Page 5 of Lost Love Cove 4
“I didn’t see you at Trevor’s funeral,” Carrie said, careful with her tone.
“We saw you,” Ian answered quietly. “You stood near the back for a time and then spoke to Arno. You spoke to my wife also. You were pale, and you held yourself very still. Erika said your lips were trembling. We knew you and Lori were more like sisters and respected your boundaries that day.”
Carrie dipped her head. It had been a hard week beyond grief. The investigation that would end with a judge indicted and a bullet tearing through her side had begun just then. She remembered the sudden tunnel vision and the taste of metal when she woke in the hospital and Trent’s face, white with fury, leaning over her. She broke that memory away and locked it in its usual drawer.
“You and Cheryl had your marriage annulled,” she said, pulling the thread back to the Winters line.
“Yes,” Ian said. “Delia’s lawyer made it very easy. I signed papers in a room that smelled like oranges and bleach. Cheryl signed hers elsewhere. We were suddenly unmarried, and I was suddenly eighteen again, as if nothing had happened. Only it had, and nothing could make me forget it.”
“That is why you hated Delia Winters,” Carrie said.
“That, and the way she treated everyone she believed was beneath her,” Ian said, the old anger returning. “She had money that reached into offices and onto docks. She had a way of making people feel small. She wasn’t harsh in public. She dismissed you without needing to lift her chin. Most families here knew the feeling. She loved the Keys, or said she did, but she did not love the people who kept the place alive.”
“Why was she so bitter?” Oscar asked, unable to help himself.
Ian lifted one shoulder. “Too much money. Too much power. A lonely life. I heard she didn’t love her husband, and he didn’t love her. I heard he was unfaithful. People tell stories when they live in small places, and I don’t know which ones were true. I do know she looked at me like I was a stain she couldn’t scrub out.”
Oscar leaned forward, eyes bright with that hungry curiosity he could not hide. “What happened to all her money when she died? She didn’t leave it to her daughter, right?”
Carrie watched Ian’s mouth compress. He did not answer at once. When he did, the words came soft.
“She left everything to Cheryl,” he said. “Everything.”
“Mom always said that lady was insanely wealthy.” Oscar whistled. “I bet Cheryl Winters is now jetting all over the world in her own private jet.”
“No.” Ian shook his head. “She isn’t.”
“Doesn’t want her mother’s snob money, huh?” Oscar asked.
“No, they can’t find her,” Ian told them, his voice dipped. “And we would never have known any of this or how much trouble Trevor and I suddenly found ourselves in if Matt hadn’t bought Delia Winters’ house.”
The room went quiet again, the kind of quiet that peels back coverings. Carrie felt the past step closer and press against the present. She turned and looked at Matt, who had gone gray as he stood staring in disbelief at Ian.
3
CARRIE
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Andy, who hadn’t spoken in a while, said. “But who wants some tea?”
“I would love a cup,” Carrie told him.
A chorus of thank yous followed hers. Carrie's mouth felt desert-dry, her fingers twitching with the need for a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio—or maybe two—to quiet the tremor in her hands. She fixed her gaze on the whorls of the wooden coffee table, tracing each ring with her eyes, desperate for any distraction from the storm raging outside and within her. Every few seconds, Carrie’s mind conjured the image of Maggie's shiny head of curls or Cody's gap-toothed smile, somewhere out there in Key West, too far away for them to reach or do anything. They were trapped and rendered helpless by Mother Nature. Her heart clenched like a fist. She could almost see Alisha's face, pale as beach sand, and Trent's jaw locked tight the way it always did when he was keeping panic at bay.
Her jaw clenched tight enough to make her molars ache. Carrie hadn't even been able to contact Tessa and tell her about Maggie's disappearance. Nausea rose up in her throat like abitter tide, and she swallowed hard, taking a deep, deliberate breath that expanded her lungs against her ribs. She crossed the room to the third sofa—a plush loveseat upholstered in faded blue chenille—and sank into its soft cushions. Matt followed, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood, and settled beside her close enough that his knee brushed against hers. The contact sent a current of warmth up her thigh, an unwelcome distraction in the midst of her worry.
Carrie inhaled deeply, drawing the scent of salt and rain through her nostrils, and commanded her racing thoughts to settle like scattered birds coming to roost. Trent wasn't just any agent—he was one of the Bureau's best, with resources that stretched across state lines and a determination that mirrored her own. She pictured him now, his broad shoulders squared beneath his dark windbreaker, the Florida downpour plastering his sandy hair to his forehead as he coordinated with Alisha, whose quick mind would be cataloging every detail. The knot in her stomach loosened a fraction. She smoothed her palms over the worn denim of her jeans and turned her attention back to Ian, whose weathered face held secrets like the tide pools along Lost Love Cove's shoreline. Perhaps here, in this room heavy with the weight of unspoken truths, they could untangle at least one mystery—the labyrinth of property deeds and the shadow of Trevor's possible betrayal.
Andy rose from his armchair with a soft creak of wood, the movement stirring the heavy air in the room. His footsteps faded toward the kitchen as Carrie leaned forward, her elbows pressing into the worn denim covering her thighs.
She turned back to Ian, whose weathered face had gone still as stone beneath his silver-flecked beard. "Let's talk about these properties." Her voice dropped an octave, steady as a detective'sin an interrogation room, and her hazel eyes pinned Ian like butterfly wings to a collection board. "How much do you know about the sale of Matt's house?"
A muscle twitched at the side of Ian's jaw, creating a ripple beneath his weathered skin like a stone dropped in still water. His long fingers—tanned and spotted from decades under the Florida sun—curled into loose fists on his lap. For a moment, he studied them as if the answers were etched into his lifelines before lifting his head with the heaviness of a man carrying an unbearable truth. When his eyes finally met hers, they were the faded blue of a storm-washed sky, haunted by shadows. "I know," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, "it's what ultimately killed Trevor."
Ian's words fell like pebbles into still water, each one sending ripples of shock through Carrie's body. She felt the chill start at her scalp and travel down her spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake. His drawn face, half-shadowed in the dim light, bore the hollow-eyed look of a man who'd carried a terrible secret for too long.
Carrie leaned forward, the chenille upholstery rough against her palms. "Are you implying," she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, "that someone killed Trevor?"
"Not outright," Ian said, holding her gaze with eyes that had gone flat as sea glass. "Trevor's health had been failing for years by then. The chemo had hollowed him out—left him gaunt, his once-robust frame whittled down to sinew and bone. The cancer went into remission, but his heart..." Ian's fingers pressed against his own chest, the handcuffs clinking. "His heart never recovered. Some days, just climbing the stairs to the office left him gasping like a beached fish."
