Chapter One

 

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

I looked up from the latest love note sent by the California State Franchise Tax Board and offered what I hoped was a pleasant smile. Between the taxes, the jetlag, and the unwelcome discovery that my soon-to-be-demoted store-manager stepsister was using the flat above Cloak and Dagger Books as some kind of love shack, pleasant was about the most I could manage.

Medium height. Blond. Boyish. As I stared into an eerily familiar pair of green eyes, recognition washed over me. Recognition and astonishment.

“Kevin? Kevin O’Reilly?” I came around the mahogany front desk that served as my sales counter to give him a…well, probably a hail-fellow-well-met sort of hug, but Kevin didn’t move. He grinned widely, nodded, and then—unexpectedly—his face twisted like he was about to burst into tears.

“Adrien English. It’s really you.” His voice wobbled.

“Hey,” I said. I was responding to the wobble. My tone was a cross between warm and bracing. Alarmed, in other words.

Kevin recovered at once. “It’s only…I figured it couldn’t be the right store. Or if it was, you’d have sold the business and moved to Florida.”

“Moved to Florida?” Did anybody move from Southern California to Florida? Did Kevin remember me as an elderly Jewish retiree? No. Kevin was just talking, mouth moving while he stared at me with those forlorn eyes. Trying to make his mind up.

About what?

He looked…older, of course. Who didn’t? And thinner. And tired. He looked unhappy. There was a surprising amount of that during the holidays. And even more after Christmas. Which is what this was. The day after Christmas.

Boxing Day, if we had stayed in London.

Which we hadn’t.

“Wow. This really is a surprise,” I said. “Is it a coincidence? Or were you actually looking for me?”

“Yes.” Kevin hesitated. “No.”

I laughed. “Good answer.”

Kevin opened his mouth but changed his mind at the thump of footsteps pounding down the staircase to our left.

Natalie, my previously mentioned stepsis and soon-to-be-demoted store manager, appeared, looking uncharacteristically disheveled—though I’ve been duly informed that smudged eye makeup and “bed head” is a real thing and supposedly sexy. Angus, my other business investment mistake, was on her heels. Right on her heels. In fact, they nearly crashed down the staircase in their hurry to stop me from whatever they thought I was about to do.

“Adrien, it’s not what you think!” Natalie clutched the banister as Angus lurched past her.

Why do people always say that?

I spluttered, “Seriously? Really? Are you kidding me, Nat?”

Angus, having avoided knocking Natalie down, promptly tripped over Tomkins, the beige alley cat I’d rescued six months earlier. The cat was apparently also fleeing my wrath, though he’d been the only innocent party at that…party.

I held my breath as Angus managed to hurdle the last three steps and deliver a barely qualifying 12.92 landing on the ground floor.

I glared at him. “And you. You stay out of my sight.”

He shrank inside his gray hoodie like a retiring monk, which he was demonstrably not. Note to self: next time hire a headless monk.

“I’m fired?” he gulped.

Natalie gasped.

“Hell no, you’re not fired. In the middle of the holidays? Wait. Maybe you are fired. I have to think about it. Meantime maybe you could bring yourself to reshelve the week’s worth of books sitting on this cart?”

Angus leaped to obey.

“It’s not a week’s worth,” Natalie said with a show of defiance. “You haven’t been gone a week. That’s two days’ worth, and we didn’t have time to reshelve because we were busy selling books.”

“And you were busy not selling books. But we’ll discuss it later.”

“Fine. Okay. Yes, Mr. Scrooge, we did take Christmas off.”

“And other things too, it seems, but like I said, we’ll discuss later. Right now we have customers.”

She looked at Kevin.

“Not him.”

“Where?” she demanded, mutiny in her blue eyes. Flecks of green glitter dusted her model-like cheekbones.

Right on cue, the bells on the door chimed in silvery welcome, and I had to smother a grin at her irate expression as a pair of elderly, male professorial types wandered in, each clutching what looked ominously like bags of books for return.

“Want to grab a cup of coffee?” I asked Kevin, who had observed the last three minutes in astonished silence.

“Sure,” Kevin said.

“We’ll let these two get their story straight before I cross-examine them.”

“Oh, so funny,” Natalie muttered.

