Why wouldn’t Dane pick up?
Brooke’s neck pulsated as she stared at the package on the floor of her apartment above Left Field. Her senses tingled— this thing wasn’t right: her name written in spidery letters, no return address, sloppy brown paper wrapping, an acrid smell.
Memories kicked back at her from the safety training she’d gotten when she went to the Miss Virginia pageant. Pageant winners got dogged by stalkers and threats often enough that the pageant system didn’t take any chances. They trained their girls, particularly on the state level.
She stepped back from the parcel, dialing Dane again. Still no answer.
She listened for a timer in the box, but there wasn’t one. She didn’t know enough about bombs to tell any particulars, but she did know enough to get away. Fast.
“Aunt Ruth?” she whispered after tiptoeing downstairs at the bedroom door, just in case the bomb was noise-triggered. If there was such a thing. Her pulse raced. It was nearly midnight now. She tried Dane’s phone again— he might have turned it off to sleep tonight.
Please pick up.
Nothing. She texted him. Maybe he’d get that.
“Aunt Ruth?” Brooke peeked into her aunt’s room, but she wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t anywhere in the downstairs of the museum. Had someone taken her? When they’d left the suspicious package?
Holding her breath, she pulled aside the curtains to look in the back yard, but the car was still there.
Brooke’s heart lurched. Fear would have planted her feet to the ground, but she forced logic to overshadow it.
Aunt Ruth is fine. She’s got to be fine. Brooke willed her breathing to steady, and she tiptoed to the front of the museum. The door was ajar.
“Hello?” Brooke ventured into the muggy air. “Someone out here?”
A man’s voice said, “Brooke?”
“Who’s there?” Panic gripped her. “Do you have Ruth Chadwick?”
“I do.” He stepped into the streetlight’s glow, but Brooke’s eyes snatched at where Aunt Ruth could be, her muscles trembling.
“I’m okay, sweetheart.” Aunt Ruth’s voice brought a cool rush of relief. “I just saw him out here on my way back from mailing a bill at the post box— didn’t want to miss the four a.m. pickup— and here he was, looking a little forlorn.”
Forlorn? Brooke turned to the man and recognized him at once.
“Ames Crosby?” What in the world? Brooke’s stomach clenched twice as tightly as it had when she saw the bomb upstairs. There he stood, rumpled and frazzled, but still nearly as handsome as the last time she’d seen him. Their eyes met and Brooke looked away quickly, before anything else could go seismic in her insides.
“I’ll just leave the two of you …” Aunt Ruth said, sidling away.
“Sorry. Long day.” Ames looked sheepish and ran a hand through his hair. “I probably look like a stalker.”
The word stalker brought her back to reality. She ran after Aunt Ruth. “No! Don’t go in there.” Brooke grabbed her by the arm and jerked her to a stop.
Aunt Ruth turned, a question on her face in the sodium light.
“I mean— I don’t want to alarm you, but—” What choice did she have? “There’s something in my apartment upstairs, and I’m not sure but I think it might be a bomb.”
“A bomb!” Aunt Ruth’s shoulder bag slid off her arm and onto the concrete.
Words spilled forth from Brooke’s overstressed soul. “I called Dane a dozen times, but he wasn’t picking up, and then I started worrying that you’d been kidnapped by whoever planted the bomb, and—”
“Did you call the police?” Aunt Ruth bent to pick up her bag and the lipstick that had rolled from inside it.
Oh. No. She hadn’t. She’d called Dane and not the police.
Ames was already dialing, and as he gave the address and explained the situation to the police dispatcher, up roared Dane’s old Dodge. He flung himself from the driver’s seat and didn’t even shut the door. He made eye contact with Ames but didn’t acknowledge him.
“You can’t just send me a text like that. What are you doing outside?” His eyes were wild. “Nothing exploded? What’s going on?”
Brooke gave him the barest details, and then Dane turned toward Ames. “Crosby, you deal with the cops and the bomb squad. I’m getting Brooke and Ruth somewhere safe. I have a place.”
Ames just nodded, his mouth firm.
Brooke and Aunt Ruth clambered into the Dodge and Dane roared down Water Street, rapidly firing off questions. Brooke did her best to answer them with the scant information she had.
“It’s not safe for you at Left Field. Not until we find out what’s going on.” Dane ran a stop sign.
“Do you think it has anything to do with the Called Shot Ball?”
He shrugged. “I do think it’s highly suspicious that the night you find a bomb in your apartment you also find Ames Crosby lurking out front.”
