Licensed for Trouble (28 page)

“How'd you get here so fast?” Boone seemed to be checking her over.

“Believe me, after the thirty or so messages she left on my phone, and especially the last one, I had to track her down. I heard the accident as I came onto the bridge. I spotted the Bug right before she . . . went over.” Jeremy sucked in a watery breath and let her go.

PJ watched as he got up and stalked away from her. He became a silhouette of agony in the darkness as he braced himself against a tree, then bent over the nearby garbage can.

She turned back to Boone, who tore his eyes from Jeremy, shaking his head. “I feel like doing the same thing. Who was it, do you know?”

Her teeth clacked together. “Not a clue. Although I have a sick feeling it has something to do with Max. Have you seen him today?”

“No.” Boone took off his jacket, draped it around her shoulders, then turned at the sound of another approaching siren. An ambulance pulled up.

“Really, I'm fine, Boone.”

“Good, because after they confirm that, they can shoot me with a couple of sedatives.” But for the first time, he gave her a soft smile. Reached out and touched her cheek. “I hate to admit it, but I'm glad Jeremy is in your life.”

“PJ!” A dog barked as Max tried to wrestle past a couple police officers.

Boone waved him over and the officers freed him. Max tore down the grass, his flannel shirt flapping, Dog leading the way.

The animal launched into her arms, and she caught him as he slathered her face. “I love you too, Butch.”

Dog danced away, past her, unfazed. When Max caught up, he looked from Boone to PJ. “Was that you who went into the water? I was at the house and saw the entire thing through the back windows. I couldn't believe it when I saw your Bug go in. Are you okay?”

Jeremy had returned, treading up silently in the sand behind her. “Were you really at the house?” he asked, his voice calm. Deadly calm.

Max glanced at him. Silence bulged between them until finally Max gave a small shake of his head and crouched before her. “Do you know who did it?”

“Someone who didn't want her sniffing around . . .
someone
,” Jeremy said, now kneeling beside PJ. His hand went to the back of her neck, wiping away her sodden hair.

Max ignored him, worry in his eyes. Yes, little Tyler had to be his son.

“I met a guy today who said you needed to watch your back. He knows you.”

Max appeared dazed, as if he was clearing water from his brain. “He knows me?”

“At least, he said he recognized the picture we put in the paper.” She couldn't help a slight wince at that. “That's a good thing, right?”

“Not if they're trying to kill you,” Jeremy said with an edge to his tone.

PJ put a hand on Jeremy's arm. “That might not have been the smartest move, because apparently, someone else—someone you might have needed to hide from—might have also recognized you.”

“Someone I needed to hide from?”

“You may have been mixed up in something overseas.” She couldn't look at Jeremy for the next part. “Apparently you were some sort of special ops soldier and you were in Sierra Leone, helping de-mine the country. But you were wounded, a head injury of some sort.”

“I have scars.” His hand went to his head. “I wondered what happened. I thought maybe it was related to that night.”

“No, Windchill—”

“Windchill?” Max asked.

“My jumpmaster.”

Boone didn't move. “Did you say
jumpmaster
?”

“Oh yeah. Probably I shouldn't tell you that I went skydiving today.”

“Yes, I'm going to be ill.” Boone shot another look at Jeremy.

Jeremy's mouth tightened into a granite line.

“Hey—it could be worse. I didn't go and talk to Ratchet on my own.”

“I'm not even going to ask.”

“Windchill said you were shipped stateside, but when you got here, your wife was murdered, and your son—”

“So he is mine?” Max sat back with a thump on the sand, pressing a hand to his chest. He looked like he might be the one who needed the oxygen.

PJ glanced at Jeremy, who closed his eyes, almost in a wince. She turned to face Max. “He has your dimples.”

“Okay, yeah, he's probably yours,” Jeremy said. “Although right now, you're the best guess to be the murderer, so I wouldn't go knocking on his door just yet.”

“I told you, I'm willing to pay for my crimes,” Max said, his voice solemn. “I'm just hoping that . . . I'm not that guy.”

