Page 37 of Conrad

It couldn’t be her.

Really.

Focus, Stein. The last thing he needed was for his boss to get hurt—or worse—during Steinbeck’s first gig back in the game.

FIVE

“So shehuggedyou?”

Jack’s question made Conrad look up from where he had unscrewed the base of yet another bus seat in Jack’s newly purchased 1973 GMC forty-five-foot passenger transit bus, which sat tucked away from the elements in a rented heated garage in Duck Lake.

“Don’t get excited. It doesn’t mean anything.” Conrad tossed the nut and bolt into a bucket as Jack loosened a seat on the other side of the aisle.

The bus was a classic, vintage find, and Conrad fought a small twinge of envy, despite the mountain of work ahead of his brother. The mint-green vintage bus, with its metal racing stripe down the side, flat windshield, fishbowl headlights, and angled safari-style windows looked like something out of an old 1970s photograph. It would make cool digs for Jack when he hit the road again, traipsing America in search of the lost.

Maybe when Jack hit the road again, Harper Malone would join him as his wife, given the fact that Conrad had walked in on them kissing this morning.

For her part, Harper seemed already invested in the project, painting ceiling boards and trim laid out on sawhorses, the piquant smell of fresh paint sharpening the brisk air. She listened to music, wearing paint clothes, and a bandanna over her short blonde hair.

Cute.

And just then, the sight of Penny sitting across from him at the Ironclad, her eyes wide at his words, sat down in his brain and didn’t budge.

“You, Penelope Pepper, are the connection.”

He’d never been so ice cold as in that moment he’d realized that.

Until then, he hadn’t been able to get his brain off . . . the hug.

“What do you mean ‘It doesn’t mean anything’?” Jack worked the seat free from its mounts.

“She’s not into me—or maybe not now. I did a stupid thing and told her the story of Jasmine.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, okay? I just . . . I didn’t want her to think I was that guy.” He got up and helped Jack wrench his seat free, then took one end as they hauled it out of the bus. “Let’s focus on what really matters.”

“What’s that? Donuts?” Jack angled the seat down the steps.

“For the love. What do you know about the mystery of Sarah Livingston?” He let go as Jack carried the seat to the corner to join the other forty-five seats on their way to an eBay posting.

Jack set it down, smacked off his hands. “Pretty much everything since Harper is helping produce the podcast. She’s writing copy and managing the forum.” He glanced at his girlfriend, who was humming a song Conrad couldn’t make out.

Jack wore a silly grin now as she took the paintbrush and sang into it like a microphone. “Don’t stop believin’—”

Oy.

“She’s not great at karaoke,” he said, laughing.

Nice to see his brother happy. Jack had spent so many years as the prodigal. His return home seemed to have set their family to rights.

And had freed Doyle, maybe to finally find his future.

Conrad slapped dirt from his hands too. “First, like I said, let’s not get crazy about the hug. It was an impulse. Just—a reaction to seeing Beckett’s house on fire. And good thing, because about ten minutes later, the firefighters carried his charred corpse from the house. At least, we thought it was Becker. They identified his body in today’s paper.”

“Charred corpse? That’s a little harsh, Conrad.” This from Harper, who clearly could hear them over her music.

He glanced back at her. “Sorry. Good copy, though—you should use that for the podcast.”

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