His lips twitched. I couldn’t quite tell if it was amusement or a simple muscle spasm. “I have heard that you’ve been a stone in his boot.”
I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I understand if you want to call it a night.”
His stare didn’t change. “I do.” He pushed back his seat and stood.
Way to go, Nik. I slumped slightly in my seat.
His hand clamped on the chair back and helped pull it out for me. “But I think you owe me another date to make up for it.”
I glanced up at him. His lips twitched again. It must be his version of a smile. “I can do that.”
He walked with me to the bar door. People seemed to naturally part in front of him, unlike the way I’d had to squeeze through the tightly packed bodies and say excuse me at least five times in my attempt to reach the bar.
He held open the door, and I ducked outside. The cold air slapped me in the face, and I sucked in a breath. With all the bodies packed into Hops, it’d been so warm I’d forgotten how far north I was.
I hitched a thumb to the right. “I’m that way.”
“I’m in the other direction.” He reached for my hand and linked his fingers with mine. “I’ll call you later this week. Next time, though, tell me what you’re up to. I could have questioned Kevin officially.”
I gently squeezed his hand. “I will. Promise.” I gave him a lopsided smile. “Are you going to tell Chief Wilson?”
“I should tell him that Jason’s alibi fell through, don’t you think?”
I picked at one of my buttons with my free hand. “Do you have to tell him I’m the one who checked it?”
He gave the hand he held a return squeeze, then let go. “Yup. Omission is still a lie.”
I wobbled a little like his words came with a physical push. It was such a different perspective from what I’d been raised with. My parents were masters of omission. They considered it good business practice. I guess in their work—our work—it was. Maybe the Chihuahua-size lump his words created in my stomach were yet another sign that I wasn’t cut out to continue working as a defense attorney. Lying—directly or by omission—tended to make me feel like a sleaze.
“I’ll give him a call right away so he doesn’t waste time sending anyone else out here.” He raised his hand in a parting wave. “Goodnight, Nicole. Try to stay safe. I plan to make good on calling in that second date.”
I blushed again, but this time for an entirely different reason.
Chapter Sixteen
Since I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anytime soon with my mind bouncing from my date with Erik to Jason’s broken alibi, I headed for Sugarwood instead of for The Sunburnt Arms. No way was I staying out there after dark, but I could quickly grab the last two boxes and haul them back to my room at the B&B to sort through. I still hadn’t found the insurance papers, and I was guessing I only had a limited amount of time to get those changed over into my name before the policy would lapse.
I pulled up in front of Uncle Stan’s house. I needed to start thinking of it as my house, but that was going to take me a while longer. Once I settled in and didn’t have to worry about someone trying to blow me up again, I could redecorate and put my own touch on the place. Then, hopefully, it would start to feel more like home.
I fished around under my passenger seat and snagged the flashlight I’d bought myself earlier today. I popped it on, and immediately my heart rate slowed. It was startling the difference a little extra light could make. I made my way up the walk.
A piece of paper tacked to the front door fluttered gently in the breeze. I freed it. The paper was smooth, a sure sign it hadn’t been there long, not with all the random showers we’d had today.
I aimed the flashlight beam at the paper.
Nicole,
There’s a dangerous mold problem with the old sugar shack that could hurt business. I need your help with a decision immediately. Please meet me there as soon as you get in.
--Russ
I glanced over my shoulder toward the path that led to the original sugar shack. I couldn’t see further than a few feet away unless my flashlight were aimed in that direction.
A shiver slithered over my arms. Russ made it sound urgent. I honestly didn’t know enough about this business yet to know if that was melodrama or if snap decisions were often needed.
Mold could make people quite sick depending on the kind. How long did it take to cure mold? The tours given of the grounds made up a significant portion of income during the busy season, especially for Noah, who’d told me about the generous tips people gave him if he let their kids feed the horses carrots, and the original sugar shack was one of the popular highlights.
