Page 101 of Fate's Crossing

“Can’t a girl just be in a good mood?” she asked, gliding over to clear the last of the tables.

Wade’s ice-blue eyes stared knowingly at her before dipping back to his task. When he’d placed all the cash into the zippered bag ready for banking, he handed it to her. “Put this in the safe, would you? I’ll finish cleaning up.”

“Sure.” On her way back from his office, Lexie heard Wade’s cell phone ringing.

“Yeah?” he answered. “What? Are you sure? Well, how bad?”

Lexie’s curiosity shifted to concern as the one-sided conversation unfolded.

“Okay, I’m on my way.”

“What’s going on?” she asked when he’d disconnected.

“That was my neighbor. My house is on fire.”

“What?”

“Must have been that dodgy refrigerator. Goddamn it, I should have replaced the thing a year ago,” he said, digging around his pocket for his keys. “Fire department’s on the way, but she said the place is going up. Can you wait here until I get back?”

“That could take forever,” Lexie argued, knowing exactly what his angle was. Nico had called earlier to ask Wade to escort her home because he couldn’t. From what he could safely reveal to them both, the entire Mercy Cove police force—bar Chief West, which Lexie found odd—had left to make a big, important arrest. Reading between the lines, both Wade and Lexie had reached the same conclusion; that the person responsible for Darcy and Isabelle’s gruesome murders had finally been found. “I can drive myself home,” she said. “It’s barely dark outside.”

“I don’t have time to argue, Lex.” Wade started toward the back door where his truck was parked. Since there was only space for one vehicle back there, Lexie and the other staff always used the parking lot across the street. “I gave Nico my word. Please, just stay here.”

“Wade—”

“Stay put,” he ordered. “I won’t be long. Lock the door behind me.”

“Seriously?!”

But he was already gone.

Ugh, men.

Lexie huffed and puffed until she admitted that it was a waste of energy. She locked herself in, finished clearing the tables, threw one last load in the dishwasher, and gave everything a once-over with a wet cloth. She married the ketchups, filled the salt-and-pepper shakers, then contemplated doing some more side work before hastily dismissing the idea. Wade had said he wouldn’t be long, plus she was officially off the clock and the prospect of getting on her hands and knees to clean gum off the underside of chairs was about as appealing as, well, cleaning gum off the underside of chairs. By nine fifteen, she was officially getting antsy. She’d switched off all the unnecessary lights, immediately regretting it once she realized she sat in almost complete darkness while she waited for her boss to return.

“Screw this,” she mumbled after another glance at her watch. She pulled out her phone and tried to call Wade. “Okay, please don’t be mad at me,” she said to his voicemail. “I know you told me to wait, but this is silly. You’re busy, so I’m just going to—”

Lexie wasn’t sure exactly what it was that made a million cold prickles erupt on her skin, because the sound of window glass shattering didn’t come until after her spine had already stiffened in fear. Every sense her body possessed went on high alert as she listened to the distinct sound of someone forcing their way into the building. Adrenaline kicked her like a mule. She fought to control her breathing as her phone slipped from her grasp and onto the floor. She bolted from the office chair to stand with her back to the wall leading to the short hallway. The intruder was coming in the front, through the door she’d just locked. It wasn’t subtle, but it made sense; there were no windows on the alley side and the back door was security-grade steel. Lexie stood rooted to the spot. She strained her ears as she screamed in her mind for her legs to move! This was a terrible place to hide. The safe was in here. Any thief with half a brain would come straight for it.

And if it wasn’t a thief . . .

Lexie shoved the thought right out of her head. She couldn’t think about that. If she did, the terror of what it might mean would paralyze her ability to think, and she’d be as good as dead.

When she heard glass crunching under boots as whoever it was slowly entered the deserted space, Lexie took the opportunity to slip out of Wade’s office, tiptoe down the hall to the swing door that led to the kitchen. She didn’t dare open it, though, remembering the way the hinges squeaked when moved. Instead, she dropped low and crab-walked through the two feet of open air between the door and the floor, until she felt cool tiles under her hands. In the most ungainly elevé in history, she rose from the ground and swallowed past the hard lump in her throat.

The most logical path for someone to follow—whether they were looking to rob the place or, god forbid, for her—was to the right of the kitchen. That’s where everything was; the office, the maintenance closet, the staff break room, and the rest rooms. All that led to the left was a restaurant full of empty tables and the alternate entry to the kitchen, the one they used to return dirty dishes to the sink. Lexie exhaled ever so quietly at the sound of shoes on linoleum. They were moving toward the other side of the building, away from her. Worried that she may not get another chance to escape, she scooted underneath the other swing door into the shadowed eating area. The chair-topped tables gave her enough cover to move through relatively quickly, though once she hit the front, she had to pause. The door sat about a foot ajar, but she’d need to pass through a spattering of broken glass to reach it. One wrong step, and she’d give away her position. And, say she made it outside, what then? Her car was a good five hundred feet away. She supposed if she sprinted, she could make it. She had to.

Silently, she reached inside her purse—which she’d already swung over her head in preparation to leave on her own—and located her keys. She didn’t pull them out, just gripped them tight and made a break for it while she still could. She winced at the racket her exit made but gave no more thought to it as the cool night air filled her lungs and she was off, running for all she was worth through the abandoned street toward the parking lot on the other side. She fumbled with her keys as she flew across the asphalt. When her finger found the central locking button, she pushed it and made a hysterical noise of relief as the orange blinking lights lit up in front of her like a beacon of safety.

She hit her car with a thud. As her hand made contact with the handle, she was spun around so forcefully, that had it not been for the hand wrapped around her arm, she would have overbalanced and collapsed.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Lexie was almost happy to hear Kyle’s voice—the monster you know and all that—until she remembered what she’d said to him the last time she saw him. Even in the dark, she could sense how drunk he was, how angry. And he must have been angry, to go so far as to break into Rusty’s to get to her. Wait—had he been responsible for the fire at Wade’s place too? Had he tossed a match into her boss’s house just to get her alone? The idea petrified her, because if it was true, it meant he’d lost all sense of reason and was acting on nothing but pure, unadulterated rage.

All of this went through Lexie’s thought process in a matter of seconds. She screamed. She kicked, bit, shouted, and punched, using every weapon at her disposal from her fingernails to her elbows to escape his grasp. He let her go, shock and horror at her reaction all over his face.

“Jesus! What the hell’s the matter with you?” he yelled.

---