After All the Wreckage

by LJ Evans

Genres: Action & Adventure Romance; Romantic Suspense; Friends to lovers

Synopsis

What if the future is already written?

GAGE

When Rory Marlowe Bishop walks out of my past and into my bar, I realize she’s not just a kid anymore. Now she’s hell on wheels and a special kind of temptation. But I can’t afford the distraction, not with the responsibility I’ve inherited. I’m raising my two young siblings who have inherited the unexplainable family “gift” of premonitions that always seem to come true.

It’s safer to keep my distance from the enigmatic private investigator. Rory doesn’t need to be tangled up in my family drama. At least that’s what I tell myself until my brother goes missing…

RORY

Gage Palmer was the hero of my childhood, entering my life when I needed him most. A decade later, I’m instantly reminded of the teenage crush I never quite got over. But neither one of us can act on our growing feelings once he hires me to find his brother. I won’t stop until I help him uncover the truth. Not when I have the chance to reunite a family instead of breaking one.

Even if it means revealing secrets that could destroy us.

Even if it means our future is already written in the wreckage.

Release date: January 24, 2024

Publisher: LJ Evans Books

Print pages: 466

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Sample

CHAPTER ONE

Rory

 

AM I ALRIGHT

Performed by Aly & AJ

If panic attacks could have babies, I’d be having quintuplets. The thought landed in my chest as I pulled my royal blue Honda Rebel into a tiny spot on the street outside my dad’s office. It was the last place I wanted to be for more reasons than I could count. Some of those reasons were petty, full of old grudges and teenage hurts, and some were deadly serious.

The deadly part was why I’d swallowed my pride enough to come.

I slammed my foot on the kickstand and swung my leg over the seat before standing in my thick-soled Harley-Davidson boots and pulling off my helmet. I dragged the hair tie from my ponytail, slung it around my wrist, and ran a hand through the dark brown strands.

When I turned toward the small but expensive building that held Bishop Investigations & Security, my reflection caught in the two stories of glittering glass. I cringed, knowing neither my bike nor my appearance would help my cause today. My black jacket was naturally distressed with spiderweb cracks along the leather, and the hole in my black jeans was from a tussle with a cheater I’d been following rather than any designer styling. They’d be the first of many things my father would pick at today. A few more additions to the long list of my mistakes. But two could play at that game. After all, I had a list of his that I could recite too.

I shoved my shoulders back and strode through the doors. The inside of his office was professional and cold. Decked out in steel and gray leather, the lobby was elegantly arranged to impress Dad’s clients. As if the surroundings screaming wealth proved he could get the job done rather than the fact he had a good interior designer. But the truth was, as much as it irked me to admit it, Dad always got the job done. Whether the client liked what he found was an entirely different story―one I knew firsthand.

My eyes drifted to my wrist and the black-and-blue fingerprints that had turned darker throughout the day. I tugged the cuff of my jacket down, clamping it against my palm with my fingers. If Dad saw the marks, any chance of asking him for the favor I’d come for would be lost. And I needed him to come through. For the first time in almost a decade, I actually needed my father.

I hated it.

At the desk, the latest receptionist in a long string of Georgetown grad students sat waiting. Each of them used their time with his company to launch a litany of justice and law enforcement careers. His name on their résumé was an exclusive D.C. insider’s gold star that opened doors. Too bad I’d never been offered a chance to earn one. Maybe he’d known I would have rather been boiled in acid than sit at that clear glass desk answering his phones.

“Rory,” Chanel greeted me with a snip to her tone. Her gym-toned legs below the hem of a gray pencil skirt crossed as she swiveled toward me, purple Prada pumps dangling from her feet. They were the only sign of color in the stark space. She fit into Dad’s image perfectly whereas I looked like I’d been dragged in from the biker bar on the edge of Cherry Bay—the town I called home after leaving D.C. a few months ago.

“Dad in?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice light and even.

Her gaze flitted over me briefly, barely withholding her judgment, but I could hear it anyway. The silent How on earth is this Sutton Bishop’s daughter? Because the only thing I’d inherited from the blond-haired dynamo in a suit who was my father was the cleft in my chin. He was tall with a square face and wide shoulders, whereas I was almost all Mom with honey-toned Italian skin and a lithe, short frame. Dad’s green eyes screamed their color even over a distance while the tiny bit of jade that flashed in my brown ones was only visible if you were close enough to kiss me.

Not that I’d been kissed lately. It had been so long, my lips and ovaries thought I’d abandoned them.

“He has twenty minutes before he has to leave for lunch on the Hill,” Chanel said primly.

It was exactly what I’d hoped for. Dad spent more time wining and dining D.C. bigwigs these days than he did investigating. Although, maybe that wasn’t much different from when Mom had been his partner. Back then, he’d brought the business in and she’d executed it… or I did. Right up until the divorce split them down the middle and me along with it.

As I headed for the stairs, I tossed a jab over my shoulder. “Dad has dining with sleazy politicians down to a science. They should give him the oil prospector of the year award.”

 “First, not all politicians are sleazy. Second, you’re one to judge. How’s it going swimming with the cheaters?”

My foot stalled on the first step, and when I looked back, her eyes were narrowed. I almost laughed at her quick retort, but then I wondered if her defense of Dad came from a sense of loyalty that went much deeper than an employee-employer relationship. I wondered if Dad had tucked this receptionist into his bed a time or two… or more.

It made me want to heave up the cold mac and cheese I’d called breakfast.

I didn’t respond, turning back around to take the stairs at double time.

His office door was open, the low hum of his voice audible if not the actual words. He didn’t have an assistant guarding the entrance. He didn’t believe in having one. The fewer eyes and hands on sensitive information, the better in his opinion. And if for some reason the nearly perfect Sutton Bishop did need help, the highly paid receptionist downstairs would be tasked with it.

Dad had his chair turned toward the enormous windows looking out at the dome of the Capitol Building. I knocked, and he swung around to take me in. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly before a tight smile appeared on his lips.