I squinted into the dark. I tucked the flashlight under my arm and worked my phone out of my purse. I’d give him a call first.
My phone showed one weak bar of signal. Great. First thing tomorrow morning, I was calling local carriers and seeing if one could give me the best coverage, penalty or no penalty for canceling my current contract before it ended.
I’d gotten a signal inside the house before. I unlocked the door. I wasn’t traipsing out there in the dark until I’d exhausted my other options.
Inside, my signal jumped to full. I dialed Russ. No answer. The old sugar shack probably sat in another pocket.
I chewed on my bottom lip. Stay or go. He might not even be out there anymore.
Or he might be waiting for a chance to ambush you, the paranoid voice in my head said.
“Shut up,” I told it.
I knew I could outrun Russ as long as he didn’t get a firm hold on me. I might be too clumsy for sports, but I loved running and biking. The only way I’d be in danger was if he had a gun, and that wouldn’t look much like an accident.
Besides, Jason didn’t have an alibi. Russ looked less and less like a suspect every second.
Just in case, I ducked into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife. I hid it in my purse. None of my self-defense training included knives, but how hard could it be? Stab for your attacker’s fleshy parts, then run. It’d only be a backup anyway.
I quickly moved the last boxes I needed to sort through into my car, locked the house and car, and headed into the woods with my flashlight.
On second thought…I backtracked and unlocked my car. In case I needed a quick getaway, I didn’t want to be struggling to find my keys and unlock my car while running.
I shook my head. “Now you’re being silly. And you’re talking to yourself.”
But I’d rather be silly than dead. And no one was around to see my silly, so it didn’t matter. If I didn’t need the knife or the unlocked car, no one would be the wiser, and they both made me feel a whole lot better about heading off into the woods alone.
I passed into the tree line and held the flashlight out in front of me like a shield. It wouldn’t stave off a human attacker, but hopefully it would keep the creepy crawlies in the woods away from me. Did they have wolves up here?
I strode forward, my speed a touch shy of a jog. I wasn’t cut out for the great outdoors.
Cold stiffened my fingers. The old sugar shack appeared in front of me, all shadows and reflection. A light glowed from inside.
“Russ?”
No answer.
I moved around the front. The door was hooked open and a fire burned under the boiler. He must have been waiting for me and stepped away to take care of something else.
I climbed inside and directed my flashlight beam into the corners and around the edges of the floorboards. No mold that I could see.
A grinding sound behind me. I whirled around in time to see the front door slam close with a shack-rattling bang.
I dove for the door and tugged on the handle. It refused to budge.
My heart skittered around in my chest and the jittery feeling spiraled through my stomach and head. I swallowed hard. Do not panic.
Russ told me the door sometimes did this. The hook must not have been properly set. Maybe I’d jostle
d it when I climbed in.
I whipped my phone out to call for help. No signal.
I sank down into the chair, gulping in air. It was a simple accident. This wasn’t a big deal. Russ would come back and let me out. No one stood to gain anything from locking me in here. Even if, for some strange reason, Russ didn’t come back to check for me or put out the fire, I wouldn’t freeze to death overnight. I had a fire, after all. Noah would be by to feed the horses in the barn tomorrow morning, and he’d have to hear me if I yelled. If nothing else, Mark would start to worry if he didn’t hear from me in a few days. My mom or Fay or Erik might even start to wonder what happened to me. I could live a few days without food and water.
I hugged my purse and flashlight into my lap. “Don’t be a baby, Nicole.”
Nicole!
The note taped to my door hadn’t called me Nikki. It’d called me Nicole. But Russ, at least in verbal communication, always called me Nikki. What if Russ hadn’t left the note at all?
I pulled it out of my pocket and read it again. Anyone could have written it. I didn’t know Russ’s handwriting, and it didn’t have anything in it that had to come from Russ.
And I’d fallen for it.
