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So I’ll handle this alone.
But maybe...
Well, maybe I can just ask Alaska for advice.
He works construction. He’s ex-military. He was a freaking SEAL. There’s no one better to tell me what to do with this.
He can point me to the right equipment I’d need to theoretically find a small plane at the bottom of a lake and go exploring. That’s all. I won’t get him involved.
Also, I’d better hope his money plus the new cashflow covers renting scuba gear.
Because I can’t let this rest.
And I can’t keep living my life on Paisley Lockwood’s whims.
Even in death, Dad found a way to call to me.
How can I not answer?
How could I turn down a sliver of a chance to end this forever?
6
Fool’s Gold (Alaska)
No matter how many times we change homes, one thing stays sacrosanct in the Charter household—breakfast.
It’s been a morning ritual ever since Elijah was old enough to eat solid food. I’ve always done most of the cooking, but some days when I was busy with work, it’d be sandwiches or takeout for lunch or dinner.
Not breakfast.
Breakfast is as permanent and sure as the sunrise.
My days don’t feel right if I don’t start ’em standing over the stove with several skillets popping away, filling the kitchen with the glories of frying hash browns, sizzling bacon, eggs sputtering with molten cheese.
Sometimes my son helps—but the kitchen in the rented cabin is a little tight for a man my size and a growing teenager, so he’s perched on a stool at the island, half watching me and half messing around with Instagram filters for his latest photoset.
“Hey, Dad,” he says a little breathlessly. “I just landed my five hundredth follower!”
“Yeah?” I glance over my shoulder, watching him while keeping one eye on the timer. The buttermilk biscuits are due out any second, and I hate burning the edges. “I’m proud of you, dude. You don’t mind if I check these people out, do you?”
He stops, sighs, and gives me an aggrieved look.
He’s still in his pajamas, an oversized t-shirt and shorts, bedhead sticking up everywhere. I hold in a laugh. He looks less like the patient sufferer he wants to be and more like a very exasperated baby chick with his feathers ruffled.
“You don’t have to check all of my followers. I’ve been careful,” he says.
“I can promise you I do,” I reply smoothly. “You’re twelve years old. It wouldn’t be the first time weirdos online sent inappropriate DMs. I just want to know what kind of accounts are following you, and why they’re interested in your photos.”
Eli groans, rolling his eyes. “Okay, okay. I’ll change my password back.”
I snap my head around to eye him.
“You changed your password?”
“Um...it was a security thing. It prompted me!” he rushes out.
“Uh-huh.”
Real slick. Like I wouldn’t change my password if I was twelve and trying to avoid my overprotective dad supervising my internet fun.
Sighing, I shake my head and go back to pushing eggs around the skillet. “Just text me the new password. If it was a security thing, it probably won’t let you change it back to the old one.”
That earns me a scowl and a stuck-out tongue, barely glimpsed from the corner of my eye. I turn around and secretly grin as I hear him tapping on his phone to text me.
The sound that chimes next definitely isn’t my notification tone, though.
The doorbell.
I’m not expecting company. The very last thing I’m expecting, when I turn around, is to see Felicity Randall waiting outside on the front porch, framed as pretty as a picture in the glass inset of the door.
Oh, hell.
Yes, I’m painfully aware that I’m standing here in pajama pants, shirtless except for a damned apron, probably looking every inch the mess of divorced bachelor man I am. Divorced roughneck bachelor man, with my tattoos out and literal battle scars showing.
Meanwhile, she’s put together like a dream, teasing and svelte in a simple but lovely off-the-shoulder blouse. It glows in a shade of soft blue that brings out the rich blue-violet glow of her eyes.
Her hair tumbles over her bare shoulders in cinnamon ripples.
Her jeans hug her curves and long legs, heeled leather boots giving her an extra inch in height.
A battered leather purse hangs from one arm, her fingers wound lightly around the strap.
An first glance, yeah, she looks like pure vixen sin. Delicate pointed features, heavy-lidded eyes, the low sweep of thick lashes.
Take a closer look, and she’s more like a fawn.
Still delicate, strong, long and slender and all legs, but less sly and more wary, waiting to bolt the second something startles her.
Is that the skillet popping or my blood?
I wonder who hurt this girl. And why?
I’ll never get why people go out of their way to make someone else suffer for no goddamned reason, and I can’t imagine Felicity doing anything to provoke those shitty rumors.
