Twirled Bond (Holly Woods Files, #5) (15 page)

“Yes. And what is that?” Drake’s eyes fixate on the box. “Is that the thing you sneaked out of the house?”

“You did what?” Trent asks.

I explain how I found the key and searched down the bed to get the box. I unlock it and show them the letters. “My gut feeling said she never told anyone about this, so I thought it might raise more questions than anything.”

“But you told him about the journal,” Drake points out.

“He knew about that. A teen girl having a journal, even now, isn’t unusual.” Even if today’s journal is mostly the Internet. “These? I don’t know. I think it’d be in the original report if it were known.”

“I’m not even asking how you know about the original report. But yes, you’re correct. Letters weren’t mentioned in the original report.” Trent grabs a letter off the top. “What do you think they are?”

I feel like I’m shrugging a lot today. “I haven’t read any of them, but from a quick look, I think they’re likely to be pen pal letters. The oldest ones will be at the bottom. It’s going to be a lot of work to look through them all.”

Trent meets my eyes. “No. Noelle, that’s asking for trouble.”

“Bek’s schedule is relatively empty except for one case. I need help, Trent. Help y’all can’t spare here. There are probably over fifty letters in here. I can’t read them all myself. Personal issues are gonna have to be pushed to the back.”

Drake rubs his hand down his face. “Noelle, sweetheart, usually I agree with you, but not this time. It’s not even her helping you—Brody and Jason are both directly involved in this case. You bring her in and there are gonna be fights all over the shop.”

“Good.” I swing my gaze from my brother to my boyfriend. “Then maybe she’ll finally figure out the guy she wants to be with. Mark my words. The one she fights with the most is the one who wants her the most.”

“Your idea of love is seriously fucked up.” Trent throws the envelope on top of the box.

“Really?” My gaze shoots back to him. It’s like fucking eyeball Ping-Pong. “You fight with someone when you care about what they’re doing. When their safety matters to you. When they matter to you. When you stop fighting, that’s when you stop caring. You know that as well as I do, Trent. Nonna and Nonno fought until the day before he died because they loved each other that much.” And, even then, it was Nonna threatening to kill him if he died before she did. “I
need
help. I need someone to do this with me and she’s the person I trust more than anyone outside of our family. You’ve got to let me have her help me.”

Trent stares at me for a long moment. His dark eyes convey a myriad of thoughts and emotions, but he eventually settles on a loud sigh, flinging his hand toward Drake. “He’s the man in charge. Don’t ask me. I’m just his bitch.”

I turn back to him. I know my eyes are pleading, because personal shit aside, I’m gonna bounce it off her anyway, so she may as well help me. “She’ll come under my contract with Mrs. Russo. Her cut will come out of mine. She won’t even be here at the station—her own work will come first. I already gave Mike and Dean a bunch of my cases so I can deal with this. Please?”

Drake’s bright-blue eyes scrutinize me for a long moment. He’s being the detective he is instead of my boyfriend. I can almost see the cogs whirring in his brain as he weighs up the pros and cons of everything.

“Fine,” he says after a terse minute of silence. “Bring Bek in, but she signs a confidentiality agreement, and I want original copies of for the sheriff. I’ll notify Jason and Brody and warn them both that any drama will see them distanced from the case. If I don’t agree, you’re just gonna go and do it behind my back, and I’ve got too much to deal with to handle that too.”

Wow.
That was sharper than I expected.

Trent sidles out without a word, leaving us alone. I close the box, and Drake looks down at the report on the desk in front of him, his shoulders tight and his arms tensing against the tight, white material of his shirt.

Silence sings. Ironic, really, that something so quiet can be so deafening.

“Are you okay?” I say in a quiet voice.

“I’m fine.”

Lies. “I don’t have to ask Bek to help me. I can probably do it.”

“Noelle, just have her help you, okay?” He glances up at me, an indiscernible shadow in his normally crystal-clear eyes. “Go take those letters back to your office and have her help you as soon as she gets back. I really need to look into this suspicious-death line of thinking. Okay?”

I want to stomp my feet. I want to demand he tells me why he’s so short with me. Why he’s suddenly so cold. But...I can’t.

So I don’t.

I simply lock the black box, put it back inside my purse, get up, and walk out.

Sometimes, the lesser of two evils is the cruelest.

Alison, Trent’s wife and my best friend, sits across from me at the bar of the Holly Woods Inn. I haven’t spoken to Drake since this morning, and I doubt I will until tomorrow, so she’s my first stop.

I love Bek. I love Amelia. They’re two of my favorite people in the world, but I know that Alison is the one I need right now. Plus, the likelihood is that Trent already told her everything since she knew Daniela too—and I know that Drake will have told Trent about his dad.

“Has he dealt with it?” she asks. “His dad having cancer?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Honestly, right after he found out, Trent called him to report the body. He put his game face on, and I don’t think he’s taken it off since. I think it’s easier for him to ignore it.”

“But it’s not.” She smiles sadly. “He’s gonna have to have surgery, and chemo, probably radiation... That’s a long, hard road for an older man, Noelle. He might not make it.”

I roll my shoulders back. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about how it would affect Drake, given all the time that’s passed and the issues with their relationship.

“I’m worried about him, Ali. I don’t think he’s letting himself process the fact that his dad could die without the answers I know he wants.”

