Chapter

16

Seth opened the door to the apartment. “Can I get you something to drink? A soda? Or I could make you some tea. Maybe.” He looked at the door to the kitchen as if he wasn’t really sure what he would find in there. “We might have some left over. I … I might have some, I mean,” he said. 

I suspected Seth was regretting the decision to bring me here. I felt it, hanging between us. Michael. The promise I’d made to never get involved with his brother. I was sure he’d extracted the same promise from Seth too. And we’d both broken our word just hours after the memorial service. 

“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll see what I can pull together, okay?”

I allowed him to gently drag me over to the couch, where I flopped down. Gracefulness was not my gift. Coordination had been gained by years of practice, but it was beaten out by a bone-deep weariness and the chemical cocktail of adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine. It was all I could do to keep upright. 

I tried to play it cool, but we both knew I wasn’t close to cool. Or calm. Or collected. A perverse part of me thought, for a moment, that Ben seeing me like this might have been a good idea. Nothing better to convince him that being a private investigator was a bad career choice than his big sister scared to the roots of her hair. And I was. It wasn’t every day someone tried to knife me. I’m sure plenty of people have thought about giving me a good smack, some maybe even half seriously. But the guy with the knife was very serious. The feeling that there was something about him that I knew but couldn’t place came back. It was frustrating.

I felt the couch dip down next to me. “I couldn’t find any tea. Sorry.” 

I opened my eyes and giggled. What the hell? I was not a giggler. Except, he was holding a honey bear. He looked down at the container and smiled.

“I have no idea why I brought this out with me.”

This was a Seth I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Nostalgia made me lean my head against his shoulder.

“Don’t read anything into this, okay? I’m still pretty pissed off at your cover. He’s a rude jerk and him kissing me like that earlier wasn’t okay.”

Awkwardness tended to bring out my mean side but since I was making an effort to not push his buttons, I thought a joke would be a good idea. Also, I wanted to distract him from the lecture I was sure he was gearing up for regarding my personal safety.

“So let me see if I understand you. I shouldn’t read anything into you leaning your head against my shoulder. Am I supposed to read anything into the fact that you specifically mentioned Undercover Seth’s manner of kissing you?”

My mind blanked for a second. Why had I put it like that? Why did my mind come up with the worst possible way to phrase things? And that wasn’t even a phrasing problem. That was just a flat-out dumbass thing to bring up. I kept my head still and hoped he’d think I’d fallen asleep.

“So if I kissed you right now it would be okay since I’m not him?”

No dice. He’d clearly not fallen for my Scooby-Doo ploy, genius investigator that he was. I had to just cross my fingers and hope that I wouldn’t get myself further into trouble.

“I’m not sure what I meant. And I don’t think this is a good time to figure out what I meant.” Honesty. Huh. It hadn’t even hurt too bad. In fact, I felt pretty great except for my arm, sore from the baton making contact with the assailant’s body. “You know, I whacked that guy pretty good, Seth. I could have broken his arm. You might think about alerting the hospitals.”

And I had gotten myself back into the other mess of talking about something I hadn’t wanted to get into with him. My brain was on a ten-second delay. 

“Will? Look at me.”

I reluctantly dragged my head up off his shoulder. 

“You’re really okay, right? You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Mostly because I’m an idiot and I don’t like to admit weakness. And I just can’t listen to you talk at me anymore about my safety. But I really am okay.” Heck, telling the truth seemed to be my new game plan. At least, the game plan of my brain-to-mouth filter.

He just looked at me with an expression that wasn’t amusement but also wasn’t annoyance. The two most common expressions I was used to with him.

I laid my head back down on his shoulder. I figured I could close my eyes for a minute or two.

“After this case is over we’re revisiting the whole mess between us, Willa. Count on it.”

I nodded, trying and failing to stifle a yawn.

We must have fallen asleep because a loud clunk shocked both of us awake. Seth was clearly more startled than me because I found myself bracketed under him on the couch, his eyes wild and unfocused.

