioned her to it. A wave of contentment crept over her as she took a seat and lapsed into silence. Sitting with him here was almost like sitting with her dad. This was what it would have been like had he still been alive.

Joe shifted in his seat. “No more trouble, I hope.”

“No,” she answered. “None.”

“How’s your hand?”

“It’s good.” Actually, she hadn’t thought about it once today, aside from the inconvenience of trying to help wash dishes, so it was obviously healing.

“Chief Lawson find anything?”

Lori stretched out her legs with a sigh. “Nothing. But I think I know what it’s all been about. The land.”

He turned slowly to face her. “The land? Why would you say that?”

“Someone wants me to sell. Quickly.”

His lips parted, jaw hanging open for a moment before he shook his head and closed it.

“I can’t be sure,” she assured him. “I heard a rumor. Ben’s trying to chase it down now.”

Joe sighed and looked up at the sky, then he swept a long, lingering glance around them. He looked at the campsite, the meadow, the wide sprawl of river. Then he nodded. “I’m sorry, Lori. I’m sorry for everything.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

He pulled the charred fish out of the flames and set it carefully on a rock. “It’s not right the way you’ve been living here, and I couldn’t seem to convince you to go. I thought you needed a little nudge out of the nest, you know?”

She paused in midnod, frozen solid as ice. Unease prickled up her arms like an army of fire ants. “What…what do you mean, Joe?”

“I could hardly bear watching you take care of him for all those years, but I kept telling myself you’d be fine. Eventually, you’d be fine. After he died, I thought you’d go back to school, but you didn’t even want to talk about it. You should never have gotten caught up in all of this. I had to do something.”

“Joe,” she breathed. Her head buzzed with adrenaline. “Joe, are you saying…Were you the one vandalizing my garage?”

His white hair whipped across his forehead in the wind, then pressed back close to his scalp, the pink showing through. “It was just small stuff. The hydraulic lift. The torque guns. The doors. And then…I never thought you’d get hurt in the oil spill. I liked to have died when I heard that, Lori. I just thought if things got a little more dire, if your bills were too much, you’d have to sell the land to me. Then you could pay off that debt and move on. I even thought maybe you’d leave the garage in my care. I could keep running it, and you wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.” He gave her a pained smile. “You’ve got to fly away, little bird.”

Little bird. He hadn’t called her that since she was twelve. Tears burned her eyes. This made no sense. Joe loved her. How could he have done these things? “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “You wanted me to sell the land to you? Give you the garage? That’s what you wanted?”

“No. It wasn’t about the land anymore. I’ve been saving up for thirty years. I’ve saved a lot since your dad…Well. I’ve got nearly a hundred and twenty thousand now. I wanted you to have it.”

“In exchange for the land?” she demanded. Her muscles were aching now, her hands trembling. Not Joe, her mind insisted. Not Joe.

“I was going to give the land back to you! I don’t want it, not anymore. I was going to leave it to you in my will, and then you could sell it again, you see? I’d pay you for it now, while you need the money, and then you could have it back, Lori. I didn’t want it for myself, I swear.”

It actually made perfect sense. And yet it didn’t. “Why didn’t you just tell me your plan? Why do it behind my back?”
And terrify me in the process,
she left unsaid.

Joe threw one hand up in exasperation. “You wouldn’t have agreed to that in a million years. You’re too proud, always have been. Nothing like your mother. That woman would take help from a person before he’d even offered.”

He was staring into the fire now. Joe picked up a stick and poked thoughtfully at the edge of a charred log. “That time she wrote to me? She wanted money. She’d been gone so many years and it didn’t bother her at all, reappearing like a ghost.”

Her neck had tensed into a burning knot. Her broken hand remembered that it was supposed to hurt and started throbbing. “I thought she wanted to check up on me.”

Joe didn’t seem to hear her. “I wouldn’t send the money. I couldn’t do it. Despite everything, I never thought she’d leave you. It’s hard to see the truth sometimes, and I just didn’t want to see she was that bad of a mother.”

“Joe.” Lori stood. She wanted to leave. Run until she was so exhausted that her brain would cease to think. She could forgive Joe for wrecking her garage. She could. He’d had good intentions, despite being totally misguided. But there was something else in his voice now. Some deeper sorrow. An older memory.

“Joe,” she choked out. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words scratchy with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry. She didn’t want to take you with us, and I couldn’t leave without you. So I stayed and she moved on, and good riddance to bad rubbish. I couldn’t have loved her after that anyway. What kind of woman could leave a little child behind?”

Lori clutched her broken arm to her chest. “Joe…” Oh,
no.
Oh, no. “Joe, did you…Were you with my mom before I was born?” The truth suddenly seemed obvious, but Joe’s brow furrowed with confusion. Looking up at her, he shook his head.

“No. That’s not it. I’m not your daddy, even if I wish I was. But I did love her. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I did. After they were married and you were born—” Joe’s shoulders slumped “—it seemed like she’d gotten what she wanted out of your dad. She was bored and pretty, and I was young and stupid. I’m so sorry.”

This is a motive,
her brain was spelling out to her in slow and careful tones.
A classic love triangle.
Except that her mother had run off thirteen years before her dad had hit the asphalt of that parking lot.

Her foot slid back. She inched away. “I’m going to go now, Joe.”

He stood. “No.”

“Joe,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“It’s been killing me for a long time now, Lori. This is my chance to tell you the truth.”

“No,” she begged him.

“She wrote to me. She’d been gone more than ten years, and here she just up and waltzes back in from out of the blue, looking for money. I wouldn’t give it to her. I wrote back and told her how amazing you’d turned out to be and how much she’d missed out on by being stupid and selfish. I guess that didn’t sit too well. She called me and told me she was going to tell your dad everything.”

Her tears were blinding her. Lori tried to wipe them from her eyes, but they kept coming back.

Joe hung his head. “I waited for the explosion. I knew if he found out, he’d ride me out of town on a rail. I’d have lost my best friend and I’d never have seen you again. I was scared to death, Lori, but nothing happened. She never called or wrote again. I thought it was over.”

Lori took a step back and stumbled over a clump of grass. With the cast on her wrist, she couldn’t catch herself in time, and landed hard on her butt. Joe rushed over and pulled her up and right into his arms.

“I’m sorry, Lori,” he whispered, and she began to sob. She cried for what he was saying and what it meant. She cried because she was scared of him, and yet she buried her face in his chest and sobbed while he held her.

“He was going to sell me the garage,” he explained. “We’d had a plan from the time your mama walked out. I was going to work for him, put in my time and then buy him out. He could retire then, buy his land and spend his days fishing. At some point we stopped talking about it, but I guess I just didn’t notice.”