Sheriff Peak and I retreaded the investigation over the next thirty minutes. Clearly, he just wanted his files in order. With all the news making the headlines, the FBI would be swooping in soon to pick up all the broken pieces. “I just wanted to dot some I’s and cross some T’s, is all,” he explained. “And, of course, make sure you were alright after all this. Pretty wild couple days for you, huh?”
I chuckled a little because, what else can you do? “You can say that again.” I stood from my seat. “If you need anything else, let me know.”
“Of course, Ms. Maxwell. Thank you for your cooperation.”
He came around and opened the door for me, and called Frank in from where he was pacing in the middle of the little sitting area. He must not have heard us coming out in the office, because his head shot up at the sound of his own name.
“Frank?” I asked as I approached him. “You okay?”
He started to say something, but shut his mouth as his eyes glanced past me to Sheriff Peak. “Fine,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I know I’d barely known him for more than a day, but something in the set of his chin and the way he held his shoulders screamed at me that he wasn’t telling me everything, but that he needed me to play along. So I did. “No reason.”
“You ready for your interview, Frank?” the sheriff asked from behind me.
“Yes, sir,” my bodyguard barked. With the way his voice changed, I was half-surprised he didn’t snap off a salute. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
Together, they disappeared into the office behind the closed door, leaving me wondering just what had Frank walking the floor like an expectant father.
What had him so spooked? Had he gotten a call from his boss about my case? Had something happened between him and the bimbo? Whatever it was, I knew he’d tell me when he got out. Still, the not knowing worried me.
I took a seat in the little sitting area and crossed my legs, vaguely upset that I still didn’t have my phone. Not that I was going to use it for anything important, or anything, but it’d be nice to at least check my Instagram and see what my friends were doing. Maybe it would take my mind off what Frank hadn’t been able to tell me.
But then, as I sat there worrying about my friends, I realized something. Those people really weren’t my friends. Sure, I might have known them from the different music festivals or from college. But they probably hadn’t even figured out that I’d dropped off the face of the earth and stopped posting to my feed. In fact, the only people checking up on my social media presence right now were most likely reporters who’d caught wind of the investigation into my father and his business.
Jessica Long and Sheila Pearson were more my friends than any of those people. Jessica had at least showed up with these clothes I had on my back. And, sure, they weren’t designer quality like I was used to, but who cared? At least I wasn’t being shot at, and at least she was there for me.
So, instead, I picked up one of the old fishing magazines and found an article about noodling, where they followed around a pretty teenage girl who’d just gotten into the sport. I had no idea people fished that way! Sticking their hands in catfish’s mouths and pulling them out of the water? Not that I really had a lot of experience with fishing to begin with. But good lord!
I picked the magazine up and looked closer at the pictures, trying to imagine myself as the girl holding up that catfish that stretched almost the whole length of her body, from her heels to her head. I could never do that!
But then, as I looked at her more closely, I realized how similar we were, this Candice Shetland and I. She was a small, lithe woman with blonde hair and a pretty smile. I touched the image with the tip of my finger, absently stroking it over her cheekbones and her pert little nose. Even our eyes were the same blue. She didn’t look like any less of a woman than I did, even with the giant whiskered fish she was displaying like a trophy. Why couldn’t I do something like that? Because my friends would laugh at me? Who cared? I was about to be a pariah among them anyways, wasn’t I?
I put the magazine down and leaned back in the chair, closing my eyes. If someone had told me two days ago that I’d both be stalked and shot at, then whizzed around the great Rocky Mountain region by security personnel, I would’ve told them they were full of it. And, on top of that, had they told me I’d survive it and keep everything together, I would have passed them a fire extinguisher for their pants. In my mind, I hung off the edge of that small boat, Frank steering the motor behind me as I dangled my hand over the edge just like the young girl in the article, my fingers grasping and wiggling as I tried to entice a giant catfish to take hold.
So why the hell couldn’t I go noodling sometime? Why couldn’t I do whatever the hell I wanted?
I broke myself from my absurd daydream and turned back to the magazine.
“If y’all need anything else, you just let me or Peter know. We’re happy to oblige.”
Frank and Sheriff Peak stood at the door to Peak’s office, shaking hands. Frank’s giant hand seemed to engulf the sheriff’s normal-sized one, crushing it in its grasp. If the sheriff felt any pain, though, he didn’t show it.
“Of course, Mr. O’Dwyer. We know you’re still in the middle of your assignment, but we sure do appreciate y’all coming down this morning. Like I told Ms. Maxwell, we know you two weren’t at fault in any way, but we need to perform our own investigation and due diligence.”
“I understand, sir. The law’s the law, even if it’s inconvenient.”
Peak gave him a wry grin. “Don’t I know it?”
Frank and I said a few more formalities and niceties to Sheriff Peak, and then we were out the door and headed to his silver Mustang. “No problems?” he asked as he opened the passenger side door for me.
“Not really. You?”
He shook his head before closing the door as I settled into my seat. He came around and got settled behind the wheel.
I turned to him as he started up the car. “Okay. Now what couldn’t you tell me?”
“Right. I think Barbara Hacks and your stepmother are in cahoots.”
“Well, why wouldn’t they be? They’re both trying to save the company, aren’t they?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s something else.” He gave me the rundown of what happened between Barbara and Elizabeth. The slap, everything.
