The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

“Right now, a team is going in to capture a man named Bob Welsh and to rescue his two hostages. I’m how I am right now because my daughter is on a date with a boy whose sister was murdered, and I’m waiting for a call from the FBI to tell me your situation is over.”

Now, I was panting.

He slid the pad of his thumb under my eye again and leaned slightly toward me.

“Now, Larue, I need you to eat your dinner and drink your wine and keep your shit. Celeste will come home messed up, because she likes this boy and she’s too good of a person, she takes on hurt and it doesn’t do her favors. So she’s gonna need us. And you being free is going to tweak her, because she’s terrified you’re gonna leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.”

“They’re sure it’s the guy?”

“Yes.”

“Your profile,” I deduced.

“Partly.”

“Don’t be modest.”

“Shit like this is always a team. That’s why Dern is such a fuckup. Or one of the reasons.”

“Right.”

“Your husbands?”

I just stared at him.

He gave it to me.

“They were weak. They were stupid. And I can guarantee they’ve spent the years in between putting a lot of effort into ignoring that voice in their heads that’s telling them the truth. They made the biggest mistake in their lives, losing you.”

“What’s happening here?” I whispered.

“You’re feelin’ me out because you don’t wanna get hurt again. I’m feeling you out because I don’t wanna get hurt again, and I can’t have my kids dragged through shit like that.”

“You’re into me?”

His heavy brows knitted.

“You’re into me,” I mumbled.

“There’s also the sitch that I’m getting paid to look out for you, which is why my sons are taking turns on your couch, because if I had a turn, I wouldn’t be on your couch. Distractions like that lead to mistakes that I’d never be okay making. With you, absolutely not gonna happen.”

Oh my.

“This guy is getting caught tonight, Larue.”

He said that like a warning, his hand sliding away from my face.

I took it another way entirely.

That was the reason why I smiled.

Nineteen

Nervous

Later that night, we were on Bohannan’s pier for two reasons.

One, his daughter’s curfew was soon.

Two, he had a loveseat Adirondack chair on his deck.

Just around the hook of the trees, I could see the lights of my house reflected on the mist that had formed on the lake, precisely like I could see the lights of his when I was on my pier in the evenings.

Any further sign of humanity was much farther away.

“I know it’s fall, and cold, but it’s weird that those two rentals haven’t been booked the entire time I’ve been here,” I remarked.

“It isn’t, considering I own them, and I cancelled the bookings when you came to town.”

I was sitting beside him, not nestled into him as I would’ve liked to be after his spectacular speeches during dinner, but he had his arm around my shoulders and there was closeness.

I didn’t want to mess with that, so I twisted only my neck to look at him.

“What?”

“I own everything at this end of the lake. As the road goes, five miles from end to end. Except your house.”

“Holy crap.”

“Came home to MP because it was a good place to raise my family. But the idea of it cleared through the block I had about it when my dad drank himself to death and left me all of this.”

I had no idea.

I communicated that by saying, “Whoa.”

“Yeah. Long time ago, he got drunk, did it while playing poker, was on a losing streak, bet your place to Fred Nance. They didn’t like each other when they started the game. They liked each other a lot less when it was over. Dad tried unsuccessfully for over fifty years to get that land and house back. Fred wasn’t gonna have it. To the point he had it in his will that after he died and that lot was sold, since he had no wife and no kids and wasn’t a big fan of the rest of his family, it’d go to the state of Washington before he’d let me buy it.”

“That’s one mighty grudge,” I noted.

“Dad had been dead over a decade, and I did nothing to the man to deserve being cut out like that, so…yeah.”

“Did your dad do…other things like that?”

“This land was his dad’s land. And his dad’s before. And his father before that. The people who owned it before didn’t own it, according to white man ways, since they were Native Americans. That’s how far back it goes. Dad didn’t quit drinking. But he did learn his lesson about poker.”

“Well, at least that’s good.”

And it was.

What he said next was bad.

“Beat the shit outta me, which was okay, seein’ as once he started doing that, he quit beatin’ the shit outta Mom. Problem with that was, she could take it, but she wasn’t a huge fan of him dishin’ it out on me. So she hid baseball bats and knives around the house. Meant when he’d get in the mood, a weapon wouldn’t be too far off, and apparently, a woman sober as a judge and determined to make it so you don’t lay your hands on her boy makes even a drunk stand down. I cannot tell you how many times I came home from school and his shit was out on the deck. She loved him, though, and took him back. Then she loved him and didn’t take him back. He lived in a shack that way for years until she died.”