“I could never forget you,” Jack replied. “I’m just … something is bugging me.”
Ivy waited patiently.
“Laura never mentioned suing the city when we talked,” Jack said. “She never said a single thing about it.”
“Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with you,” Ivy suggested. “She must feel really … awkward … about what happened. If she doesn’t believe her brother is guilty, she might believe you’re part of the cover up.”
“Laura always struck me as a straight shooter,” Jack countered. “She was a little flaky sometimes, but she wasn’t the type to lie. If she was uncomfortable with me calling, she would’ve told me and hung up.”
“What do you mean ‘she was flaky?’ Are you insinuating she was crazy or something?”
Jack chuckled. “No. She was more … bohemian.”
Ivy raised a challenging eyebrow. “I’m bohemian. Does that make me flaky?”
“Don’t even try to pick a fight,” Jack warned. “In general you’re one of the least flaky people I know.”
“In general? Can you clarify that for my flaky brain?”
“Fine,” Jack said, blowing out a frustrated sigh. “If you want to know the truth, you do the occasional flaky thing.”
“Like what?”
Jack grinned. He loved it when she got fiery. “Well, for starters, I once watched you tell a cult member that we were out hunting for mushrooms when he caught us spying on him.”
“He bought it, didn’t he?”
“You locked Kelly in your bedroom and fought off a masked intruder on your own instead of hiding with her,” Jack added, referring to a traumatized teen Ivy helped a few weeks before.
“That was a perfectly legitimate reaction to the situation.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “How about when you went for a walk in the woods alone one day after being shot?”
Ivy ceased moving forward and pulled her hand away so she could place it on her hip. “I needed time to think. I was upset. You left me in the hospital and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was gardening but … I had a weird feeling that someone was watching me … so I took a walk. It was a good thing, too, since you were the one watching me.”
Jack frowned. “First off, I can never express how sorry I am for walking out of that hospital,” he said. “I will beg you to forgive me for the rest of my life if it comes to it. I know what I did was horrible.”
Ivy’s expression softened. “Jack, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“You can bring it up whenever you want,” Jack said. “I deserve it. Go back to the part about someone watching you garden.”
“Not someone. You.”
“Honey, I didn’t watch you garden that day,” Jack said, rolling his neck until it cracked. “I was too upset to go near your house. I was terrified of running into you.”
“Then who … ?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, hating the fear in her eyes. “Did you actually see someone or just sense them?”
“I just had that feeling you get when you know someone is watching you. I … after I ran into you at the lake, I assumed it was you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this when you saw me that day?” Jack was trying really hard to rein in his temper. It wasn’t working. “You could’ve worked it in between the harsh words and the slap.”
“You deserved that slap!”
Jack grabbed the front of Ivy’s shirt and hauled her to his chest, planting a huge kiss on her lips before separating. “I did deserve that slap. You still should’ve told me. Someone could’ve been watching us that entire time.”
“I know,” Ivy said, her expression rueful as he lowered back to the ground. “I … I forgot about it until just now. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, honey,” Jack said. “This is on me. I upset you. I caused you to lose your head.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Ivy couldn’t help but make a face. “Are you suggesting that you caused me to go temporarily insane?”
Jack shot her a charming grin. “I plan on doing it when we get back to my old house tonight, too. I’m just going to use different methods.”
They lapsed back into amiable silence, the new information running through Jack’s mind as Ivy considered what else she might’ve missed that day. They reached for each other’s hands at the same time, meeting halfway.
“Do you think Laura is capable of killing someone?” Ivy asked after a few moments. “You said she was flaky and bohemian – just like me. That doesn’t sound like a killer.”
“She’s nothing like you,” Jack said. “I didn’t say you were flaky. I said you occasionally do flaky things.”
“That’s the same thing,” Ivy muttered.
“It’s not even remotely the same thing, so stop your pouting,” Jack ordered. “You’re right, though. The Laura I knew wasn’t capable of murdering someone. Whoever walked up to Mark Dalton on the street picked him because he was in close proximity to us. That person looked him in the face before shooting him. They were close. I don’t think Laura has that in her.”
“Oh, my … .” Ivy’s face drained of color.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, worried.
“I never put that together,” Ivy admitted, her lower lip trembling. “I never even wondered why Mark Dalton was chosen. It’s because we were on the street and someone wanted to get your attention because they were watching us and knew you were close. The fact that he was a police officer was just a happy coincidence.”
“It’s okay, Ivy,” Jack said. “None of this is your fault.”
“It’s not your fault either,” Ivy challenged, regaining her senses.
“It’s not my fault,” Jack conceded. “Mark Dalton would still be alive if it weren’t for me, though. That’s something I’m going to have to live with.”
“Well, by that way of thinking, Mark Dalton would still be alive if you didn’t go out of your way to pick a vegetarian restaurant for me,” Ivy countered. “He would still be alive if