“I’ll have to call you back,” he said into the phone, pausing to listen to the response. “I’m telling you, you’re worrying over nothing, Roland. I’ll see you tonight.”

He hung up and watched as I moved to stand next to the pair of straight-backed chairs in front of his steel desk. The chairs weren’t designed for comfort. Dad didn’t want people to dally in his office any more than he wanted them lingering in his personal life.

Handsome and brimming with charisma, my father could have been a politician as easily as he’d become a private investigator. He could charm his way into just about anywhere… and anyone. It was a skill Mom said I’d inherited from him, and sometimes, I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not.

“I’d love to say it’s nice to finally see my daughter again, but I’m confident you didn’t drive into D.C. on that asinine bike just to visit dear old Dad,” he said dryly with a pointed look at the helmet under my arm.

I tossed it on the chair as he came around the desk to draw me into a one-armed hug. A catch and release he’d once shown me how to do while fishing. The nonchalance pricked at old wounds I couldn’t afford to let show.

A wisp of pine from his cologne combined with a hint of smoke from his occasional cigar wafted over me. I was dismayed by the temptation to hold on to him longer, to use his strength to buoy me up. To once again be the little girl he’d beamed at when she’d handed him the proof of a certain congressman sleeping with a prostitute. Proof that had cost the man his reelection and his wife.

I gritted my teeth and stepped farther away. If I allowed myself to drop my shield even briefly, the weight I was carrying might slip off and I’d never be able to pick it up again. I wasn’t even twenty-three yet, but I had both lives and a business resting solely on my shoulders.

As he leaned up against his desk, he scanned my outfit, his look lingering on the fresh cut and red skin visible through the hole in my jeans. I grabbed the cuff of my jacket extra tight, ensuring it stayed firmly in place.

“To what do I really owe the pleasure?” he asked.

I regretted the cold mac and cheese all over again.

Now that I was here, I didn’t really want to make my request. I took a few seconds to run through the numbers in our bank accounts once more. Then, the image of Mom lying in the bed at the long-term care facility settled cruelly in my chest. Her skin was paler than ever before, and her eyes were always shut as a feeding tube, a host of cords, and beeping machines kept her alive. I forced back an unexpected rush of tears. I couldn’t afford them any more than I could afford the damn hug to undo me. Tears never solved anything—the saying should have been monogrammed on our Bishop family crest.

“I need a loan,” I told him.

I knew better than to ask for money straight up. Dad believed in earning what you got. Struggle built character. It was the one and only thing my parents had agreed upon after the divorce.

Dad crossed his arms over his chest. “How much and what’s it for?”

If I said I needed it to cover the added expense of Mom’s new facility in Cherry Bay, he’d object. He’d made it very clear he disagreed with keeping her on life support after the doctors had recommended shutting it off and the insurance had stopped paying because of it. But if I said I needed cash to cover Marlow & Co. bills, he definitely wouldn’t give it to me. He’d be happy if the business Mom had created after divorcing him disappeared. One less competitor.

After my mistake in high school—getting suspended and almost expelled for stunning a drug dealer in the boys’ bathroom—he and Mom had pretty much switched sides. Once he’d seen me as an integral part of their business, now all he saw were my errors.

Because neither of the real reasons I needed the money would sway him, I gave him the fake one I’d come up with on the commute into D.C. “I want to get my master’s.”

I tried to keep my face impassive through the partial lie. I’d once planned on going to grad school before applying to the FBI, but these days those ideas seemed like Neverland dreams, and I was out of pixie dust. After missing the spring semester because of Mom’s accident, I’d transferred from Georgetown to Bonnin University in Cherry Bay where I was weeks away from squeaking out a bachelor’s degree. Even though it was less expensive, I’d still had to take out a loan as every penny from the sale of Mom’s D.C. condo had gone toward keeping her breathing.

Dad’s eyes narrowed as if he was attempting to read me. My face remained stony, but I made the mistake of shifting ever so slightly on one foot, and he caught the small movement.

“You’ve applied and been accepted to grad school? Where?”

He wasn’t buying it. Why had I humiliated myself like this when I’d already known it was a futile effort? Mom’s face flashed in my head again, and those fricking tears I never let out threatened once more. I grabbed my helmet and headed for the door before I further humiliated myself.

“Never mind. Forget I was even here,” I said.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t give you the money. I just want to know the truth.”

Gripping the chin guard of my helmet with one hand, I waved at him with the other. “Why does it matter? Your daughter needs a loan. I’m not asking for a handout. I’m not asking for anything I won’t pay back. You set the terms, and I’ll meet them.”

The second he strode toward me with anger flashing in his eyes, I realized my mistake.

He grabbed my arm, demanding, “Who hurt you?”

“It isn’t important.” It was embarrassing was what it was. A stupid wardrobe malfunction that had let the cheating bastard lay a hand on me.

“Damn it, Rory-girl! How many times do I have to repeat myself? You aren’t cut out for this business. You’re going to end up dead just like your mother.”

“Mom isn’t dead!” I growled back, pushing him away from me and taking a step into the hall.

He sighed, the sound full of frustration and sadness. “She is, Rory. Even if, by some miracle, she comes out of it, she’ll be a shell of a person. She won’t ever be Hallie again.”

“Just because you’ve given up hope doesn’t mean Nan or I have,” I hissed. “And Mom didn’t die because some asshole cheater came after her. She crashed into the Potomac.”

I stomped toward the stairs.

“Because someone messed with her car’s computer.”

As his words sank in, my feet stalled. My heartbeat sped up, doing triple time, as I whirled around to face him. “What?”

He rubbed his forehead. The regret and exasperation on his face were a clear message he’d let something slip he’d never intended for me to hear. I’d repeatedly asked the detective in charge of Mom’s accident for the cause, and Muloney had told me they’d never know for sure. There hadn’t been another vehicle involved. She’d just gone over the edge and into the river. A submerged tree had pierced the right side of her head, and she’d drowned before the rescue people got to her. They’d resuscitated her, but she’d never woken up. She’d gripped my hand a few times, her lids had fluttered open and closed, but she’d never really been cognizant.

