“He isn’t acting like himself,” Maria confirmed. Now her pale blue eyes had gone dark with sudden worry. Yes. She did get it. “If he says the wrong thing to Caity, she might fire him. It would kill Mase to lose his job, and Cait, too, if she had to let one of her guys go. No, no, no.”
“The radio— that’s why I need your radio.”
“Dammi un secundo. Wait here.”
Instead of entering her room, Maria spun around, her long dark hair a curtain that whipped behind her as she ran down the hall. Tess began to nibble on her thumbnail, realized what she was doing and let her hand fall to her side.
One second turned into a minute, then two before Maria came jogging back. She carried her communicator in her right hand.
“I had it with me in the kitchen when I was prepping dinner earlier,” she explained. “I already buzzed the station. Sly told me that the sheriff went home. So I tried Caity, but no answer. Come on. I’ll take you there. If he goes to the station first, we might be able to beat him to her place. And we can always try buzzing her again in the car.”
Tess just managed to snap her seatbelt closed before Maria sped off in her coupe. The roads were empty and Maria drove even more recklessly than her brother. Tess wa
s beginning to think her overwhelming anxiety had rubbed off on Maria until both of them were racing against Mason’s cruiser.
Maria wanted to make sure her old friend kept his job. Tess… she wanted to make sure that no one else got hurt because of her.
No sign of Mason as they drove. Normally, the intense speed would’ve caused Tess’s heart to lodge in her throat. Since she was so busy trying to page Caitlin De Angelis over and over again, she barely noticed how fast Maria was going.
The buzzes went unanswered. That only made the feeling that something bad was going to happen even worse. Tess caught herself gnawing nervously on her thumbnail again and let it go.
Just how far was the sheriff’s house from Ophelia?
She had to trust that Maria knew where she was going. Hamlet was small, and in the handful of days she’d been stuck there, she’d only seen a fraction of what it had to offer. When they pulled up in front of a quaint pale blue house on the corner, she didn’t recognize it. She turned in her seat, gripping the seatbelt strap.
There. A police cruiser. Yes!
Maria leaned on her horn, one continuous squeal, as she skid to a fast stop along the curb, leaving burning rubber in her wake. Only one cruiser was parked there. She came within an inch of the bumper, killing the engine before they both climbed out of the coupe. Tess tossed Maria’s radio onto the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her as she stepped onto the grass.
“Is this her house?” she asked.
“Yes. And that’s her cruiser,” Maria said, pointing at the other car. “No sign of Mason, though.”
A sigh of relief. The tight knot in her stomach relaxed the tiniest fraction. It felt good to be wrong. “Maybe he didn’t come here after all. Maybe I—”
“What the hell is going on?”
Tess gulped. The sheriff sounded pissed. Now that she saw for herself that Mason hadn’t come to confront De Angelis, she wanted to get the hell out of there.
She grabbed Maria's sleeve, tugged it once. “Okay, she's fine, still no Mason and I definitely overreacted. Can we go now?”
“Shh. It'll be fine. Let me talk to Cait.”
Moving in front of Tess as if blocking her, Maria turned toward the open door. Caitlin De Angelis stood there, a scowl crossing her pointed face, her red hair dark with damp as it hung in heavy clumps down her back, barely brushed. A towel was in her hand. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a flowy yellow blouse that made her seem even smaller somehow.
“Maria, was that you honking the horn? What gives?”
She didn’t even wait for an answer. Raising her towel up to her head, she wrapped the wet strands of hair, vigorously rubbing at it in an attempt to dry it.
“Jesus, can’t a girl take a shower in peace? My radio has been buzzing nonstop these last ten minutes. I finally answer one of the calls, and it’s Sly telling me that you’re worried about Mase of all people. And now you’re killing me with the horn. What the hell?”
“Sly, he’s right, Caity,” Maria told her. Whether on purpose or not, she shielded Tessa’s smaller frame as she drew all of Caitlin’s annoyance her way. “Something set Mase off, now there’s a good chance he’s coming to confront you. We don’t want that to happen. No. He’s a good deputy, and a good man. We all know he’ll regret it if he loses his cool. We wanted to stop him before he did.”
“We?” Caitlin finished with her towel, tossing it onto the porch chair before she stormed down the couple of steps that led down to the walkway. “I don’t get it, why would my deputy want to— oh.”
Her thin lips pulled into a sneer. She’d finally noticed Tessa tucked behind Lucas’s sister.
“You.”