Brooke shook her head, blinking a thousand times. “You’re kidding, right?”
Dane pulled the car up at the marina, half a mile up the coast from the dunes. The syncopated clunking of twenty or thirty boats bobbing farther down the dock knocked in the night. “You’re kidding that you don’t find the coincidence a little much, right?”
There hadn’t been time to think about why Ames Crosby had been standing there, not even a second. She’d have to process that later.
Dane got out and let them out of the car. “I don’t think we were followed. Come on.” He led them down the dock by the light of the flashlight on his phone. It didn’t do much to dispel the darkness of the moonless night. “This is it.”
They stood in front of the nicest boat on the dock. Dane jumped across the gap between the deck and the dock, and he extended a gangplank for her and Aunt Ruth to cross on. “Uncle George won’t be needing it this weekend. Or anytime in the next five years, so I’ve been crashing here when it’s late and I don’t want to make the drive back to Naughton.”
“George Rockwell. Is he the one who— ?” Aunt Ruth started to ask, but Brooke shushed her.
“No, it’s okay. You’re right. He’s the one who’s spending time in federal prison for bilking the elderly out of their retirement money by scamming them into thinking they were investing in his miracle arthritis medication.” He took Aunt Ruth’s arm and steadied her on the deck. “Different from my cousin Eddie who’s in the big house for scratching VINs off flood-damaged cars and reselling them as new.” He held open a door to an area below decks, and led them down a tight staircase. “And not the same as my other cousin, Vito, who is in jail over in Richmond for buying cigarettes for underage smokers. Charming family pedigree, I know.”
A bitterness tainted his voice. Brooke didn’t recognize it in him.
“Well, here it is. Your home sweet home until the police can catch whoever wants to bomb you.” He carefully pulled some curtains closed and then flipped on a dim lamp, illuminating a luxury living room, a nice kitchen to one side, and a hallway to an open door with a bedroom visible. “Or until we find out what’s going on.”
Brooke’s body was made of tired.
“I can go to work tomorrow, right?” For some reason she felt compelled to ask his permission.
Dane frowned. “Can you get it covered?”
“Maybe.” Over the year between her breakup with Ames and the start of all the wackiness with the Jarman will, Brooke had taken on as many hospital shifts as she could. Practically everyone owed her. Big time.
“I’ll be back in the morning.” He tossed her a key, probably for locking the door they’d come through.
“But… where will you sleep?” The drive back to Naughton wasn’t far, but he looked so tired.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “You just concentrate on staying alive.”
That sobered her. A bomb? The ball taken? Stuff was moving too fast for her to process.
She followed him and stood at the base of the narrow staircase. He climbed to the top but paused before heading out.
“Don’t let anyone in.” There was that caustic edge to his tone again. “Whether you think he’s your trusted friend or not.”
Obviously he meant Ames.
Before she could clear the air of all the toxins floating between them, Dane disappeared from view, leaving her with a thousand unanswered questions.
__________
Dane got back in his truck. Hiding Brooke and her aunt on the boat was the right thing to do. No question.
Protecting her physically was a no-brainer.
But going to bat for her as her attorney was a tougher decision. If he did, his career could go up in smoke, now more than ever.
He glanced back down the pitch-dark line of boats to where he’d deposited Brooke. Leaving her behind sliced at his soul. Someone needed to watch over her. Geez. Somebody, some villain, left a bomb in her apartment.
Things had just gotten serious.
Dane’s first instinct was to stay there at his uncle’s yacht, keep two eyes on Brooke day and night. But his truck would be a tip-off if someone was not just threatening the museum but also hunting her down.
He started the engine and drove back to Left Field. Police were still there, but Ames Crosby was just heading out. Not that Dane had any desire to chat him up, he was just glad to see him leaving, even if it wasn’t in handcuffs.
At least the bomb hadn’t exploded. If it was a bomb. He’d get the police report tomorrow.
The town clock tower chimed two o’clock.
Somebody had to keep an eye on Brooke.
Dane parked his truck at Left Field and then walked the quarter mile back to the dock, a sleeping bag from his truck slung over his shoulder. He spread it out at the head of the dock, the night too stifling to climb inside it. If he just rested here, he’d know whether someone approached. He could sleep light, keep an ear out.
She’d be safe. He’d make sure. The slosh of waves lapping against the sides of the docked boats lulled him into rest, finally. The big empty sky above him and the big empty ocean to the east clarified things, put them into order of priority.