And now it had been eleven months… Eleven months I’d survived without her. But it felt like twenty years. An eternity in which I’d lived in some alternate version of what had once been my life.

“Who told you that?” My words were garbled as pain and fury roared through me. He didn’t respond, and it only goaded me further. “I can’t believe you! You told Muloney to cut me out? You’re not her next of kin. You don’t get to make any decisions about her. You lost that right when you divorced her. Like it or not, I’m the one who’s responsible for her now.”

“Except you want my money to keep her alive.”

“That’s not what it’s for.”

“Isn’t it?” he demanded, brow rising again. “I know you’ve gone through the tiny profit you got out of the condo, Rory. I know you’ve had to change facilities more than once. This bullshit idea about a master’s degree? You and I both know it isn’t what the money is for.”

God, there were times I hated how good he was at his job. He really knew everything. He always had. It was why clients flocked from all over the Northeast to his doors.

“Keep your damn money. I’ll do this alone, just like Mom and I have done everything else for the past ten years, and I’ll figure out why someone wanted her dead while I’m at it.”

“I don’t want to lose my daughter and my wife.”

“Ex-wife. Your latest girlfriend would hate to hear you call her that.”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “You’re not cut out for this, Rory,” he repeated. “It’s my fault you started down this path. I can admit I was wrong. I never should have asked you to do any of the things I did, and Hallie should never have let you coerce her into picking up where I left off.

“Jesus, look at you.” He gestured toward me. “You’re battered and bruised, racing around town on that deathtrap, for what? An idea that you can be some real-life Veronica Mars? Real detective work isn’t anything like that goddamn show.”

Each syllable was a hit to my already bruised psyche. Scars and scabs hidden deep in my soul started to bleed. Veronica had saved me. And ever since Mom’s accident, my life had taken on an even more decidedly Veronica-like vibe. She’d stayed to help her dad after he’d gotten sick just like I was helping Mom. She’d gone back to running the family PI business, and I’d done the same. The clients and money I brought in weren’t nearly enough, though. I was doling out more each month than I was bringing in, and Nan didn’t have any extra cash to offer. She was barely getting by on Pop’s widow’s pension.

I swallowed hard, striking back the only way I could with words I wasn’t sure were true but would hit home anyway. “At least Keith Mars loved his daughter. Fake show. Real love. The complete opposite of this.” I waved a finger between us and then turned on my heel and headed down the stairs.

He followed me to the railing, calling after me. “Rory, don’t leave like this.”

I didn’t respond.

“You know there are a lot of companies who would give someone with your computer skills a hiring bonus. If you’re looking for money and don’t want it on my terms, at least consider it. You need to leave this business behind and concentrate on what you are good at.”

Chanel was pretending not to watch the show as I stormed past her desk, but I saw the smirk, and it only fueled the rage inside me. I wished I could slam the door to the building, but all it did was swing back and forth.

As I stalked over to my bike, the realization that Dad might be right caused bile to hit my throat. Maybe I did need to get some eight-to-five desk job in some corporate office peddling my computer skills. Not because a buckle had gotten caught in a trellis and the cheater had pulled me from it by my wrist, but because a job in a corporate office would pay a helluva lot more than my handful of clients.

But then Dad’s slipped admission came back. Someone had messed with Mom’s car! Someone had done this to her on purpose. There was no way in hell I’d let that go. I’d borrow money from Tall Paul, the biggest loan shark I knew, before I’d just walk away.

Just like Veronica Mars had once said, this was where I belonged. In the fight. It was who I was. And I could guarantee whoever had done this would regret it.

As I pulled on my helmet and merged into the heavy traffic of D.C. at lunchtime, I wondered how much Dad had paid Baloney-Muloney to keep the truth from me. Was Dad investigating it on his own or was he leaving it to the tiny force that made up Cherry Bay’s police department?

If Dad had any information, I’d find out. I had a backdoor into his network that he was clueless to. I’d find out what he knew, and if it was nothing, there were other doors I’d start banging on—or hacking into.

Dad was right about one thing. I’d die before I let anyone get away with this.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Gage

 

BROKEN

Performed by The Guess Who

I tapped my fingers along the edge of the Pathfinder’s steering wheel, trying to push down the impatience I felt sitting at the back of the car line in front of Cherry Bay’s only middle school. I had a long list of things to get done at the bar, which meant I barely had time to manage picking Monte up and getting back to the apartment before opening.

The car in front of me inched forward, and I did the same thing as I scanned the sea of tweens sidling down the sidewalk past the car. No copper-topped waves in sight. Had Monte worn a baseball cap today? I couldn’t remember. My younger brother did more often than not. He hated his red hair. Hated the curls more. Hated that kids teased him about being Orphan Annie’s twin brother. How the hell they even knew who she was beat me. I’d had to look it up.

“Bubba, I have to pee,” a tiny voice from the back seat whispered.

Shit. I glanced in the rearview mirror, meeting Ivy’s gaze. My sister’s pale blue eyes were just like our mother’s, but at the moment, they were wide and desperate. A look I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen in Demi’s. I’d seen fanciful, whimsical, and even clouded, but never desperate. More often than not, Demi’s were strangely serene, even in the face of my anger.

Ivy wiggled in her seat, and panic filled my veins. I definitely didn’t have time for a bathroom accident. Didn’t have time to clean the car seat, the car, or tame the shamed tears that would flow. It wasn’t her fault. What three-and-a-half-year-old hadn’t had an accident or two?

“Hold tight, Ives,” I ground out.

I flipped on my blinker, zipped out in front of a car in a way that earned me a loud honk, then cut off another car before it could block the driveway of the school’s parking lot. After sideswiping the orange cone set up to keep people out, I pulled up along the sidewalk near the flagpole in front of the nondescript square building.

