“Thanks.”
I slip through the small living area, cluttered with thick-cushioned sofas, then past the huge dining room table on my way to the kitchen in the back. Tea’s not a bad idea. I can pour us both a glass. It’ll make this visit look more social and less “let’s talk about your betrayal and your dad’s possible attacker.”
I find glasses on the counter and glance outside, spotting Chelsea at a chair just beyond the windows. The windows are open for air, but the blinds are tilted down enough to make it easy to see out without totally sacrificing privacy.
I like that it gives me the chance to see Chelsea, to brace myself for our talk. She’s still with the guy Donna mentioned, so maybe I should give them time. I don’t recognize him, but he looks nice enough—dark skin, gray suit, and a friendly face.
“I don’t know how long,” Chelsea says, apparently answering something. I feel a little bad being able to hear them so well, so I grab a glass for the iced tea and start pouring.
“Do you think Emmie knows anything about this?”
My head jerks up at my name. What kind of a Children’s Services question is that? What would I know about? Unless maybe she wants to stay with Mom and me? Hope unfurls in my chest.
“I don’t know,” Chelsea says, her voice cracking. “God, I hope not.”
“But you aren’t sure,” the man says. “We have to be sure.”
Chelsea sighs. “She works for Joel, not my dad, so I doubt it. I don’t know though. It’s not like I haven’t kept secrets from her.”
My stomach drops, and tea dribbles over the rim of my glass. I set down the pitcher. This isn’t about where Chelsea is staying. This is about secrets. And somehow about me.
“Maybe I’ll have a talk with her,” the man says.
“Don’t!” Chelsea’s urgency startles me. “Please don’t talk to Emmie. Not about this.”
The kitchen goes narrow and dim. All I can see is the tea I spilled, rivers of brown liquid that pool into tiny lakes on the counter. I snag a handful of napkins with shaking hands.
“I can’t make you promises, Miss Westfield.”
“She wouldn’t keep this quiet,” she says. “Emmie can’t handle secrets like this.”
I’m wiping furiously, scrubbing at the mess on the counter.
“It’s almost time,” the man says.
“I know.” Chelsea looks down at the table and sighs. “I should get back in there.”
She stands up outside, and fear grips me. I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want her to know I heard them. I swipe the napkins into the trash and put my glass in the sink. I all but sprint out of the kitchen.
I’m at the front door when Donna starts coming down the stairs. “Emmie? You’re as white as the wall.”
“I’m so sorry, Donna. I think I might be sick. I’ll come back.” My gaze darts to the back of the house. I can’t see the kitchen from here, but I don’t hear anything yet. “Could you maybe not tell Chelsea? I…I wanted to surprise her.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” she says with a smile.
I stumble outside without another word, my stomach in knots and my world falling apart.
• • •
I dial Joel half a block from Ann Street Inn, but his line goes straight to voice mail. Okay, slow down. Think. Calling Children’s Services will get me nowhere. Calling my parents will result in a paranoid mess. The police?
I pause at the corner, thinking that one over. I don’t know if he was Children’s Services or not, but Chelsea wasn’t afraid. He obviously introduced himself to Donna. The only scary thing about any of this is the fact that Chelsea obviously has a secret. One she doesn’t want me knowing about.
Chelsea, what are you hiding?
I remember in a rush. Deacon knows.
The office will have to wait. Everything will have to wait. I narrow my eyes and start out again, toward my house. I don’t care whose secret this is—it’s getting closer to me every second, and I’m tired of being in the dark.
I stop back by the house to pick up my bike—a second-hand beach cruiser with a giant metal basket. Mom and Dad are both gone, and I don’t hear Ralph barking, so they must be out.
My tires crunch over the driveway and then onto the street. I swear I feel eyes on me the second I clear the shadow of my house. It’s stupid. This isn’t some big city. Sheriff Perry doesn’t have the manpower to set up a tail for a seventeen-year-old girl. Heck, we can barely produce a sufficient police presence when things get crazy during the Pirate Invasion Festival every year. Still, I find myself looking over my shoulder at every stop sign.
I avoid the waterfront and take a couple of wrong turns, so it takes me almost an hour to span the four miles to the cottage up the creek. It’s the quiet side of town, the part the tourists don’t see and most of the rest of us don’t think about much. The houses are farther apart and sometimes abandoned. Beaufort isn’t a cheap place to live or an easy place to find work.
The old Carmine place had some sort of foundation problem. When the owner couldn’t fix it, the house was condemned, and after he died, the whole thing turned into a blame game. The place has been sitting vacant ever since. Chelsea, Deacon, and I found it shortly after Mr. Carmine died. Chelsea hated it—thought it was creepy to be wandering around an old dead man’s house—but I thought he’d lived a good life here, and the peacefulness kind of stuck.
I could have come here every day.
I might have, if Deacon hadn’t chosen it as his personal sanctuary too. I’ve ridden out here more than once to spot his motorcycle off in the high grass beside the gravel driveway. Chicken that I was, I kept right on pedaling, too afraid of what might happen if I spent time with Deke without Chelsea running interference.
