Page 22 of Keeping Secrets

Keely laughed. "Noted."

"She’ll call you Monday, I think. See you soon!"

"Two jobs in ten minutes." Willa gave her a playful shove on her way past. "You’re settling into Pelican Point real quick."

"Am I?" she asked, more to herself than Willa.

She watched through the front window as Nat’s truck rolled by. Behind her, she heard Willa scolding the kids for claiming another two cupcakes each.

A warm feeling of home kindled in her chest, and she smiled.

"I guess I am."

CHAPTER 7

For weeks, the spectral question of the girl in the forest had haunted him.

He had wondered if she was okay, if she was even alive, or if she had tumbled down a cliff in the dark. If she had overdosed or been snatched up by Adam’s associates.

Now that he had met Rachel, his worries had shifted.

He was grateful that she was okay, but he felt deeply worried that her foolishness could tie him to the scene of the crime, whether by way of offhand comment to her friends or a truth spoken in fear when goons came knocking at her house again.

The fear that overshadowed the others was that the police would bring her in for questioning and she would confess everything that had happened, Travis’s name and place of business included. It had been careless and foolish of her to come to the bar and speak to him in front of everyone.

He lived in fear of uniforms bursting through the front doors and hauling him away from the restaurant… from his spot behind the bar to a cell behind bars.

Worse still, what if the heavy hitters that Adam was dealing with saw the trial and decided to tie up loose ends? He had no doubt that they could make him disappear if they wanted to, whether he got off on self-defense or not. Everyone who cared about him would be left wondering what had happened.

What would Scot do then? How would he cope?

Travis needed to meet with Rachel. Just one more time. They had to get their story straight in case they ever did have to go in for questioning.

He felt a sharp kick of anger when he thought back to Nick’s vigilantism, anger at Nick for starting down that road and anger at himself for going along with it. But none of that was any use to him now. He could only go forward, knowing what he knew. Carrying another man’s death on his conscience.

Adam’s death in and of itself didn’t bother him. He had been a monster of a man who didn’t hesitate to get young girls hooked on drugs so that he could sell them to the highest bidder.

But the grim satisfaction that Travis felt over the death of another human being… What did that say about him? He felt fear of repercussions, but no remorse. He would do it again. And what did that make him?

"Travis." Scot’s voice cut through the fog of his thoughts. "If you keep cleaning that same spot, you’re going to polish a hole in my bar."

"Sorry." Travis tossed the rag into a laundry bag beneath the counter. Then he turned and looked at Scot. "Did you need something?"

"I want you to run this week’s trivia night."

Travis stared at him for a beat before responding. "Seriously?"

"I haven’t been in much of a joking mood lately," he said dryly. "You may have noticed."

Travis looked down at the bar, mulling it over.

Scot had reigned over the bar’s weekly trivia night since before Travis started working there - and he had been washing dishes in the kitchen since he was a teenager.

Trivia Night had become a treasured Pelican Point tradition.

Part of the draw was how Scot shot off the trivia questions rapidfire off the top of his head. He never consulted notecards or a cheat sheet. Sometimes it seemed like he held the sum of human knowledge in his head, like some kind of computer or demigod.

Eventually Travis learned that Scot brushed up on historical tidbits each week before trivia night; he simply had a mind like a steel trap and could commit a long list of trivia to memory before each event.

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