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Part of Lucas wanted to remind Rick that Maria wasn’t quite the sheriff’s wife yet. Since getting engaged last May, Maria had been spending most of her free time planning a Christmas wedding. It had been her dream from when she was a little girl, otherwise he was sure that Sly would’ve already had her standing in front of the altar at the Hamlet Church. After waiting four years to finally pop the question, he’d accepted that he’d have to wait another six months to say “I do”.
That’s why he didn’t. Because hedidknow that Sly was doing everything he could to give Maria the wedding of her dreams, Lucas let that pass.
“Then there was that creepy writing on the back of the card…” Rick added. “So it’s not like he thought you had anything to do with Maria’s disappearance, but you gotta see it from his angle. The woman he loves most in the world is gone, her car later found abandoned near the gulley… your business card left on her coffee table next to her paints… it messed him up.”
Lucas understood. When Sly mentioned Maria’s coupe being found by the gulley, his first instinct was to suspect the worst. After all, how many people have already died, falling into the great, big hole that greeted outsiders?
How many people have Lucas led to their graves there?
So, yes, Lucas understood why Sly had waited. The sheriff had needed to search the gulley to make sure himself that it hadn’t claimed Maria as it’s next victim, and then he must’ve wondered just what Lucas’s business card was doing, left behind like a calling card with—
Wait.
Lucas turned his head, taking in Rick’s stony profile. “Creepy writing?” he echoed. “What do you mean, creepy writing?”
Rick’s eyes darted back at him. “Didn’t Sly tell you about the business card?”
“The business card, yes. One of mine. But the sheriff didn’t mention anything about there being writing on the back.”
A shadow danced across Rick’s rugged face, there and gone again. It didn’t matter. Lucas saw it, and he knew that there was more to it than the message scrawled on the back simply being ‘creepy’.
“What did it say?”
“I don’t—”
He kept his voice even as he repeated himself. “What did it say, Ricky?”
You can take the man out of Hamlet, but you can’t take Hamlet out of the man. Both of them proved that. Rick Hart might have left for a decade before he came back, and Lucas was currently only visiting, but as they met each others’ stare, it was like they were kids again. Lucas was dating Caitlin Scott because she was obsessed with him and there was no one better, while Ricky Hart was the big, quiet guy in their class who had the hots for Caity but not the nerve to ever tell her so.
Caitlin was gone. Lucas had Tessa now, Rick had a family with his own beloved wife, but in this cruiser? They were seventeen again, with Lucas the leader of their friend group, demanding loyalty and obedience with the other kids their age.
Back then, Rick didn’t like him. Lucas was sure that, deep down, he still didn’t. He tolerated him because Tessa and Grace got along, and because Lucas was the one to save Grace when Dorian Reid tried to attack her in her own home.
Did the deputy suspect the darkness inside of him? After seeing so much war and combat, did Rick look into Lucas’s icy blue eyes and see death staring back?
He didn’t know, but he wasn’t the least bit surprised when Rick nodded, then grabbed the communicator resting in the console between them.
Holding up one finger, singling Lucas to wake, he engaged the radio.
After a few chimes, someone on the other end of the line answered with a chirp, “HSD. How can I help you?”
“Willie? It’s Rick.”
“What’s goin’ on, sug?” A crackle, then with a hopeful note to her voice, the older woman asked, “Any update on Maria?”
“Wish I had better news for you, Wil, but not yet. We’re still looking for her, though, and we’ll find her. In fact, I got the old doc with me now, giving me another pair of eyes while I drive.”
“Lucas? You got Lucas there? Hey, Luc, sweetie. I’m so glad you’re back in town. It’s like old times again, even if they ain’t good times.”
Rick angled the communicator toward Lucas so that he could speak into it. “You can say that again,” he said. “But Ricky’s right. I’m going to find my sister and everything’s going to be much better than it was.”
Especially when he found out who dared to take her—and he made them pay for it.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Willie said, and Lucas could just see the woman with her heavily made-up eyes behind her trademark cat’s eye glasses casting her gaze toward the ceiling, looking at Heaven. “But if you haven’t found our Maria yet, what’s goin’ on, Ricky darlin’? I wasn’t expecting you on this line.”
The big deputy winced. “I had it on, Willie. Scout’s honor.”
“I hope you would, though you and I both know you might be a Marine, Ricky Hart, but you were never a scout.”