Oh, see, this was why she needed to prove it wasn't him—that look of sheer torture on his face, in his eyes. “You're
not
that guy, Max. I think you may have had information about some diamond heist in Sierra Leone, where you were injured. And apparently you already had a paranoia meter—so much so that your wife didn't even tell her mother you were home. But there might have been someone who knew—a guy named Ratchet came looking for you. You and he were POWs together in Iraq a few years back.” She pointed to his arm. “Ratchet might have been the guy the landlady saw, the one with your tattoo.”

Silence. The murmur of spectators and car engines entwined with the lake still raking the shore, the wind shivering the trees.

“He has my tattoo?”

“He was a POW in Iraq. So he might be the guy Jinx was talking about. The bad news is that Ratchet is still out there, and Windchill thinks that the picture in the newspaper may have resurrected ghosts from your past.”

“Why would Ratchet want to kill him?” Jeremy asked, his hand still on her neck, warm on her skin.

“Windchill seems to think that Owen was involved in diamond smuggling—maybe even smuggled the diamonds home for Ratchet. I'm wondering if Ratchet showed up later on Owen's doorstep, armed with a little ‘Tell me where they are or else,' and Owen and he got into a fight. Maybe Ratchet even killed Bekka to get Owen to talk, except I keep thinking about the fact that Owen was injured. What if Owen didn't have anything to do with the diamonds—what if they sent the package home, not expecting him to recover? He wouldn't even have known what they were talking about. And Windchill did say that he and Ratchet had some bad blood between them. Maybe Ratchet came over to get the package, and Owen surprised him.”

Jeremy sucked in a breath, and she heard his words in her brain:
“You have to stop investigating with your hopes and dreams and take a look at the truth.”

But for some reason, her words
felt
like the truth. Max, as Owen, couldn't be a diamond smuggler. “I'm wondering if Ratchet thought Owen might be dead—or close to it—when he dumped him into the bay. And then there's always arson as a cover-up for murder evidence.”

“Do you think this Ratchet guy might have been at the wheel tonight?” Boone asked.

“Could be, although I don't know how he found me. Unless he was watching Windchill.”

“This just gets worse,” Max said, shaking his head. “Why did I ever decide to track down my past?”

Boone shifted in the sand, watching the chaos on the bridge.

“Because . . . it matters.” Jeremy glanced away, the edges of his mouth tight as if his words had leaked out beyond his control. “Because knowing who you are gives every choice you make relevance.” He stared at PJ, tenderness in his eyes. “Because if you know what you've been through—the things you've done, both good and bad—the choices you make today have merit. Resonance.” He touched her face, ran a thumb down her cheek. “Not knowing your past steals meaning from your future.”

Then he nodded as if in answer to some lingering question. “A fresh start has no meaning unless you understand what you left behind.”

The paramedics hit the beach, one carrying his medical kit, the other with a blanket.

“I'm fine,” PJ said, raising a hand toward them.

“Humor us,” Boone said, towering over her, his arms akimbo.

An hour later, she sat wrapped in a blanket in the back of the ambulance. Other than a bruise on her sternum where the seat belt garroted her and the raw burn of her lungs from the icy water, she'd suffered no lasting effects. They'd given her a tetanus shot and some antibiotics all the same. She'd refused an overnight stay at the hospital.

“Let's go home.” Jeremy stood just outside the ring of light slanting from the open doors of the ambulance. He'd turned eerily quiet as the paramedics took her vitals, checked her for bleeding.

Boone harassed the crime scene team, having blocked off the bridge, their spotlights glaring on the jagged metal.

The wind cut through her sodden clothes as she returned the blanket and slid out of the ambulance.

Boone crossed the grassy park toward them. “Listen, I think she needs to sleep at her sister's tonight. I've already called. Connie is waiting for her.”

PJ opened her mouth to protest but let it die before it could gather speed. Yes, a night at Connie's might help her sleep.

Jeremy turned to him. “I hate to ask, but it's too cold to ride home on the bike.”

“I know. I'll drive it to Connie's place. I have a guy waiting to take you to Connie's.” Boone gestured to a cop leaning against his rig in the lot.

“You'll stop by the house?” Jeremy asked.

Boone nodded.

PJ sensed more in that question than she could currently sort through.