I was in the red zone, but I didn’t care as I jumped from the driver’s seat and jogged around to help Ivy unbuckle even as she protested. Holding her tightly to my chest, I ran toward the bathrooms outside the gym—smelly spaces I knew well from when I’d attended the school a lifetime ago.

I skidded to a halt outside the boys’ and girls’ restrooms, debating which to use.

“I don’t know if I can hold it,” Ivy’s small voice squeaked out.

Her alarm raced through me. I rushed into the boys’ room. When I didn’t see anyone standing at the urinals, I sent a silent thanks to the universe. Two stalls were empty. I’d barely set her on her feet before Ivy was jumping up onto the seat. I winced, trying not to think about what was on the toilet. It wasn’t like middle school boys were known for their hygiene. But the look of pure gratitude on her face eased the chokehold that had taken over my chest.

Her ponytail was askew. Little wisps of curls had escaped, surrounding her elf-like face dusted with a light sheen of freckles. If there was anything in my life that could make me feel like a failure, it was her damn hair. How did other parents do it? Every time I picked Ivy up from preschool, all the other girls seemed to have their hair still perfectly assembled—neat and tidy—while Ivy’s seemed to come loose the moment I put it up.

How was I, at twenty-seven, even in a position to be thinking of a little girl’s hair and where the nearest bathroom was? My life was so far from where I’d imagined it would be that there were days the simple weight of it was like an anvil sitting on my shoulders. I was living the wrong life. With that thought came the spike of anger and frustration that usually followed it. Fucking life. Fucking Demi.

Once Ivy was done, she leaped off the seat, and her face burst into a smile so bright it felt like heaven was shining a beam right down on us. It took every thought I’d just had about living the wrong life and all the rage, and zapped it away. She was worth it. She and Monte both.

“All better?” I asked.

She nodded, slipping her tiny fingers into mine, and we made our way out to the sinks where we both washed our hands. With our damp palms joined, we made our way back to the SUV as Ivy tried to skip. She looked like some malfunctioning robot, but it made my lips twitch upward for the first time all afternoon.

I was definitely going to be late now. But I had help at the bar. River would be there, and he’d pick up the slack by unloading the delivery. Audrey would handle the setup inside, and between the two of them, they’d shoulder the tasks I hadn’t been able to get to. It would be fine. It always was.

When I got back to our gray Pathfinder, I lifted Ivy into the back seat and watched as she struggled to buckle up. She was extremely proud of being able to do it herself and would get frustrated if I tried to help. It took her five times as long as it would have if I’d done it, but it all came down to that old saying about teaching someone to fish… No one ever mentioned how much patience and energy it took the teacher to do so.

I hopped into the driver’s seat and moved to a spot that had opened up near the school’s front office. I left the car idling, pulled my phone from my pocket, and shot Monte a text.

ME: Ivy had to use the bathroom. We’re parked in the lot.

A couple minutes went by, and the number of kids wandering past dwindled. The vehicles in the car line beyond the sidewalk started to fade. Still no sign of my brother. He knew the timing was tight from pickup to the bar opening, so he usually did his best to get out quickly. I flipped my phone over to see there was no response.

ME: Hey? Did you have practice today?

I had his basketball schedule taped to the refrigerator, logged into the calendar on my phone, and burned into my brain. But that was the other thing I’d found out the hard way—nothing was predictable with kids.

The principal meandered down from the head of the car line, picked up the cones in the driveway, and set them aside. Three kids tagged along behind him, backpacks weighing them down, phones in hand, and walking while texting in the way teens did despite the warnings that it could be dangerous.

An inkling of something that wasn’t quite fear but close hit me in the chest.

Nothing is wrong. Everything is okay.

It was a mantra I lived by these days.

Except last night Monte hadn’t slept, and neither had I because of it. His eyes had been shadowed this morning, a sense of despair clinging to him as he’d shoveled in the eggs and toast that his growing body demanded.

“What’s the point of even having the visions, Gage?” he’d asked. “I’m useless to stop whatever they show me. Nothing I can do. Nothing you can do. We’ve both tried.”

What if he’d gone on his own to D.C.? That singular thought caused more alarm than any kind of pee accident could.

While waiting for his response, I shoved my hand through the pitch-black of my thick waves. I looked nothing like my brother and sister. They were all Demi—strawberry-blond strands with pale eyes and soft white skin that showed off their freckles. I was Dad from my dark hair, gray eyes, and square chin down to my skin that always carried a hint of tan year-round.

As the minutes ticked away, my anxiety grew. I stabbed out another desperate message.

ME: Please tell me you didn’t go to D.C. I’m at the school. Ivy is about two seconds from melting down.

It wasn’t Ivy who was having the meltdown. It was me. But Monte would do just about anything for our little sister. When she’d first been born, he used to crawl into bed with me for comfort whenever she was crying, even when it was just a normal I’m hungry type of cry.

My phone buzzed with a reply from Monte, and relief washed through me.

MONTE: I went home with India, remember? I’m spending the weekend with her to work on our science project.

My relief was quickly replaced with guilt. Had he told me and I hadn’t paid attention? I’d been so focused on his vision, sleeplessness, and growing restlessness that I might have missed him telling me.

ME: Are you sure that’s a good idea with everything happening?

MONTE: It’ll keep my mind off it for a while.

In my gut, I knew the truth. He was doing this for me as much as himself. He didn’t want me hovering over him, worrying. But it was my job to protect him, not the other way around.

I put the SUV in gear and backed out of the spot, heading toward the bar.

The asphalt roads at the edge of town quickly turned into cobblestone streets in the town center. The first village in Cherry Bay had been founded in the late 1700s, but the college that had been built on the bluff overlooking the Potomac in the 1940s was what had put us on the map. It drew students and academics from around the globe.

I hooked a right at the alley between two stone buildings that would have been perfectly at home in a medieval English village and headed into the small parking lot at the back. The Prince Darian Tavern had been in my family for over two hundred years. It had first been a post inn, and now it was a bar and restaurant with a two-bedroom apartment and extra storage space above.