But if Russ hadn’t sent it, why had whoever did want to draw me here?
A sharp crack ripped through the air, like wood snapping. I jumped to my feet, my purse, flashlight, and the note tumbling to the ground. What the…?
I inched toward the back of the building. Heat radiated off the wall. I stretched out my hand, but yanked it back before touching the wood.
Holy. Crap. They’d set the building on fire from the outside.
I backed toward my chair in the middle of the room. My hands shook, and I couldn’t steady them. The fire under the boiler made sense now. Depending on if they’d used an accelerant, or if the police even brought in an arson investigator to check for accelerants, this could very well look like an accident. Stupid city girl was fooling around with the equipment in the old sugar shack and burned it down with herself inside.
It was a flimsy cover. They had to be depending on law enforcement to not investigate too carefully. After nearly getting away with Uncle Stan’s murder, they had good reason to think that might be the case. Except I didn’t think Mark would believe this was an accident.
For all the good that would do me. I’d be dead.
I checked my phone. Still no signal. No way to call for help. By the time someone noticed the flames, it’d be too late. I had to find a way out myself.
Smoke poured in the cracks, and a bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck under my hair. I stripped off my jacket.
There were only two ways out of the shack. The door, which I knew was locked tightly, perhaps even secured from the outside to make sure I didn’t escape. And a tiny window high in the left wall.
I dragged the chair across to the window and stepped up. The fire must have been set on the opposite side, on the wall behind the boiler, because this wall was still cool. The window was clean, and I couldn’t see any flames directly outside it either.
The window was small, but assuming I could get it open, I should be able to climb out. And once I got out, I’d have to hope I didn’t break my neck in the fall.
I ran my fingers along the edges of the window. It wasn’t the kind that opened, and it had a sturdy wooden bar running horizontal across the middle and another vertical. Breaking out the glass would be easy enough. The bars would be the real problem.
I scrambled down from the chair, grabbed my jacket, and wrapped it around my hand and arm. I snagged one of the antique-looking spiky metal tools from its hanger on the wall and smashed out the glass as well as I could. None of the other tools looked like they’d help me with the bars.
Smoke dried out my throat, and I scrubbed at my eyes. Sweat plastered my hair to the back of my neck.
I wrenched on the bars. Even if I hung off of them, they didn’t feel like they’d give. I had to weaken them somehow.
A cough wracked my body. The air even seemed hot now as I breathed it in. I was too afraid to look back. A panic attack now would, quite literally, kill me.
I grabbed my purse. The only thing I could think was to saw at the bars with the steak knife I’d wedged into my purse. It was the heavy kind that men seemed to favor, and if I knew my uncle, it would be sharp.
I took out the knife and heaved my purse out the window. Assuming I didn’t make it, maybe someone would spot my purse and see it as a clue that this was no accident.
My lungs burned and ached. I sawed at the vertical bar with both hands wrapped around the knife handle. Even without looking, I could tell by the roaring and firecracker-like pops behind me that I wouldn’t have time to cut through both. If I could at least break this one off, I might be able to squeeze through. I wasn’t chunky, but I wouldn’t be modeling on any runways, either. I carried a lot of muscle weight.
The wooden bar started to splinter. I yanked on it, leaning back, and the bar gave at the bottom. I shoved it back and forth until the top broke. I dropped it on the floor inside. One less thing to fall on if I could get out.
I stuck my arm out the window and heaved the knife to the side, out of my drop radius hopefully but where I could still grab it back up in case the arsonist decided to stick around to watch me burn. What kind of a psycho would do that, knowing he’d probably hear my dying screams, I don’t know, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I hoisted myself up and shoved my upper half through the window. Shards of glass I couldn’t remove tore my shirt and sliced my skin, sending lines of pain down my torso. Each squirm delivered new streaks of hot pain. The horizontal wooden bar ground into my back.
One final twist and I tumbled out the window, trying desperately to push off the wall and shift my weight so I wouldn’t fall on my head.
