“Travis Hale, you didn’t eat half of your breakfast. Is something wrong with Norm’s cooking all of a sudden? And what about that?” She pointed at the blueberry muffin sitting next to my plate, sugary-cinnamon crumbs covering the top. “Bree brought those over just this morning. They couldn’t be any fresher.”
I took a swig of coffee and then rubbed at my stomach. “It’s not the food. I think I might be coming down with something, that’s all.”
Maggie frowned, leaning over the diner counter where I sat at my regular seat and putting the back of her hand to my forehead. “You don’t feel feverish. Maybe you should go home. When was the last time you took a sick day?” She nodded at my new recruit, sitting next to me, shoveling Norm’s O’Brien potatoes into his mouth as if this might be the last meal he’d ever eat. “Spencer can handle things for one day, right, Spencer?”
Spencer nodded, but before he could speak and show us a mouthful of chewed food, I intervened. “No. I’m fine. Just something that needs to run its course.” The truth was, my stomach felt fine, but my appetite was still affected by the sour mood I’d been in since I’d walked in on my girlfriend in bed with another man.
The picture was burned across my retinas and there was a strange pinching feeling in my gut that wouldn’t recede.
Maggie studied me for a moment and despite being a grown man with a gun strapped to his hip, I almost squirmed under her perusal. “I heard you and Phoebe broke up.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
Maggie waved her hand. “Around.”
Around. Sometimes I hated living in a small town.
I took another sip of the now-cold coffee, nodding casually. “Things just ran their course.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Huh,” she said. “Just like that?”
I shrugged. “Relationships fail all the time, Mags. Just because you and Norm have been together since the ice age, doesn’t mean everything lasts as long.”
Maggie glanced back at Norm scraping grease off the griddle, the bald spot on the top of his head gleaming in the fluorescent lights, his large gut hanging over his belt. “It’s true you’re no Norm,” she said, turning back to me, and giving me a teasing wink. “But you do have your good points. You know I’m here if you need someone to talk to, right?”
“I do, Maggie. Thank you.” Maggie had always seen the good in me, even when I didn’t deserve it, and had tried her best to take up where my own mother left off. I felt a tightening in my throat and swallowed around it, tapping Spencer on his arm. “We should get going.”
“Yes, boss.”
“You don’t have to call me boss, Spencer. Travis is just fine.” Spencer bobbed his head. He was a good guy, just young and a little too eager to please, socially . . . challenged, and he could be so damned literal sometimes. But . . . he was the grandson of a couple in town, the Connicks, who owned a number of cottages on the lake, people I’d known all my life. I remembered Spencer as a kid, holding a toy police car in his hands and watching the now-retired chief stroll by in his uniform with a look of awestruck wonder on his face. When he’d applied to be an officer and I’d called and told him he was hired, I’d known I was granting a long-held dream. And it was obvious that Spencer had transferred the hero worship he’d held for the retired chief to me.
Spencer downed the last of his coffee, and I put some money on the counter, said a goodbye to Norm, and smiled at Maggie. “Be safe,” she called as the bell sounded over the door and we stepped out into the warm June day.
We turned into the lot where the cruiser was parked, almost colliding with someone. “Oh shit. Sorry, man. I wasn’t looking—”
The man stopped talking suddenly, his mouth hanging slack. I pulled back, my blood freezing, eyes narrowing when I saw who it was.
Him.
“Urrr . . .” he choked, his eyes darting from my face, to my gun, and back again as we stood at the side of the diner, staring at each other.
I smiled, a slow, cold tipping of my lips as I reached down and rested my hand on my weapon. I saw Spencer frown in my peripheral vision, stepping back to get a better view of the interaction, his own hand going to his weapon.
The guy—Easton—took a step back, his expression filled with surprised terror. “Listen, man, it wasn’t what you think.”
I tilted my head. “Really? So you weren’t fucking my girlfriend when I walked in on you two naked in her bed? You hadn’t seen the photographs on her nightstand of the two of us? You must have asked. Did she tell you about me? Did it make it more exciting?”
He swallowed. I could see by his expression that I’d hit the nail on the head. If anything, those pictures had sweetened the deal, upped the challenge. And then there was likely the fact that, because she’d had—past tense—a boyfriend, Phoebe wasn’t a girl who was going to demand anything of him after the deed was done.
You’re the best! The best!
That pinching again, humiliation cooling my blood several more degrees. Speaking of ice ages. I felt like a walking glacier.
I was cheated on with this . . . kid? This pretty-boy club employee, vacationing in my town for the summer? I’d seen him the day before when I’d been sitting at the refreshment bar talking to smoothie girl.
The kid opened his mouth to speak then closed it again. “Here for the summer, I assume?”
“Urrr . . .”
“Maybe it’s time to call it an early season,” I suggested.
His eyes narrowed minutely. “Yeah . . . sorry. I can’t do that.”
“What’s your last name, Easton?”
He hesitated, the wheels of his mind obviously turning. After a moment, having clearly worked out that I could find out his name easily enough if he wouldn’t give it to me, he answered, “Torres.”