No question, Dane’s career was worth a lot less than Brooke’s life. Or even her happiness. Or her safety.
He’d be by her side on Tuesday, no matter what. Even if he had to finish Brooke’s hearing only to get disbarred by the beige ethics prosecutor.
I’m a man with basically nothing to lose.
Except Brooke’s trust.
__________
Dane knocked on the door of the boat and poked his head in after unlocking it with his other key. He needed to see that Brooke was okay. Oh, and grab a shower.
“Knock, knock.”
Speaking of showering, out of the tiny bathroom, wrapped in an oversized fluffy white towel, emerged Brooke. Steam billowed around her, and she looked fresh, clean, and gorgeous.
Dane about dropped the paper bag filled with breakfast he’d brought for her.
“Dane!”
“Hello, there.” He stepped into the cabin, shutting the door behind him. “This is even better than when you were in the swimsuit competition.” Her skin sparkled with the drops of water beading up on her shoulders. He moved toward her, compelled by every force in the universe to touch that skin…
“Turn around. I’m not decent.”
“Oh, I’d call you decent. More than decent. You’re stellar.”
With her face blushing, she clenched the towel and disappeared into the bedroom, breaking the spell on him just a little.
“You, Dane Rockwell,” she said through the lightweight door to the bedroom, “vacillate wildly between prince charming and the charming rogue.” She poked her head out the door, her hair dripping, and reignited the spell. “You’re so nice one minute and such a cad the next.” She disappeared again behind the closed door.
“That’s why you can’t stay away from me.” He took a step toward the door, his hand resting on it, but pulled it away quickly as if it was red hot. He could not do this. Not today.
Finally she emerged, just after he got his willpower back; he’d been imagining how many different calibers of pistol Quirt would use to shoot him if he misused Brooke. She looked so pretty, clean. And he’d let her stay that way.
“Any word on Left Field? Is it in smithereens?” She slid the back of her sandal over her heel. “I didn’t hear any explosion or smell smoke.” It was only a half mile as the crow flew from here, so signs of an explosion could have reached the boat; only it hadn’t exploded.
“I went by the police station. Bomb squad came in, examined it. It had all the hallmarks, but none of the explosives.”
“So it was a fake?” Brooke sat back, dropping her other shoe. “I overreacted?” To his surprise, she looked embarrassed.
“Uh, no. You reacted perfectly. Err on the side of caution when someone plants a bomb or a fake bomb in your house. That’s the rule of thumb.”
“But why?” She grabbed the dropped shoe and tugged it on. “Scare tactic? This might be something about the ball. Or the hearing.”
“Pretty suspicious timing.” As was Ames’s appearance. The police had questioned Crosby, but they’d let him go. Dimwits.
“Who are the suspects?”
“They interviewed Crosby.”
“What? Why?”
“Uh, because he was lurking outside Left Field at the time the bomb appeared? And because he is connected to Sarge LaBarge?” Not as connected as he used to be, what with the alleged divorce, but still. “Come on. You have to agree the police were right to question him.”
Brooke crossed her arms over her chest. “You didn’t seem at all surprised to see him in Maddox last night.” Her gaze turned hard. “You knew he was in town. And you didn’t tell me.”
Dane might as well come clean. “I heard he might come back, but I didn’t know for sure.” Why did he feel like he was skirting the truth on this? “Your friend Pansy told me.”
“I know. She just texted me this morning about that.” Brooke pointed at her phone on the coffee table, clearly out of sorts. “You should have warned me. I got blindsided.”
Hot shame spread through Dane’s chest. He’d tried— really tried— to warn her. Or at least say something about it. But the words had lodged in his throat like a bad chicken bone.
“I need to go talk to him.” Brooke stood, gathering the key to the cabin and her phone.
Dane jumped up. “What? No.”
With a hand on her hip, she said, “Don’t you trust me?”
This question, so pointed, made him splutter silently. Yes, he trusted her. But he didn’t trust Ames Crosby.
Could anyone trust Brooke’s feelings when she was around Crosby? Sands shifted beneath Dane’s feet. “I think it could be dangerous,” he finally said.
“Dangerous.” She leveled a look at him. “No way did Ames plant that bomb.”
“There are a lot of different kinds of danger.” It came out low, gravelly. Much more raw than he’d intended it to.
She reached out and took his wrist in her fingertips. The place where she touched him grew hot.
“If I just go through my trials, they don’t change me. I have to let them go through me, too.”
In a second she’d dropped his arm and gone up the steps.
And with that, he’d lost her.