Dinner with Matthew was amazing. It wasn’t exactly romantic or seemed like a date, but it was still comfortable. Everything just seemed easier with him around. The conversation flowed easily, whether it was about random trivialities or about my life. We talked about my childhood a little, about growing up with a drunk of a father. We talked a little about his, how he’d been raised by adopted parents, as we ate etouffee, dirty rice, and gumbo.

Now, though, we were headed back to his pickup so he could give me a ride home. The stars stretched over us, a canopy of lights that seemed to open the whole world to exploration. Even with all the craziness going on today, with Matthew getting shot, and the nearly twelve hours on the road, it was the best I’d felt in weeks, maybe months. I couldn’t remember feeling better than right at that moment.

“Still keep in touch with them?” I asked as we walked side-by-side down the sidewalk, my arms wrapped around my body against the chilly air. Stupid me, I hadn’t even brought a jacket. Typically it got down to the fifties overnight up here during the summer, but I hadn’t thought I’d be going out to dinner before I headed home.

He made a face. “A little. I probably don’t go back to see them as much as I should, though. It’s just strange to live your whole life and then, all of a sudden, get told that you’re not like the rest of the kids in the family. That your brothers and sisters aren’t really your brothers and sisters, and that your parents aren’t really your biological parents. I mean, in retrospect, it made total sense. I served in the military and became a firefighter afterwards. My older sister’s a lawyer and my brother’s a professor of art history at Stanford of all places. I couldn’t be any more different from either of them.”

I laughed. “Your parents still took care of you, though, right? Still loved you and clothed you?”

He glanced down at me and saw the way I was hugging myself. He took his jacket off and draped it around my shoulders, saying, “They did. And I wouldn’t ever say different. Like I said, I love them, but we just have so many differences. Things they wouldn’t ever understand.”

“Ever find your real mom or dad?” I asked as I pulled his jacket closer around my body, allowing it to engulf me and douse me with his wonderful scent.

He frowned a little and shook his head. “My parents said they didn’t know anything about them, that I’d been dropped off.” I could tell as he spoke the words that they affected him deeply, that he didn’t normally open up this way to people about this.

“I know,” I said, reaching down to touch his hand. “I felt the same way when I first ended up with Uncle Zeke. That my parents hadn’t wanted me, so what was the point? How could anyone else ever want me, unless it was out of pity? Why should I even want myself?”

He smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess we are two of a kind on that, aren’t we? How’d you get through it?” he asked as we came to a stop next to his pickup.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Took me a while to start letting people in. But you’ve got your coworkers, right? You guys seem really close.”

He nodded, looking up and down the street both ways before returning his attention to me. “We are. We’re like brothers now.”

“What’s that whole thing? About family not just being blood, but about who you choose?”

“It’s something like that,” he said as he fished his keys from his pocket. “Yeah. I mean, at least I have some things in common with the guys. All of us military, same workplace, a lot of the same experiences…” he said, trailing off with his mouth still open. It was almost like he’d been about to say something, but thought better of it at the last moment.

I didn’t press. If he didn’t want to tell me something, I was fine with it. Some people guard themselves more closely than others. “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

He scratched his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s, well, I’ve had a really great time with you today. Even if we did get shot at.”

“You know,” I said, looking up at him, my eyes traveling down to his full lips, my thoughts wandering to how his arms would feel around me again, “I was just thinking the exact same thing.”

“Kindred spirits?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, a little smirk dancing on his lips.

“Something like that.”

Subconsciously, we both drifted a little closer, like the opposite poles of two magnets. “You know,” he said as we got closer and closer, “it’s getting pretty late. Peter said that meeting was at nine tomorrow. I should probably get you home.”

I sighed a little.

“And besides,” he added, “I’m not supposed to be taking you out on a date until after this case is finished. Remember?”

I looked away, blushing a little. “Who said this was a date?”

“Well, I did pay for it.”

“You said you were putting it on your company card. Business meetings can’t be dates.”

“What if,” he said as he unlocked the passenger side door for me and pulled it open, “I told you I’d lied?”

I climbed into the passenger seat and turned to look at him from beneath thick lashes. “I’d say that’s treacherous, sneaky behavior unbefitting of a public servant.”

“So what you’re saying is, you’d use fancy words?” he asked, grinning as he closed the door. He went around the front and climbed in on his side. “Still not a date, though?”

I just laughed. “Okay, fine, whatever, it was a date. Happy? Now take me home, Romeo.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said with a grin as he started up his truck.

