Page 29 of Delicate Escape

“Me? I’m fine,” she said quickly. “I wanted to talk to you about Thea.”

The tension was back but for an entirely different reason. Thea’s face had played in my mind all day at the jobsite. Her true terror at having me in her space. Her stubborn resolve to handle the problem on her own. I did everything I could to keep my voice even, almost disinterested. “What about her?”

“She said you helped her with a leak at her house.”

I nodded. “As much as she’d let me.”

Rhodes worried the corner of her lip. “She went to Castle Rock Construction yesterday.”

I couldn’t help the curse. The owner, Bob, was old school. Slightly sexist and definitely oblivious. But his son? Russ was a piece of work and always had been.

We’d been in the same year at school, and he treated everyone like dirt. But he’d hated me particularly. Loved calling meBox Babyin elementary and hadn’t much grown out of that.

“Tell me she didn’t hire them.” Castle Rock did shoddy work at best, and they’d overcharge for what theydidmanage to execute.

“Thankfully, no,” Rhodes said. “I might’ve convinced Thea to let you help her.”

A hum lit my muscles, phantom energy that buzzed. “You sure about that? She wouldn’t even let me inside her house to check out the issue.”

Pain flashed across Rhodes’ face, and I wanted to kick myself. Still, she pushed on. “I don’t know what happened to her, but I know she’s running from something. Dunc pays her in cash. And she doesn’t have a phone or an email address.”

Everything in me went on alert. “No phone or email?” I didn’t know a soul without both.

Rhodes shook her head. “I think she needs someone who will go at her pace. Do whatever it takes to make her feel comfortable.”

A million possibilities played in my mind, but none were good. All of them made a sick feeling take root in my gut.

“Shep?” Rhodes prodded.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, pulling myself out of my spiraling thoughts.

“Will you help her?”

I swallowed through the tightness in my throat. “Of course.”

But my offer of that assistance and Thea taking it were two different things. And I didn’t see her letting me in anytime soon. Something about that burned. Scalded in a way I was desperate to heal. But Thea would have to take the first step. And I wasn’t sure she ever would.

11

THEA

A loud bang sounded,and I jumped, almost bungling the frosting I was coloring a light shade of pink.

Walter glanced at me from the wash station, concern written all over his face. “Sorry about that. You all right?”

All he’d done was set a pot in the sink—something he’d done countless times before. But today, it had almost made me give myself a frosting facial.

It didn’t matter that Sutton had told me all about the vandalizing teens on the car ride home and said the tire prank was right in line with the other things they’d done. I was on edge. My gaze jumped from one thing to the next. I analyzed every person who came into the bakery, searching for anything that might mean danger.

I couldn’t turn it off. Couldn’t get my body to simply relax. My muscles felt more like cement than sinew.

Still, I forced a smile for the man who treated me like a granddaughter. “I’m good. I didn’t sleep the best last night. I’m a little out of it.”

All of that was true. I’d just left out thereasonsfor it all.

The lines around Walter’s eyes deepened as he squinted, trying to read me. “Make sure you take some of our Sleepytime tea home. That always does the trick for me. Maybe put a pinch of bourbon in it.”

My lips twitched as I moved to cover the icing and set it at Sutton’s decorating station. “I’m pretty sure it’s the bourbon sending you to sleep land.”

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