“Where'd Max run off to?” PJ asked as Jeremy led her to the parking lot.

“He's cleaning up the house and moving on,” Jeremy said quietly.

“But I want to ask him more about Ratchet, see if we get any electrical jolts.”

“Stop!” Jeremy held up his hand. It shook, and the emotion in his eyes rattled clear through her. “Just stop, already.” He took off his jacket and curled it around her, holding on to the lapels. “I should have driven the bus. . . .”

“Jeremy.” She caught his wrists. “Jeremy, I'm
okay
.”

“You might not have been!” He closed his eyes, notching his voice down. “Someone tried to kill you and nearly succeeded.”

“But they didn't.”

But her words were lost on him and he turned away.

She put a hand to his back, felt his muscle pulse. “I'm sorry we fought,” she mumbled.

“What if I had lost you?” He turned, his eyes red as he stared at her as if not seeing her.

She had no words.

“The worst part about all this is that I never thought I'd feel this way about someone again. It's like I'm watching it happen all over, with the nightmare getting closer and closer, and I can't do anything to stop it.”

Then, before she knew what to say, he stepped close, slid his hand around her waist, and kissed her. He tasted of the lake, and it seemed her entire body remembered his lips on hers, breathing life into her as they'd risen to the surface. Every part of her tingled, and somehow, she tasted salt.

Could it be her own tears? Because even as he held her, she knew the truth. Trouble. It didn't matter who did the name-calling—Boone or Jeremy or even herself. Or even the voice she'd heard as she'd flown through the sky. She couldn't hide from the truth. Not when it was written in every dripping pore of her body. She couldn't escape it. And just like Jeremy couldn't bring her into his past, she couldn't keep him away from hers.

She put her hands on his chest and pushed. He broke away and buried his face in the crook of her neck. His lips moved as if he were breathing her in. His soggy shirt made her shiver, but he held her so tight, she couldn't quite let him go.

Tomorrow. She swallowed and her throat burned. She'd let him go tomorrow. Because together, they were headed for broken hearts and disaster.

Finally he pressed his forehead to hers. “Did you say you went skydiving today?”

She wiped her tears with a quick swipe of her hand, fighting for a smile. “I think I'll wait to answer that until I have a pizza and dry clothes.”

* * *

She'd seen the Pontiac before. PJ stared at the ceiling of her old bedroom in Connie's house, tracing the moonbeams slatted on the white chenille bedspread, finally able to feel her toes, and trying to erase the feel of Jeremy's hands on her, holding her. She kept replaying the accident—she refused to call it attempted murder, thank you—through her mind, second by terrifying millisecond.

Yes, she'd seen that car before. But where? The image burned into her brain, knotted her into the covers.

Okay, she should surrender to the inevitable, get out of bed, pad downstairs to where Jeremy slept in the guest bedroom/office—thanks to Connie's generosity and keen lawyerly recognition of a man on the edge—and wake him. Together they could log on to her computer, maybe access the DMV database . . .

Except that would only drag him deeper into her world.

Her tangled, suffocating, near-death-experience world. No, she'd stirred the hornet's nest. She'd have to extricate him before anyone else got hurt.

She flattened the covers on either side of herself and stared at the ceiling. The front headlights of the GT bored into her like eyes, the malevolent grin of the grille—

That was about enough of that. She skimmed the covers off and flicked on the side lamp. Light puddled over her. They'd stopped by the mushroom house on their way to Connie's—not pausing to survey the wreckage of her walls—and picked up her belongings, as well as Joy's diary. It lay on top of her duffel, and she swiped it up, nesting it into the covers as she flipped it open.

Clearly, she and Prudence Joy had more in common than she wanted to admit in the wee, grainy hours.

September 1960

A new life. That's what Hugh promised me, and I believed him. I believed his smile and the way he held me, the way he told me that he would never leave me. But now what? I suppose we'll be okay; he says it and I hold on to it. But while the rest of my friends were boating and making their college plans, I stood out in the hot North Carolina sun, my body expanding, not even able to wear the thin ring he gave me, and watched Hugh in his brilliant new uniform. He is brave and strong, and the baby moves inside me, and all I can think is . . . yes, a new life. God, I pray it's true.