Page 102 of Finding Noah

I couldn’t hold back the barked laugh that burst through my lips, filling the quiet car. “Babe, what the hell kind of detective work am I gonna do in River fuckin’ Canyon?”

“I … I don’t know. I mean, there’s—”

“Yeah, hunting down missing wallets and lost cats.”

“Well, that’s probably not—”

I cut her off with a sardonic chuckle. “Meg, I’m telling you, that’s all there is to do down there. That’s why I’m becoming detective in the first place. You know this.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, her silence speaking volumes, before she said, “I guess I just didn’t realize that it would mean you’d want to … what? Leave?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to leave,” I said quietly, steering the car toward the funeral home. “I’m not … I’m not leaving, Meghan. Come on.”

“Well, why not?” she challenged, now wide awake and defiant. “If you’re so bored here, then why wouldn’t you just leave and find something more exciting somewhere else?”

As I rolled to a stop at a red light, my elbow landed against the window ledge with a heavy thunk, and my palm scrubbed against my face.

“Babe, I—” I pulled in a deep breath, pressing my fist to my lips for another moment, watching the turn signal on the car in front of me blink over and over. “I wasn’t calling you to argue about this, okay? I wanted to tell you how things had gone at the cemetery. I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere. We just don’t know what a change in career is going to mean for me. That’s all. It could lead to more time away from home, or maybe it won’t. We don’t know.”

She pulled in a shaky, audible breath. She was getting angry, upset, and I wasn’t sure why, but she was calming down, and I was relieved.

“Okay,” she replied softly. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired, and I slept like shit, and I miss you, and the idea of this becoming an everyday part of life is feeling really unappealing at the moment.”

“I get it.” And I did. Sincerely.

But stopping the bad guys and fighting the fight for helpless victims were more important than me and the cold bed I would be leaving at home.

“Anyway,” she said in a hurry, like she couldn't wait to brush the topic away, “what happened? Tell me.”

So, without another moment to spare, I told her about the plain headstone of Tomas Nolan.

It had read nothing but his name in uppercase letters and the dates of his birth and death. Whoever had carved the epitaph didn’t bother to indicate what he’d done with that dash between the days his life had begun and ended, and I guessed maybe that was because whatever he had filled his days with wasn't worth remembering. Or maybe I was looking too deep into it.

The grounds weren't as neatly landscaped as the cemetery Charlie cared for, though I couldn't see a weed in sight around Tomas's plot of land. It had struck me as odd when there seemed to be the odd dandelion here and there poking through the surrounding land.

But what had been even stranger was the freshly laid bouquet of flowers, leaning against the stone.

“Someone probably left them yesterday,” Meg suggested.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But … I don't know. I don't think so.”

Then I told her about the man I'd seen, hurrying from the direction of Tomas's grave.

“So, you think that, by some ridiculous stroke of luck, you just happened to be visiting the same grave on the same day as this random guy?” Meg sounded dubious, and I felt stupid.

“I mean, it's not impossible, right?”

“Well …” She hesitated and pulled in a deep breath I heard through the phone. “No, I guess not, but … it seems … very unlikely.”

“Yeah,” I muttered with a sigh, thinking she was probably right.

Yet …

Something—something—was niggling at me. Tugging at a strand of intuition somewhere in my gut, telling me I wasn't far from finding the guy I was looking for.

Benjamin.

The world erupted around me with a sound of crashing thunder moments before the sky opened and dumped buckets of rain onto the windshield of my car.