I did laugh then, although she was right. It wasn’t funny, and Natalie + Angus was an unexpected and unwelcome equation both in the work place and every other place I could think of. Which is why it seemed like a good idea to step away before I said things I might regret.

Plus I desperately needed caffeine. To add to their other offenses, Natalie and Angus had pinched every last coffee bean in the building. I’d had to choose between coffee and nine more minutes with Jake that morning. Which went predictably. My gaze veered automatically to the clock on the faux fireplace mantel. Jake ought to be walking into his meeting about now. He’d headed out to meet a client as I’d left for the bookstore. We were hoping to rendezvous for lunch—and just the idea of that, of being able to casually meet Jake for lunch, instantly warmed me.

We left Natalie distractedly greeting customers, and I led the way out of the store into the damp, chilly Monday morning. The smell of last night’s rain mingled with street smells. The gutters brimmed with oily water, and the street was black and slick. The fake evergreen garland and tinsel-fringed boulevard banners looked woebegone and windblown—like they’d gone to bed without taking their makeup off.

All the same, it felt weirdly festive. Like the dark side of Christmas.

“Is it always like that?” Kevin asked as we jogged across the already busy intersection.

“More or less. I prefer less.” I threw him a sideways smile.

His brows drew together. “You haven’t changed at all.”

“Now there you’re wrong.”

“No, but I mean you look exactly the same. You look great.”

“Thanks. It’s the Wheaties.” And the successful heart surgery. Being happy probably didn’t hurt either. I pointed down the street at the blue and white umbrellas crowding the sidewalk in front of the indie coffeehouse, and we veered from the crosswalk and hopped the brimming gutter, just missing getting splashed—or worse—by a Mercedes who didn’t notice the crosswalk or us.

I said, “How long has it been? Three years?”

“About. It feels like thirteen.” He looked like it had been thirteen. There were shadows beneath his eyes and lines in his face even though he couldn’t be much more than twenty-eight. Out of college and doing archeology for a living? Could you make a living doing archeology?

Probably as easily as you could selling books for a living.

“So how’ve you been?” I prodded his sudden and complete silence. “How was your holiday?”

His face twisted again. “If you’d asked me last week—”

We’d reached the coffeehouse. I held the short, wrought-iron gate for Kevin, and as we reached the glass door entrance I gave him an encouraging shoulder squeeze—hold-that-thought! The life-affirming fragrance of hot coffee and baked goods wafted out.

“Find us a table.” I headed for the mercifully short line. “What do you want?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “A tall, pumpkin spice latte with caramel drizzle and no foam.”

Uh-huh, as the philosophers say.

“Got it.”

I placed our orders and eventually located Kevin at a tiny table behind a large potted tree festooned with red bows and white fairy lights. He had his head in his hands, which is never a good sign in someone you’re planning to have coffee with.

I pulled out the chair across from him. “Something tells me this is about more than not getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

The words came out muffled behind his hands. “I don’t know where to start.”

I sighed mentally. I’m all for extra helpings of comfort and joy this time of year, but I was more than a bit sleep deprived, and I was worried about the situation with Natalie and Angus. Still.

“Start at the beginning. What are you doing in my neck of the woods? Are you visiting family?”

“No. My family’s all up north.” He raised his head and took a deep breath. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“Ivor. I’ve checked the hospitals, the morgue. The police won’t help because his family won’t report him missing and he’s an adult. They say he’s got a right to disappear if he wants.”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “Ivor is…?”

“Missing.”

“Right. I mean, who or what is Ivor to you?”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Possibly I sounded overly enthused, but as I recalled, Jake had not taken kindly to Kevin’s, er, boyish interest in me. Or mine in him. Not that I’d ever really been interested in Kevin.

Anyway, it was all a long time ago.

“Yes. It was. Is. And that’s why—” Kevin broke off as the barista brought our coffees and a couple of pastries on a tray.

In a mystery novel, that would have been the point at which a silencer would have appeared through the branches of the potted tree to take out Kevin, but in real life we just waited politely until she departed.

“Have some baklava,” I said, “and let’s walk this back a few steps. Ivor is your boyfriend, and he came down south to spend the holidays with his family, and now he’s missing?”

“Yes. Right. Exactly.” Kevin reached for a slice of baklava.

