Page 48 of The Murder Inn

“Or I could ask my grandpa if he’s got spares,” Nick said and went back to the rifle scope.

“All this stuff with Norman Driver,” Bill said. “And there hasn’t been a chance to talk about you.” He recounted his and Susan’s experience at Dorrich’s apartment, the shot in the bathroom wall. Nick told him about the failed attempt to find Master’s sister, Danielle, in Providence.

Bill stood pondering, watching the still blue night through the window. “If I was Rick Master and I thought someone was coming for me, I’d tell everyone I knew and loved to keep a low profile. Blow out of town for a few weeks.”

“It was worth a try, though,” Nick said.

“Yeah. Worth a try.” Bill yawned. “Maybe tomorrow we can cajole Susan into using her FBI contacts again to see if Master has any properties in his or a relative’s name that we don’t know about.”

“It is tomorrow,” Nick said after glancing at his watch.

“Oh, right.”

“Go to bed, man,” Nick said. His friend went to the door, paused, looking toward the stairs to the attic. His and Susan’s room. Nick felt a pang of jealousy, and maybe Bill sensed it, because he looked back and jutted his chin at Nick playfully.

“Where’s Breecher?”

“I dropped her at her motel over in Essex,” Nick said, refusing to bite.

“Somethin’ there, maybe?” Bill asked. Nick could see his smile even in the shadow of the hall.

“You tryin’ to make my watch feel longer or shorter?” Nick asked. Bill conceded and disappeared, but the damage was done. Nick’s thoughts turned to his former teammate, and the smell of her body on watch in Afghanistan. He’d never got used to the smell of other men. The desert wind and days hauling equipment without hope of a shower or clean uniforms. Breecher always smelled good. Even when she smelled bad, she smelled good.

His fingers moved on their own. He took up his phone and texted, deliberately ignoring the consequences.

Lonely night without u.

Nick scolded himself immediately. He had come on too strong. Breecher had been in his life since 2010, and with one text, he saw himself destroying everything they’d ever experienced together. The triumph and trauma of war, their terrible shared sin, the return and the devastating plunge into uncertainty back in the US. Could one awkward text push her away, after all that? He started and deleted a series of replies.

That wasn’t meant to sound…

It’s just being around you after all this time reminds me of…

Sorry, I’m just saying…

With terror in his heart, he watched as three bubbles on the screen indicated she was writing back.

Her text appeared, and he smiled.

Be right over,it said.

Breecher arrived as he was handing his watch back over to Bill. Blessed timing, so he didn’t have to explain, excuse, deal with stealthy smiles. He let her in the back door to the kitchenand led her silently to his bedroom. She was sliding her hands up under his shirt before he’d even shut the door behind them.

He knew her. Every inch of her body. He’d seen her bathing in a river in a ravaged village. He’d heard her crying in the tent in exhaustion and pain. He knew what she was like when she trembled and fought and laughed. But in his bed she was a complete stranger to him. New and exhilarating. He couldn’t tell what was happening behind her eyes as she held him, what thoughts traveled through her mind in the warm, tired moments afterward.

She was asleep beside him, one of her legs twisted around his, when he reached over to grab his phone from the nightstand where it lay beside hers. He was thinking he’d screenshot the “Be right over” text. A shrink had told him once that good moments saved, recalled, relived, could be momentary oases in his troubled ruminations.

The phone buzzed as he touched it. Breecher’s screen lit up as a text came through to her phone at the exact same time.

It was Master.

You’ll regret this. Danielle was my sister. She had nothing to do with this. You’re dead. Both of you: dead.

Nick felt a pang of terror rock through his body. He reached over, lifted Breecher’s phone, saw the identical message written on her screen. He picked up his phone and googled Danielle Master’s name. Breecher must have sensed the tension in him, because she woke and rolled over sharply.

“What-what-what?”

“It’s him. It’s Master.”