I hit the ground sideways. Something popped in my shoulder, and agony burst through my body. Black rimmed my vision, and the hot, queasy feeling that always came before passing out flooded over me.
But I was still too close. I used the building wall to pull myself up, but my vision blacked completely and I sank to the ground. I crawled as far as I could from the shack using my good arm. My other arm dangled in a strange way. I tried not to think about it.
Somewhere between the shack and the edge of the clearing, I passed out.
Chapter Seventeen
When I next remembered opening my eyes, I was in a room with tan walls. My shoulder still ached, and I felt the sling before I focused enough to see it. I ran my good hand over my torso. Someone had bandaged me up.
Soft male voices started to register. Ones I recognized. Mark? And Russ?
My stomach knotted. The use of my full first name wasn’t solid proof that he hadn’t sent that note. Maybe he was the kind of person who would always write my full name even though he called me Nikki.
And whoever wanted to get rid of me had almost succeeded a second time. I wasn’t going to test the old saying that the third time’s a charm. After I figured out whether I was seriously injured, I needed to talk to Mark alone.
I turned my head. Russ and Mark stood outside what I now realized was my hospital room. Someone must have spotted the fire or found me.
“Hey.” Russ pointed toward me. “She’s awake.”
They strode into my room, and Russ moved to my bedside and laid a hand on my shoulder.
I recoiled, my body reacting instinctively even though my mind was unconvinced Russ could have done this to me.
Russ jerked his hand back. “Sorry. You’re probably sore, aren’t you?”
“How did I get here?” I asked. My voice came out raspy, and it hurt my throat to speak.
“Noah saw flames when he was coming home last night.” Russ scrubbed his hands over the top of his head. “He called 9-1-1 right away and went straight to the spot. He found the sugar shack burning and you passed out about forty feet away. That’s when he called me and I called Mark.” He wrung his hands together
. “I thought you might want him here.”
I struggled to sit up. Mark helped me. The blanket slumped down, revealing a blue hospital gown. I wasn’t going to ask where my clothes were. They probably hadn’t been salvageable. “Am I okay?”
Mark sank down into the chair next to my bed. “Other than a dislocated shoulder, your wounds were relatively minor cuts and bruises. The doctors wouldn’t tell us anything at first, so I used your cell phone to call your mom and had her give them permission to share your medical information with me since she couldn’t be here.”
I scrunched my eyes shut. Perfect. Now my mom would think staying was an even worse idea, and she’d also think Mark and I were involved. The idea of her daughter dating a doctor might almost make up for the fact that I nearly died. “You talked to my mom.”
“I hope that’s okay.” His voice carried a hesitant note. “I waited until after the hospital notified her, of course.”
I forced open my eyes and smiled at him. Thinking logically, he’d done the right thing. I’d clean up the Mom mess later. “No, that’s fine.” I pulled the blanket up a little higher. The thin sheet and even thinner hospital gown weren’t nearly warm enough, and it felt like my bra had gone wherever the rest of my clothes had. “Did they say when I could leave?”
“Assuming your neurological scans come back clean, later today.”
I felt my head. “I don’t think I hit my head when I fell.”
Mark flashed me his dimples. “They have to check. You were unconscious when Noah found you, and we had no idea what happened.”
The unspoken question of what had happened hung in the air. I flickered a glance toward Russ. “Could you go call Chief Wilson for me, please? I assume he’ll want to take my statement.” That might not take him long enough for what I needed to do. “And would you try to find me a cup of coffee? I could really use something warm to drink.”
A relieved look flashed across Russ’s face. I got the feeling from the stretched-thin look around his eyes and the way he held stiff like he was afraid to touch anything that he didn’t like hospitals. He’d come here, to a place that made him uncomfortable, for my sake. That either made him especially caring or especially smart, since playing the role of concerned friend would help him seem innocent.