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“Are you fucking kidding me?” Carl was still in jail, of this he had no doubt. The judge had been plenty pissed at the former brewmaster and had revoked his bond. Maybe Billy was still suffering from the head injury and had misunderstood what he’d seen? Yeah, because that was likely. “All of them?”
“Yep.” The kid’s eyes were clear and focused. “Saw it myself.”
He shoved the brim of his Sweet Salvation Brewery baseball hat lower on his forehead. “Fuck me running.”
“No thank you.” Billy grinned.
Sean flipped him off. “Smart ass. Come on.”
They hustled through the brewery and out the open loading dock door. Sweet Salvation Brewery had built up their delivery fleet to three trucks, each one of which was parked behind the building. As he stormed toward them, he could see they had sunken down to the rims.
One tire he could understand, but multiple tires on each of the vehicles? That wasn’t an accident, and someone was going to pay, even if Sean had to deliver justice himself. “Call the sheriff’s office.”
“You got it.” Billy took off back inside the brewery.
An angry heat seared him from the toes up, and if he’d looked in a mirror at that moment, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see a twisted, red–faced, bearded, younger version of his father staring back at him.
Alone in the gathering twilight, Sean crisscrossed the gravel rear parking lot, the blood pounding in his ears with every determined step. The security lights clicked on and he spun around.
Billy stood by the switch, the phone to his ear.
Sean waved a hand. “Thanks.”
After getting a thumbs–up from Billy, he turned back to his perusal. A sparkle amid the dusty gray gravel grabbed his attention. He squatted down and picked up the tiny piece of metal.
A nail.
Everything inside him went still, cold, and quiet. Whoever had it in for the brewery wasn’t done wreaking havoc. He glanced back at Billy and his bandaged head. The kid could have been killed or seriously injured. If the truck tires hadn’t lost air pressure so fast in the cool winter air, the nails would have stayed embedded in the tread until the drivers had a blowout while going seventy miles an hour on the highway. He tossed the nail into a bin.
At that moment, he understood better than he ever had in his life the kind of rage that had torn his dad up inside. He looked around and the ground resembled a disco ball, with little silver nails scattered everywhere. “Dammit.”
It only took a few minutes to confirm the same nail circle surrounded the other trucks’ tires. Someone was fucking with the brewery, and they were done trying to hide it.
Good. That would just make finding the asshole easier.
Chapter Twelve
The photo shook in Natalie’s hand as she sat behind her desk. It had been torn it from an old copy of People magazine. The man pictured had to be in his early twenties. Brown, short hair artfully tousled, a surfer’s tan, and brown eyes that kicked her pulse into overdrive even when the man in question wasn’t within touching distance. And, of course, the thin scar just above one eyebrow.
Sean, her Sean, wasn’t Sean O’Dell at all.
The missing paperwork.
The W–2 he still hadn’t completed.
The way he never talked about family or his past or about anything much at all.
Her stomach sank under the weight of the realization, and she reached for her talisman. The round pearls felt warm to the touch as her fingertips slid up and down the strand around her neck.
She glanced at the clock. Only an hour ago, everything had been right with the world. And then Rupert Crowley with Hollywood and Vines Reports had strolled into her office and turned everything upside down faster than a tsunami.
“This can’t be right.” Her voice shook and she pushed the photo across her desk.
The reporter sitting across from her reclaimed the photo and slid it into a manila folder. “I’m afraid, Ms. Sweet, it is.”
Her fingers danced across her pearl necklace as her brain scrambled to put the pieces together, to force the story to make sense.
Sean was a movie star. Not just that, he’d been a damn good one. His face had been on the front of most major papers when he’d disappeared. Some said drug overdose. Others speculated he’d lost his mind. The American Inquirer even had a report that he’d been the Misery–style victim of an overzealous female fan.
