Seeing Red (21 page)

“I guess we’re still bothering somebody,” she said in a surprisingly normal voice. “Or should I say me. I’m still bothering somebody. That’s not really saying much though, since I’ve been bothering pretty much everybody I’ve come across since being home.”

“Red—”

“Here.” She thrust the phone at him. “Just…do what you do and figure it all out.”

He grabbed her hand and squeezed until she looked at him again. “I will,” he promised.

And though just about everything was going wrong, including them, she nodded because she believed him. She believed
in
him.

S
ummer woke up alone in Joe’s bed. She hadn’t closed the curtains the night before and the early morning sun slanted in the high, narrow windows, warming her, making her squint as she looked around.

She was hugging Joe’s pillow, lost in his warm comforter, and though the room faintly smelled like him, she was alone. As she had been all night.

Joe had sent her to his boat while he worked. Empathy and something else hit her, something that felt suspiciously close to neediness, and she tossed the covers aside. His bathroom was the size of a postage stamp, the shower even smaller. She pictured him in here, that tall, long body bumping into the walls as he soaped up. She used his shampoo, and then sighed dreamily over the scent of him lingering on her as she dressed and moved into the galley.

Her cell phone sat on his small wooden table, being used as a paperweight to hold down a note scribbled in Joe’s handwriting.

Sparse, not a single extra word to it. Why hadn’t he come to bed? Feeling out of sorts and frustrated with herself, she headed to the original Creative Interiors. The store wasn’t open yet but Camille and Tina were there, sitting at the back table. They had a fresh pitcher of iced tea and a stack of catalogs, which they were poring over together.

“Hello darling,” Tina said with a smile. “We’re contemplating some of our fall stock.”

“What’s missing from last night? Anything?” Summer asked, her stomach tightening with nerves.

“Not a thing,” Tina said.

Camille stood up and grabbed another glass, which she filled with iced tea. “Chamomile,” she said, and handed it to Summer.

For its calming effect. “Thanks.”

Camille stroked a finger over her cheek, then turned away and sat back down.

Tina patted a chair. “Sit, darling Summer. It wasn’t what the police thought. Braden had a key.”

“He’d left his wallet,” Camille said. “And forgot about the alarm.”

“They took him in for questioning this morning, but let him go,” Tina said. “Chloe’s hot under the collar about it, says he’s done nothing wrong.”

“And what do you think?” Summer asked.

“I want to think the same. I
do
think the same. But Braden’s pride is hurt and he’s quit.”

“How did Chloe take that?”

“Not well, as you can imagine. It’s all such a mess. Gregg thinks he’s being investigated for the fires, and Stella’s going crazy. The twins…I found cigarettes in the outside trash this morning.” Tina sighed and looked at Camille. “Our group is losing it, but I just keep reminding myself we’ve never once made a wrong decision on any of the people in our lives, right?”

Camille looked at Tina for a long moment. “I’d like to think not,” she said very softly, and began adding sugar to her tea.

Summer leaned in and hugged her mom. “You doing okay?”

“Always.” But she let go of her teaspoon and hugged Summer back, hard. “Always.” Then she pulled free and stroked Summer’s hair from her forehead. “And because I am, it’s time.”

“Time?” Summer glanced at Tina, but her aunt lifted a shoulder. “Time for what?”

“For you to go back to your life.”

“Mom.” She pushed her tea away. “We’ve discussed this. I’m staying until it’s all over.” She thought of the text messages and knew she should tell them before they heard it from Joe. “And there’s something else you both should know.”

“Uh oh,” Tina said.

Summer kept her hand on her mother’s so she couldn’t reach for the sugar. “I’ve received two text messages, anonymously, suggesting I need to leave.”

Camille jerked, and spilled her tea. “Oh! I’m sorry.” She jumped up and grabbed a towel.

Tina didn’t move, just sat there in shock.

“I’ve told Joe about them,” Summer said. “He and Kenny are on it.”

“What do the messages say?” Camille asked, cleaning up the tea.

“The first one said ‘Please, go away.’ The second one said, and I quote, ‘They won’t stop looking for me until you’ve gone.’”

Tina covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

Camille stood up. “That’s it, you’re done here, honey. I mean it. You’re going back to your life. Your safe life.” With that, she walked out front.