“Torres,” I repeated. Why did that sound familiar?
“Yeah. It’s really Torres.”
For several moments we engaged in a stare-off. Finally, his gaze skittered away.
“This is Travis’s town,” Spencer interjected.
I shut my eyes briefly and huffed out a breath. Talk about melodramatic. “Listen, Mr. Torres, you might have just arrived, but I think we can both agree that you’ve burned the wrong bridge here in Pelion. I wouldn’t expect this to be an enjoyable summer if you stay.”
“You should leave before we run you out of town,” Spencer threatened.
“Spencer,” I said between clenched teeth, not glancing his way. Spencer had obviously watched far too many reruns of Gunsmoke in preparation for the job.
“What are you going to do?” Easton asked warily.
I chewed at my bottom lip thoughtfully, a slow smile unfolding. His gaze widened. “Nothing,” I drawled. His chin jerked minutely, eyebrows lifting. “Nothing until you least expect it,” I clarified, my smile growing. I stepped out of his path so he could pass by.
He moved to go around me and I stepped in his way, causing him to have to move around the other side. Immature, yet satisfying.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” he said, dipping around and glancing back repeatedly as he almost ran to the diner door, ducking inside.
As if he was safe there.
Those were my people. And unlike Phoebe, they were loyal.
Still, I’d bide my time.
Spencer followed as I walked toward our cruiser.
I pulled out of the lot, heading toward the station. “We could have him roughed up,” Spencer offered.
My brows came down and I gave him a glare. “We’re not going to rough anyone up, Spencer. Jesus.” I was many things, but a crooked cop wasn’t one of them.
He looked chastised. “Sorry, boss.”
I sighed. “This is a personal issue. I’ll know when the right opportunity comes along.” I glanced at him. “And listen, Spencer . . .”
The guy was staring at me so intently, as though I was about to impart the sagest advice he’d ever been given. I was surprised he hadn’t taken out a piece of paper to make notes. “Just . . . dial it down a notch, okay?”
His shoulders sagged and he nodded dejectedly. “I just want you to know I got your back, boss.”
I sighed. “I know that. I appreciate it.” He was a decent guy. He was even a good cop so far, though he hadn’t been on long. His main downfall was that his regular ass-kissing got on my nerves.
“She cheated on you,” Spencer said. “Phoebe cheated on you.” He looked personally outraged and, though it was overkill—an example of him not dialing it down—I still appreciated the concern on my behalf.
“And you walked in on it,” he said, letting out one long whistle. “Man. That sucks.” He dragged out the word, enunciating the u with a seemingly unending number of head bounces, until it was about fifty-seven syllables long and a headache had started at the base of my spine.
As if the word sucks needed to be so dramatically enunciated when discussing my cheating girlfriend. I had no doubt plenty of that had gone on before I walked in the room. I didn’t appreciate the sudden visual. “I’d want revenge too,” Spencer offered. “I mean, you walked right in on it!” he repeated.
God, why had I told him about it? Why?
Temporary emotional insanity, it had to have been.
“Yes, Spencer, I’m aware that I walked right in on it. I haven’t forgotten the moment.”
Spencer shook his head, staring through the windshield as the sunshine-drenched streets of Pelion streaked by, the blue of the lake sparkling in the distance. “What that guy did?” Spencer went on. “Humiliating you like that? Seducing your girl? Getting under the sheets with her, naked! Sticking his—’
“Spencer,” I barked. He looked at me, startled. “Thank you so much for spelling the situation out for me, step by step, as it likely occurred. I was looking forward to considering all the possibilities and reliving the experience all over again.”
“Not a problem, boss.”
Okay, so he wasn’t the most perceptive person. If he was a good cop, it was likely only a result of luck and the fact that the most serious calls we tended to get in Pelion—barring what had happened between my father and uncles decades ago, and what happened to Archer more recently—were for lost dogs, and the occasional drunk and disorderly.
And once in a while, a reckless driver.
Haven Torres from California. That’s where I’d heard that name before. Could they be related?
“You can do me a favor, though,” I said, thoughtfully.
“Anything, boss. Just name it. Anything. No matter what it is.”
I glanced at him, thinning my lips. “This is a place where you might dial it down, Spencer.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. Yes, sir. Um . . .” He screwed up his face, looking lost.
The headache moved up my neck and settled at the base of my skull. I looked back at the road, turning into the station parking lot. “I’m going to find out exactly where Easton Torres is from and where he’s been. Then I want you to dig up everything you can about him. Traffic tickets . . . arrest warrants, illegal activities posted to his social media, anything and everything we might want to know about.”
“What are we going to do with it?” Spencer asked, leaning in conspiratorially as though I was about to impart some evil master plan.
“Make flyers. Write it across the sky, of course,” I murmured, not able to roll my eyes for the pounding behind my left eye. I sighed, rubbing my temples again. I wouldn’t do anything in an official capacity unless it was warranted. But even if melodramatic, Spencer had been right in one respect: this was my town. And though I wanted revenge, I also wanted to protect what was mine.
