Chapter Twenty
The following Friday found Miah staring at his computer screen. He was so tired, and so burned out on this surveillance footage, it felt as though the individual pixels were shimmering, jumping around and rearranging themselves like one of those old Magic Eye puzzles.
He turned to his untouched lunch, blinking hard. When he glanced back up, the video didn’t look any more sensible. He’d been staring at that slice of wall and walkway for so long, it was all just patches of black and white and gray now. He sighed. Nothing for it but to power through—he was down to the final three hours of the final day’s tape. He’d get maybe forty-five minutes done over lunch, then finish tonight.
“Miah?”
He glanced up, finding his mom at the office door. “Hey, what’s up?”
“That man’s here to see you, to take the follow-up soil samples.”
He blinked, totally lost. He clicked to the calendar program and there it was. 1:00–3:30 groundwater testing, supervision required. “Ah, shit. I completely forgot.”
“I can’t do it,” his mom said, apologetic. “I would but I’m meeting with a wholesaler at two.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Damn it. Matty was working with Raf today—Miah had hoped to kick off a little early and harass the kid.
He clicked back over to the footage—his mom couldn’t see the screen, and she didn’t know, either. He noted the date and time, scribbling it down. He shut the video application, then the laptop.
“I could use the air, really. This can wait.” It wasn’t as though it was going to lead anywhere, he thought, locking up the office behind him.
What are the chances the person even used the bank here in town in that span of time? Or that I’d recognize them? He could feel the pessimism creeping in around him like ivy climbing.
“He’s waiting out front,” his mom said, walking ahead of him down the hall. “Said he’d collect the equipment from his car.”
“Thanks.” Miah grabbed his hat off its hook and headed outside. He jogged down the front steps, spotting the guy in the lot. He lifted his hat in greeting when their eyes met. “Afternoon. Sorry to keep you waiting.” Then he trotted to a halt, all at once confused.
“That’s fine. Beautiful day to be kept waiting.” The man glanced around admiringly at the yard and stables and house. “Oren Vreeland,” he added.
“Miah.” They shook.
Shit, he knew this guy, and not just because he’d shown him around last fall. He was . . . No, that couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense, besides. Only . . . Something in Miah’s gut nagged as he released the guy’s hand.
Oren Vreeland was tallish, slender, about forty. A messenger-style leather bag hung around his chest and he held a heavy-duty plastic case, containing some seismic equipment; Miah had watched him use it last fall to check the composition of the earth. He set the case down and dug in the bag, pulling out a piece of printer paper.
“Here’s the map I’ve got,” Vreeland said, passing it over. Certain spots on the property were circled, with GPS coordinates penned beside them. “I hope it won’t take too big a bite out of your workday. The actual sampling and testing’s simple, but it looks like quite a range to cover. No pun intended.”
Miah nodded, miles away, himself.
I think I saw him on the surveillance footage.
But his eyes had been all but crossed through the chore these past few nights, and this guy wasn’t exactly distinctive—white, with an unassuming face and wire-rim glasses. The only interesting thing about Vreeland was the two sweeps of pale gray at his temples, streaking his otherwise brown hair. Miah’s heart was hammering, though. He wished he could run inside and scan the screenshots he’d taken of all the entering customers. He could’ve gone to the bank for any old thing. It could easily be a coincidence.
He managed to cobble some small talk together as they walked to Miah’s pickup, but his mind raced, scrabbling to imagine how a soil and groundwater analyst could have anything to do with the arson and murder.
He probably doesn’t. Miah hadn’t slept more than five hours straight in over a week, plus grief and hope and lust did weird shit to a man.
“The spots on the map look like the same ones I took you to last year,” he said.
“They are. The casino’s not exactly breaking ground at record pace, but they’ve done quite a bit of foundation work, as I understand it. They’re required to check in after six months to make sure there’s been no unusual chemical changes to the water and soil.”
“I’m not a huge fan of government regulations, but that’s one I could get behind,” Miah said.
After a pregnant pause, Vreeland said, “I, um . . . I heard the news. Everything that happened since the winter.”