And he does. He wants to know why his dad left. He wants to know why he disappeared without a trace and why he came back when he did. He just...doesn’t make it known. He’s too damn private and hates to talk about his feelings. Unless they’re mine. Then he loves to talk about feelings.

“You gotta talk to him.” She sips her wine. “He ain’t gonna talk to you. You know what he’s like better than anyone.”

“But it doesn’t seem the right time. With the case and—”

She softly smiles. “You’re makin’ excuses. There ain’t ever a right time when you’re worried about someone, but it can be too late. You’re partners now, Noelle. The day he moved into your house, that place you guarded as fiercely as your independence, he became the other half of you. The other half you needed. The quieter, more rational, more thoughtful side of you.”

“So, why can’t he talk to me?” My throat feels thick as I speak. “If he’s the other half of me, then I’m the other half of him. Why does he need to hole things up and not share them with me?”

She looks at me. Her eyes fill with sympathy, and I look away, feeling totally stupid for the tears that I know just filled my eyes. Especially since all he did was talk to me sharply, even if his comment felt like a veiled dig.

Why can’t he talk to me? Am I that insensitive? That horrible?

Ugh. I’m not good at this self-pity stuff.

“You really love that man, don’t you?”

I nod. I don’t want to speak right now. I still can’t believe I’m in love with Drake Nash—the man I once accidentally shot in the foot, who infuriated me so badly that I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him. Who set my anger alight with the mere mention of his name.

Now, I can’t imagine any of those things.

In fact, I imagine a whole lot of things that scare me.

“Just talk to him. Make him talk to you. Keeping things inside never helped anybody.”

“I know. I just never know when to ask him.”

“Well, not around Nonna, for a start.” She smiles. “As long as he knows you love him. Sometimes, that’s the best support you can give someone.”

Sorry if I made you mad... I called Rosie’s and ordered you a steak baguette and cherry pie for lunch. And coffee. It’s being delivered at 12.

Love you.

I
scribble a rough heart at the end of the note and prop it up against the coffee machine before I leave the house. I was right when I thought I wouldn’t speak to him again. He came home at some stupid hour of the night, crawled into bed, and passed out.

Not that I slept until he was home. It’s not like we had a fight at his office, but sleeping still felt like it was super hard. I didn’t want to sleep through his return home in case he wanted to talk, but he didn’t.

Even this morning. I deliberately got ready in the en suite bathroom, and he didn’t wake up. If he did, he didn’t show me.

Anyway. The coffee pot is full, his lunch to the station is ordered, and his note is written.

Understanding isn’t my forte. Being a patient, nice person isn’t something I’m always good at. I know that. Being considerate of others’ issues is something I’ve always struggled at, despite the numerous ones I’ve had myself. I guess I see the strengths in people before their weaknesses—which is, ironically, perhaps my own weakness.

With Drake, though, right now, I’m going to try. I’m going to try to understand the pressure he’s under and the stress he must be feeling. I’m going to try to be as considerate and supportive as possible without losing my mind and going full Noelle bitch on him.

It’s going to be hard, but hey. I’m gonna try.

I get into my Audi and pull away from the house. I’m up early, even for a hectic case, so I drive through town and make it to my office in record time. It’s deathly quiet here, so I pull into my spot in the parking lot and go into the building. I deactivate the alarm, making sure to lock the door behind me, and write a note to Grecia so she doesn’t get concerned when she sees the lights on.

My office is a welcome sanctuary, even without coffee. I don’t even want coffee—I just want silence. I want to carry on reading through these letters that plagued me all night and probably contributed into my sleeplessness in their own way.

Whoever he is, Daniela’s pen pal was a boy one year older than she was. The only name I have so far is Lucas.

Even his last name isn’t on the back of the envelopes. None I’ve seen, that is, and I’m only five or six into their correspondence. I have to piece together her responses because, obviously, I don’t have them, but right now, it looks like usual teenage stuff. They were probably connected by one of those agencies or through the school, but I don’t remember a program like this at school.

Maybe it was online. Who knows? Unless he reveals his last name, I’ll probably never know.

All I have is that his return address is there. Maybe I can get Carlton to run it and see if he can find any information, but that’s a long shot. I can’t exactly track down every Lucas in the Omaha, Nebraska, area and call them, can I?

Well...I could, but knowing my luck, I won’t find him and I’ll need to look everywhere.

I sigh. I can’t believe his full name isn’t on any of these.

Not even on the envelope with pink piping. The sealed envelope I can’t bring myself to open, because every time I look at the flap, glued shut, chills run down my spine and I have to put it down.

I didn’t notice it before. I don’t know how. It was buried at the bottom of the box between a couple of different letters, and I only just got that far late last night. I thought I was seeing things then and ignored it, but now, I know differently.

Sealed, unaddressed, and hidden.

I know that this is the last letter she ever wrote to the mysterious Lucas. And she never got to send it.

I tuck it back to the bottom. I don’t know if I can open it yet.

This one-sided story of friendship, and I think maybe a hint of young love, is too enthralling. Although some of the letters so far are disjointed and hard to understand without Daniela’s responses, there’s enough that I can follow.

They didn’t talk about anything deep. Just school, movies, books, even sports... Lucas mentions the high school national football championship, and from what I remember, there was a chance that our high school would make it. From his tone, it sounds like we could have faced his high school, and he, as the backup running back, and Daniela, as a cheerleader, would have finally met.