“He broke his neck,” Holly said matter of factly.
Laura said nothing, but there was a tightening around her eyes.
“I heard the words internal decapitation used.” She’d overheard Max and Rye Harper talking about it at Stella’s one morning. And it wasn’t like she’d eavesdropped. Max was very loud. “That’s when the spinal cord is separated from the base of the skull. It’s a rare injury and one that doesn’t normally occur from someone tripping and falling. I believe that was the theory Nate put forward.”
“How do you know about internal decapitation?” Holly’s eyes had widened.
She felt herself flush. Not even her two best friends knew about her writing. They knew she wrote, but not what she wrote and that she’d been published. It wasn’t because she thought Holly and Laura would be shocked. They wouldn’t. Her best friends would be supportive. But when Henry had started working on the books with her, she’d liked the intimacy of it being only the two of them. They shared so much of their lives with everyone around them that having this part remain private made it even better. Those books contained her secret self, her fantasies and dreams, and sharing them with Henry alone felt right.
Henry didn’t actually write the books, but he helped her plot. He did a lot of research and was her first line editor. Henry had read everything she’d ever written.
Henry had been the one to suggest that her spy hero understood the fine art of atlanto-occipital dislocation, more popularly known as internal decapitation.
“I’m doing research for a possible book.” They knew she was always planning something.
“I thought you were writing about recycling or climate change.” Laura had sat up, shifting her now sleeping baby from her shoulder to her arms.
“I research a lot of things.” She researched the things she found interesting and let Henry teach her about things like war and which kinds of guns law enforcement would use. He’d researched everything from how to defuse a bomb to bioweapons. She worried he might be on several watchlists. It was probably a good thing they didn’t travel much. “And my research taught me that it requires a good amount of force in exactly the right place to separate the skull from the spine. There’s a reason it’s rare. It mostly happens in high-speed car accidents.”
“Why are you asking, Nell?” Laura asked before she glanced Holly’s way again.
It was obvious they’d been talking about this, too. “I think it’s odd, that’s all. I also think it’s odd that Seth had a problem with the plumbing. It was just put in.”
“Did he say what was specifically wrong?” Holly asked.
“Plumbing can go wrong at any time.” Laura continued to rock. “And it makes sense since you said he hid in the bathroom.”
Nell nodded. “That’s what he told me. Do you know when the call went in? I can’t see the front of Seth’s cabin from the kitchen. I was working on some bread and then I answered some email. That window faces the river, so I was utterly unaware anything was going on. Why didn’t Nate have his siren on?”
“I think Logan managed to get a call out before he took down the bad guys,” Laura explained. “I’m sure Nate didn’t want to alert them the police were on the way.”
Nell had gone over and over the timing in her head. “I talked to you five minutes before Henry came home. By then he’d helped with the people who’d gotten hurt, and then helped some with the cleanup. He had to take a shower and change his clothes because he got blood on them. And he was only gone for an hour and a half.”
“Nell, what are you worried about?” Laura asked, her mouth down in a frown.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit it, but she needed to talk to someone. “Have you heard the rumors? About Henry?”
Holly sighed. “I’ve told Caleb he’s insane. It’s ridiculous.”
“He’s not the only one,” Laura countered.
She’d heard the rumor from Rachel, who’d rolled her eyes and called Doctor Caleb Burke crazy for even hinting that Henry Flanders might be some sort of trained killer. She’d thought Nell would find the idea hysterical, but then Nell heard how the man had died.
Was it merely coincidental that Henry had done a ton of research on internal decapitation for her latest book, and not a few weeks later someone died that way right here in Bliss?
“I’ve heard Gemma thinks something’s wrong with Henry, too,” Nell admitted.
Holly reached out and covered Nell’s hand with hers. “No one thinks there’s anything wrong with Henry. Caleb and Gemma both have vivid imaginations, and neither of them have been here for long. What do you think happened this afternoon? Do you think Henry stormed into Seth’s cabin and took them all down? How would he have even known there was trouble?”
But that was where Logan came in. And Seth. When Henry had first come to Bliss, he’d met Logan and Seth. He’d had an oddly close relationship with Seth over the years. Henry had kept in touch with the young man while he’d gone to college and started his incredible business. “Why would Logan come to our door when he could have called? If it was an emergency, calling would have been faster.”
“You know how people are around here,” Holly countered. “They like to be friendly.”
“But he wasn’t friendly. I didn’t even hear him knock on the door. He didn’t come in or say hello to me.” It hadn’t bothered her at the time. She’d been concerned with her bread and her latest project. She found kneading bread a soothing way to think, and it wasn’t until later that she’d been struck by how odd the encounter had been.
“I still don’t understand why this is a problem.” Holly sat back. “Do you think Henry lied?”
“When he first
