Page 80 of Broken Harbor
I headed out the front door and down the steps toward my SUV,but I felt Cope’s eyes on me as I went. His stare felt different than any other I’d experienced. There was a warm strength to it. A sensation that somehow managed to ground and heat all at once.
As I beeped the locks and slid behind the wheel, I glanced up at the entryway to Cope’s house. There he stood, hands in the pockets of a pair of joggers that hugged his hips perfectly. But there was something in his dark-blue eyes in that moment. I swore it was sadness. It could’ve been a memory of Teddy surfacing perhaps. But something told me it wasn’t.
I stared back for a long moment before forcing myself to start the engine and head into town. Darkness was just starting to coat the landscape in a breathtaking deep purple. I didn’t mind the drive, not when I got to take in this sort of beauty. But I did miss popping downstairs to the bakery to frost in my pajamas. Or hopping up to the roof to tend to my bees in just a bathrobe.
That thought reminded me that it was time to harvest honeycombs from another one of the hives. Cope had said he wanted to learn how. I added it to my mental to-do list as I pulled into a spot behind the bakery. As far as I could tell, Rick hadn’t had much luck renting the apartment upstairs. I couldn’t help the tiny flicker of satisfaction I felt at that. Sometimes, karma came through.
I grabbed my keys and purse and headed for the back door. It only took me a matter of seconds to get inside and lock up behind myself. I shot off a quick text to Cope, letting him know I’d made it, and flicked on the lights. I moved to the stereo system, and waves of country music filled the air.
As I moved into the kitchen, I refastened my hair in a tighter bun. It was a compulsion when I was baking or decorating. I couldn’t stand hair falling in my face and impacting my vision. The only problem was that I constantly lost my hair ties. So, when I couldn’t find one, I got creative, using butter knives, piping bags, or anything else that could tie my hair back.
Thankfully, I had a silk scrunchie in my possession tonight, so no cooking utensils were needed. I crossed to the sink and thoroughlywashed my hands, drying them on a fresh towel. Then I turned toward the cake.
It was one of my largest. Four tiers. A belated graduation party for a local boy. I didn’t know him or his family, but I had a list of his interests, and his mom had given me free rein. Her only instruction had been,“Make it fun.”
That, I could do. The rising college freshman was into dirt bike racing, so my plan was to create a track all around the cake while his other hobbies served as landmarks along the way. At the top, I’d have him on his dirt bike.
Grinning, I reached for the frosting and dove in. One of the things I loved most about baking was how I could lose myself in the process. Five minutes or five hours could pass, and it wouldn’t matter because it transported me to another world. Everything disappeared but the music and the art I was making. It forced me to stay in the present, like an active meditation.
It was that altered state and the music that kept me from hearing what I should’ve, the squeak of a shoe against the tile floor that had me stilling and then whirling. What I saw came in snapshots. A tall, broad figure. A man. All in black. Wearing some sort of ski mask that hid any distinguishing features other than the fact that he was white.
The seconds it took my brain to register what I was seeing were seconds too long. The man lunged. I tried to dodge and escape his grasp but wasn’t fast enough. He caught me by the hair, yanking me to him so my back was to his front. Cold metal pressed against my jaw.
“Empty the register,” he snarled. But it wasn’t a normal voice. It was distorted somehow. Robotic, like a computer’s tone. Or affected in some way.
My heart hammered against my ribs, and blood roared in my ears. The man shook me by the hair, and I couldn’t help the cry of pain that left my lips.
“Open the fucking register.” He pushed me forward toward the counter, the gun jabbing into my jaw.
A million thoughts ran through my mind: the pepper spray at the bottom of my purse, the self-defense move that meant sendingan elbow to the man’s ribs. But none of that helped when a gun was pressed to my head.
My hand shook as I punched in the code, and the drawer shot open. There wasn’t much in there, just enough to get us started tomorrow. I’d taken everything else to the bank on my way home. Just like I’d done every day since moving in with Cope.
“Put it in a bag. Nice and slow.”
My trembling didn’t let up as I reached for one of our to-go bags under the counter. Luca’s face flashed in my mind. “Please don’t hurt me. I have a son?—”
The man’s hand tightened in my hair, and he shook me with a ferocity that stole my breath. “I don’t wanna hear it, bitch.”
A strangled noise left my throat, but I swallowed any words that wanted to escape. I grabbed for the bills in the register and stuffed them into the paper bag. I’d worked so hard on the design. The adorable little emblem that went with the wordsThe Mix Up. It was quirky and a little off-kilter, so in opposition to a violent crime.
“Where’s the rest of it? I know you’ve gotta have more on hand with your fancy-ass hockey fuck buddy.”
I stiffened, my muscles locking as if cement had been poured into the sinew. “Th-this is all I have.”
The man’s grip changed, moving from my hair to my throat, his fingers constricting my airway. “You’d better be fucking with me. Because if there’s no more cash here, I’ll take my payment in flesh.”
I shook violently as I struggled to suck in air. “I take it to the bank every day,” I croaked.
The man’s grip on my throat tightened, and he whirled me around, shoving me against the counter so hard that white-hot pain flashed through me. “I’ll find it my goddamned self.”
In the kitchen lights, I saw a glint of metal behind the man, and then it was colliding with my face. The pain was all-consuming, taking over every inch of me before I felt the world falling away and descended into blessed nothingness.
31
COPE
The phone rangfor the dozenth time as I pressed the cell harder to my ear, as if I held it tightly enough, it would make Sutton answer. Her voice came over the line, but it was the recording telling me I’d reached a number I knew was hers. Her voice was so bright and cheery—the opposite of the worry currently coursing through me.