While Dad had leased out the restaurant several decades ago, the tavern had been run by a Palmer since its inception. Between the renovation loans I hadn’t known he’d taken out and the pandemic closing us down, we’d been almost wiped out financially. After Dad had died, I’d had to sell the house, and we’d moved into the apartment that he used to rent to college students. We were squished together in a space crowded with furniture that didn’t fit, but I refused to get rid of those last pieces of our family history. Selling the Victorian we’d grown up in had been painful enough.

I parked the Pathfinder and waited with gritted teeth while Ivy fumbled with her buckle. My gaze journeyed to the next parking lot over, and my heart skipped a beat at the sight of a dark-haired woman. I could practically feel the energy vibrating from Rory Bishop as she headed toward the doors of the Cherry Bay Police Department. The aura of brave confidence was the same as it had been when she’d been fifteen. A self-assurance that mimicked the fictional heroine she’d worshipped back in the day.

Lithe and edgy in all black, I was hypnotized by the way she moved. Unable to draw my eyes away from her.

How long had it been since I’d seen her? How many miles, years, and traumas had filled the space between us?

I was just about to call her name when Ivy jumped out of the car and landed on my foot. It turned any sound that would have emerged from me into a deep grunt, and I had to catch my sister as she wobbled and balance myself at the same time. When I looked back over to the station, Rory was gone, and something a bit like sadness filled me.

Which was ridiculous. I didn’t even know Rory anymore. I’d barely known her as a teen.

I pushed aside any thoughts of her, stepped around the wrought iron staircase leading to our apartment, and headed for the rear entrance of the bar with Ivy’s hand in mine. A delivery truck had its door rolled up, and as I’d expected, River was already unloading it on his own.

His wide shoulders flexed as he hefted a case of vodka onto his shoulder. His height and build along with his shaved head, pierced nose, and plethora of tattoos intimidated most people. They had no clue his aura radiated nothing but kindness when all they saw was a scary giant.

River had been working for my dad since he’d been in college himself, and decades later, he was still here. Although I was pretty sure that had more to do with not abandoning me and my siblings than because he needed the job. Not when his art was in high demand around the country.

“Sorry we’re late,” I offered before looking down at my sister. “Go into the office and get a snack from the snack drawer and your coloring books from the shelf. I’ll be in after I help River.”

“Can I have a chocolate cwinkle?” she asked, eyes wide, knowing I normally didn’t let her have sweets this close to dinner. But with my nerves feeling frayed after the scare I’d just had at the school, I didn’t feel like arguing with her.

“Yes, but only one,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.

She grinned and then took off down the hall, her messed-up hairdo bouncing around her.

“Hey, Squirt! Don’t I even get a hello?” River grunted after her.

She waved her stuffed otter without ever looking back as she hollered, “Hi, Uncle Wivuh!” her R’s lisping into W’s.

“I expect a hug later.”

I grabbed another case off the back of the truck, hauling it to the storage room above the bar. The dark interior stairs were small and groaned with age, but they were smooth and stained to perfection. Everything in the building might be old, but it wasn’t shabby. Dad had made sure of it, and I’d picked up where he’d left off.

While River and I unloaded in silence, my thoughts kept drifting back to the brown-haired dynamo I’d seen next door. A piece of me longed to go back in time to when I’d known her. When I’d had nothing to worry about but internships and college tuition. To a time when I’d been adored by a girl who I’d known would take the world by storm and set some guy’s heart on fire.

Last I’d heard, she was at Georgetown, but I vaguely recalled some mumblings late last year about her mom being in a car accident. I hadn’t paid much attention to the talk because Rory and her mom hadn’t lived in Cherry Bay for almost a decade. Plus, I’d been hip-deep in another of Monte’s visions and finalizing the paperwork on Ivy’s and Monte’s adoptions. I’d barely been able to breathe at the time, let alone think of a young girl from my past.

But now I couldn’t shake the image of her.

Why was she was in town? Was she visiting her friend Shay, whose family owned the Tea Spot across the street? Or was she visiting her grandmother? Regardless of why she was there, I didn’t have any more time now to let my thoughts dwell on her than I had a year ago.

I signed the receipt from the delivery and walked toward the tavern’s office. I pushed open the antique wooden door with its beveled glass to find Ivy at a claw-foot table that had been there probably since the tavern had first opened. She was on her knees in a burgundy brocade armchair, draped in a mosaic of color from the stained-glass window that made her seem like one of the paintings of our ancestors hanging on the walls in their gilded frames.

When I got up close to her, the mirage broke, and a chuckle rumbled through my chest. She was covered in chocolate from forehead to chin. It never failed to surprise me how quickly and absolutely she could become a mess when eating. She’d need a full body scrub before dinner.

Which reminded me, I needed to call our babysitter and beg her to come over. I’d expected Monte to be home to watch Ivy, which only reconfirmed I hadn’t known my brother would be at India’s. Unease settled in my chest once again—a worry I couldn’t shake. I was an Olympic champion at worrying these days.

I pulled my laptop from the old captain’s desk on the other side of the room and brought it over to the table. I kissed the top of Ivy’s head as I set it down in front of her. “Give me a few minutes, Ives, then I’ll take you upstairs for dinner. Do you want to watch something while you wait?”

She nodded. “Scooby-Doo?”

Her addiction to the cartoon made me smile. “Sure.”

I loaded the streaming service, started an episode, and then looked at her chocolate-covered face and hands. “Don’t touch the computer. And wash your hands when you’re done with the cookie.”

She nodded absently, already watching Scooby and the gang as they scurried over the screen in the opening song. I stepped away, watching her with regret curling through me. She was loved and cared for, but she didn’t have a normal childhood. Then again, none of us had been allowed one. Not with Demi in and out. Not with the abilities she’d branded us with.

But we had each other, and that was all that really mattered.

