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“What’s your police brain thinking?”
“Either, something happened recently that got Matt all fired up and sent him down here like a late vigilante—”
“Or?”
Juliette grabbed another bag of candy. “Or he wants the jewels for himself.”
The sun had set a long time ago and shadows chased me through the kitchen that smelled like the gumbo we’d had for dinner.
There was a plastic container of leftovers in the fridge and I could grab it and take it out to him as easily as not. But I chose not.
He didn’t deserve gumbo.
I found him in the dark twilight, working on the last of the greenhouse, carefully sliding glass panes into place. His back rippled, the small muscles of his arms flexed and shifted. He had lost weight—the side of his face that I could see was thin. His cheekbones looked like they could cut steaks.
Not that I cared, but seriously, we didn’t need him passing out or worse.
“You should eat,” I said and he jumped, nearly dropping a pane on his foot.
“Christ,” he breathed. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, and tried very hard to convince myself that I didn’t want to touch him. Didn’t want to stroke back the sweaty hunk of hair that fell over his forehead, practically into his eyes.
He needed a haircut.
Not. That. I. Care.
“I have a question,” I said.
He grunted, picking up another glass square, unwrapping it from its protective shell. His hands were raw, and a scrape along his palm was bleeding, probably going to get infected.
Not. That. I. Care.
“Are you here because you want the jewels for yourself?”
That got his attention and he straightened to his full height.
“No,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving smears of dirt and blood. “I don’t care about the gems.”
“Where are your gloves?” I snapped, angry that he was dumb enough to do this work without protection and angry that I cared.
“They have a hole.”
“Get a new pair.”
His lips twisted slightly. “Yes, boss.”
He slid the glass home.
“So if you’re not here for the diamond and ruby, why come seven years after the fact?”
He bent and picked up a broken pane and cursed under his breath before carefully setting the pieces into what I assumed was the junk pile. Concrete, glass, bits of brick and stacks of ruin, like terrible, shattered buildings.
His silence stretched and pulled until I snapped. “You lied your way into our home. We have a right to know.”
He breathed something I didn’t hear as he bent to pick up another pane.
“What?”
“Justice!” he yelled, glass shattering at our feet. I jumped at the sudden fury in his voice.
“Dad didn’t do the crime alone, his hands weren’t the only ones dirty.”
“But it’s seven years too late—”
“Guilt should be punished.”
The courtyard rang with his voice and I stepped back, stunned. Something else was at work here, it was all over his face. It changed the way the air around him smelled like sulfur and blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice suspiciously calm. But I could see, in the moonlight, his heartbeat throbbing in his neck, as if he’d been running for miles.
“Are you okay?” I hated myself for asking.
“Sure.” An idiot could see he was lying.
I had questions. Plenty of them. A thin river of concern running through them all but, finally, I decided to listen to myself.
I don’t care.
I walked to the house but stopped at the door and tore chunks of chipped white paint from the door frame, flicking them away with my thumb.
“Are you married?” I asked.
“No,” he said, his voice thick and solid.
“I can find out if you’re lying.”
“Then why ask?”
I rested my head against the screen door, hating that the worst thing I’d ever done had brought me Katie, the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“I’m not married,” he said, softly.
“Good.” I pushed the word past the ball of sick in my throat. I stepped through the door and stopped again, sympathy and a dozen other things I didn’t want to examine too closely stopping my feet.
“There’s gumbo in the fridge,” I said and listened to the humming silence behind me for a moment and went inside.
It was easy, in the end.
I sat in my dark ridiculous bed, moonlight splashed across my lap and the computer cradled there, my finger poised over the enter key.
Matt Woods typed into the search engine.
No matter what he said, Matt was absolutely not okay. I didn’t want to see it, but it was like watching someone self-destruct right in front of my eyes. Something was eating him, from the inside out.
Guilt deserves to be punished.
I had the terrible suspicion that Matt was using my courtyard as punishment.
But for what?
Without a second thought, I hit the enter key.
“Matt Woods receives award,” I muttered, reading the files. “Woods Takes On Downtown. Architect Has ‘Elemental’ Vision For The City. Contractor begins work on billion-dollar rejuvenation.”
