this time?”
“Because she needs us to shut the hell up. She’s facing some unpleasant jail time with me showing up and stirring the old news. She can’t risk us finding out exactly what we did-that she’s a career con.”
“Where’s Ernest?” Danny asked. “What’s his part in this?”
“That’s a bit complicated, actually.”
They all whirled to face Ernest in the doorway. He looked grim. That is, grimmer than usual. In his hands he held the big ring of keys that would open any door within North Beach.
Shit, Bo thought.
“Ernest,” Mel said softly. “What’s going on?”
“You already know.” He looked pale. Very pale. “You know everything, you just didn’t put it all together in time.”
“Sally sent me an e-mail from your computer,” Mel said.
Ernest shook his head. “I sent the e-mails.”
They all stared at him as if he’d grown another head, and he sighed. “Sally came to me weeks ago and asked me for help.”
Weeks, Bo thought. Right around the time he’d first shown up.
“I tried to scare you off,” Ernest said to Mel. “You began digging, and Sally got nervous. She asked me to make sure you didn’t find…”
“Find what?” Bo glanced at the keys in Ernest’s hand. “Something that would implicate her,” he guessed. “Something she needed to stay hidden.”
Ernest nodded.
“You two go way back, don’t you Ernest?” Bo asked. “She knew you were someone she could trust.”
Ernest looked at Mel. “Yes. We go way back. All the way back.”
“You’ve been in contact with her all along?” Mel asked, shocked. “All this time? Years? When I needed her, you were talking with her and didn’t tell me?”
Another nod, jerky now.
Mel looked as if she could be knocked over with a feather. “And do you know what she did?” she demanded. “Do you know how she ruined people’s lives?”
Ernest stared down at the keys, his usually placid face a mask of pain. “I thought she was the most beautiful, wonderful, compassionate woman on earth. I thought she was amazing. I thought…”
“You were in love with her,” Mel breathed.
Ernest fumbled with the keys and said nothing.
“You were as fooled as we were, weren’t you?”
“She changed,” he said tightly. “It’s my own shame that I didn’t see that before. Soon as I did…” He met Mel’s gaze helplessly. “I stopped helping her. I was still trying to scare you off, though, but by then it was so that you wouldn’t get hurt.”
“Where is she now?” Bo asked.
Ernest shook his head.
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell?”
“I’ve been covering for her all these years without knowing it,” Ernest said quietly, looking at Bo. “I’ve been fooled, the same way your father was, the same way the others were. But no more. Here.” He thrust out the key ring, with one key in the forefront. “This is yours. It should have been yours this whole time, and saying sorry doesn’t seem good enough, but I am. It’s been waiting here for you.”
Bo took the key, eyed the number on it. Number thirteen. “Ironic,” he murmured and turned and left the hangar. He knew the others were following him, with Mel immediately on his heels. He could feel her dismay, her anger, and when she set her hand on his back, her support. Damn if that didn’t mean far too much. They moved along the tarmac to the rental hangars, stopping at the second-to-last one.
Ernest’s.
Bo unlocked the side door and came face-to-face with the same stacks and stacks of old boxes he’d seen before. But Ernest reached out and pushed at them, and they fell over. “Empty,” he said.
“Nice cover.” But Bo didn’t feel amused as they flipped on the lights to find…more boxes. He shoved those out of the way as Ernest had. Like the others, they fell easily aside, revealing-
“Holy shit,” Bo breathed at the sight of the Beechcraft.
His father’s first plane.
Mel gasped at the sight of the antique aircraft. It’d clearly been neglected, but was probably still worth close to three quarters of a million dollars as is.
“Right under our noses,” Danny said, and let out a low whisper. “Christ, she’s a beauty.”
Bo didn’t say a word, couldn’t say a word as he walked up to the plane and stroked the steel.
Mel covered her mouth at the stunned, almost overwhelmed look on Bo’s face as he reverently touched the Beechcraft. She still couldn’t quite believe it. All these years, it’d been right here. How was that even possible…?
But it made sense. Perfect sense. Sally had been keeping tabs on them. She knew Bo had never shown up.
God, it was all so amazing, how it’d worked out. Mel thought back to how Bo had been when he’d first arrived: ready to take on all of them to get back his father’s good name, not to mention what had been rightfully his. She knew Bo now, knew him better than she’d ever meant to. Yes, he was cocky and sarcastic and far too good looking for his own good. But he was also fiercely loyal, passionate, and utterly honest, bluntly so at times.
And he’d never lied to her.
He never would.
There was comfort in that, unbelievable comfort. It was a shame that she hadn’t given that comfort back to him. She hated regrets, but now she moved to Bo’s side and stared her biggest one right in the eye. “I didn’t know it was here,” she said softly.
“He loved this damn thing-” His voice was rough with emotion, his hand still on the plane as if he couldn’t bear to stop touching it.
“Bo.” She turned him to face her. “I swear it. I didn’t know.”
His gaze went suspiciously bright when he nodded. “I know.”
Not thinking, simply reacting, she pulled him into her arms.
He resisted for a half a second, then with a roughly muttered “fuck,” fisted his hands on her shirt at her spine and held on tight, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “I miss him, Mel. I still miss him.”
Words failed, so she just nodded and held on tighter.
After a minute, he lifted his head and looked at her from those gorgeous green eyes that always stopped her heart. “A piece of him is here.” He glanced at the plane. “Which means me coming here was the best thing that could have happened out of all this.”
“Because you can sell it?” Ernest asked. “And be rich?”
“Megarich,” Danny added.
Mel knew what the money would do for Bo. It’d give him the nest egg he needed to get the restoration business off the ground. It’d give him a down payment on land in Australia, where he could run an airport like North Beach if he wanted. It’d give him freedom to go anywhere, do anything. And she found herself holding her breath as he eyed them each in turn, finally his gaze landing on her for the longest beat of her life. She managed to smile at him, through a throat so thick she could scarcely breathe.
“Whatever you do,” Danny said, pulling out his cell phone, “we need to call the police.”
Ernest went green. “We do?”
Bo looked at the older man. “Yeah, we do. The paperwork is in Sally’s name, right?”
Ernest nodded.
“I want to get this all straightened out. It’s going to be a mess.”
“I didn’t really do anything illegal, you know,” Ernest said.
Mel narrowed her eyes, but before she could open her mouth, Bo said, “It’s not you I’m after.”
Ernest nodded but still didn’t look happy, knowing he could end up in jail.
It didn’t take the police long to arrive, and they all had a long chat, spilling everything they knew, from the
