Page 74 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
“I need to show you something. Come with me.” He turned at once and started walking away, like he actually thought I’d go with so little information.
Not sure what the fuck was going on, I looked to Roman. “What the fuck?”
Finn had stopped about twenty feet away. Now he was looking back at us, his beefy arms crossed. Frustrated that we hadn’t rushed after him, I guess.
“We should go with him.” Roman set his plate down. Then he took mine from me and set it next to his. “Wy, will you make sure nobody swipes our plates?”
“Sure,” Wyatt said and moved to the side of the table. “What’s goin’ on?”
“We’re about to find out,” Roman answered and took my hand.
As soon as he saw us finally following, Finn turned and resumed his journey—back to his truck, apparently.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked Roman, remembering that odd exchange between them earlier in the day.
“I think so. But I don’t want to say yet.”
“Well, that’s cryptic.”
“Sorry. It might be good. I just don’t want to get that brain of yours spinning unless there’s really something.”
That sounded like criticism, and I stopped short. We were holding hands, so Roman pulled up about one step later.
“That brain of mine? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I was working up a mad, and I know that was obvious in my tone—I’d intentionally made it obvious—but Roman chuckled and came back to me. He hooked his free hand over the back of my neck and bent down to touch his forehead to mine. “I love that brain of yours. It’s smart and funny and strong. But you start spinning out doomsday scenarios at the first hint of trouble. Am I wrong?”
He wasn’t wrong. Positivity did not come naturally, and certainly not easily, to me. I gave all I had to Wyatt, and that left me alone in my head with all the nasties. Micah had been a ‘positive thinker’ and a ‘manifester,’ so he’d had no patience for my darker thoughts. I was young enough when we’d met that it hadn’t occurred to me that I shouldn’t keep my worries to myself and be the Leo he wanted me to be. To manifest happy Leo.
I think that version of me was about seventy percent façade.
Since Micah’s passing and the turmoil Wyatt and I had lived through, Dark Leo had gotten a lot more air, I guess. And Roman had been with me while I fought the biggest battles of my return to Bluster, so he was getting the real me, too overwhelmed to pretend I was anything else.
That was, just then, dawning on me—and it feltgoodto be truly seen by him. Not a romanticized version but the real, messy me. So I set my hand on his chest and murmured, “Okay. Notwrong.” Then I focused on something else he’d just said. “But is this trouble?”
“I don’t think so. Let’s go see.”
Again, Finn had stopped and waited with obvious impatience for us to follow. This time, he stood there until he caught up with us. I don’t think he trusted us to make the rest of the trip unless he kept his eye on us.
“What is it you want to show us?” I asked when I reached him.
“Roman said you didn’t recognize the boy in the video. The one whose face you can see.”
I looked over at Roman, asking with my eyes if he’d been showing that video around. I had a defensive feeling, like my dirty laundry was hanging for all to see.
Which was actually, literally true that day—there were clotheslines strung all over the place.
Roman gave me a calming look. “I wanted to see if anybody else might know him, so I showed it around.”
Now I returned my attention to Finn. “Do you know him?”
We’d arrived at his truck—a big gunmetal-grey Ford. He went to the bed, reached over, grabbed something, and lifted it so the top part cleared the side of the truck, and we could see what he wanted us to see.
A man. Finn had reached into the bed of his truck and pulled a human being to a sitting position.
The man was bound, wrists and ankles, with white, medium-gauge marine rope. A piece of yellow hi-vis duct tape covered his mouth. He wore dark jeans, battered Nikes, and a faded t-shirt from the Boat House Grill in Crescent City.
He was also blond, bearded, and blue-eyed. The skin around his left eye was swollen and discolored. Blood crusted his nose.