We drove through our little town, past the still-hopping Elk, and headed toward my house. I looked lovingly out my window at all the historic buildings, all the places that seemed to be the cornerstones and keystones of my memories growing up. My first boyfriend had lived down one of the roads we passed. God, Lawrence Prescott couldn’t have been more different from Matthew if he’d tried. Skinny, geeky, a total book nerd. Don’t get me wrong, I was still attracted to him. But it wasn’t because of his physique.

There, in the old theater that they’d converted to a bookstore, had been the spot of my first kiss. I couldn’t even remember what movie Lawrence and I had been watching, but I could still recall the feeling of his nervous, clammy hand in mine as I shoveled salty, buttered popcorn in my own terrified mouth.

 The town may have changed over the years, just like me, but it only seemed to have grown more mature and richer with age, turning from a small mining and lumber community into a tourist destination. On the one hand, I could see why Genevieve Richter wanted her granddaughter to get out of our little town, and to go to school and live her own life that wasn’t limited and predictable. But now, as I sat in the cab of Matthew’s pickup, driving down the roads of my childhood and teen years, I realized that it was a good town, one you could raise a family in.

Geez, where had that come from? One second I’m eating gumbo, and next I’m thinking about kids? Was it all the cayenne, or something?

A few moments later we were pulling up in front of my place.

Matthew put the truck in park. “Want me to walk you up?”

Yes! I wanted to shout from the treetops, the mountaintops even. But I knew that wouldn’t be in good taste, especially with what I’d pulled the night before in my drunken stupor. “No, I should be fine. Meet you down at the sheriff’s office at nine?”

“Yeah,” he said, giving me a sexy little half-smile, “see you then.”

That smile of his sent a little melting tremor through my body, and it took all I had to force myself out into my front lawn.

“Have a good night,” he said just before I went to close the door.

“You too,” I said, smiling and biting my lower lip a little. “Sleep tight.” I closed the door before I tried to beg him to come inside with me, and headed up the walkway to my front door.

The little motor inside the door of his pickup whirred as he rolled down the passenger side window. “Rebecca!” he called to my back.

I turned around, smiling a little, wondering what he was going to say. Just the sound of his voice had given me a delicious little chill that reminded me of that first kiss with Lawrence. “What?” I asked as I turned around.

He paused, like he was suddenly unsure of what he was going to say, his teeth worrying away at his lower lip. “I’m really glad we were able to help your uncle.”

I smiled the easiest smile I’ve ever smiled in my life. Deep down I knew that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say, and I could feel the nerves just rolling off him. But, to be honest, it was kind of cute and endearing to see him nervous like that. Especially when he’d been so confident earlier today, first marching into the state penitentiary, then later conning his way into a mafia hangout.

“Yeah,” I said, “I am too. Glad I didn’t shop around for a better price.”

He laughed as I turned back around and continued my walk to the front door.

I dug my pile of keys out and stuck them in my lock, turning the keys effortlessly despite their normally getting stuck. I was so giddy I didn’t even notice that the deadbolt wasn’t set in place. I slipped into my empty house, locked the door behind me, and tossed my purse on the entryway’s side table. I headed into my little bungalow, turning the lights on as I went, the little clicks of the switches the only sound in the house as the bulbs sprang into beautiful illumination.

“Let there be light,” I mumbled through grinning lips as I heard Matthew’s pickup finally pull away. I grinned a little broader at how he’d stuck around and waited for me to get safely inside, like some kind of phantom bogeyman may have been laying in wait for me just inside the foyer or right behind the door.

I made my way into the bedroom, figuring I’d call it an early night. Maybe, if I got lucky, I’d get a chance to see Matthew in my dreams again. Hopefully this time there wouldn’t be a house fire. Just those strong arms of his and those soft lips.

A girl can still dream, can’t she?

I stripped down, hung up my clothes in the closet, and changed into the same shorts and cropped shirt from the morning. I headed into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, brushed my hair, washed my face of all the makeup, and headed back into the bedroom. I turned off my light as I headed around to my side of the bed.

A quick glance at my pillow caused me to stop in my tracks.

What was that? A sheet of paper lay right on top of my pillow, my bed still a mess from early this morning.

I swallowed hard. That hadn’t been me. I hadn’t laid down a piece of paper there.

My thoughts went back to the deadbolt on the front door, about how I hadn’t had to struggle with the lock.

I froze at first, not sure what to do.

And then I screamed.