Feels funny riding up this narrow, twisting road now, not bubbling up with that electric mix of hope and fear that I’ll see him. This time, I’m just praying he’ll be here like he said.
It’s a good choice for a hideout. Close enough to give him access to town. Far enough away to keep people out of his business. Plus, with an attached dock, the property provides easy water access.
The house is ugly, tiny, and lost in a thicket of wildly overgrown shrubbery. Probably has a lot to do with why it’s been in legal limbo so long. It’s a one-bedroom hovel with a closet-sized kitchen and a bathroom so small, you could probably pee and shower at the same time. The plumbing still worked last time I checked, but the occasional critter gets in the bedroom window. And there’s no electricity. Not exactly the Hilton.
I park my bike in the weed-covered driveway and head to the porch. That’s what brought us here the first time. We heard something crying in this thin, awful way. From the road, it had sounded like a little kid. Chelsea was already skeeved out, but Deke insisted we look.
We found her trapped on the second step of the porch, one paw caught between two boards and raw from her trying to free it. The cat hissed and shrieked until even I was ready to call animal control and throw in the towel. Deacon just took off his shirt and wrapped her tight, holding her other paws down while he freed the trapped one. He carried her all the way back to Dr. Atwood’s that night, rolled up like a little kitty burrito in his sweaty T-shirt.
I even suggested Burrito as a name, but Deacon was set on something more ironic. She’s been Hushpuppy ever since.
There’s no caterwauling today though. Just the steady breeze rasping through tall grass. I don’t see any movement inside the windows. Nothing on the chipped kitchen counter or on the floor where a dining room used to be.
Still, I inch around the side of the cottage. I see a flash of silver-gray out by the dock first. My cheeks tingle. Deacon’s little putter-around boat.
I find him in the hammock, stretched out and eyes closed while he sways just a little. I know from my own naps on that hammock that if I get much closer, I’ll
hear the creak of the rope against the metal ring. Is he sleeping? I take a second to watch his chest rise and fall in his white T-shirt, his brown arms propped behind his head.
The grass rustles when I start walking again, and he opens his eyes, surprise lighting his features. He lumbers out of the hammock, stretching his arms high enough for me to catch a glimpse of hip bone above his faded shorts.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says, smirking.
“We have a lot to talk about.”
We walk to the dock where his boat is anchored, sitting side by side. The fabric of his cargo shorts brushes my leg and heat spreads over my skin, flash-fire fast. I look out over the inlet. The water’s gone navy blue under the cloudy sky.
“Someone was talking today with Chelsea at the inn,” I start.
“She’s staying with Donna?” he asks, then he frowns. “Hell, I didn’t even think about that. I figured she’d stay with Joel.”
“He applied for emergency guardianship, but they’ll probably reach out to family too. Donna thought this guy was Children’s Services. But here’s the thing—”
“It should be me there for her. I know.”
I shake my head, wishing this were just a simple chewing out. Because this is worse than that. I watch a heron stalk back and forth in a patch of tall grass. I feel like I’m hunting too—for words. I doubt I’m going to find any that will make this easier to say. I scoot back on the dock, tucking my legs under me so I can turn to face him. “The guy with Chelsea asked about me, about whether or not I knew about something. They never said what exactly, but Chelsea begged him not to talk to me. It was creepy, Deke. He said it was almost time too.”
“Almost time for what?”
“I have no idea.”
His shoulders pull back, and a gust of wind tugs hair loose from my ponytail. I focus on the thin white scar on his chin and the tension in his jaw.
“Was she afraid of him?” he asks. “Was he threatening her or anything?”
I press my lips together. “She wasn’t scared. Not one bit. She just begged him not to talk to me. She said I couldn’t keep it quiet. Like it was a secret. Do you think she’s hiding something about what happened to your dad?”
“You’re seriously asking that?” His eyes are sparking, spots of pink burning high in his cheeks.
I swallow hard. “Deke, I know it sounds crazy—”
“It does sound crazy, Emmie,” he says. “Chelsea’s so wholesome she should be on one of those nutritional posters. She’s a Girl Scout. A youth group leader!”
“I know that! You don’t think I know that?” Our shouting startles the heron, which lifts off with a steady beat of long, wide wings. I blink away my sudden tears. “She’s my best friend, but she is hiding something. Hiding it from me specifically. You said so yourself.”
Deacon stands up, pacing back and forth on the dock. It’s like he’s putting pieces together. Of course he is. He knows the big secret; I don’t.
I square my shoulders, though tears are blurring my vision. “It’s been the three of us forever, Deke. Forever. And I’m dying watching you both go through this, but I can’t help, because there’s obviously some huge chunk of your lives that neither of you trust me with.”
“I trust you.” He crouches in front of me. Touches my shoulder. My chin. Turns me to face him. “I trust you, Emmie.”
He grazes my cheek, one calloused finger running temple to jaw. He’s waiting for me to say something, but I can’t. His touch is sucking all the oxygen out of the air and changing everything between us.
“Then tell me the truth,” I say finally.
He takes a breath, and I can see a war waging behind his eyes. Then his mouth goes soft and his brow goes smooth. If surrender had a face, it would look like this.
“I’ll tell you everything,” he says. “But first I have to show you something.”
