WHAT THE HELL IS THIS woman doing to me?
That’s one of many thoughts I have as I leave behind Reid Winter Winery, and Faith with it. Leaving her kills me, and I have never in all the many fucks I’ve shared with a woman, given two fucks about the morning after, or the second morning after as it may be, and what do I do? I choose Faith, a woman I went looking for to destroy. She’s not the killer I thought she was, but she might be when she finds out who my father is, and why I sought her out. And she’ll have to know there’s no way around it. Really, this is poetic justice. I told Faith I’m not like my father, but running through women, and not giving two fucks, is something he did well, and I do better. How profound that the one I give a shit about is going to hate me like she’s never hated before.
I pull onto the main highway and tail lights greet me. “Fuck,” I growl, forced to halt behind a line of cars, while debating the pros and cons of turning around, throwing Faith over my shoulder, and taking her home with me. Something feels off with her uncle. Something feels wrong in general and it’s not her.
Looking for answers and action, I fish my phone from my pocket and use Siri to find the shop that has Faith’s car, making arrangements to pay for it and have it delivered to her over the weekend when I plan to be with her. By the time I end the call, the traffic still hasn’t moved, and I dial Beck. “Nicholas,” he greets.
“The uncle,” I say.
“Filthy rich snake of a bastard,” he says, clearly aware of who I’m talking about.
“He fucked Faith’s mom.”
“Who didn’t?” He laughs. “That woman saw more action than ten Taco Bells on Friday night at two am.”
“The uncle,” I repeat.
“He had random contact with Meredith Winter over the years, but nothing notable after the obvious falling out between him and her husband. And I’m sure you know that he’s married to one of the billionaire Warren Hotel heiresses now.”
“I knew,” I say, having done plenty of my own research. “That’s how he got the money for his start-up. Any contact between him and Faith?”
“Aside from him attending both her mother’s and father’s funerals, none.”
“Find out if he, or anyone for that matter, has an interest in the property the winery is sitting on,” I say, before moving on. “Josh—”
“The agent,” he says. “What about him?”
“Could Macom have used him to connect to Faith’s mother or my father?”
“Interesting premise when I thought of it as well,” Beck says, “but I cross referenced phone numbers and emails. There’s nothing.”
Grimacing, and with plenty of tail lights and time in my future, I lead the conversation to the bank, and draw Beck into a debate over their motives, before my mind takes me to a place I don’t want to go. Not with Faith in Sonoma and me in San Francisco. “What if Faith isn’t a killer, but now she’s the one in the way of whoever is?”
“Any time a million dollars plus is missing and two people are dead of the exact same cause two months apart, the possibility of someone else ending up dead exists. But unlike you apparently, I won’t conclude a murder or murders were committed until you get me your father’s, and Meredith Winter’s autopsy reports. And for the record, I’m far from thinking Faith Winter is innocent. She and her mother could easily have been a scam team. Always remember that in the absence of evidence, there is someone making sure there’s an absence of evidence. I’ll warn you again. Watch your back. You have my excessively large bill to pay.”
He hangs up on the warning I’d feel obligated to give me, too, but I’m not a fool. I read people with a lot less of a look into their lives than I have into Faith’s. I dial Abel Baldwin, my closest friend, and one of the best damn criminal attorneys on the planet. “I was starting to think you might be dead, too,” he says, when he picks up. “What happened with Faith Winter?”
I glance at the clock on my dash. “Can you meet me at my place at four?”
“Now I’m really curious. I’ll be there.”
I asked him to help me destroy her. Now I need to pull back the reins and have him help me save her. And I return to: What the hell is this woman doing to me?
Just after four, Abel and I sit in the living room of my house, him on the sectional that occupies most of the room, me on a chair across from him. One of his many Irish whiskey picks he brings by my place weekly is in our glasses, and while the sectional he occupies is a pale gray, my mood is decidedly darker. “Good stuff, right?” Abel asks, refilling his glass.
“One of your better picks,” I say, but when he lifts the bottle in my direction I wave him off. “I need to stay sharp. I have work to do.”
“I’ll hang out and get boozed, and ask stupid questions to piss you off because what are friends for?”
“You’re a hell of a friend, Abel. One hell of a friend.”
He downs his whiskey. “I love watching North geek out and start reciting facts.”
“The kid’s an encyclopedia,” I say, motioning to his severely buzzed blond hair. “You thinking about going back to the army or what?”
“Starting a trial next week,” he says. “The judge is an ex-SEAL.”
“And you plan on reminding him that you are, too.”
His lips quirk. “Gotta work what you got.” He narrows his eyes at me. “And you got me, Nick. Put me to work here. What’s the elephant in the room you want to talk about but haven’t?”
