Thanks to the isolated location, it was tough for the fire department to put the blaze out, but over time they managed. Cam had shrugged off the EMT about four hundred times, but since Laurel was here questioning everyone, the EMT just kept coming back as urged to by his sister.
“I’m fine,” he growled when Laurel approached him with the man in tow again.
“You sound like you swallowed glass.”
“I’m fine.”
Laurel sighed heavily, but nodded toward the EMT, who walked back to the group of first responders huddled around the fire site.
Laurel stood next to him, but her gaze was on Hilly, who sat on a blanket, another draped over her shoulders. The dog was curled up in her lap despite being far too large to be a lapdog.
“She’s not talking,” Laurel offered.
“She talked. She’s just not giving you the answers you want. She doesn’t know anything. Not about the fire or the spray paint.”
“Dad disappears. A man who doesn’t exist on any public record as far as I can tell. Then she hightails it out of the station without telling us much of anything. Her place gets burned down, same day. Confess is written on the ground. Ground that’s technically on public land and not owned by anyone. You said she was armed to the teeth with enough surveillance equipment to make my department weep with jealousy. She knows something.”
“I don’t think so.” Evidence mattered, sure, but so did a gut feeling. So did the fact Hilly didn’t know how to use a phone and had looked absolutely wrecked when she’d told him her name.
“Don’t let a pretty face and breasts fool you, Cam,” Laurel said, surprising him enough to have him bristling.
Yes, Hilly might be an attractive woman, but as much as he wasn’t a cop or detective like his sister, he was former military. He knew a thing or two about reading people.
“I’m taking her home.”
“Cam.”
“She’s a victim in all this, Laurel. I know it. I’ve dealt with my fair share of victims.”
Laurel’s expression got pinched, a sure sign she was weakening in her surety that Hilly was a suspect.
“She didn’t set the fire herself,” Cam added. “Two men. I gave you my descriptions.”
“Descriptions that could be anyone.” She glanced at the spray paint on the ground. One of her deputies had taken pictures of it at a variety of angles. “She claims she doesn’t know any other names her father would go by, and now it looks like we won’t be able to find evidence of any.”
“Listen to the recording on my phone. I couldn’t hear anything, but maybe if you get somewhere quiet it’ll tell you something.”
“I’ll see what we can do with it,” Laurel returned. “You know to call if you think of anything else. If she tells you anything else. And I mean anything.”
“Laurel.” It felt like an odd invasion of privacy to reveal what he’d observed regarding Hilly, and yet Cam couldn’t help but think it was important. “She didn’t know how to use a phone. I think she’s been living here, isolated from the world, since she was a little girl.”
“Cult?”
“But only the two of them by all accounts.”
“Lone-wolf militia type. Weapons and paranoia. It’d fit. I don’t know how much infighting goes on in groups like that, but maybe he has some kind of enemy. I’ll work with the fire department, look into any similar arson cases, but if these are antigovernment types, profiles or information will be hard to come by. Especially considering his name isn’t even in our system.” Laurel glanced at Hilly again. “I can’t believe she doesn’t know more about that. About his fake name or whatever he does.” Laurel looked up at him, fierce and determined in the midst of her job. “I need you to convince her working with us is her best option.”
“Except if her father is involved in something criminal, that isn’t true.”
“My job is to find the criminal, Cam.”
“But mine isn’t.”
“I can’t believe you,” Laurel replied, not even bothering to hide her surprised disgust when she usually kept her emotions firmly under wraps when in uniform.
“You wanted me to help her. Well, I’m helping her. My job means keeping clients safe.” Usually a client actually asked him to work for them and paid him, but that was just semantics. Hilly had offered to pay him, after all.
“I hope for your sake you’re right and she doesn’t know anything, because it’s not going to do your reputation or your business any favors if you end up helping a criminal.”
Irritated with a lecture from his younger sister, Cam smirked. “Or is it?”
Laurel huffed and turned away from him, marching back to the group of first responders. He ignored the little sliver of guilt at needling her while she was on duty. She was being short-sighted and too focused on her job, and not thinking about the actual person affected by all this.
Cam moved toward Hilly. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the charred remains of her cabin, but when he approached she spoke.