Tina pulled a flask from her purse and poured a healthy shot into her tea. “Our secret,” she said and took a long sip.

“Aunt Tina—”

“It’s not you. It’s everything else. The fires, the rest of the family. It’s all driving me to drink. Do me a favor, darling, and cover for the twins out front until they show up? I’m just going to finish my tea.”

The twins were a full hour late, with no explanation. Stella and Gregg called in sick, which Summer took to mean they needed an attitude adjustment day.

When Madeline and Diana finally arrived, Madeline had a sneer on her face and Diana had her head buried in the latest
Teen People.
She peeked up long enough to look at Summer and shake her head mournfully. “Your horoscope was a doozy.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“You’re going to be extremely unlucky in love today specifically.”

“As opposed to what?” Summer asked. “All the luck I’ve had?”

“Oh and also it said you probably shouldn’t get out of bed.”

“Great. Thanks,” Summer muttered as she left. She got into the Bug and drove to Joe’s work.

He wasn’t there, though she found Kenny in the large common room on the ground floor, where the firefighters hung out when they weren’t on a fire. He was sprawled on a faded orange corduroy couch that looked as soft and comfortable as it was old, eating soup out of a Styrofoam cup and watching a soap opera.

He winced when she caught him. “Don’t tell Joe.”

“Why would Joe care if you’re eating Cup-O-Soup?”

He pushed up his glasses. “Not the soup, the soap opera.”

Summer glanced at the TV screen. A beautiful young woman sat in a bubble bath, being attended to by an even more beautiful young man who sat shirtless at her side. He poured her wine and dropped rose petals over her body, flexing his muscles as he did.

“Let’s face it,” Kenny said. “Our Joe isn’t much for flowers and wine.”

Summer laughed. “No, he’s not.” She thought of their kiss on the beach, the way he’d painted her skin with his fingers when they’d made love. “But he can be romantic when he wants to be.”

“That’s because you’re different from the other women he’s been with,” Kenny said. “I’m so glad you’re different.”

She wondered at the others.

Kenny grinned. “You’ve also got amazing restraint.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Go ahead, I’ll give you a freebie. Ask me anything, I’ve known him for years. You want to know if he snores? Yes, when he’s stressed. You want to know if he still thinks of himself as a fat loser? Yes, especially when he gets dumped by some silly woman who never understood him. You want to know if he’s easily hurt? Double yes, way too easily.”

There was something in Kenny’s eyes now, some gentle reproaching warning not to hurt his close friend and partner, and the loyalty made Summer’s throat thick. “How about I ask a question about you instead?”

“Okay,” he said, surprised.

“What’s going on between you and my mother?”

“Nothing.” His eyes behind his glasses were right on hers, and as far as she could tell, honest. “Yet.”

“What’s
going
to go on between you and my mother?”

A small smile curved his lips. “Truth?”

“Please,” she said.

“When this arson investigation is over, I’m going to date her. A lot. Is that a problem for you?”

“She’s seven years older than you.”

“Seven years is nothing. She’s sweet, beautiful, kind, and she cares about me.”

“Kenny.” Torn between loyalties, she chewed on her lower lip. “She cares about men. That’s never been the issue. She just never likes them for long.”

“I’m a big boy, Summer. And anyway, have some faith in the power of love.”

“Love?”

“Love,” he said firmly. “Trust me.”

Trust him. He hadn’t been the first man to ask that of her. No, Joe had the distinction of that honor.

“Do you want to know where Joe is?” Kenny asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to make him even grumpier, or turn the day around for him?”

Summer thought about that. She wanted to tell Joe how much she’d missed him last night. That she needed him. That she thought that maybe all those years ago she’d loved him as much as she’d been capable of, and it had scared her but she didn’t know why, and she still didn’t. “It might be a combination,” she admitted.

Kenny nodded. “There was just a store bombing near the Amtrak station. A convenience store. Some punk tossed an M-80 through the windows to break in. They think it’s the same punk who’s robbed three other stores this year. Joe’s working with the police, checking for evidence.”

“Can you just tell him I came by, maybe ask him to call me?”

“You bet.”