“And his family is saying…what?”

“Nothing.”

“Meaning they won’t talk to you or they don’t have any information?”

Kevin chewed like a threshing machine and spit out, “Both.”

“It can’t be both.”

“First they said he wasn’t there. Then they stopped talking to me.”

“Ah. So you think—”

“He didn’t change his mind about us! I know he’s there. Something happened while he was down here visiting them.”

Yep. And that something had led Ivor to change his mind about being with Kevin. Been there and done that. And honestly, it had all turned out for the best. As painful as it had been getting dumped by Mel, I didn’t regret a minute of that heartbreak because my path had ultimately led to Jake.

I didn’t try to tell Kevin that, though. I didn’t tell him if it was meant to be, it would happen. I didn’t reassure him about all the fish in the sea. Because it doesn’t help when you’re in love with a particular fish.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Realistically, I mean.”

“Realistically, I don’t know. Nothing they could say would make any difference to him. I know Ivor. I know he loves me.”

I have to admit his absolute certainty was convincing. Or maybe it was just poignant.

I said tentatively, because sometimes hearing it aloud jolts you back to reality, “Do you think he’s being held against his will?”

“Maybe.” He said it more in challenge than in belief.

“What do you think would be the purpose of that?”

“Maybe they would try to force him into conversion therapy? They’re really conservative. I mean like something out of the nineties.”

“Uh…” Presumably he didn’t mean 1890s.

“I didn’t even think normal people could feel that way now,” he said all wide-eyed and shocked-looking. Seven years wasn’t a generation, but Kevin had grown up in a different world than me. Certainly a different world than Jake.

“I’m not sure how normal they are if they’re really holding their son against his will so that they can force him into conversion therapy.”

“I mean normal-seeming. People who live in the real world. Who’ve been to college. Who have jobs. Friends. Who have money.”

That caught my attention. “They have money?”

“A lot of money.” He said it with complete disgust.

“What’s Ivor’s last name?” I asked.

“Arbuckle.”

“Arbuckle? As in Candace and Benjamin Arbuckle?”

Kevin watched me, torn between hope and unease. “Right. Why? Do you know them?”

“My mother knows them. I went to school with Terrill.”

I hadn’t thought of Terrill in years. And I’d have been happy to go on never thinking of him.

Kevin was staring at me expectantly. I admitted, “I vaguely remember Ivor. There was a sister too, I think.”

“Jacintha. Yes.” Kevin continued to wait for my pronouncement.

I didn’t have a pronouncement. If I did, it would be something along the lines of Run for the hills! Terrill and I had been doubles partners on the tennis team back in high school. He was a good player but a total prick off the court. Happily, once my health had sidelined me, I’d never had to deal with Terrill again. As in literally never. I’d never seen or heard from him again after I got sick.

Terrill Arbuckle as an in-law was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone—or at least not the Terrill Arbuckle I’d known back then. And I couldn’t imagine the rest of the clan was any better. That was an assumption. I didn’t know it for a fact. Maybe Ivor was the white sheep of the family.

Kevin gazed beseechingly at me with those wide green eyes. He said huskily, “Do you—could you—can you help me, Adrien?”

“Me? Well, I don’t know how much help I’d be. I do know—”

“You saved me,” Kevin broke in, and he sounded startlingly passionate about it. “I’d have gone to prison for murder if you hadn’t stepped in three years ago. Nobody else believed me. Only you. Well, also Melissa. Anyway, I never got the chance to tell you. Never got the chance to say thank you.”

“That’s okay. You didn’t have to.”

“When I saw your bookstore, it was like a sign. I mean, I know that probably sounds crazy, but I was driving around feeling so—so desperate and alone, and then when I saw you, I knew it would be okay. I knew you would help. That I’d managed to find the one person who could help.”

“Okay, but wait,” I said quickly. “First of all, you’re welcome for three years ago. I couldn’t have done that on my own, though. And really the same goes for now. I’d like to help, but probably the most helpful thing I can do is put you in touch with someone who can get you some answers.”

“Who?” Kevin asked blankly.

I smiled. Because even in these not very cheerful circumstances, knowing I could call on Jake for help, could count on Jake now and forever, filled me with…happiness.

Yeah. Happiness.

“Jake Riordan,” I answered.