“What’s it going to cost me to get those autopsy results sooner than three weeks from now?”
“We just filed the order,” he says. “You can’t buy your way past a medical procedure. This isn’t a crime TV show and you know it. Toxicology, which is what we’re looking at, will take weeks and even months.”
“Understood,” I say, “but we both know we can move certain aspects of this to sooner, rather than later. Whatever it costs, make it happen.”
He narrows his eyes on me, and after a decade of friendship, I’m not surprised at what comes next. “You fucked her.”
“I’ve fucked a lot of women.”
“This one got to you. Nick, damn it. You got me involved in this because of one word: Murder. Let’s recap. You find a million dollars in checks written by your father to this women’s mother, who is now dead, by the same means as your father, thus making Faith Winter, the biggest suspect, and you choose to fuck her.”
“I’m crystal clear on the details. And murder is still on the table. I just don’t think she did it.”
The doorbell rings and I curse. “Leave it to North to be early.” I scrub my jaw and I’m about to get up when Abel says, “Nick. Man. Many a good man fell over a woman and I’m pretty fucking sure the same can be said in reverse. Watch where you stick your cock.”
“Says the guy who can’t stop banging his ex,” I remind him, standing and heading for the door, my booted feet heavy on the pale wood of the living room floor, only to have him shout out, “She has magnificent breasts.”
I laugh, and she must, because that’s not the first time I’ve heard that. But his warning about fucking Faith has hit a nerve and my own warning replays in my mind, when I swore I wouldn’t let it again. You never find guilt when you’re looking for innocence.
I open the door to find North standing in front of me looking like Clark Kent if Clark Kent was skinny and geeky. But that’s the thing about North. There’s more to him than meets the eye. He will slay you with facts. Superman-slay you. And damn it, there is more to Faith than meets the eye. I know it. I feel it. And I need to find out what and now, before a surprise-slays me.
It’s eleven when I finally have my house to myself again, and I walk into my office and bypass the pine carpenter-style desk that is the centerpiece. Instead, I walk to the oversized brown leather chair in the corner, a floor-to-ceiling window beside it, and sit down. Beside it is a stack of paperwork from my father’s office and another from his home, that led me to Meredith Winter in the first place. I’ve been through it all ten times, and there is nothing that gives me the answers I need. Who killed him? I’ve told myself that it is simply my need for closure, but the truth is, the idea that that man was thwarted by anyone but me in his death, claws at me. Bastard that it makes me, I wanted the man around just to show him his son would always be better. Someone took that from me. And my gift to myself is to find that person. That’s my form of grief. There is no guilt to it.
Guilt.
That’s what I keep sensing in Faith, but my mind goes back to lying in bed with her last night. When she’d asked if I had cried for my father. When she felt she should have for her mother.
Guilt.
Acceptable guilt that I can live with and help her live with. It’s nothing more than that. I let that thought simmer for several minutes, with space between myself and Faith, and I still feel the same. She didn’t kill my father or her mother.
I remove my phone from my pocket and dial her. She picks up on the second ring. “Nick,” she says, and damn it, how is it that my name on this woman’s lips, can make my cock hard and my heart soft.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Did you finish your prep?” she asks, once again showing concern about my work that I’ve never given another woman a chance to express. Maybe they would have. Maybe they wouldn’t have. I just didn’t care to have them try.
“We’re ready,” I say. “We’ll kill it at every turn.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “I was worried I’d distracted you.”
“You do distract me, Faith, but in all the right ways. Where are you?”
“My house,” she says.
“I thought you were staying at the winery?”
“I was inspired to paint.”
I lean back in the chair, shutting my eyes, imagining her standing at her canvas, beautiful, gifted, focused. “Are you painting me, Faith?”
“Yes,” she says. “Actually I am. I’m still trying to understand you. Now that you’re gone…”
“Now that I’m gone, what?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“Something,” I repeat, opening my eyes and standing up, facing the window, the glow of the lights on the Golden Gate bridge before me. “There is something, Faith,” I add, wanting her to tell me what I sense. “What is it?”
She’s silent for several beats. “Are we talking about you or me, now?”
“You,” I say. “I’m your attorney and the man in your bed and life. What haven’t you told me?”
“We’re new, Nick. There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”
I feel those words like another claw in my heart and every warning that’s been thrown at me the past few hours digs it deeper. I have never been a fool who thinks with his dick. I’m not starting now. “I want you to tell me, but you know I’ll find out.”
“Of course you will. You enjoy a challenge. Goodnight, Nick.”
She hangs up.