Page 40 of Defend Me

The faceless image I’d had of her shifts to a plain-faced woman in mom jeans with a handknit crochet vest. Kindergarten teacher does seem like Noah’s type.

“Here,” he says, “I’ll send you her number. Isla’s too.”

“How do you know I don’t already have Isla’s number?” I shoot back.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“No,” I admit.

“Will you keep me posted?” he asks as my phone pings with the new contacts. “Let me know how it goes with Patrick?”

“Of course,” I say.

He sips his coffee, then glances at me. “I can make dinner again.”

I feel a tiny leap of excitement. “Oh,” I say, playing it cool. “Sure. If you want to.”

Based on the smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, I’m not fooling him.

“Do you remember where the light switches are?” I ask dryly.

“You mean the Panel of Doom?” he says. “Yeah, I’m not touching that.”

“It’s easy,” I say. “Just tap the screen and the buttons are self-explanatory. Oh, and if you want to connect your phone to the speakers, you can do that through the screen too.”

If he likes to listen to music while he cooks, he should at least have decent sound quality.

Noah looks surprised only for a half second. “Thanks,” he says.

I leave quickly because this is getting altogether too strange. I take my green juice with me, though.

I say hello to Sam behind the front desk and thank Benito by name as he holds open the door for me. They both look a little surprised but also smile at me, and not in that way they usually do, where it feels like a job requirement. My car is waiting to take me to the helicopter at the Seaport and Alex picks me up at the helipad in Magnolia Bay. When I give him the address of Dale’s Tavern, he raises one eyebrow in the mirror.

“It is a little early to be drinking, no?” he says.

I smirk. “I wish this was that sort of bar visit.”

He pulls out onto the road.

“How are things with the press?” I ask as vineyards roll past me out the window.

“The same as yesterday. Mr. Alistair is going to spread the word that you have left town. Your father is thinking that will be helpful.”

“That’s good,” I say. With nothing left to report on until the pretrial hearings, maybe things will get back to normal for theestate—at least until the end of the summer season. We do solid business through the Christmas holidays, but summer is Everton’s peak.

The bar is exactly where Noah said it would be, a run-down establishment about twenty minutes outside Magnolia Bay. The windows are made of thick bricks of wavy glass, making it impossible to see inside. There’s a dilapidated sign on the green roof that just says TAVERN. Maybe the Dale’s part got lost to time.

“Would you like me to be coming inside with you, Miss Von?” Alex asks, looking at the chipped wooden front door warily.

“No,” I say. There are only three cars in the lot. I’m sure I can handle a couple of early morning drinkers. A glance at my watch tells me it’s just after ten-thirty. Alex opens the door for me, and I step onto the cracked pavement, balancing precariously in my Louboutins. I smooth down the crepe material of my beige pencil skirt and stride toward the door.

The first thing that hits me is the smell—like decades of cigarette smoke has been permanently ingrained into the fake leather booths that line one wall. The bar is long and weathered, stools scattered haphazardly along it. One grizzled man nurses a beer at the end closest to me while a woman with an aggressive perm sips a vodka tonic in one of the booths. A bartender wipes the dirty bar with a dirtier rag.

All three of them look up in surprise at my presence. I ignore the patrons and stride across the worn wooden floor toward the bartender. He’s in his sixties, with sagging jowls and age spots at his temples.

“Good morning,” I say. “I’m Siobhan Everton.”

The bartender tosses the rag over his shoulder. “I know who you are.”

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