Surviving Ice (Burying Water 4)

“Just . . .” He sighs. “Keep an eye on her. You’re right. We don’t want her turning up dead right now.”

“Or ever.”

“Right.”

“And your guys?”

“They’ll stay away from you.” He’s awful quick to say that.

“If I see them again—”

“Just find that fucking video and everyone will be happy and safe,” Bentley snaps.

The phone line goes dead. I toss it aside and stretch out on my bed. The center caves under my weight, but I barely give it any thought, my mind reeling over tonight’s developments, which veered in a much less enjoyable direction than they were supposed to.

As long as that videotape is out there, Ivy’s not safe, that much is clear. Tonight, Bentley’s other guys trashed her house for no good reason. I already searched that place top to bottom and told Bentley as much. He must be under a lot of stress here, to undermine me like that, to not trust me after bringing me here explicitly because I’m the only one he trusts. He’s not thinking rationally. Which means that tomorrow . . . who’s to stop him from telling these guys to go straight to Ivy?

They’re not getting their hands on her. I won’t allow that.

I need to find this goddamn tape.

The willow tree that my mom planted when I was fourteen is gone, replaced by a generic young maple. I wonder if the willow died. There’s no way my mom decided to cut it down—she loved it and all its messy tendrils.

Everything else about the house is exactly the same, except the new windows. The stucco is the same pale yellow, the front door the same stark white that my dad paints every spring to erase the scuffs. The property is still manicured to perfection.

I haven’t laid eyes on my family’s home in five years, and now I sit parked across the street, with a coffee in hand, a necessity after only two hours of sleep. Something compelled me to take the long way around and see my parents’ home this morning. Maybe to see them.

It’s seven twenty-five and the daily newspaper still rests on the stoop. I expect the door to open any moment, and for Captain George Riker to step out and collect his morning reading. He’ll sit at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice and read it from cover to cover, even if it takes him all morning.

Unless, maybe, he’s changed. Maybe enough years have passed after retiring from a thirty-year career in the navy that he’s learned to relax a bit. Maybe he doesn’t polish his shoes every day and make my mom iron his golf shirts. Maybe he doesn’t still get together with his guys on Tuesday nights for poker.

Maybe he wouldn’t look at his son through the eyes of a disappointed father.

At exactly eight a.m., the door creaks open and my father steps out in his pressed golf shirt and pressed khaki shorts, his hair still cropped short but nearly all white now. He was thirty-five and halfway done with his career before he met my mother. I inhale sharply, both wistfulness and resigned sadness swelling inside my chest at the sight of him. I used to idolize him, standing tall and proud in his uniform.

He takes a leisurely glance around the neighborhood, waves at Mr. Shaw two doors over, who’s watering his flowers, and then stoops to collect the paper on the welcome mat and disappears inside.

No . . . He’s still the same hard-nosed man.

Before I can think too much about it, I crank the engine and pull away, determined to find that damning video evidence today.

TWENTY-ONE

IVY

I snort into my coffee mug, my eyes still glued to the single text Sebastian sent me last night. I responded, “You too,” but he never answered. “Are you kidding? He’s not coming back.”

“Of course he is,” Dakota says in that mellow, singsong voice of hers. She’s the same from the moment she wakes up until the moment she goes to bed. If I didn’t like her so much, I’d find it highly irritating. “Here. Have a breakfast bar. I just baked them.” She holds a plate of squares out in front of me.

I eye them warily from my wicker chair. Pistachios, sunflower seeds, raisins . . . they look safe.

“Oh, relax.” She rolls her eyes. “I made them for the people at the shelter.”

I smirk, helping myself to one. Dakota’s unconventional, but even she wouldn’t drug homeless people with hash.

My gaze shifts around her rustic greenhouse, an attachment that runs along the back of the home she rents. It’s a simple frame of wooden timbers and hard plastic above and glass windows that make the sides and back. Beneath my feet are flagstones. And all around are plants. Vibrant purple orchids and blooming cacti, lemon trees with fat, yellow fruits hanging from them, even though I don’t think lemons are in season right now. Dozens of colorful planters rest on the floor and on tiered shelves. Giant trees form a canopy in the corners, vines climbing up the walls. It’s a secluded jungle in the heart of San Francisco, decorated with Christmas lights and countless chimes dangling from the beams of the ceiling.

And off to the side, hidden by innocent, floppy tropical green leaves, is her little marijuana grow-op.

“It’s really nice in here. Peaceful,” I offer.

“Isn’t it?” She beams, her almond-shaped eyes rolling over the space in wonder as she tightens her afghan to her shoulders and curls up in the wicker chair opposite me with her own coffee. Dakota has always been a natural beauty—she has Native American roots, with thick black hair that she keeps long, dark olive skin, and slender but supple curves to prove it. She wears very little makeup, if any, and in all the years I’ve known her I don’t think I’ve seen a single pimple mar her complexion. “So, what do you have planned for today?”

“Well . . .” I sigh. “I have to let the painters into the shop and call the insurance company about the house.”

“After all that you’ve been through, now this.” She offers me a sympathetic smile. “Is it beginning to sink in yet?”

I nod, avoiding an answer with another sip of coffee.

Helping herself to a square, she offers, “You can stay for as long as you need to. You know I don’t mind. And I’d rather you did. That area your house is in isn’t the safest. Clearly. I don’t like that you’re alone over there.”

I wasn’t alone. Not last night. Had those jerks not ransacked my house, I would probably be tangled up in the sheets with Sebastian right now. “Thanks. I may take you up on that.” That house isn’t fit for living in at the moment, anyway, even if I did want to stay there. “I’m going to get my things, and my car.” I glance at my phone. It’s eight fifteen. Sebastian will be here soon. If he’s coming.

He’s not coming.

“So, how did you meet this guy, anyway?”

Leave it to Dakota to change topics from grieving my murdered uncle to the guy I picked up with one sentence. “Someone referred him. He showed up three days ago, wanting a piece done on his rib cage. ” I chuckle, remembering the afternoon, how angry I was. “I turned him down at first, but then he helped me with a rusted bolt, and I felt guilty.”

“Hmm . . . So you gave him what he wanted?” There’s the mischievous twinkle in her eye that I saw that first day I met her back in Sisters. I was a high school sophomore and she was a junior, and both of us were skipping class to enjoy a sunny fall day on the grassy hill behind the school with our sketchbooks.