“Whoa, Seth, it’s okay.” I looked up at him, his eyes scanning the room. It was as if he hadn’t heard me. “Seth, listen to me. Everything’s all right. It was just my phone falling off the couch.”

His gaze sharpened. He glanced down at me, his skin blooming pink from under his shirt and up his neck.

“Sorry. That, uh, startled me. I just reacted.” He eased up off me and offered his hand to help me up. It was clear from the way he refused to make eye contact that he didn’t want to talk about what had just happened. I didn’t push it. We all had our secrets. I knew enough to know that he’d done some work in the Army that was pretty dangerous. I was sure he had some bad memories. Lots of bad memories, if his reaction to a dropped phone was any indicator.

He bent over and grabbed my phone, handing it to me, still hiding his face. “Maybe now is the time to settle all of this. I don’t know if I can do this otherwise,” he said.

I just stared at him, not daring to open my mouth. I eased back, realizing how close we had been standing to each other. I cursed my hormones, which seemed to draw my body to his whether I chose to or not. Feeling like a smart coward, I fled to the bathroom. I just needed a moment and a door closed between us. 

Seth was right. My safety was an issue. My emotional safety. I didn’t hate the warm fuzzies I had allowed to flourish as much as I wanted to. How he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get through this case without figuring out what would happen with us. If I wanted to be with Seth, the only thing keeping us apart was my fear. Was it wrong that I wanted him to spell it out for me instead of the vagueness he kept offering? He’d just reappeared in my life after years. Years in which I’d gotten sporadic letters and emails. Years in which he’d kept alluding to what he felt, but never in a straightforward way, never in a way I couldn’t dismiss as his standard surface flirting. I’d never challenged it. Michael hadn’t wanted Seth and me to get together, so I had just ignored it. Years where I’d felt safe because I could ignore it.

Feeling safe with Seth seemed stupid in light of the big, mean guy wielding a knife at me on the side of the road. 

My legs started to shake and I sat down on the edge of the tub. I didn’t know if it was training, instincts, or dumb luck that had caused me to take that baton out with me. Sitting in the bathroom staring at the door made me want Seth to continue to fight me about staying on the case. Part of me—the dead-tired, scared-spitless, emotionally empty part—really wanted a hero to come swooping in and make everything better. It was a small part but it seemed to be winning. So I planted my feet and stood up. I locked the bathroom door. No way I was letting that weak bitch out to ask to be rescued. I gave myself a few more minutes before I headed back out to the living room. 

Seth was on the phone when I got back to the couch. I heard him give some final details to the person on the other end of the call. It seemed he agreed that getting a description of my attacker out to medical facilities was a good idea. He ended the call and turned to me.

“I hope you did break the bastard’s arm.”

“It’d be nice to get our hands on him so quick, huh?”

His eyes were hard and angry. “It’d be nice to get my hands on him so I could beat him unconscious. Sorry, I know you don’t want me doing that, being all protective. It just kills me that you were alone on the side of the road and some asshole tried to hurt you,” he said.

“No, I get it. If anyone’s going to kill me, you want it to be you.”

He stared at me for a second and then laughed, shaking his head.

“Come on, Anderson, gallows humor. Besides, you’d never be able to pull it off. I’ve seen you fight. You’re all posture and overly ambitious. That takedown at that garage was some weak shit.”

“Any time you want to get on a mat, you let me know, Pennington. I learned some things in the Army.” He had stepped into my personal space aggressively, proving my point. 

“I’m sure you think you did but you’ve forgotten that I’ve trained too. What’s say when this is all over we throw on some gloves and I take your ego down a few notches?”

That certainly had distracted him from the guy with the knife, but not as I intended. The space between us pulsed and swirled. Ben’s ringtone broke the tension slightly and I looked down, out of the reach of Seth’s searching gaze.

“Hey, Benjy.”

“You gotta come home the Horowitzes are here their house is on fire.”

In his excitement, the words had run all together. It was a bad habit we couldn’t break him from but we’d all learned to translate.