Chapter Eleven
Deacon heads into the house, and I walk to the space where the dock meets the yard. A little crab struggles at the edge, one claw pinned between the boards.
“Little buddy,” I whisper, trying to ease his claw out without getting pinched by the other. The wind is ridiculous. Half of my ponytail is flying loose around my face. I gently free the crab and then yank my hair tie out while I watch him scuttle into the safe shadows under the weathered planks of the dock.
Deacon returns with a battered, brown Westfield Charters envelope. It’s covered with greasy smudges I really don’t want to think about. He offers it and laughs when I recoil.
“You sure I’m the right guy for you to be hanging around?” he asks.
“I ask myself that every day, Deke.”
That makes him laugh harder. “You do know what I do for a living, right? Do you ever think about the kinds of residues that might be lingering on my hands?”
“I choose not to dwell,” I say, and he waggles his fingers toward me like it’s some kind of threat. Hardly. If he keeps it up, I’ll start bobbing like one of those cobras in a basket. His special Emmie superpowers annoy me to no end.
I finally swat his hand away, because I like that last shred of my dignity. “All right, what do you have in there?”
His smile vanishes as he opens the envelope, pulling out a stack of receipts.
“Where did you get these?” I ask.
“From the lockbox on the main boat up in Morehead City.”
They don’t have an office in Morehead, just a closet-sized, fold-up counter where they can lock the register at night.
I look up at him over the receipts. “Wait, you stole these?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, Emmie. I stole a pile of receipts. Hide your women and children.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” I say, looking them over. “Joel and I need these to do the accounting for—wait, are these coordinates?”
My fingers trace the handwritten numbers on the bottom of a receipt. Deacon’s stomach growls, and I look up. He points back down at the receipt. “They all have coordinates. I need you to see the last one.”
I flip through. The coordinates are jotted down everywhere. Some on the bottom. Some on the side. They’re all different, but I know why the last one is important at one glance.
15 62, 25 30 (Emmie)
My pulse jumps. “That’s my name. Why is my name on that? Where is that?”
“About sixty miles southeast of Washington, DC.”
“Sixty miles from DC? Why the hell is my name next to coordinates near Washington, DC?”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Did you arrange any charters for that area?”
“No. They’re all in state.” A dull ache throbs at the back of my neck. I head over to the hammock, sitting down sideways. “I found coordinates with my initials in the dockside office. It’s at home, but I checked and it’s for a pretty random spot in the Caribbean.”
Deacon joins me, and the hammock swings hard, the scratchy rope rubbing at my thighs. “The Caribbean? I don’t get it,” he says. “The coordinates aren’t the kind of places you’d imagine charters heading. No resorts or beach towns. Just random spots along the Carolina coast, some up into Virginia. I was trying to figure it out from our client files.”
“Maybe I should check the dockside office again,” I say.
Deke shakes his head hard. “Emmie, you should steer clear of that place. Believe me, some of the guys working on our boats are worse than the shit we scrape off the hull.”
“I know. Thorpe cornered me in there.”
Deacon’s whole body goes stiff beside me. “He what?”
I kick at the ground to swing us, careful to avoid a glass jar full of shells. “It’s fine,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m fine.”
“Did he touch you?” His voice goes to gravel, and his eyes grow dark. “Because so help me, if he even looked
at—”
“No, it wasn’t… I mean, yeah, he was gross. Joel kind of saved me. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Him even breathing in the same space as you is that bad.”
Warmth floods over me at his sudden intensity. He can’t look at me like this, not when we’re mashed together on a hammock with the wind blowing my hair into his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Really.”
He opens his mouth, and his stomach growls again, loudly. I laugh, and he flips me off playfully.
“When’s the last time you fed that thing?” I ask.
He’s as close to blushing as he ever gets, one corner of his mouth curled up. “It’s been a while,” he admits. “I finished off the gas station crap yesterday morning.”
“Yesterday!” I gape at him while he shrugs.
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Yeah, starving to death isn’t a big deal at all.”
He chuckles. “It’s not exactly the Great Outback. I’ve got a pole in the boat. I can catch something if it gets dire.”
“And then what? You’re going to just gnaw into it raw? Maybe bust open a coconut for water? This isn’t the zombie apocalypse, Deke.”
I stand up, about as gracefully as a greased pig on an ice rink, and brush off the back of my shorts.
“Wait, what are you doing?” he asks. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes. New plan. I’m getting you some supplies. You can’t survive on energy drinks and whatever you fish out of there.” I wave at the inlet for emphasis.
“Emmie, this isn’t a camping trip. I got myself into this. I can skip a couple of meals.”
“And drink salt water?”
“The water’s still on in the house. Don’t know who missed that, but I’ll take it.”
“Those faucets might be spewing chemical terrors unknown. You’ll probably end up with some rare psychological disorder.”
His grin turns his face into something magazine-worthy. “I think my raging blood phobia covers the psychological part, don’t you?”
Deke’s glib expression slips, just enough to show me the raw bits underneath. My throat goes tight looking at those bits. “You’ll get better. You can handle the fishing stuff now, right? That used to freak you out.”