 

CHAPTER THREE

Rory

 

NO ONE

Performed by Aly & AJ

My first stop on returning to Cherry Bay was the police department. The building was several hundred years old, sitting at the edge of Main Street and butting up against the acres of green that made up the Bonnin University campus. Even after it had been retrofitted multiple times, the station still had a moody, Gothic vibe with its original stone, brick, and iron mixing in with high-tech cameras, computers, and bulletproof glass.

Harriet sat at the front desk where she’d been for as long as I could remember. Her dark hair was cropped short. She had a lean, toned frame and dark eyes in a narrow face. One of Mom’s best friends and the department’s dispatcher, Harriet was the first to know everything that happened in town. It tugged hard on my heart that she might have been hiding the truth from me.

“Look at what the cat dragged in,” she said with a smile that faded once she saw my glower. “Is it Hallie?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” I said, and relief coasted over her face. I felt a twinge of guilt before I demanded, “What the hell, Harriet? Her wreck wasn’t an accident, and you kept it from me?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “What? No!”

Her reaction seemed genuine which meant she hadn’t known either. My teeth gritted as I headed for the swinging half door that led to the desks in the back. “Where is Baloney-Muloney?”

She shook her head, reaching out to stop me. “Muloney isn’t here, Rory. He drove to New York to bring his daughter home for Thanksgiving.”

 My emotions swung back and forth. A part of me wanted to storm into the bullpen, tear up the detective’s desk and his computer, and get what I’d come for. Except that wouldn’t win me any favors with anyone in the department. It would likely ban me from the precinct forever. The smart course of action was to pull out the Bishop family charm and win him over when he returned. With the way my anger was bubbling and growing, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to channel it when he returned.

“When will he be back?”

“Sunday,” she said.

Another two days wasted. I was already too far behind on Mom’s case. Almost a year too late. Why hadn’t I demanded more from him sooner?

“He lied, Harriet. He lied and kept the truth from me. He’s lucky I haven’t put out a hit on him yet.”

“I haven’t heard even a whisper of it being anything but an accident. I would have told you.” She squeezed my arm again, and we shared a tormented stare before she patted my cheek. “Come to the house on Thanksgiving. Please. I told Kora I wanted you both there. Hallie wouldn’t want the two of you sitting alone in a room at the recovery center.”

That was the thing no one seemed to understand. My grandmother and I weren’t alone. We were with Mom. And I wasn’t much for holidays these days. It felt wrong to celebrate while Mom was lying there, but the hope in Harriet’s eyes had me swallowing back my automatic no. Instead, I told her I’d talk to Nan about it and said goodbye.

It was a short drive from the station to Shady Lane Rehabilitation and Recovery Center across from the hospital. Both were square buildings built in the fifties, but they’d kept the charm of the town in their stone and plaster facades. Shady Lane was the second facility Mom had been in since the D.C. hospital she’d been airlifted to had kicked her out. Nan and I had moved her here, not only because the staff knew us, but because it didn’t require Nan and me to commute in the horrendous beltway traffic. The downside was it cost even more than the last place.

I signed in at the front desk and made my way along the sterile hall to Mom’s room. The quiet hum of the machines and the antiseptic smell were almost unnoticeable to me after eleven months of practically living in similar facilities. My grandmother was there, sitting in the same chair she always was, knitting a creation that wouldn’t be straight and wouldn’t fit right. It was a hobby she’d picked up to fill the long stretches at the side of a hospital bed.

“I was surprised when you weren’t here,” Nan commented as I strolled in and tossed my helmet onto the loveseat under the room’s single window.

Nan’s hair used to be as dark as mine but was now mostly white. It was cut close to her head for ease, but it suited her. She was only in her midseventies, but the loss of her parents, her sister, her husband, and now her daughter had aged her in an irreversible way, adding wrinkles that shouldn’t have been there.

“Where’s the Jeep?” Nan asked, head tilting toward the helmet I’d tossed aside. Technically, the Jeep I’d been borrowing ever since Mom’s SUV had been totaled was my grandfather’s. Nan had kept it running right along with her green Volkswagen Beetle from the sixties even though she definitely didn’t need both vehicles. After twelve years, she still couldn’t part with a single piece of him. It was why their closet still held his clothes, and the shed out back of their house held his woodworking tools.

“I had some business to take care of in D.C., and the bike needed to be driven.”

I hadn’t told Nan I was asking Dad for a loan because she would threaten to sell the cottage again. A home she and Pop had bought in their twenties and was mortgage free, but that she could still barely afford because the property taxes and insurance stretched her meager income.

“You got a new case?”

I nodded. It wasn’t a lie. I had Mom’s case now.

“How is she today?”

Nan’s knitting needles slowed ever so slightly, and she didn’t respond right away. When she finally looked up, I saw hopelessness in her eyes. It had been a bad day, and I’d been off on a useless errand.

I went to her, crouching down and surrounding her hands with mine. “What happened?”

“Doctor Huan showed up. She basically said we were wasting time, money, and love holding on to a physical body when Hallie is already gone.” Nan choked on the last words, and my anger flared back to life.

How could everyone just give up? I knew the odds. I knew the miracle we were looking for was rare. Mom’s lack of eye movement, the lack of any response, and the stupid Glasgow Coma Scale they administered all told us the numbers were not in our favor. But every time I looked at my mother, I felt like she was still there, and I’d read enough stories about people who’d recovered even a year later that I couldn’t just remove the life support and let her body die. Not yet. Not when we were still within those miraculous months.

“Screw her, Nan,” I said gently. “She doesn’t know Mom. She doesn’t know us. She has no clue what kind of fighters we Marlowes are.”

Nan sniffed, grabbed a tissue from the side table, and dabbed her eyes with it. “You didn’t get that fight from the Bishops, that’s for sure.”

After giving her a weak smile, I winked. “I got my charm from them.”