The bimbo and Father met, I’d assumed, at some cocktail party while my mother was in the hospital. But what if they’d actually met under different circumstances? Could Barbara have had a hand in their connection? Their courtship?
I gasped a little as I considered the possibilities. “Do you think this is all some kind of setup, then?” I asked. “With them somehow trying to pin it all on my father?”
“Maybe. Could be, though, they were all in on it together, and your father saw the writing on the bathroom wall. From what we know, your father came west, right? From what they were saying, though, he took some files, some kind of documents. Enough that they think he can pin this all on them. So, he sees it coming, he gets the hell out of Dodge, you know?”
“Or maybe my father discovered what they were doing and decided to leave with the documents so he could prepare a defense. He took enough money to live off of, and his name has enough weight that he could be dealing with his attorneys already and is building a defense.”
Frank shot me a skeptical look.
“Well, whatever he’s doing, the answer’s back at my father’s cabin.”
“That’s a shame, then.”
“Why would that be a shame?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything.
“We’re going back to the cabin, aren’t we? Now that we know what we’re looking for, right?”
He sighed. “Look, Ashley, my job’s to keep you safe and out of harm’s way. Not take you straight into the thick of it. These people are dangerous. They’re killers. I need to take you back to my place and put you back on lockdown till Peter tells me our next move.”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head. This was my father we were talking about. “Fuck you.”
His eyes widened. “Fuck me? What the fuck? I’m trying to keep you alive, Ashley.”
“Take me to my father’s cabin,” I said angrily. “Take me up there. I need to find those papers, and I need to figure out what’s going on.”
“Why? I thought you didn’t want anything to do with your father?”
“That was when I thought he did all this, that it was all his fault. But what if it’s not, Frank? What if what you overheard is true, and he really was manipulated into all this? That he’s on the run, trying to prove his innocence?”
“Your father ain’t Harrison Ford, and there ain’t no one-armed man he’s after.”
“Dammit, Frank, that’s not what I mean and you know it. But, look, do you want me to think of my father as a felon? For me to go through life knowing I passed up a chance at helping him just so I could be safe?”
He shook his head again and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in agitation. “Ashley, I can’t. Peter will have my fucking ass on this if I take you up there instead of back to my place.”
I sighed and held out my hand. “Fine. Just give me the keys and I’ll go alone.”
He gave me another look, his eyes like saucers. “Oh, hell no. I might like you, and all, but we ain’t exactly at that stage in our relationship.” Evident shock aside, though, I could tell we almost were.
“Look at me, Frank.” I shifted in my seat and faced him straight on. “My father might be going to prison for a very, very long time. The rest of his life, even. I haven’t spoken to him in a year because of him marrying that bitch Elizabeth, and now you’re telling me it may have all been a set-up to just get to his money. I have an opportunity right now, right here and right now, to go back up to that cabin and try to fix everything, to help him get out of this. Maybe, just maybe, he and I can put aside this last year. Maybe we can rebuild the wreck of a relationship we have.”
“Ashley, he pushed you away–”
“No,” I said, my voice flat and even. “I pushed him away. After the wedding, I was the one who broke off contact. Yes, what he did to my mother was wrong. But that doesn’t mean I can keep punishing him for the rest of my life. Or let him just get thrown in prison for something he may not have done. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I knew I’d had a chance and did absolutely nothing.”
He looked away and took a deep breath.
“So, will you help me, Frank?” I asked, touching his arm. “Will you take me up there?”
He swallowed hard as he looked out the window. Finally, he nodded. “Yep, reckon I’ll take you up there.”
I leaned over and gave him a kiss, our first since early this morning.
His lips were just as soft as I remembered, his hand just as gnarled and callused on my cheek.
I sighed into him, my hand coming up and touching his jaw line and his neck, as my lips parted for his tongue.
After what felt like long, wonderful hours, we pulled apart, our breaths ragged.
“Thank you,” I whispered as we leaned our foreheads together, smiling despite the fact that we were about to rush into the middle of something we didn’t fully understand.
“I’m gonna let Peter know you swayed me with your feminine wiles. Just saying.”
I licked my lips a little, gave him another kiss. “I take full responsibility.”
We pulled apart, both smiling as Frank found his keys and slid them into the ignition. He looked over at me as he started up the Mustang. “Guess we’re gonna figure this out, ain’t we?”
I nodded. “Guess so.”
We pulled out of our parking spot and took the first left, heading up to the highway that ran through the edge of town. We passed Dixie’s, the Curious Turtle, and the little postal shop with a blue Subaru parked out in front.
I brushed my hair back behind my ear and stared out the window. An unsettling feeling of disorientation had finally caught up with me, where I wasn’t sure who I could trust or who I could turn to. Which side was which, who had the most to lose, who had the most to gain. I put my hand on top of Frank’s on the center console, threading my fingers into his.
He tightened his grip, light enough to show he cared, but not nearly hard enough to hurt.
My chest swelled a little as I felt a spark of electricity rush through my arm. It was probably just my imagination, I knew, but I didn’t care. It was still real to me. Real enough, at least. This man, right here, this was the man I could trust—the man that cared about me, and whom I cared about in turn. He wouldn’t let me down. I knew he had my back, no matter what.
“Boss man’s going to be pissed as fuck,” he mumbled miserably as we pulled out onto the highway and did a California stop at the sign before racing up onto the asphalt and launching toward my father’s cabin. “Real pissed.”
And, just like that, we were on our way. I just hoped we could get to the documents before anyone else.