“I’ll be right there, Ben. You stay in our house. You don’t go out to help. Fifteen minutes.”

I disconnected the call and jammed the phone in my back pocket. I snatched my jacket up and shoved my arms in the sleeves, then turned around in circles looking for my keys, forgetting entirely the previous events of the evening. Seth grabbed my hand and tugged me to a stop.

“Will, what’s wrong? What are you looking for?”

I yanked my arm out of his grip. “The neighbor’s house is on fire. The one whose granddaughter was living with Joe Reagan.”

Random things happen randomly sometimes. This? So not a coincidence. Not a chance. The whisper of memory floated through my head again. I clenched my fists, frustrated at how it flitted away just as I tried to grab it.

“You got another helmet? Get it now.”

He didn’t even blink, just turned and headed into his bedroom. He was gone no more than a minute and reappeared holding a helmet and a pair of leather gloves. He tossed the gloves at me and pulled open the front door.

Seth’s driving took my breath away. As we sped to the house I wondered if he always drove like a madman. I concluded that he did. Of course he did. Like everything else in his life he pressed the throttle and leaned in. That was why it was so annoying when he accused me of doing it. He wasn’t any different. He just got clapped on the back for it because he was a man. Even my parents, proclaimed feminists, had always admonished me to use care, be cautious, look before I leaped. That guy on the side of the road wouldn’t have approached Seth so casually. It pissed me off.

Lost in my thoughts I barely noticed when we turned into the neighborhood. The scream of a fire engine’s siren broke through my musings. We swerved around the slowing truck, almost clipping the bumper. I tightened my grip around Seth’s middle, squeezing a bit tighter than necessary. I hoped he’d get my message. ATF Seth didn’t need Undercover Seth getting noticed by the cops.

I hopped off the bike and yanked off my helmet, getting a deep breath of smoky air. A gust of wind blew water droplets into my face. Hot and cold at the same time, smoke and water, controlled chaos. The fire seemed to be under control, dying under the assault of the hose.

“Stay here.”

Seth made to dismount too and I planted my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t need anyone getting twitchy and a situation escalating. With the cops, the firefighters, and Seth, we’d have testosterone overload if they all got edgy at once.

“I said, down boy. I don’t need your cover getting mouthy and inviting questions neither of us can answer. Boyd will be here sooner or later. We’ll talk to her together. Until then, discreet and inconspicuous. Okay?”

“Your wish is my command, your majesty.”

He had an annoyed purse to his lips. I had to gently smack him back down.

“Hey, all I’m asking for is a few minutes of patience. Think you can manage that, Ace?”

He nodded. A clipped little gesture, so I knew backing down cost him. As I walked up the path, I mentally patted myself on the back. I won the round without either of us yelling. Yay me. The cop at the door was one I knew slightly from a training workshop. He was well over six feet tall with a baby face that belied being in his early thirties. I remembered he was conscientious if a bit too trusting. But that workshop was years ago and even though I could remember his personality, his name eluded me. I squinted at his nameplate in the dim light. Lynch.

“Officer Lynch, I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Willa Pennington. I live here.”

“Of course I remember you. Good to see you again even if it’s under these circumstances.” He turned and opened the storm door for me.

I was inexplicably nervous passing over the threshold. The idea of David and Susan converging with Boyd and me in my home set my nerves loose. I stepped back to gesture to Seth, who was staring resolutely at the house.

“Officer Lynch, my friend on the bike will be sticking around. Can you let the others on scene know so they don’t think he’s a lookey-loo, please?”

“Will do.”

My legitimate stall tactic spent, I entered the house and headed into the kitchen, where I knew Ben would have the Horowitzes. By now he’d have plied them with tea and cookies, Susan’s currency of comfort. For a split second, I wished Ben was the adult. He was better at it than I was. He got his social graces from Nancy, whereas neither of my biological parents were what you’d call personable. Charming, yes. At ease in social settings, not even close. In crises, Leila would fall apart, fluttering around and trying on accents like she could put on a new identity; Dad reverted to cop mode, interrogation and deduction. It would never occur to either of them to offer tea and cookies. I doubted Leila could even make tea. I knew she couldn’t make cookies.

