20. Pumpkin

TWENTY

Pumpkin

“This is humiliating,” Jess muttered.

“That’s two hundred dollars, Jesse!” Madden crowed.

Jesse handed her the one hundred and fifty dollars of Monopoly money he had left. Then he flicked the top hat piece off the board, plopped back into the sofa in defeat and declared, “I’m out.”

Madden giggled.

“You’re vicious, and I think that dice is weighted,” Jesse accused on a tease.

Madden giggled again and cried. “It’s your board!”

Jesse cracked a smile. “Oh. Right. Well, whatever. When you own all of Misted Pines and I’m late on rent, remember what a good loser I was.”

Madden burst into gales of laughter.

Rus grinned at Lucinda at the same time wondering if this might be a good read of the future for Madden, successful Misted Pines tycoon.

Lucinda smiled back, knowing it was.

They’d been playing Monopoly for an hour and a half.

Rus had purposefully lost half an hour ago, not a difficult feat since the Bonner women were relentless.

However, he did this because he wasn’t into board games seeing as, when he was growing up, not allowed TV or a ton of other activities kids should be allowed to do, they played a lot board games.

Now, he hated them.

Since Jesse was out, the only ones left were Lucinda and her daughter, both with huge piles of money in front of them.

Obviously, Lucinda had brought Madden for dinner, and Rus was pleased she did.

He was because Madden had lost Brittanie, and more than usual, she needed her mom. Also because Rus loved watching them together, seeing as they were so damned cute. Last, he knew it was Lucinda’s indication she was putting no pressure on him to take what was happening between them further when he had other things he should be thinking about.

And her understanding his need to focus meant a lot to him.

Oh yeah.

And, since she brought her daughter, he’d learned the important fact she was insanely competitive, so was her girl, which was important to know.

“Call it a draw?” Lucinda asked Madden.

Madden brought her hands up in front of her and twiddled her fingers together, a move akin to what Rus had seen her mother do a couple of days ago.

“No, we’re in it until the bitter end,” Madden announced.

Watching this, Rus thought Disney had missed the boat.

They shouldn’t have been focusing on the singing, dancing fairy princesses.

They should show young girls how awesome it was to be the cunning queen.

On this thought, he felt something strange and looked to Delphine, who had her eyes aimed at the kitchen.

The expression on her face told him what he’d see even before he peered over his shoulder to follow her gaze.

Jace had opted out of the game but had hung with them until he’d wandered to the kitchen with his dad, after Bohannan had done what Rus had done, and successfully lost early.

Jace was now walking out of the kitchen toward the doors to the back deck, Bohannan with a face full of worry watching him go.

That night, Rus had found it surprising they’d all known Delphine for what amounted to a short time, considering she was so close to Celeste, it seemed she was her mother. And she doted in a loving, shovel-a-lot-of-shit way on Jesse and Jason, which also appeared like she was the proud mom of two grown men.

Part of Rus’s job was to get a bead on people and places. But if he’d walked in this house with no information, he would have told you Bohannan and Delphine had been married for thirty years and had three great kids.

Delphine being perfectly in tune to what Bohannan was right then perfectly in tune to said it all.

Rus shot Lucinda a look, glanced through a concerned Celeste and Jesse, who had his eyes to the back door and a muscle jumping in his cheek, both of them clearly having decided to give Jace space, and made a decision.

He rose from his chair.

“Excuse me,” he murmured.

He took his beer and headed outside.

The air was chill in that wet way that made a little cold seem biting.

Jace was on the end of the back deck, staring into a heavy fog, which clung to the lake so thick it almost cloaked it, and it encroached toward the house, so all Jace had to do was step off the deck and he’d disappear in it.

Rus came to stand next to him.

“That’s a lot of fog,” he noted.

“Hot springs,” Jace replied. “In the summer, smooth as glass and you can see from here to the other end of the lake, which is a hike. Minute it gets cold, though, the warm off the water hits the air…” He took a drag from his beer, swallowed, and explained, “Misted Pines.”

Absolutely Misted Pines.

“That’s got to be a lot of hot springs,” Rus remarked.

“That’s what everyone says,” Jace replied. “The good, we could swim right now, and it’d feel like summer. The bad, mist hides shit, so if they drained this lake, the bottom is probably covered end to end in bones.”

Another indication of the lore this town carried.

“Harry told me there were stories,” Rus shared.

“Yeah. He tell you of the buried treasure?”

Of course there was buried treasure.

“Nope, he failed to mention that.”

Jace jerked up his chin.

“One of our ancestors buried it somewhere close to here. Jesse says we should take a break, go hunting for it. I’m not in the mood, but it’d be good if we found it. Honest to God, people these days are so fucked up, it’s a wonder we’re not always chasing assholes off our land who are obsessed with finding it.”

Treasure hunting was a big deal, so that was a wonder.

