Page 54 of The Misfits of Copper County
“Sure,” I said, striving for the same casual tone. “Sounds good.”
I stood in the shower a few minutes later, letting the hot water pour over me, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Last night, Brewer and I had shared something incredible. Something that had felt passionate, and raw, and honest, and, well,profound, not that I’d spit that sort of purple prose out loud. I felt like I’d been swept off the precipice I’d been clinging to and into something new. Something Brewer and I might explore together.
But the distance Brewer had put between us after everyone left had made it clear that I was flying solo.
“Good job,” I muttered to my dick while scrubbing shampoo through my hair with more force than necessary. “You’ve picked another winner.”
After dressing in jeans and a sweater, I headed straight to my office rather than the kitchen. I couldn’t face Brewer while my head was still spinning. I needed to ground myself in something familiar, something that was entirely mine.
Work. I would focus onwork.
I opened my laptop and pulled up the Empire Ridge files. I’d been digging into this story for weeks, but in the past few days, I’d stalled. Some evidence was there, as I’d told Tam, but not nearly enough to make a compelling case, anaward-winningcase.
I’d conducted interviews with Anthony’s second-in-command, as well as a couple of other people who’d been friends with Anthony for years and, predictably, corroborated his story. I’d contacted the people at Empire Ridge for a comment, and they’d referred me to their website, where I’d found lots of glamour shots of the cookie-cutter River Bend housing development and a single press release denying all knowledge of the incident.
In other words, nothing helpful at all.
I went to close the website when an aerial map of the development caught my eye, and I clicked to enlarge it. The development was divided into several smaller cul-de-sacs interspersed with pools, tennis courts, a clubhouse, an elementary school, and even a community theater. I wondered which part of the property had been Anthony’s property, so I looked for the firehouse… but I didn’t see it.
Confused, I pulled up the website for Southbourne, New York—the town where the development had been built—to find the address of the new firehouse, but their website was so outdated I gave up in disgust. I emailed Anthony Harmon, asking if he could point me in the right direction.
Then I reviewed the notes I’d made for the seventeenth time, hoping some fresh line of inquiry would pop out at me.
Spoiler: it didn’t.
A knock on my open office door a moment later startled me more than it should have. I glanced up to find Brewer leaning against the doorjamb. At some point, he’d changed into different clothes—a dark green henley hugged his broad shoulders this time, and his jeans clung to his thighs in all the best ways.
He looked unfairly good for a man who’d spent the night on a hardwood floor.
“Hey,” Brewer said in that same professional, neutral tone from before. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not.” I closed my computer. “You’re saving me from chucking this laptop out the window.”
He chuckled, low and intimate… or maybe that was just how Iwantedto hear it.
“Story not going well, I take it? Not easy making things fair and right?” His tone was teasing but surprisingly sincere.
Or maybe not so surprisingly, after our conversation last night.
“It’s not.” I pushed up my glasses and rubbed my eyes. Some of us were not meant to sleep on floors, and it showed. “I’d really appreciate it if the bad guys could just twirl their mustaches, or wear T-shirts that say ‘Bad Guy,’ and/or have little manifestos on their websites about being bad. Who can I send a strongly worded letter to about this?”
Brewer laughed. “If it was that easy to tell who the bad guy was, wouldn’t you be out of a job? Or were you thinking of taking up sledgehammering professionally?”
I laughed, too—which I hadn’t thought was possible, given how frustrated I was. Then I adjusted my glasses. “Did you need something?”
“If you’ve got a minute. I finished cleaning up and started looking at the jam cupboard… and I think we might have a mystery on our hands.” He bounced his eyebrows.
I sat back in my chair. “What kind of mystery?”
“The mysterious kind. Come see,” he said, tilting his head toward the kitchen.
Curiosity piqued, I followed him down the hall.
The space had been mostly cleared of debris, the cabinets Hen had authorized us to return were stacked neatly, and the hole in the wall was more defined now, like Brewer had removed the loose plaster around the edges.
I moved closer, peering into the opening.
