but had since moved the business into City Hall’s basement. Evan and Cam had torn down the old walls of the mill and hired Whitcomb’s Wonders to section off the first and second floors into eight large offices, and the third floor into two small apartments and two large ones.
The slow, easy approach they’d intended to take in readying the building for occupancy had gained momentum when a previous tenant, an accounting office, was happy about the renovation and eager to return—preferably between Christmas and the new year. Cam had promised the premises could be occupied on January second.
They had three more tenants eager to move in downstairs, and one waiting for a second-floor spot. It seemed that their development company was off to a good start.
Evan smiled to himself as he thought about how different his life was now from what it had been eighteen months ago. Then, he’d had morning coffee and pastries with scores of other cops in a squad room. He’d patrolled the city in a pattern that was often fairly routine, but could explode into periods of stress and danger that were sometimes energizing, sometimes terrifying. And he’d loved it.
Then he’d killed Blaine, and everything had changed. Well, over the past year he’d managed to accept that he hadn’t really killed him; Blaine had been struggling for the wheel at the time of impact. But that didn’t completely absolve Evan of blame. It was his fault Blaine had been in the car in the first place.
But he didn’t want to think about that right now. What he had here was good. Good friends, good coffee, rewarding work waiting for him. He missed his parents and Sheila and the boys, but he wasn’t up to seeing them yet. His mother had invited him for Thanksgiving, but he’d told her he had to work on the accountant’s office to have it ready in time. She’d sounded disappointed, but said merely that he had to plan to come home for Christmas.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to get out of that yet, but he intended to.
“You’re coming to the Wonders’ Christmas party?” Hank asked Evan as he consulted his watch. It was almost eight a.m., time for them to get to work. “Sunday afternoon. And since we’ll all be together, Jackie’s planning to hold a meeting about preparations for opening the shelter.” Jackie had found a willing group of volunteers in her husband’s friends.
“I’ve got to work on the—” Evan began.
“No, you don’t,” Cam interrupted. “We’ve got a couple of weeks before Harvey starts moving things in.”
“But the carpet’s got to go down.”
“That’ll take all of two hours. You’re just trying to get out of joining us.”
He was. Their warmth and camaraderie, while great on the job, was a little tough to take in their homes. It was a reminder of the family he just couldn’t bring himself to see again, and the family he’d never be able to build for himself.
“I told Brian you were coming,” Cam said, shamelessly forcing his hand. “The kid’s looking forward to seeing you.”
“And Mike was looking forward to talking to you about the Sox,” Bart told him. “Nobody else has the stats at his fingertips like you do.”
Hank slipped out of the booth. “Jackie wants you to bring salad. We’ll expect you at two o’clock.”
He conceded with a nod. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
The group dispersed. Evan bought a refill on his coffee and a few more doughnuts, then went out to the red Jeep the garage had lent him while they replaced the alternator on his van.
He missed his big vehicle. EVAN BRAGA, PAINTING, PART OF WHITCOMB’S WONDERS was now painted in red letters on its side. He felt a certain pride every time he looked at it. He’d managed to pull himself together in a year, and though he still had a lot of issues to deal with, he was making progress. Life was good.
He climbed into the Jeep, grateful to have wheels at all, put the coffee cup in the console, tossed the bag of doughnuts onto the passenger seat and headed for the mill.
His parking spot was around the back, where he and Cam kept an office that also served as a storage shed for tools and equipment. There was a lumpy old love seat in it that Bart and Haley had donated when they bought new furniture, and Evan wanted nothing more than to sit on it, drink his coffee and have another doughnut, before he applied the second coat of paint to the window frames and doors of the accounting office, then wallpapered the women’s bathroom.
Balancing doughnuts, coffee and the new roller handles he’d bought, he unlocked the door and pushed it open.
What he saw shocked him into stillness. He experienced a playback of that moment, a year and a half ago, when he’d opened the gym bag and found bundles of cash.
Only, this moment was potentially more dangerous. He was looking at the business end of the Louisville Slugger he kept on top of the bookshelf. Ready to swing it was a very disheveled young woman in a torn and dusty navy-blue suit and jacket and dress shoes. Dark red hair was piled in a messy bundle atop her head, and she looked pale and obviously terrified.
He assessed her calmly as his old training kicked in. She was average in height and slender, and even with a gun would have posed a negligible threat—if she’d been calm.
But she wasn’t. She looked exhausted, and her red-rimmed blue eyes said more clearly than words that she was on the brink of destruction—her own or someone else’s.
His presence seemed about to push her over the edge.
“Hi,” he said calmly, and stayed right where he was.
HI? BEAZIE DEADHAM thought hysterically. He’d killed her boss and chased her across the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all he could say when they finally stood face-to-face, was Hi?
She was going to lose it. She could feel it happening. She was shaking so hard she could hear her own teeth chattering.
Things were beginning to reel around her. She’d been up all night with nothing to eat or drink. She’d tried to close her eyes during the four-hour drive in the back of the moving van, but each time, she’d seen her boss’s broken body crumpled on the concrete floor of the parking structure, life ebbing out of him as she ran and knelt beside him. She’d seen the red SUV with the gunman in it rev its motor.
“Beazie,” Gordon had gasped, and clutched her hand. “Evans…” Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. “Take it to…Evans. Maple Hill… No police.”
Barely able to hear him, she leaned over him, her ear to his lips.
“No one…else,” he said in a barely audible croak. “Evans…Maple Hill.”
It was only then that she noticed he’d pressed something into her hand: a miniature tape cassette like the kind in an answering machine.
This wasn’t happening to her, she thought in a panic now, dragging herself back to the moment and the man who stood across from her. Although her arms were aching from holding the bat, she didn’t dare lower the weapon. This guy had killed her boss, Gordon Hathaway. Gentle Gordon, the man who’d given her an advance on her paycheck when she’d hired on, because she’d explained she was really broke; who’d given her a bonus when she’d reorganized the filing system; who’d been kind and funny and more of a friend than an
