Chapter 3

Joey

 

“What the fuck are you doing, Coen?” I grumble, staring at my younger brother, who has widened the hole we have been digging by at least another foot in the time it took me to grab a couple of water bottles.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” His short dark hair lies flat against his head, wet with sweat.

I grin, watching his face turn from calm to annoyed—maybe even angry. My kid brother is so rarely riled up that although I’m sunburned, exhausted, and coated in sticky sweat, humor tickles my lips. When we were younger, I’d push him around when he got mouthy. Now that I’m nearing thirty-four and he’s thirty-one, I don’t doubt my little brother would hesitate giving as good as he received.

“I’m digging a goddamn hole all the way to fucking China. By myself!” He glares at me.

“Why are you expanding it?” I ask. “We measured it all and marked it off. And didn’t you tell me that if I swore again, you’d cut off my fingers with the goddamn shovel?”

He tries to hide his grin by digging another scoop of soil that he throws onto the large tarp beside us. “You forget to pay attention. Hayden was out on the porch with Ella, you asshole.”

The immediate reflex to tease my brother doesn’t come as expected. Not this time. Not when he talks about his girlfriend, Ella, and her nine-year-old son, Hayden. My brother deserves happiness, and as far as I’m concerned, Ella is already my sister-in-law and Hayden is my nephew, whether it’s been made legal yet or not. Instead, I find myself joining in his efforts to widen the large hole we’re digging to fill with stones to create a fire pit for their new house.

I swipe at my brow. We’re taking a beating today with the sun. “So you got out of the big city, out of suburbia, and into the sticks. How are you feeling about things?”

“It’s peaceful.” Coen’s voice is uneven as he continues to dig. “There are some giant-ass bugs, but I’d much prefer dealing with them than neighbors.”

“Ella and Hayden seem to be liking it.”

Coen nods, stopping to wipe his brow with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “I think being away from all the negativity Ella was always facing has been really good for her. It’s like a fresh start—a new start—and Hayden sees that.”

“You gave that to her,” I tell him.

Rounded brown eyes reveal his shock at my compliment. Then he shakes his head. “We did it together.”

My brother will likely never take credit for helping Ella recognize the good she deserved, but he was certainly a key component to it when he convinced her to move here to Haven Point, Virginia, with him. She had lived in a town that spread rumors and lies about her and her past, and while those stories created a hurdle for my brother and Ella to be together, I know they’d both do it a thousand times over again.

“I think this is it, though,” Coen continues. “I think this is going to be our house. Our forever home.”

“Wow.” I lean back on my shovel, staring at my younger brother, who has never voluntarily brought a woman besides Ella home. “Those are some big words.”

Coen’s eyebrows raise. “Actually they’re small, but their meaning is pretty significant.” He flashes the quick smile I always picture him wearing and slices back into the ground with his shovel.

“Ma’s planning your wedding already, so I’m glad you’re ready for it.”

He laughs but doesn’t protest it, and for the first time, the reality of his situation sinks in fully. My kid brother is ready. He’s met his soul mate. He wants to get married.

“Stop standing around. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and I don’t want a mud bath back here.” Coen smacks my thigh with his shovel.

“Dude, free labor here. Don’t be an asshole.”

“‘Free labor,’ my ass. You’re crashing in the apartment over my garage for the next few weeks and can only tell me it’s to lay low, which in your profession isn’t a good thing.”

“You know I’d never put your family at risk. You maybe, but not them.”

His familiar smile returns. “So you can’t tell me anything about it?”

“It’s been intense,” I tell him, shaking my head. “Everything about working as a detective is worse than they portray on TV. Everything.”

Coen mirrors me, shaking his head. “I don’t know how you do it. I hate being away from Ella and Hayden when I have to be on for twenty-four hours; there’s no way I’d be able to be gone for weeks at a time.”

“Being away is usually the easiest part of this gig. It’s what I see and what I know—what I learn people are capable of—that really get to me.” I suck in a deep breath, trying to calm myself down, but the anger hits me like a tidal wave, drowning me in regrets and resentment. An operation for a single perpetrator or single crime uncovers dozens more, and to prevent compromising the end goal, you often have to report them and look the other way, hoping another line of justice will ultimately prevail.

“I thought I’d be making a big difference in the world, and now I feel like I can’t look at anyone without suspecting they’re some kind of monster,” I tell Coen.