Miah shivered. He’d gotten used to people bringing it up these past six months, but this one caught him off guard for some reason. “Yeah, I imagine you have.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. I never got to meet your father, but it sounds like the community lost a real pillar.”
Miah gave a single nod, feeling strange and itchy, uncomfortable. They fell into an awkward silence as the truck trundled down the bumpy service road, the grinding gravel making conversation challenging.
It only feels creepy because I’m cross-eyed from the video footage and think I saw this guy on the tapes. Desperation and fatigue were messing with his head.
There’s no way this guy is rich. Environmental scientist? No chance, and what Lorna had told him had led him to believe Chris had been dealing with somebody powerful and intimidating, someone with connections. The man in Miah’s passenger seat didn’t fit the bill.
Plus what would the motive even be? Why the fuck would this man want the Churches to sell their land?
Maybe he found gold or something.
Miah about rolled his eyes at himself for even thinking it. The gold had all been stripped out of the area decades ago, plus there’d never been much of the stuff found on the range, in the creek. Certainly not enough to justify the cost of acquiring the land, or to make murder a rational response to the discovery.
You’re cracking up. You’re going to get home in a few hours, check the tape and realize the guy you thought you recognized doesn’t look a thing like Oren Vreeland.
Hope was basically a controlled substance, Miah thought, driving them down the dusty track. Partake of it too much and you start hallucinating shit.
* * *
Nicki turned onto the highway just after six—late and sweaty and irritable. The final traffic stop of the day had been a major pain in her ass, some puffed-up jerk-off who’d talked right past her to her male partner, even though she’d been the one addressing him. She was usually pretty good at shrugging that crap off, but she felt worn down today. Tired from the shift and the heat, sure, but there was something more to it. She felt . . . vulnerable. And vulnerability always made her punchy and grumpy and weird. She’d been like that when Matty was first born, and all through the police academy, and when she and Jonas had decided to divorce. Anytime she felt uncertain, she got this way.
And try as she might, she couldn’t pin it on Matty’s school trouble or her doubts about staying in Nevada. She knew exactly what had her feeling this lost.
I like that man. A lot. They’d not had a chance to be together this past week, not with both of them busy with work, and Miah’s little free time occupied with the footage, and Nicki’s one day off dominated by a training session with the volunteer firefighters. They’d talked on the phone, but the distance had really driven it home. She had it bad.
She’d caught feelings for Miah quicker and stronger than she’d ever felt them for anyone, including her ex-husband. And it had her all edgy and touchy.
At least this time she’d caught it before she’d been a jerk to her mom or Matty or some other innocent party.
What to do about it, though? If the answer was to back off . . . Well, fuck. She was so into him, physically as well as personally, the math was gnarly—she’d have to weigh the pleasure of enjoying whatever she could for now against the pain of having to say goodbye to it all in a few months, if she ultimately decided to move away.
The only thing she did know for sure was that she wanted him. His company, his body, his laugh and his scent, the way he looked at her, the way he treated her. Everything. What she felt was too good to round down to a fling, too right to file away under Enjoy It While It Lasts, but what choice did she have?
She pulled into the ranch’s lot and didn’t give herself the luxury of checking her reflection or blotting her nose and forehead with her sleeve as she normally might. She hated being kept waiting, but she hated being late even more. She slammed her door and jogged across the gravel and up the front walk to the porch steps, hoping her shirt didn’t have pit stains but suspecting it most certainly did.
Miah was waiting on the swing, surprising her.
“Hey,” she said, coming up the steps. “Sorry I’m late.”
He stood, and the way he tucked his thumbs in his front pockets . . . he wanted to touch her, she could sense it. He wanted to pull her close and kiss her, just as she wished he could. That body language sent her swirling emotions into overdrive.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Matty’s actually with Raf, helping the hands bed the horses down. If you’re not in a hurry to get home, I was hoping I could talk to you for a second.”
“Sure. Right here?”
“In the office, if you don’t mind. Raf said he’d look after Matty until they’re done.”
“Lead the way.”
She followed him inside, past the kitchen and den and down a long hall into a wing that felt different than the rest of the farmhouse—newer. French-style doors opened into a sunny, cluttered office and Miah shut them at their backs.
“Check this out,” he said, rounding the messy desk. A laptop was open and he pushed a rolling desk chair her way.