“You’re fighting with your sister?”
“She’s just a little frustrated with me. Not unusual when it comes to siblings.”
Hilly’s eyebrows drew together. “I wouldn’t know.”
“As the eldest of four, I’m going to assure you, you’re very lucky.”
Her eyes tracked the scorched, wet remains of her blackened cabin. Yeah, not that lucky. Cam didn’t think Hilly Adams knew much about luck.
“Let’s go,” he offered, nodding toward the huddle of police. “Someone will take me back to my car.” He held out his hand to help her up. The dog got to its feet and pushed its head under his hand.
Cam chuckled, petting the happy, friendly dog for a moment before holding his hand out to Hilly again, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. She was staring at the remains of her home.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she whispered, gold-brown eyes suspiciously shiny.
“You’re going to come home with me,” he said firmly.
Her eyes widened and moved to him. “With you?”
“Whether you like it or not, I’m a part of this now. I told you my business is keeping people safe. Consider yourself my business.”
She swallowed visibly. “I don’t have any choice. I don’t have anything. I don’t...”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet. He held her gaze, and he made her a promise he wouldn’t allow himself to break. “At the end of all this, you’re going to have both.”
* * *
IT HAD BEEN strange to ride in the police car to the police station. She hadn’t been in a car for years. Decades, really. The truck they had moved to the cabin in had broken down when she was ten, and Dad had never felt the need to get another one.
That you know of.
She closed her eyes against that ugly voice, a voice that wasn’t hers. It was in the whispers and looks of everyone who’d asked her a question today. Deputy Delaney. The earnest young man in a matching uniform to Cam’s sister. The firefighters. The paramedic.
Their questions were pointed. Their responses to her answers were judgmental at best. Cam was the only one who talked to her as though he believed her, even though he kept looking at her a little sideways, like she was some fairy creature he was scared to take into the sunlight for fear she might fade away.
But that didn’t stop him.
She was in his car. He was driving. It was even weirder than the ride to the police station. She was trusting a stranger, not just to drive her, but to offer her shelter. She was trusting Cam with far too much.
He drove them through a town that looked vaguely familiar. Something about the boardwalk sidewalks and shoved-together buildings that lined Main Street nudged at some long past memory.
Maybe they’d driven through it when they’d moved here. She couldn’t remember the name of the town they’d lived in before Dad had moved them to the cabin. Most of her memories before the cabin were fuzzy half memories, but Dad had always spoken as if it was far, far away.
Is anything Dad told you true?
Hilly closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the window. Everything about doubting her father made her feel guilty and sick, and yet he’d allowed this seed of doubt to grow and grow.
Confess.
Confess.
Confess.
“Here we are,” Cam murmured.
Hilly opened her eyes. They’d left town behind and were now driving up a curving paved drive. The house at the end was... Sparkling was the first word that came to Hilly’s mind. Huge was the second. Gleaming wood and pristine windows and just acres and acres of wide-open space and mountains.
There was a small cabin in a secluded area a ways away that looked far more like what Hilly was used to.
“This is your house?” she asked. She knew nothing about the outside world, but this kind of extravagance had to mean Cam was important somehow.
“My family’s ranch,” Cam replied. “Laurel lives in that cabin over there. My brother and I live here with our father. My other sister lives in town, but she comes out and cooks for us quite a bit.”
“I don’t want to...” She didn’t have the vocabulary to explain all the ways this made her uncomfortable. How much she didn’t want to go in that house.
“The house has plenty of room for an extra person, as you can see. This is a simple, temporary solution. Where else would you go?”
Somewhere small. Somewhere secluded. Somewhere safe.
“I know you don’t fully trust me, Hilly.”
It was strange to hear someone else say her name. Someone other than her father in his rough, gravelly voice.
“But that’s okay,” Cam was saying. “I don’t expect you to trust me yet. You don’t have to be comfortable or happy to be here. But I can’t exactly let you wander the streets with nothing. We’ve got an extra room, and Jen or Laurel will spend the night if you’re worried about the all-men thing.”
“I’ve only ever lived with a man,” Hilly pointed out. Should she be worried about spending the night in a strange house full of men? It seemed no different than spending the night in a strange house full of women. They were all strangers.
