On Her Side. Beth Andrews
the past three summers, Tanner had worked down on the docks with his father. It wasn’t an easy job and he didn’t get to hang out at the beach all day like his friends, but it did pay well.
“Mom and Dad said I could use a total of five thousand on the car,” Tanner said. “The rest of my wages are being saved for college.”
Four thousand dollars wasn’t nearly enough to get the job done, but it’d make a good start.
“Here’s the deal,” Griffin said, unable to believe he was actually agreeing to this. Pissed that the kid had backed him into a corner this way. “We work on it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons. I’m not putting any time in on it on my own. If you’re not here, the work doesn’t get done. In exchange,” he continued when Tanner opened his mouth, “you’ll clean up the garage and do anything else I need done around here. You can pick your own hours but you’d better put in at least twenty a week or the deal’s off. You hear me?”
Tanner nodded like a bobblehead doll. “Yeah, yeah. I hear you. It’s a deal.”
And then he grinned, slow and easy, like he’d won the lottery and a night with the hottest cheerleader in his school.
“Enjoy this moment,” Griffin told him. “Because that was for working on the car. The deal for me not ratting you out to your parents is going to cost you even more.”
“You’d blackmail your own brother?” he asked, sounding merely curious.
“Don’t think of it as blackmail. Think of it as me kicking your butt for dragging me into this in the first place. The way I see it, you have a choice. You can take my punishment. Or we can tell Mom and Roger you lied and tricked them. Your choice.”
Griffin imagined Tanner was having visions of himself spending the rest of the summer grounded. Or worse, completely losing his driving privileges.
“What do I have to do?” Tanner asked.
“You are now in charge of all yard work and exterior maintenance at my house for exactly one year.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll mow the grass, do the trim work. In the fall you can rake leaves—”
“You never rake your leaves.”
“Well, they’ll get raked this year, won’t they? You can also clean the gutters. In the winter I’ll expect my walk and driveway cleared each and every morning before I go to work.”
Tanner gave him a long look. “That’s fair.”
It wasn’t. It was overboard and Griffin had the feeling Tanner knew it. Or maybe he knew Griffin had been trying to get him to back out of their deal, which would then let Griffin off the hook.
Now he was stuck, for the second time that day, with a deal he didn’t particularly want and that his instincts told him would somehow come back to bite him on the ass.
* * *
“THERE’S A GENTLEMAN here to see you,” Jodi told Nora over the office phone. “He won’t give his name.”
Jodi’s tone was disapproving, either at the audacity of the man showing up five minutes before the office was to close or because he hadn’t shared his name or the reason for wanting to see Nora.
Jodi did love knowing everything that went on in the office.
Nerves jumped in Nora’s stomach. He was early. When she’d spoken with Mr. Hepfer that morning, he’d told her he probably wouldn’t make it to Mystic Point before six. She’d asked him to meet her at the office instead of her house or a local restaurant so she could claim he was just another potential client, should anyone ask.
“Thanks,” Nora said. “You can send him in.”
Setting the phone down, she hurried across the room and opened the door then raced back behind her desk and took the small mirror out of her top drawer. She freshened her lipstick, did a quick hair check then tossed the mirror back inside.
She sat. Stood. Sat again. Then jumped to her feet when she saw him round the corner. She froze, her polite smile sliding from her face.
Because the man walking toward her looked nothing like the picture of the balding, retirement-age man on Hepfer Investigation’s website. Trepidation filled her.
He was an older, harder version of Griffin.
Not the P.I. she’d hired, she realized numbly. Which was fine, as it seemed she no longer needed him to find her mother’s ex-lover.
Dale York had found her instead.
CHAPTER FOUR
NORA’S BREATH LOCKED in her chest, made each inhalation painful. Panic-inducing. She’d wanted this moment, wanted to face this man down but now that he was here, her body was frozen, her mind numb with terror.
She couldn’t take her eyes from Dale as he slowly crossed her office, his confident stride bordering on predatory. She’d only seen his face once—a grainy photo the Chronicle ran the day after her mother’s remains were found, but there was no mistaking him.
She’d spent the past eighteen years thinking about him. Wondering what kind of man he was. Hating him. She’d expected him to be taller. Her father was tall. Tall and kind and honorable. A good, decent man who’d worked hard to support his family, who’d always taken care of them.
But her mother had still chosen this man over her husband. Over her daughters.
She’d paid for it with her life.
As a kid, Nora had always imagined Dale as some sort of monster. Huge and dark and deadly. Now she saw he was just a man. Not so huge, but still dangerous.
Despite his age—he had to be closing in on sixty—his short hair was still thick, the dark strands threaded with silver. His shoulders were wide, his waist narrow. He was handsome, she was forced to admit. With his sharply angled face and smooth-shaven jaw.
It was easy, so pathetically easy, to see why her mother had been attracted to him.
What she didn’t get, what she’d never understand, was how her mother could love him.
He stopped in front of her desk, his expression hard, his brown eyes cold. Nora’s mouth dried. Fear coated her throat. Made it impossible for her to speak, to get any words out. Words that should’ve put him on the defensive, made him wonder and worry. Made him realize he faced a worthy and formidable opponent.
All she could do was stare. And wonder if Griffin had been right.
Trust me, the best thing that could happen for everyone is for Dale to remain missing. Leave the past alone.
“If it isn’t little Nora Sullivan,” Dale said, his deep voice tinged with some accent she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Her skin crawled as his gaze drifted lazily over her face, sexual and appreciative. “All grown up, I see. I’m Dale York.”
“I know who you are,” she said, barely above a whisper. Her scalp prickled, her breathing quickened. She gripped the edge of her desk, held on when her knees threatened to buckle. “You’re the man who killed my mother.”
“Now, is that any way to greet an old friend of Valerie’s?” He winked. “I never laid a hand on her. Not unless she wanted me to.”
Her stomach churned sickeningly. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
Why had he come back to Mystic Point now, risking arrest? What kind of game was he playing by seeking her out?
“I’m here to do my civic duty.” Hitching up his dark slacks, he sat in the chair across from her, looking like a successful salesman instead of a cold-blooded killer. “I would’ve come sooner but I was out of the country and didn’t hear about Valerie’s death—and that the local police department