Sure enough, Ben, David, and Susan sat at the table, steam swirling up from tea cups. On saucers. With cloth napkins. And sitting across from them was Boyd. 

“Detective Boyd. You got here quickly.” That sounded more like a challenge than I had intended. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I just meant I only found out fifteen minutes ago and I was nearby. You beating me here is pretty impressive.”

She smiled at me. “No offense taken, Pennington. And nice save, by the way.”

I walked over and gave Susan a little shoulder hug. “I’m so sorry this has happened. Were you able to get out your photo albums and mementos?” I knew those would be the only things truly important to them. Their family photos. Their memories. 

Susan nodded, her eyes swollen, unshed tears shining. “We did … and … we just couldn’t stand out there and watch anymore.”

Ben pulled me aside. “The EMTs gave them the choice of hospital or our house. The cold and, you know, emotional stress.”

I turned and gave him a look that said thanks and get lost at the same time. He knew me well enough to not be offended.

“Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz. Detective Boyd. All this excitement has worn me out so I think I’m going to go to bed now. I have school early in the morning,” he said then disappeared into the back of the house.

“Wow. That is some kid,” Boyd said.

“We think he was switched at birth with some government experiment to create the perfect forty-year-old infant,” I said.

That got a genuine smile from both David and Boyd. She quickly sobered. “The arson inspector will make an official ruling, but we’re fairly convinced this was arson.”

I pulled out the head chair and sat. A position of power couldn’t hurt. I was unsure how a chair with arms made me more powerful than someone sitting in a chair without arms, but whatever.

“And you think it’s connected to the murder too, I assume.”

“Considering the timing, I can’t help but think that.”

“Detective Boyd, do you have a full statement from the Horowitzes at this point? They should probably get some rest too.”

The look she gave me told me she was clued in to my desire to have them out of the discussion and that she agreed. “Absolutely, and if we have any more questions, we can contact you later. I’m sorry for everything that has happened to you, Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz.”

They looked lost. I couldn’t imagine how they felt. It was all so overwhelming, all the events of the last week coming one right after another. 

“We don’t have anywhere to go. I suppose we could call a taxi and head to a hotel out by the mall.”

I frowned. I hoped I hadn’t given them the impression that I was kicking them out. “David, of course you’ll stay here tonight.”

I led them down the hall and got them some basic overnight supplies. I should have been nervous leaving Boyd alone in the house. Once invited in, anything in plain sight was fair game, but I had nothing to hide and I had fairly well ruled out the idea that she had her sights set on me or any of the Horowitzes for the murder of Joe Reagan. No matter how many years she’d been on the job, I couldn’t see her being so cynical as to think a young woman would burn down her own grandparents’ house to set up a fake suspect. 

And I had a surprise guest I needed to invite in from the cold. Literally. Despite the fire the temperature outside was dropping rapidly and Seth was already annoyed.

Seth sat down across from Detective Boyd, his lips pressed together. Clearly, he’d kept warm by using his annoyance at me as fuel. The man at the table was somewhere between Undercover Seth and Agent Seth. He’d need to dial that down several notches to make any headway with Boyd. Unless he was taking over the murder case from the police, he needed her. And even if he decided to take the case over, she’d demand to stay on so he was stuck with her either way.

I poked him in the arm. Hard. He turned his annoyed expression on me, the real culprit, and just stared for a minute then softened a bit and nodded. 

“The three of us have a great deal to talk about but first, I think under the circumstances, the Horowitzes need to get out of town for a few days,” I said to Boyd.

She nodded. She was curious about Seth but I didn’t bother looking at him. If he thought they had any information about his case, he’d have talked to them already anyway. And he wouldn’t have asked for my input.

“Okay, now that we’re all in agreement, I think introductions are in order. Detective Boyd, this is Agent Seth Anderson of the ATF.”