“Okay, then.”
He parked his truck and Hilly felt as though something sharp had been tied around her, painfully squeezing all the air out. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t... She couldn’t.
But then Cam’s hand rested on hers.
“Breathe. In,” he commanded. He waited a beat while she obeyed. “Out.”
She followed the orders. It felt like the only sane thing in this whole day. Breathe in. Breathe out. She could breathe. She had to breathe. That made sense.
“You can have as much space or isolation as you need. We’ll go inside. I’ll show you around. You can hide in your room if you’d feel comfortable, or we can work on the case together.”
“The case.”
“Laurel and the sheriff’s department and fire department will investigate the fire, but your father missing isn’t going to be a huge part of that.”
“And if it is, my father’s the criminal in their scenario,” Hilly said. She’d understood that from the questions they’d asked, from the way they’d all looked at her. They believed her father, and to an extent her, were criminals.
“It’s true. You were living on public land, Hilly. The name not existing. The fire. ‘Confess.’ You have to admit, it doesn’t look good to an outsider.”
Except she didn’t understand outsiders. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an interaction with a human aside from her father prior to today. There’d been more people before they’d moved here, but Hilly didn’t remember anyone in particular.
It had been her, Dad and the animals.
Confess.
“But this is where it’s rather handy I followed you home,” Cam said, and she realized even though her breathing had evened out his hand was still on hers. “I’m not law enforcement, Hilly. I don’t need to decide if your father is a criminal or not. I only have to find him for you.”
“I can’t pay you now. My money is...gone.” Everything was gone.
Cam shrugged, even though she knew people on the outside didn’t do anything without payment. Dad had always told her that. During the few rebellions she’d entertained long ago she’d threatened to run away. Dad had always explained she’d never get anywhere without money, and back then he’d always kept the cash hidden. It had only been as an adult that he’d trusted her enough with some things.
But never leaving. Never with the outside world.
Dad was right in one thing. These people had made her doubt him. His intentions, his past, everything she knew about him.
Or had his longer-than-normal disappearance done that?
“Come inside,” Cam urged gently. “Let’s get something to eat. We’ll need to figure out a place for Free to stay.”
“With me. She has to stay with me.”
Cam made an odd face, but then he nodded. “All right. With you.” He pushed the driver’s-side door open, then pulled the seat forward so Free could jump out of the back. Hilly pushed her own door open and stepped out of the truck.
The air was cold and somehow different than the air she was used to. It wasn’t as heavy. The trees were all far away, and the mountains were majestic points on the horizon. Everything was open and vast.
She was enthralled by it all, but in the midst of this expanse of land around her was a looming house she didn’t even want to look at, let alone step inside. Everything about the house was intimidating, from the size to the clean way it shone in the fiery sunset. It was almost as if mud and grime didn’t dare touch this place. She didn’t like it. Didn’t trust it. She wanted to stay outside, but it was silly to want that.
She was lucky. If Cam hadn’t been there, she’d be alone and with nothing. Though she wasn’t sure she completely trusted him, he hadn’t orchestrated that fire or the law enforcement presence. He hadn’t written “confess” on her yard. Whoever he was, he was separate from this strange thing happening to her and her father.
And he was the only one who wouldn’t vilify her father unnecessarily. At least, he said he wouldn’t. She was too tired, and, yes, hungry, to worry about if he was lying about that or not.
She didn’t have a choice.
But Cam had said at the end of this she’d have one, and that was what she wanted. That was what she’d work toward. She needed to start thinking ahead instead of circling unproductive thoughts and worries.
She glanced at Cam. He was standing on the porch now, Free at his heels, waiting for her to follow. He didn’t push. He stayed there and let her look around, let her come to her own conclusions.
Trust or not, she liked that.
“What will you need to find my father?”
“A picture would be the best start.”
“I need some paper and a pencil then. I don’t have any actual photos, but I can draw okay.” She moved forward, and noted his patient expression had morphed into something like confusion. Or maybe suspicion.
Neither mattered. Only one thing did. She met Cam on the porch, held his dark gaze. “I need to find him. I can’t do it alone. I need your help, regardless of trust.”
Cam nodded, then led her inside.