CHAPTER 8
Zoe
My vision tunneled, and the world swam around me. My heart shot straight from my stomach to my throat. I swallowed around the newfound lump in my esophagus, and I attempted to say something.
“Zoe’s?” I managed to croak out, though I wasn’t sure if my voice was audible above a whisper.
“Yeah,” Dylan replied. “Why—”
He stopped mid-sentence. I could read him as plainly as a book, and worry contorted his beautiful face. Distantly, as if in a different timeline, I cursed myself for forcing those wonderful features into such an unhappy arrangement.
“Oh,” he finished quietly. I mean, what else was there to say? That about summed it up.
Silence filled the cop car so profoundly I could almost hear the snow lightly brushing the windshield. It seemed to last hours, but in actuality, I suppose it was mere seconds.
“Well let’s go get that sorry son of a bitch,” Dylan rejoined vigorously. I tried to send a small smile his way, but it died. This was no time to fake a warmth I didn’t feel, or an ease I couldn’t possibly possess.
He slammed on the gas, and his snow tires screeched as they hauled ass to Main Street. We slipped and slid over the icy roads, weaving perilously close to danger. His eyes had grown steely, and the visage of a determined warrior had descended upon his brow. He wasn’t Dylan anymore, he was Officer Robertson, defender of the innocent and protector of the good.
Despite myself, I pictured him with a sword in hand and a shield strapped to his back, like some hero out of a comic book. Was I really fantasizing at a moment like this, when I’d potentially just lost everything I’d spent years working for? Or was my brain just frantically searching for some balm with which to soothe the waves of anxiety that rolled in?
He spared a look at me, and in a low voice, asked, “Are you okay?”
I guffawed, and Dylan didn’t ask any more questions after that. Smart man.
His distracted gaze caused him to swerve around one particularly large turn, and out of sheer instinct I assume, he flung an arm across my chest, as though he were a human seatbelt. The car returned to its original spot on the road, but his hand didn’t leave my chest immediately. Rather, it stayed on my heaving bosom a full second too long. His strong arm brushed against the contours of my breast.
I felt my nipple harden involuntarily. Stupid, treasonous nipple. Why couldn’t it just stay soft, and subtle? Not helpful at all.
I noticed he was breathing unusually deep. Had our slight swerve really made him so anxious?
But we arrived at the shop before his arm or my mind could travel other places, thank God. Or was that a good thing? In any case, it meant I didn’t have to consider the implications of his heavy breathing, or the possibility of complicity in his cheating. We’d only met a few hours ago, and already, I was spinning out with empathic thoughts of how every minute detail of our encounter affected him. Shit. This was no time for a crush.
Because what we found at the shop was as bad — no, worse — than I had even expected.
The glass from one of the floor-to-ceiling front windows was smashed on the concrete. Wet footprints, with black sludge rising up around their edges, were tracked across the tiled floor. The security alarm was still blaring, as we were obviously the first to arrive on the scene. Gone was the previously quaint and welcoming bakery, smack dab in the middle of a parochial little town.
The scene was chaotic, hellish even.
“No,” I breathed. “This can’t be happening.”
Dylan cast another glance in my direction, I think to gauge if I was in any danger of fainting. Having determined that I was steady on my feet, he pulled out his gun, and proceeded inside, leaving the instruction to ‘Wait here.’ Given the gun, and the instruction, I assumed he thought that the criminal might still be lurking and didn’t want to put me in harm’s way.
As if. It was my bakery, and I’d be damned if I’d let some no-good scum-of-the-earth burglar intimidate me.
“I’m coming with you,” I told him. The statement left no room for negotiation, and by the rise and fall of Dylan’s shoulders, I could tell he didn’t want to fight over this one.
“Fine,” he replied in a low, agitated voice. “Stay behind me. If I fire a shot, drop to the ground immediately. Don’t do anything stupid. Understood?”
“Yeah. Now let’s move, he or she might still be in there and I want to sucker punch their fucking throat.”
“What did I say about not doing anything stupid?”
“Sure, sure,” I returned without conviction. “Nothing stupid.” I hoped the lie wasn’t as obvious as to him as it was to me.
He nodded, gingerly stepped over the sill of the broken window and into the bakery. With a flick of his wrist in the direction of the switch, he turned on the lights.
I wished he hadn’t.
The entire shop was in tatters. Display cases were broken into, the till was overturned, the kitchen had been looted. Even the decorations I’d so carefully collected were ripped off the walls and smashed. It seemed almost personal. But I had no grudges. I’d been in town a matter of months. Who would do this to me? And why?
Ignoring Dylan’s instructions, I rapidly strode in front of the protective barrier of his body, exposing myself to possible attack.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Get back here.” He jutted his chin behind his shoulder, indicating where he wanted me to stay.
Before he could stop me, I scampered off, quickly commencing a search through every nook and cranny of the bakery. I heard him sigh impatiently from the dining area, and I knew that he was at least mildly pissed at my insurrection. But I didn’t care. The shop was my baby, and it had been attacked. A mother’s instinct now possessed me.
The space was small, so this took me all of a minute to finish my hunt. I made my way back to the middle of the shop, where Dylan was searching behind counters, gun still in hand.
“Dylan,” I whispered.
He turned to me, taking his eyes off the scene. I knew that it must have gone against every ounce of his training. His face had colored with pure annoyance, which I studiously disregarded.
“What?” he asked, in an equally hushed voice.
“There’s no one here.”
His decibel rose back to normal speaking tones. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
His position relaxed, and he stood up straight. “I said to stay behind me,” he chided. “You wouldn’t have been able to defend yourself.”
I ignored this, mostly because he was right, and I found myself a touch embarrassed by my lapsed fervor. Moving on, I made my way to behind the counter where Dylan stood, and began to take stock.
“Fuck,” I said softly. Louder, again, “FUCK.”
Every single machine of any value within Zoe’s Cakes and Bakes had been stolen. It was as if someone had strategically cased the place, doing their research on resale equipment value and extracting them with precision.
My hands shook as I inched to the cash register, already knowing what I would — or more accurately, would not — find within. I knelt to the ground where the till had fallen, sat it up straight, and pulled open the cash drawer. The automatic lock had evidently been broken.
Empty.
“Zoe, don’t touch anything. You’ll contaminate the scene and get your prints everywhere.”
“My prints are everywhere already. This is my shop! My job! My livelihood.”
Tears came, slowly and then all at once. I collapsed onto the only chair that was still standing on its legs, the others overturned, as sobs racked my body. A scream, unprompted, was loosed from my throat. I was insensible with anger, grief and despair. I buried my face in my hands and kneaded knuckles over my brows, pulling at the gentle skin.
“Hey.”
A pair of strong arms were encircling me, pulling me up into a hug. I felt my body liquefy and sink into the vastness of his chest.
“Hey,” Dylan repeated again. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
He buried his face in my shoulder and held me closer.
“Zoe,” he said, lowering his mouth to my ear. “I swear to you I will find whoever did this and make them pay.”
“Promise?” I sniffled.
“Promise.”