Summer turned to leave just as the soap opera went to a news bulletin. “We’re on site at the convenience store bombing from earlier this morning,” a newscaster said. “The third in this area this year. This time the suspect wasn’t able to get the money from the cash register, and he vanished. The police think he’s still in the immediate vicinity. We’ll go to Tom now, on scene.”

The camera cut to a young reporter holding a microphone, standing in front of the convenience store. The windows had been blown out and were blackened around the edges. Just inside a few officers moved around.

“Look.” Summer pointed to Joe. He wore his usual uniform of jeans and his white button-down, half untucked and draped over the gun on his hip. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was rumpled, and he looked so incredibly sexy she wanted to reach out and touch him.

Kenny sighed as she sank next to him on the couch. “How many times have I told him when there’s suits or cameras around, tuck the shirt all the way in and comb that mop masquerading as hair…”

The reporter began talking. “The police are confident that they have the suspect on camera—” A gun went off, and the reporter gasped, spinning around to take in the scene behind him.

A guy wearing a ski mask and holding a gun leapt out of a large open tub of sodas. He waved the weapon, and as everyone else reached for theirs, the man closest to the perp dove forward.

Joe. He hit the suspect at midbelly and they both went down.

The gun went off again.

Four officers converged on them both, covering the view of the camera.

“Keep the camera on them, Ed!” yelled the reporter. “Keep rolling!”

But camera guy Ed couldn’t get a clear shot, there were too many people yelling and talking, standing in front of the lens.

“Oh my God, did you see that?” Summer cried, leaping to her feet. “Joe just dove right at him. Was he shot? Could you see? I couldn’t see!”

Face grim and tense, Kenny squeezed her hand then headed for the door. “I’ll call you from the scene—”

“Oh, no, you won’t. Because I’ll be standing right next to you—”

They had to drive separately because Kenny was going in an official capacity, while Summer would be nothing more than one of the desperate crowd.

And she was desperate. Her heart was bouncing off her ribs like a Ping-Pong ball, the blood roaring in her ears as she played the scene in her head over and over.

Why had Joe tried to be a hero?

But she knew the answer to that. He’d been the closest, he’d had the best chance at taking the guy down before he’d shot someone. And yet the gun had gone off anyway.

She drove faster, cranking up her radio for news.

“One officer is down,” a reporter droned in a nasally, impersonal voice as if reading the alphabet. “But the gunman is in custody—”

It took her four more long, agonizing minutes to get to the scene, the longest minutes of her life. She’d lost sight of Kenny’s truck, and the entire block had been barricaded, but she moved in as close as she could. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find a spot to park.

When an ambulance whipped past her, going in the opposite direction, followed by a squad car, her heart kicked up a notch, if that was even possible. She was just about to abandon her car and say the hell with it when her cell phone rang.

It was Kenny. “Oh thank God,” she said in lieu of a greeting. “Listen, I can’t get in close, there’s nowhere to park, I’m just going to—”

“Turn around.” He sounded perfectly calm but Summer could hear the strain beneath the surface. “He just left in the ambulance, and is heading toward the hospital.”

Now her poor heart stopped. “He was hit?”

“I don’t have any details yet, but we both know Joe is far too stubborn to be anything but okay.”

She heard Ashes let out a little bark, and knew she must be riding shotgun with Kenny. Summer let out a little sobbing laugh, and with the phone shoved against her hunched shoulder, tried to turn around. But traffic was a bitch and no one was moving and…and she was going to go postal here in a second. “Damn it!”

“Listen to me, Summer. You have time, so drive carefully. Summer? Are you there?”

Since she couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat, she nodded as if Kenny could see her.

“Just get to the hospital,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”

Summer tossed the phone to the seat besides her and weaved through traffic, snarling at anyone who got in her way. At the hospital, she parked crookedly and ran through the lot and into the emergency department, which was so packed there was standing room only. People lined the hall, sat against the walls, paced the floor. Summer made her way past all of them, skidding to a halt in front of the nurses station. The line there was long but no one seemed to be doing anything so she stood off to the side and caught the eye of a nurse. “Joe Walker,” she gasped. “The fire marshal from the store bombing.”

Miraculously, the nurse moved to the counter and consulted a clipboard. “Are you family?”

She debated with herself for less than a single heartbeat. She knew the rules. No family, no information. “Yes,” she said because it was true. She was the closet thing to family he’d ever had.