Something in his eyes held mine for a moment, like he didn’t quite believe me, but then he rubbed a hand through his hair. “Okay, go ahead. Let’s talk about the case.”
My mind reeled. What to ask, what to ask . . . “How do you propose we go about finding Clark?”
“No, no, no. There’s no ‘we’ about finding Clark. I’m the investigator. I’ll find Clark.”
“But I want to help.”
“You are helping. By keeping your eyes open and reporting back to me.” The look on his face said the subject was closed for discussion.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said as he turned into my parents’ driveway and turned off his lights.
He jumped out of the truck and opened my door before I could get it myself. “I’ll do some digging and find Clark. I’ll also talk to Jackson.”
“And maybe Patricia too?”
“And maybe Patricia too. Just please stick to keeping lookout. I don’t need to worry about you while I’m trying to solve a murder.”
I offered a non-committal shrug and a smile.
The stars were bright in the sky, and the moon lit our path to the basement entrance. “I guess I’ll see you later then,” I said when we reached the door.
The curve of his lips and the directness in his eye took me back to senior prom, the night he’d told me he loved me for the first time. My heart began to race.
“Rylie, I’m sorry I freaked you out in high school. If I had known how it would drive you away, I never would have—”
I put a finger up to his lips. “I was scared and stupid. I do wonder sometimes what life would have been like had I said yes.”
His body radiated warmth, and I leaned into him just a bit. The electricity between us was palpable. My head urged me to take a step back, a deep breath, but it was as if our bodies were magnetized.
He leaned down and wrapped his arms around my waist. His mouth hovered inches from mine. I merely had to go the extra twenty percent. My heart raced and my arms moved without permission, circling his neck.
What would it be like to feel his gentle lips on mine again? I raised a fraction of an inch and could feel his breath when the porch light turned on.
Instinctively, as though I was still a teenager outside my parents’ house past curfew, I pulled back.
After a moment of stunned silence, he burst out laughing. “You really need to get your own place.”
9
“You were out late last night.” Megan sat at the table with my mother drinking her coffee and thumbing through the leftovers of Dad’s morning paper. All four boys sat in front of my parents’ big screen TV watching some animated show with talking dogs.
“Luke and I were discussing the case.” I poured myself a cup and joined them.
“It looked like you were discussing something very important when you were wrapped up in each other’s arms on the porch.” Megan glanced up from the paper, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows high on her forehead.
“You know, you could have asked him in,” Mom said. “That’s why you have full rein of the basement.”
Sure, and she would have left us completely alone. Right.
I rolled my eyes and took the comic section. “We’re just friends.”
Megan shot Mom a sideways glance.
“Oh, stop it.” We had to be just friends. That near-kiss would have launched us onto a completely different playing field. Was I even ready for that? It had only been a little more than a week since I’d left Troy.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Dad’s deep voice startled me from behind.
“Nothing. Just thinking about the case.”
“I thought you already caught the killer,” Mom said, her voice an octave higher than normal.
“I want to make sure we caught the right guy, that’s all.”
“You always were one for justice.” Dad kissed the top of my head. “It was nice seeing Luke last night.”
Not him too.
“Did you have a good time at dinner?”
“Yeah, it was good.” I peeked at my phone. “I’d better get going. I have a lot to do today.” I had stayed up all night searching for information about Clark on the internet. I finally came across an address that wasn’t far from the reservoir. What would it hurt to have a look around?
Clark’s house was smack dab in the middle of the slums. With the windows dark and the weeds overtaking the lawn, it looked like no one had lived there for several months.
I circled the block a couple of times to make sure I knew the ins and outs of the area, then parked my car a few houses down, prayed no one would steal my rims while I was looking around, and walked down the crumbling sidewalk to his front door. If Clark was the killer, I needed to be careful, so instead of knocking I tiptoed around to the side of the house and looked through a window.
The sparsely furnished room had only a torn leather couch and a small tube TV on a metal folding TV tray. When I pushed, the window creaked open a hair. I cringed at the sound and waited, holding my breath. After a few seconds, I inhaled only to choke on the smell of stale pot smoke.
If they hadn’t heard the creaking window, they definitely would have heard my coughs. But nothing moved inside the house.
The window was about waist high, and I looked down at my favorite pair of jeans and hoodie. Why hadn’t I worn something I wouldn’t mind getting dirty? Time to suck it up.
I pushed the window open a bit more and swung one leg over the window ledge, trying not to rip my severely tight pants. When I swung the other one over, I let out a breath. They hadn’t torn. But when I stood up, I heard the dreaded sound of jean fibers ripping. I’d relaxed too soon.
The butt of my pants had caught on a stray nail in the