Though the gate and fence, and the three very serious-looking men who lived on the property—because he learned that night Jace and Jess had homes on it, in other words, the Bohannan compound was a true compound—might have something to do with keeping people away.

“DB Cooper is a big thing up here,” Jace declared, seemingly out of the blue. “They have festivals and conventions. This guy was carrying a bomb, he hijacked a plane, probably scared the shit out of the flight staff, demanded money, then disappeared into the night. After that, they made him a folk hero. Said he stuck it to the man. Like that money he demanded, and got, wasn’t taxpayer money. I mean, the people were the ones this dick stole from, and somehow, he’s twisted into a hero so big, decades have passed, and people are still obsessed with him. They admire him, wear T-shirts with the artist’s rendering and have podcasts talking about him. When, bottom line, he’s an asshole and a criminal who put people in danger solely for his own ends.”

Rus couldn’t argue that.

He didn’t know why Jace was talking about it, but he couldn’t argue it.

“I hope, when he jumped, he slammed right into a mountain,” Jace said. “Died right there. Not only because that’d serve him right, but because it’d serve all those morons right to be obsessed with a dead man who didn’t get away with shit.”

And Rus couldn’t argue that either.

He was worried Jace had brought up Cooper because many also twisted killers into heroes, Ray Andrews being one. Not a hero, as such, but the guy looked like a male model, so he had a cult following.

Jace had been close to that case too.

And maybe Jace was upset that would be what would happen with who killed Brittanie.

Jace pointed the bottom of his beer bottle into the mist.

“We found Malorie out there, tied to our dock.”

Yeah.

Ray Andrews was on his mind.

Since Jace felt like talking, Rus settled in, crossing his arms on his chest, his beer on the outside.

And he said nothing.

But he knew what Jace was talking about now.

Ray Andrews had come to Misted Pines to play with Cade Bohannan and Malorie was a pawn in that game.

So Rus knew where they found her.

“She wanted to move in together,” Jace said.

All right then.

That wasn’t Malorie.

That was Brittanie.

And here we go, Rus thought.

“We’d only been seeing each other a few months. It was too soon. She was talking that and hinting marriage. I liked her. But we were nowhere near something like that.”

“Okay,” he said low to encourage Jace to keep talking.

“We got in a big fight when I put her off. I don’t mind fighting, but she was quick to get pissed, so it happened too much. And you can’t force a man into making a move like that.”

“No, you can’t,” Rus agreed.

Jace slugged back more beer.

Then he said, “Honestly, I didn’t wanna break up with her. She was funny and sweet. I liked her a lot. But I wasn’t ready for that, and she wouldn’t let it go.” Long pause, then, “It got too much. So it was me letting her go.”

Just like most men would do.

Rus got to the meat of it.

“I can say it a thousand times, and you won’t get it until you get it, still, I’m going to say it. You couldn’t have stopped what happened from happening.”

“I know,” he whispered.

He did, and he didn’t.

But Rus felt one day he would.

“I don’t get why she went to that motel,” Jace muttered. “It’s not her. Like, her biggest dream was to take a vacation in LA and stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was all about spas and room service. She said she wanted to have a vacation where, for a while, she got to live like Marilyn Monroe. Just stay in bed for days and days and read and watch TV.”

“Sounds like a good vacation.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, and took another drag from his beer.

“I gotta warn you, we might never know why she went to that motel.”

“Yeah,” Jace repeated, and finally, he looked to Rus. “It’s killing me, man, not being out there, finding this guy.”

“I know.”

“I know how she died.”

Shit.

But of course he did.

Rus uncrossed his arms so he could clamp Jace’s neck where it met his shoulder and squeeze, but he said nothing.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Jason assured. “I have my shit tight now. I know, if I find him, I’ll fuck this.”

“Right.”

“I just don’t know how to live with knowing how she died.”

“You’ll learn how to live with it when you understand you’ll never be able to live with it. That’s the difference between men like you and monsters like the man who did that to her.” Rus gave him another squeeze and removed his hand. “I’m sorry, Jace, you will never come to terms with what happened to Brittanie. But you will come to terms with knowing the fact you can’t is a good thing. And that will get you by.”

Jace’s demeanor changed to one that was a great deal less concerning.

“Thanks for being honest about it. Delly’s all about healing, and if she keeps making me cupcakes, I’m gonna get a gut. Celeste thinks she can love away everything. But…” he blew out a breath, shaking his head, “it’s kind of a relief to know it’ll never go away. Not that I want to hold it. Just that I don’t feel like a freak, knowing I’ll never get over it.”

“You’re not a freak,” Rus asserted.

Jace nodded, turned to the mist and took another draw from his beer.

Then he said, entirely to himself, “This year, she’s gonna get my whole pumpkin.”

Rus had no idea what that was about.

What he knew was it wasn’t his to have.

So he didn’t ask.

He just stood at Jace’s side in the mist and drank beer.