“Good use of otherwise wasted space.”

“That was the idea. And that room gets a lot of sunlight.” She’d fantasized scenarios of her playing with her gurgling baby girl while dust motes danced around them.

Now, thinking back on the many domestic tableaus she had imagined, she slid her hand beneath her hair and massaged the back of her neck. Quietly, she said, “For obvious reasons, my needs have changed.”

He sat there without saying anything, abnormally still, and she wondered if his ability to remain like that for an extended period of time had been a facet of his military training. It would certainly be of benefit to a soldier. But it was unsettling to anyone who came under his scrutiny while he was at it. At least to her it was disquieting.

Eventually he reached for his mug and took another sip of coffee. “Do you have a particular style in mind?”

“Something different.”

“From what?”

“From what it is.”

“That would entail a clean sweep.”

“I realize that.”

His long legs had been stretched out at an angle to the table, ankles crossed. He pulled them in now, placed his forearms on the table, and leaned toward her. “Forgive my bluntness. Can you afford this?”

“I won’t know until you submit an estimate.”

“Right.” He thought it over. “I’ll make up a list of things. Not the pretty, sexy stuff. The basics. Wiring. Plumbing. Roofing. Like that. I’ll attach a high-end estimate, as well as a low-ball one. Pricing will depend a lot on your choice of materials.

“If you don’t like my ideas, if you can’t afford to have the work done, if you decide your sister’s advice was sound and move back to Houston, all you owe me is a hundred bucks for putting in the time. Sound like a plan?”

She swallowed, but her voice still came out huskily. “Mr. Burnet? How did you know I had moved here from Houston?”

There was the merest flicker in the blue eyes before he shrugged off her question. “It’s general knowledge.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t told a single soul.”

“That’s the scuttlebutt. Beats me how it got around. I don’t even remember who told me.”

“Like you don’t remember where you were when I was pointed out to you.”

He gave a huff, trying to blow it off. “Is that a big deal?”

“I don’t know. Tell me why anyone would be discussing me with you.”

He raised his arms at his sides. “Everybody and his grandmother has been discussing you. Because of the…event.”

“The event being my personal tragedy.”

“Which you suffered in public. Gossip thrives on other people’s miseries.”

“Yes. It does.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “Just like when my father abandoned us.”

“Did he abandon you?”

“What would you call it?”

“Flight.”

She lowered her hands and glared at him.

Not that it had much effect. He said, “It’s generally believed that he wasn’t deserting you, so much as he was escaping capture.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“Facts point that way. The night he went missing, Welch’s store safe was cleaned out, and an employee died under mysterious circumstances. The money was never recovered, that suspicious death is still unexplained, and Joe Maxwell was never seen again. So, yeah, I’d say he’s cloaked in mystery, and, like it or not, so are you.”

Raising her voice, she said, “Well, I don’t like it.”

“Then you should have stayed gone.”

She shot up out of her chair, shoved it aside, and stalked from the room. When he caught up with her, she already had the front door pulled open. “You told me yesterday that you aren’t the man for the job. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for coming out this morning, but—”

He reached past her shoulder and pushed the door shut.

The suddenness of his movement alarmed her. She backed up to the adjacent wall. Her heart was thudding. “Have you been driving past this house every night?”

His chin went back a notch. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, I did.” Moving slowly, he raised his hands shoulder high and took several steps backward, away from her. A cleft formed between his eyebrows. “Someone’s been driving past your house?”

“Every night. Almost from the day I moved in. Even before I lost the baby.”

“Have you reported it?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“At first I didn’t think much of it. I passed it off as curiosity-seekers. Then after the emergency in the supermarket, I didn’t want to send up a flare and call further attention to myself.”

He digested that, then said, “Have you made out what kind of car it is?”

She took a breath. “Is it you?”

“Why would I be driving past your house every night?”

“That’s not an answer. Is it you?”

“No.”

A simple denial. No embellishment. No telltale expression. Ergo, a perfect lie. A perfect liar. “Is lying another skill you honed while in juvenile detention?”

His jaw clenched.

She wasn’t going to be deterred by his apparent anger. “The marijuana was your first offense, but it wasn’t your last, was it?”

“No.”

Her breathing shallow, she asked, “What other crime did you commit?”

Chapter 6

That night in 2000—Ledge

Stopping along the roadside minutes after pulling off a burglary, to conduct a meeting with your accomplices, in a ditch no less, was just one of the reasons that this whole escapade of Rusty’s design was all kinds of ways fucked up.

During the planning stages, Rusty had charged Ledge with the task of driving them, and he had been okay with that. In fact, he wouldn’t have had it any other way. If escape became necessary, he figured he knew more back roads than the other three. He certainly trusted himself over any of them to keep a cooler head in a tight situation.

“It only makes sense for us to convene in the parking lot of your uncle’s bar,” Rusty had told him during one of only three covert meetings they’d had in advance of the burglary.