CHAPTER TEN
“Do you ever wonder about the choices we made as teenagers?”
Jace tilted the bottle of beer until the wheat-flavored beverage hit his lips. The lawn chairs Lance had brought over from their dad’s house had seen better days, but they got the job done. The two chairs were now positioned on the porch so that they could see the driveway and the road approaching from either direction.
“You’re asking me that?” Lance propped his boots up on the wooden railing and crossed his arms as he got more comfortable. “I think Brynn was always in the back of my mind. She was my better half, and I left her here all alone.”
“Brynn chose to stay here in Blyth Lake,” Jace corrected his baby brother, recalling quite well the phone conversation the two of them had after that devastating confrontation. “I’m just saying that our lives would have been different had we not left for the service.”
“Do you regret it now?” The disbelief of such a notion was evident in Lance’s tone. “Is there something I’m missing here?”
“Of course I don’t regret serving my country,” Jace said in frustration, hating that he had to explain himself. “You don’t find that returning home is messing with your head, even though we did the right thing? What would have happened if Brynn had chosen to go with you? Do you think the two of you would have withstood the harsh reality of the endless deployments or the moving to another state every few years? I guess seeing old friends has me wondering about the choices we made when we were younger.”
“Is this about Shae?”
Jace snapped his teeth together instead of answering Lance, because the inevitable questions would have followed. He wasn’t ready to talk about Shae. She’d all but escorted him to the door when he’d tried to pay her a compliment. He’d tried telling her in a roundabout way that he’d made a mistake most teenage boys make—ignoring what was right in front of him the whole time.
“Forget it, man.” Jace shifted in the chair, wondering how Lance could sit the way he was without hurting his neck. It just went to show that the two years between them made a difference. “I spoke with Nick today. He said that Kyle was in the city the night Emma disappeared because he’d been the one to deliver the keg.”
“Paid him fifty bucks,” Lance added on, obviously having heard about Jace’s phone conversation from Brynn. She’d had the worst timing in knocking on Shae’s door as he’d waited for her to reply to his declaration. His offer to drive Shae back to his house had been axed before he’d even finished giving the suggestion. “Do you think he could have driven back and taken Emma? I can’t see him being a killer.”
“Neither can I, but I’m not so sure Brynn’s right to keep her head buried in the sand either.” Jace held up his hands in defense when Lance shot him a look of warning. “You know as well as I do that it’s most likely someone we know. Kendrick mentioned that Whitney Bell had let someone into her house the night she was taken, which leads him to believe that she knew her killer well enough not to worry about having him in her house alone.”
“Jeremy still hasn’t gone into the Cavern.”
That absence wouldn’t be unusual for anyone else in town but Jeremy. Well, maybe their Uncle Jimmy. His fondness for alcohol definitely ranked up there with Jeremy’s addiction.
“What about Uncle Jimmy?” Jace had to wonder what Jimmy Webb thought of their homecoming gifts. Jimmy was Mary Kendall’s brother and the outcast of the family. His stint in jail and some of his earlier choices hadn’t endeared the man to Jace’s grandfather—who had been the one to cut Jimmy out of his will. “Have you seen him since you’ve been home?”
“Yeah, and so has Noah. Uncle Jimmy made his usual empty offer to have dinner, but nothing has panned out so far.” Lance lifted his cell phone, which he’d had in his lap, and checked the time. It was getting rather late. “Are you sure you don’t need me to get the old 870 out of the truck? A number two shot would make a mess out of any unruly reporter.”
“Dad gave me one of his old Remington Model 31s. Speaking of which, did you head down to the station to apply for your concealed carry permit? I need to do that. My old one states that I have thirty days to change addresses.” Along with a ton of other things. At least he didn’t have the problems that Noah and Lance had upon moving into their new homes. “We should do something for Dad, you know. He and Mom could have used that money for a lot of other things. I still can’t believe I’m sitting on the front porch of my new home. It’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it.” Lance drained the rest of his beer before dropping his boots to the ground with a thud. “We’ll wait for Gwen and Mitch to come home before doing something. And no, I haven’t had time to go see Patty about my concealed carry permit.”