I stood and Nan smiled. “The Marlowe women have been known to make a few siren calls ourselves. You got the best of both families. Which makes me wonder why you haven’t been luring any hot bodies to your bed lately.”

I laughed and went over to Mom’s side, grabbing her cold hand and rubbing it between mine. I didn’t answer because I didn’t have to. Nan and I had been consumed with Mom’s recovery. But even before that, my sex life had been pretty hit or miss. Especially when most of the guys I’d tangled with in high school and college had been overwhelmingly immature. Or maybe it had nothing to do with them but a flash of stormy gray eyes I couldn’t forget. Memories of a boy who’d burned himself onto my soul without even knowing it. Without even a single kiss.

A man I’d purposefully ignored since moving back to Cherry Bay.

I wasn’t exactly sure why.

Liar, my soul screamed. The harsher truth was that I didn’t want him to see me this way. I didn’t want him to look at the girl he’d thought could be Veronica-Mars-strong and see her struggling to hold herself together.

I didn’t want to be pitied by him. Not him.

I sat on the edge of the bed, moving Mom’s legs, massaging them, and doing all the things the physical therapists and nurses had taught us to do. She’d be weak when she eventually came back to us, but she was going to recover. She had to. The Marlowe strength was part of our doggedness. We didn’t give up once we set our minds on something.

And it would be a hot day in space before I gave up on the most important person in my life.

♫ ♫ ♫

I spent Friday night and most of Saturday on my laptop in Mom’s room, doing what I always did—working on my cases and my classwork.

Normally, whenever Nan wasn’t in the room, I talked aloud to Mom because the first doctors we’d seen had said it was important for a coma patient to hear their loved ones’ voices. I’d ramble on about the Department of Defense background checks I was running, the cheating partner I was following, or the deadbeat parent I was tracking down for child support. I’d talk about my classes or brag about Nan’s latest gardening achievement.

This weekend, my silence hung oppressively in the air.

As I was researching her accident, I didn’t want her to relive the trauma if she could hear. The most recent reports insisted she didn’t have any brain activity and that nothing I said mattered anymore, but I couldn’t believe that because if I did…

I shook my head, concentrating on the final string of code I needed to create a backdoor into the Cherry Bay Police Department’s server. I smiled when I got in, covering my tracks as I went, like brushing away footprints in the snow.

There was nothing like the thrill of a good hack in the morning.

If I wanted to, I could tell the department how I’d done it so they’d be protected in the future, and maybe I would. But not until Mom’s case was solved.

I rooted around their system, learning the ins and outs, and finally found Mom’s file. It was suspiciously thin. I didn’t know if it was because Muloney had done a shit job or because Dad had told him to be careful what he put online in case I came looking. Whatever the reason, there was nothing about her car’s computer being compromised like Dad had insinuated. The handful of notes were about where the Pathfinder had been towed, the stops she’d made before her trip to Cherry Bay, and people they’d interviewed at those locations. There weren’t even photos from the actual accident scene, which raised the hair on the back of my neck. The lack of information made me all the more determined to see Baloney-Muloney when he returned. I wanted photocopies of his handwritten notes and the pictures someone had to have taken.

Turning away from the disappointing search, I pulled up Mom’s calendar in our Marlowe & Co. system. There was nothing out of the ordinary for the day of the wreck. She had time blocked for yoga in the morning, a meeting with the DoD about our contract for background checks, and then a client meeting in the afternoon. The only thing that made me raise a brow was that she hadn’t referenced a case file for the client meeting. I’d check her physical planner later at home.

Still not prepared to give up, I turned my attention to scouring security footage from the day of the accident. I didn’t have video saved from our D.C. condo because I’d wiped the server clear when I’d sold the place, but I did have recordings from our office cams. I was still running security for the wannabe game development company who’d subleased the space from me.

Swiping through the stored files, I found the day of the accident. Mom had worn a black-and-white-checked blazer, a black turtleneck, and dress pants. Formal for her. Likely due to the meeting with the DoD. Her steps were hurried as she headed for the door, but nothing to make me think she was upset. I froze the screen, fingers lingering on her face.

Regret was like a computer virus. It ate away at your insides until nothing was left but spoiled zeros and ones. I wished I’d said something more important that morning. More poignant. More lasting. At least I’d shouted I love you as I’d left. But had she felt the full impact of it? Had she heard how much she truly meant to me?

“I miss you,” I whispered, and then instantly felt guilty as my eyes landed on my breathing mother lying in the bed next to me.

I swallowed hard. Were the doctors right? Was she gone already? Were the thousands of dollars Nan and I had spent to get her into Shady Lane and keep her body breathing doing anything? Would she ever open her eyes, register me, and talk to me… say anything so I would have something besides See you at dinner as my last words from her?

Unexpected tears filled my eyes like they had at Dad’s office the day before. Nothing gets solved by crying, Rory-girl.

I rubbed my eyes and returned to my hunt for video evidence. Most businesses only kept security cam footage for thirty days unless it was subpoenaed by the authorities. Had the police done that for the places Mom had visited? I’d found none of it on the department’s server, so I doubted it. I searched each of the businesses only to be handed more disappointment.

If I’d done this last December, we’d be ahead of the game instead of miles behind.

As the sun sank behind the spirals of the buildings on the Bonnin campus, I kissed Mom’s cheek and said, “I love you. Maybe think about waking up, okay? You can hand Dad a healthy dose of fuck-you that would make both of our days.”

Then, with a heavy heart, I headed back to the cottage and Nan.

The porch light was shining on two pots of multicolored chrysanthemums that would bloom for a few more days. Nan and Pop’s place had always been full of color, almost year-round due to Nan’s love of gardening.

The half-timbered style of many of the homes on this side of Cherry Bay reflected the Englishmen who’d built them from plaster, stone, and maple wood that had been on the land before the cherry trees had taken over. Once thatched, Nan’s roof was now a bright blue tile, giving it a fairytale quality. The cottage had been remodeled several times over the centuries until it now accommodated three bedrooms, a single bathroom, a spacious kitchen, and a living room.