He frowns. “There are some seriously fucked up people out there. I don’t know how you manage working with them every single day. I can’t imagine ever having to deal with that shit or being around it. Especially now.” Anger flushes his face, his temper deriving from our Italian ancestry and the love he has for Ella and Hayden.

“You won’t have to consider shit like that. Not here. I have a feeling this entire town knows when someone sneezes.”

Coen tilts his chin, doubt likely clouding his thoughts. I understand. Seeing what I have—doing what I have done—often leads me to leave a dozen messages a day for my twin sister, Arianna. Unfortunately, my fear goes much further than her. All of my nieces and nephews, and two older sisters, also get the brute of my paranoia.

“Someone isn’t after you, though, right?” Coen tosses his shovel out of the hole and then climbs out. He looks at me, his face stoic, attempting to assess the situation.

I shake my head. “You know that case I’ve been working on?”

Coen nods once.

He does. The entire country knows, to some degree. But Coen and my family knew about it before the perpetrator had a name and a face, when he was dozens of files that I combed over, searching for evidence and similarities, and then again for differences that might stand out and lead me to him. While I couldn’t share much of the case with them, it was on the news constantly due to his frequent attacks—rape cases are too often unseen and unannounced, yet a serial rapist has the ability to nearly paralyze a city. Each family discussion about the case was waived and ended with concerns over me pursuing the sociopath. Coen knows how much time I’ve spent on this case and its victims, whom I want to get a small ounce of redemption for.

“You guys named Holden as a possible suspect last week.”

I grab one of the large bags of sand and haul it over to the freshly dug hole. “Because he went missing,” I tell him.

“So, what happened?” Coen asks. “How did you go from publicly naming him, to hiding out here?”

“Captain said I was too close to the case. Thinks I’ve made it too personal.” I pour the contents into the hole before jumping down with a rake in hand.

“He didn’t just reassign you new cases?”

“Oh, he did,” I say, spreading the sand. “I just didn’t listen to the first part about leaving the Holden case alone.”

“So you’re here on an insubordination issue?” Coen’s eyebrows arc.

“Until Internal Affairs gives me the green light.”

He chuckles. “So you might be my free labor until the new year, then?”

I flip him off and resume raking as my brother’s phone rings.

“Sorry, Joe, I’ve got to take this. It’s the station.” My little brother is the new captain of the Haven Point Fire Department, which requires a great deal of his time. I made the choice to come out here in an attempt to clear my head while hopefully helping him to get things moving forward with the new house.

I’m spreading the second bag of sand when Coen returns with an appreciative wolf whistle. “You might have earned yourself some supper!” he says with a heavy southern twang that is neither genuine nor convincing, but it is funny as all hell.

“What are you cookin’ for me?” I try out my own southern accent.

“More like what am I buying you?” Coen grabs the large metal ring that is the interior of the fire pit and carries it over.

“You’re sure you don’t want it flush?” I ask as we set it inside, seeing the six inches that protrude out of the ground.

“Yeah, we’ll add those stones and get it a solid eighteen inches; that way Hayden can’t get too close to it, and no one will risk falling in.”

I don’t know why I questioned him. Coen’s been a firefighter since he was twenty, and a decade later, he knows his shit so thoroughly I don’t doubt he’s planning to make his entire house fire resistant with every method possible. He doesn’t make me feel stupid or bad for questioning him, though. Coen simply pushes the wheelbarrow holding large concrete blocks closer, then grabs the bucket filled with paver base, and begins pouring a thick layer.

Our words slow as our mutual need for perfection leads us through hours of placing the stones in a seamless pattern.

“This might be the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” I admit, taking a step back to admire our work.

“There’s still so much work to be done.” Coen looks around the vast yard.

“Yeah, but you’ll get there.”

He expels a sigh. “I hope it’s soon. Ella’s getting stressed out about leaving her job in North Carolina and starting her own PR firm, and I know the extra hours I’ve been having to put in to get the station running the way I want isn’t helping matters.”

My gaze travels over the immense space. He built an expansive deck when they first moved in, and they have fenced it in and planted all sorts of trees and bushes. Now with this fire pit, the place is like a piece of heaven carved out of this small town.

“We’ll start working on the inside tomorrow,” I tell him. “Tearing down that old wallpaper will probably take us the longest, but it won’t be a problem. You’re worrying about nothing.”