Paranoid(10)

Brit Watkins, one of Rachel’s high school classmates, was working the counter. Tall and slim, she wore her blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. Large gold hoops dangling from her ears, a baby bump visible beneath her apron, she glanced up from filling a cup. “Hey, Rach,” Brit said and slid the cup over to the man in line in front of Rachel, a guy in his seventies with a silvery beard-shadow. He paid for his purchase with exact change, then left another quarter in the tip jar and moved aside to doctor his cup with cream and some kind of sugar substitute.

“What’ll it be?” Brit asked.

“How about a sixteen-ounce coffee.”

“You got it.” Brit’s smile didn’t quite touch her eyes, but then it never had. Not since that night. Maybe not before. Brit was one of the kids who’d been in the factory that night, and like most of the people who’d been at the scene of the tragedy, she was a little reserved around the woman who’d been charged with killing her half brother.

Rachel nodded. “And a maple bar and chocolate donut with sprinkles.”

Brit arched an eyebrow.

“For the kids.” She smiled. “But don’t judge me.”

“Breakfast of champions,” Brit said, one side of her mouth lifting as she poured the coffee, then bagged the pastries.

“They’ve had a rough week. No—that’s not really true. Their lives are pure bliss. I’ve had a rough week.”

Brit actually chuckled. A rarity. “I get it. Teenagers. I’ve got four on the payroll, if you count Mickey, who never seems to show up for his shift. So . . . here ya go.” She handed over a white sack and Rachel’s change.

Rachel dropped the coins into the open tip jar out of habit. “You’re going to Lila’s tonight, right? For the meeting.”

“What? Wait. No.” Brit glanced at a calendar hanging over a bookcase laden with ceramic cups. “Oh, darn. Really? Is that tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shoot! I should never have let Lila rope me into it,” she said, her forehead puckering in consternation. “I guess Pete will have to handle the kids tonight.” She blew out a long sigh. “It’s just I’m so tired, all the time. I get in here before five in the morning five days a week, and with this one”—she tapped her protruding belly—“I’m always tired.” Another sigh as the front door opened and a woman dressed in heels, a slim skirt, and a leather jacket entered.

“Are you coming?” Rachel asked.

“Not much choice. I said I’d cater the event and I will. Pete had a fit that I volunteered, but once I’d agreed, I really couldn’t back out. It was last year and now”—she glanced down at her protruding belly—“an ‘oops.’”

Rachel knew all about Brit’s surprise pregnancy. Her husband, Pete, was thrilled, in search of that ever-elusive son after three girls. Brit? Not so much.

“I can’t believe Lila talked me into catering the thing. Geez, why did I agree to it?” Brit wiped the steam wand of the espresso machine with a vengeance. “I should have my head examined.”

“She can be very persuasive.”

“And then some,” Brit said with a snort.

Lila. Forever the enigma. Once Rachel’s best friend. Mother of Luke’s son. And now married to Cade’s father. Which made her Rachel’s ex–stepmother-in-law and created a situation that was beyond weird or “sick,” as her son said. In Rachel’s estimation, Dylan wasn’t all that far off the mark. Six years after graduation Lila had eloped with Charles Ryder, a widower who was twenty-five years older than she. Somehow, the marriage had lasted, even as Rachel and Cade’s had foundered.

She didn’t want to think about that.

Ever.





CHAPTER 3


Cade threw out an arm, fingers scrabbling on the sheets as he searched for Rachel and came up empty. Half asleep, he opened a bleary eye just as the reality of his life surfaced. He was alone. In his bed. In his condo. “Crap.”

How long would it be for it to really sink in that he was divorced, that his ex-wife had moved on, and that he had better get the hell over her? He’d screwed up and he was paying for it. Every damned day.

“Son of a . . .” He rolled off the bed, a twenty-year-old double he’d shared with Rachel before they’d bought the newer queen sized. That one he’d left at the house with his wife when she’d kicked him out. This saggy one he’d scrounged from the garage.

It was time to do something about that, too.

A new mattress, a new life.

Yeah, right.

Stretching and hearing his spine pop, he walked through his condo and noted the open laptop in the living room, where he’d left on a light. His TV was still tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station, the volume barely audible. Scattered around his recliner were three days’ worth of newspapers, and on the table, several case files he’d been reading. Then his gaze landed on the half-full bottle of scotch and the empty glass sitting next to it.

No wonder his head pounded.

“Stupid,” he told himself as he picked up the bottle and smelled the heady scent of the liquor before recapping the bottle and hauling it into his small kitchen, where he jammed it into the cupboard over the refrigerator. He should pour it out. Take away the temptation, but he didn’t. Just as he hadn’t for the past couple of years. At first, after the breakup, he’d drunk to forget, or to rebel or to dull the senses. Something he’d never wanted to analyze too closely. Lately, though, it had become more than that. Not just a drink he savored in the evening after a long day’s work, but more like three or four or more. At every physical he only copped to having one or two a week, but he figured the docs saw through that.