“Patty is still running things down there?” It wasn’t surprising, but the woman had to be close to her seventies and retirement. Thinking about the station made his thoughts turn back to Shae. Hell, all he’d thought about was that woman since he’d returned home. “Are you sure Shae is safe upstairs all alone in that studio apartment above the bar? Maybe you should suggest she stay at the inn around other folks.”
“Is there something going on between you two that I don’t know about?”
Jace truly wished he had an answer for his brother. He’d always considered Shae a friend, but her confession this morning had thrown a twist into his reality. Well, saying she altered his perception of certain memories might be a better way to describe what was bouncing around in his head. Maybe talking about it with Lance would lessen his confusion.
“Shae told me something today that I didn’t understand.” Jace took a swig of his beer to give himself fortification. If Lance spread a word of this to anyone, he wouldn’t be walking for a week. “She blames herself for taking the car the night Emma disappeared. Technically, she blames me, because I’m the one she went to see.”
“Wait,” Lance said with a shake of his head. He appeared just as confused as Jace. “Start from the beginning.”
“Shae and Emma got into a fight about who was getting the car that fateful night. Their mom made the final decision that Shae could take it into the city, because Emma was staying in town anyway.” Jace couldn’t sit still for the rest of this conversation, so he stood and leaned his shoulder against one of the white wooden pillars holding up the porch roof. Lance settled back into the chair that might very well collapse at any moment. “Heated words were exchanged, but Shae took the car anyway.”
“Because she was coming to see you at your going away party?” Lance ran a hand down his face in amazement. He held his cell phone and empty beer bottle in the other. “Oh, shit. She remembers that night every time she sees your ugly mug.”
“See? Now you aren’t helping me out here, man.” Jace shouldn’t have told Lance anything. Where was Mitch when he was needed? Now he was the one brother who had the ability to analyze a situation and give sound advice. “I don’t want to be the reason she thinks of as the first element, but I’m not sure I can keep my distance.”
“Keep your…” Lance’s voice trailed off as he finally began to fit the various pieces in place. “Oh, I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you’re fucked like a duck during the first day of hunting season.”
Again, Lance’s reaction reminded Jace of why he only ever ran his problems by Mitch.
“There are times when I hate you,” Jace muttered, draining his beer. “Just do me the favor of making the suggestion to Shae that she should stay at the inn. It’s better that she play it safe, what with everything going on in the past few months. How could it hurt?”
“Look,” Lance said, clearly trying to make up for his botched reaction. “Think back to those combat deployments where we few came home with less packs than when we went in. It’s hard for me to think of some of my old buddies without remembering the bad times when we were in the shit. Those memories are there, but they’re buried underneath the others of when we laughed our asses off because we stole another unit’s Humvee or when we put laxatives into the First Sergeant’s coffee because he pissed us off with useless horseshit assignments when we were back in garrison, cleaning weapons that were just cleaned.”
The good memories outweighed the bad. They had to, or else they would have all gone insane. Unfortunately, the recollections Shae and Jace shared were typical of any teenagers trying to do the best he or she could, given the circumstances. He thought back to this afternoon when she burst into laughter over his potential death by drowning.
The bonus here was that when he thought of her, he would forever remember that moment now. He wasn’t sure why it was so important to him for her to associate his face with something other than a family tragedy, but it was.
“Lance, you might not be so bad after all.”
“I get such a bad rap,” Lance muttered, standing while managing not to break the old chair. He handed off his empty beer bottle to Jace while maintaining a hold on his phone. “Throw that away for me, would you? I should get back to the bar and help Brynn with last call.”
Lance reached the bottom step of the porch when headlights cut through the darkness. Who the hell would be visiting at this hour of the night?
“You might want to go and get that shotgun,” Lance advised cautiously, slipping his phone into the back pocket of his jeans as he kept an eye on the approaching vehicle. The movement allowed his hand to remain closer to the holstered weapon attached to his belt. “Who the hell is that at this time of night?”
Jace had already set down the two empty bottles on the bannister, monitoring the situation closely. He finally caught a glimpse of the vehicle when the driver turned the wheels to the right ever so gently in order not to block in Lance’s truck.
The light bar on top of the brown and white car gave away the visitor’s identity—Deputy Kyle Foster.