She sat and peered at the screen. There was a still from the bank’s security footage there, a man frozen as he reached for an unseen door handle.
Her heart thumped. “Do you recognize him?”
“I do. He works for a company that tests groundwater and soil. He’s come by the ranch twice—last winter, and again today—on behalf of the casino’s construction outfit. It’s absolutely him.”
“Okay . . . Wow. So, what do you make of it?”
He pushed his hat off and ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair. “I’m not sure. I’m inclined to think it’s a coincidence. The man’s not anybody you’d ever picture tangled up in a murder plot. I mean, I can’t imagine he makes a load of money, or has the connections to tell Bean he could get him off, legally. He’s just a scientist.”
“But,” she prompted, catching the strain in his voice.
“But . . . He knows the property. The property that somebody, or some people, want us to sell. Bad enough to kill to get at it. That’s something.”
“It is.”
“But,” he went on, “I’m also tired as fuck and I’ve been doing practically nothing but look for motives in every damn person I pass. So I’m not thinking straight.”
“That’s rational.” More rational than she’d been feeling herself lately.
“Fuck . . .” He sat on the edge of the desk and sighed.
Nicki held his eyes. “It’s not nothing. It’s worth telling the detectives about. You’ve identified a man with intimate ties to the ranch, who happened to enter the bank . . .” She eyeballed the time stamp on the upper left corner of the screenshot. “Saturday. Two days before the fire. Right about the time we’d expect a withdrawal to go down.”
“You’d have to fess up,” he said. “It’s not like I waltzed in and acquired the footage myself.”
She nodded, stomach turning. “I would. And I will. I’ll happily do that.”
“I’d hate to get you into trouble, not when half my intuition says this can’t be the guy.”
“Which half? Your brain or your gut?”
He shrugged, looking beat. “I can’t even tell you, I’m so goddamn tired.”
“Well, either way, the answer’s the same. There’s a chance, and all we need is a chance, no matter how small. It’s got to be enough for the detectives to get a subpoena to find out if he made a major withdrawal that day. Maybe he did. Or maybe he deposited his paycheck, or opened a savings account for his kid, or borrowed a pen. Who knows? But we won’t know—and I suspect you won’t sleep—until we find out.”
He smiled. “I haven’t been sleeping anyhow.”
“Well, all right then.”
“It doesn’t sit right, you getting in trouble for—”
“Shush. It’s not like I’ll get fired. I won’t make many fans, but that’s nothing new.” Plus I could move away next year and then what the fuck do I care about my reputation in Fortuity, anyhow?
“If you’re sure,” he said.
“I am. Write down the date and time of this still, and make a copy of the day’s footage, if you can.”
“You can have the original that you gave me,” he said, flipping through the stack of cases. “I saved them to my hard drive.”
“In that case, I’ll take it over now.”
He nodded, mouth a grim, stern line. “All right.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” she told him firmly. “Don’t worry about me. And whatever comes of it, even if it’s a heap of nothing, at least you’ll know, right?”
“Yeah, exactly. I know it’s a long shot, but you’re right—I won’t sleep until I know, either way.”
Just then, a sad and sobering thought struck her. This case might never get solved.
It wasn’t just possible; it was beginning to feel likely. But she’d save that conversation for once they knew officially who this guy was and what his business had been at the bank on that Saturday afternoon, way back in February.
“I’ll take it right now,” she said again, holding up the disc. “And if they try to give me shit for getting involved, I’ll tell them, ‘You’re welcome.’”
He laughed, coming to life again, if only for a second. “You’re a hell of a woman.”
I’d be yours in a heartbeat, if circumstances were different. “Walk me out?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be interested to catch my son elbow-deep in horse crap,” she said as they headed back down the hall.
“Just be sure he takes his shoes off before he gets into your car.”
“Pro tip.”
Miah held the door for Nicki and she stepped out into the waning sunshine, finding the landscape painted pink and gold. She held on tight to the plastic case in her hand. It might hold answers . . . though it more likely held only a dead end, evidence of nothing more than a maddening coincidence. But as it held Miah’s hope, she clung to it as she would a winning Powerball ticket.