I parked my bike behind Pop’s yellow and rust-colored Jeep inside the detached two-car garage. Nan’s Beetle wasn’t there. She’d gone to bunco with friends for the first time in months. It was good she was doing something normal, but it also seemed like life was moving on without Mom. Like we were leaving her behind. Giving up.

I gritted my teeth, unlocked the front door, and punched in the alarm code that would have made the CIA happy. I made my way directly to Mom’s bedroom which I’d temporarily converted into an office. Once she was better, we’d figure out a new place to do business.

I tossed my things on a chair and went straight to the boxes sitting in the corner. They were Mom’s things I hadn’t had the heart to unpack yet. It took me two boxes before I came up with her scratched leather day planner. I opened it, and her tight but slightly slanted print caused my heart and throat to squeeze closed. I forced myself to flip the pages until I found the day of her accident. In the two-o’clock slot for the client meeting, she’d written Space Force, Lincoln Memorial in a shorthand code that only she and I knew.

I sat back, drumming my fingers on the pages. I’d closed all the outstanding cases, and we definitely hadn’t been working with anyone from the Space Force. Why hadn’t she logged it into our case files? She’d been nervous enough to use our shorthand code instead of writing it out. Unease filled me. Was this what had caused someone to mess with her car’s computer? Had the person she’d met done it, or had someone hacked their way in? There were only a couple of ways to get into a car’s systems—the easiest through the online navigation or by attaching a device to the car’s computer directly. If it had been the latter, the evidence was probably gone. Crushed with the totaled car at the junkyard.

Irritation and impotence whirled through me. Had Dad checked it out before the car had been picked clean and then destroyed?

I turned toward the window and the quiet street outside, searching for peace or answers or a wormhole into the past. The lantern-shaped streetlights barely shimmered through the fog that had rolled in from the Potomac River.

What the hell did Dad and Detective Muloney have that proved it hadn’t been an accident? And why hadn’t they been able to find out more in the eleven months since? For all his faults, Dad was damn good at his job, so if he didn’t have more, it was either because he wasn’t inclined to go looking, or it was hidden deep. Neither was an answer I liked.

I looked down at the day planner again, absentmindedly flipping pages until it fell open to a month before her accident. More coded notes, but this wasn’t our normal one. A stab of pain slid through me as I realized she hadn’t wanted me to be able to read it either. That stung more than anything Dad had said to me yesterday.

On the other side of the page, she’d drawn an icon of some sort. It almost looked like the Avenger symbol, except instead of an A and an arrow, there was an A and an S with a zig-zagged line inside the circle. I snapped a picture, loaded it into a search engine, and went down a rabbit hole trying to find anything that looked like it.

My phone rang, and I glanced down, tempted to ignore it, but then guilt ran through me. My best friend had left me several messages over the last two days, and I hadn’t returned them. Instead, as often happened when I was on a case, I’d lost sight of anything but the trail I was following.

“Hey! I was going to call you.”

Shay snorted. “Liar.” But there was no malice to it. Not anger or frustration either. She was exactly the forgiving angel she’d always been. “I need my wingwoman tonight.”

I groaned internally. “Shay—”

“Please. You know I have a good feeling about this one. But…”

She didn’t trust herself. Not after the last cheating bastard who’d stomped all over her heart and then had the audacity to say it was her fault.

“Where am I meeting you?”

She hesitated, and I knew what she was going to say before she even escaped her lips. “I know you’ve been avoiding it…him… But I didn’t want to make it feel like a date, so I agreed to meet up with Devlin and his friend at The Prince Darian.”

I didn’t know which part of her statement elicited more twists and turn in my chest—where she wanted to go or the fact that it would be a foursome.

“He’s bringing a friend?”

“I promise I’m not trying to set you up.”

“Two couples in a bar on a Saturday night… definitely not at all date-like.”

She chuckled. “This is just Devlin and me trying to get a feel for each other without Dad hovering around us at the café.”

Devlin was new to town and the campus, carrying his newly appointed associate professor’s title like a badge. His visits to the Tea Spot where Shay worked for her dad while going to college had increased until the guy was practically eating every meal there. She’d begged me not to go all “Rory” on him, but I’d still done the basic search. Enough to know he didn’t have any priors and no complaints had been filed against him at his last college.

“What time are we doing this?” I asked, and my friend literally squealed. It simultaneously made me feel worse for neglecting her and made me smile.

“If you’d answered my texts, you would’ve had more time. They’re meeting us in thirty minutes.”

I put a hand to my messy ponytail, flattened from wearing a helmet, and then rubbed my makeup-free cheeks. I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know they were pale and lifeless and that my eyes were shadowed after months of tossing and turning instead of sleeping. This was certainly not the way I wanted to stroll into the tavern for the first time in years. Definitely not how I wanted him to see me for the first time in years.

“I look like I’ve been on a stakeout.”

“Come over. I’ll have you fixed up in ten minutes.”

The debate within me was strong. But I couldn’t abandon Shay. Not again. So, I hung up, grabbed the keys to Pop’s Jeep, and left a note for Nan before walking out the door. The Jeep smelled like oil and ancient vinyl. Like salt and sea and rust. The scent was one more reminder of things I’d lost. A grandfather who’d been one of the only people in my life to truly spoil me. He’d been gone two years before Mom and I had moved in with Nan the first time. We had stayed barely a year, but those months had branded themselves on my soul just like a certain gray-eyed boy once had.

A gray-eyed boy I wasn’t prepared to see again.

I wasn’t ready to walk into The Prince Darian.

But I’d do it because Veronica Mars’s words were true. The people who really deserved your time, faith, and love were the ones who came through even when you hadn’t loved them enough. And that was Shay for me. I’d always been more caught up in my tragedies than hers. So, if she needed me, I’d be there.

If that meant seeing Gage Palmer for the first time in seven years, I’d just have to take the hit and hope I could get up and walk away when it was over.