Barefoot at Moonrise (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 2) (18 page)

Her heart flipped. Would someone be looking for that? Why? Who?

Who would even know it was there? Her heart turned over again, but this time, it fell into her stomach with a thud.

Ken
. He knew she had the paperwork. She’d told him about it yesterday, and he….

“No, he didn’t,” she said out loud, trying desperately to talk her brain out of the direction it was going.

But who else could it be? Who else knew exactly how to get in and out of this house? The firefighters who had been here? Could they have moved the bins?

No, they hadn’t been in her closet. But Ken? She hated that the thought even planted itself in her head.

She marched to the garage, got the step stool, and brought it back to the closet, carefully climbing up. She held on to the clothes and, this time, to be safe, brought one bin down at a time. Only one was particularly heavy, but she very gingerly leaned it against her clothes and had them all on her bedroom floor in less than a minute.

All the while, she was thinking about that white envelope her dad had given her. If it was unsealed, or missing, then she had a problem. A big, fat problem.

With shaky hands, she snapped off the plastic lid and right on top was the envelope, as she’d put it in this bin nearly two months ago.

A punch of relief hit her. At least no one had taken it. But had they opened it? Read it? She remembered the seal; she’d run her fingers along the flap before she’d tossed the packet aside to be filed.

Very slowly, she lifted the envelope, which wasn’t that thick. Please be sealed, she thought.
Please be sealed.

It was taped closed.

“What?” She stared at the tape, shaking her head. Had it been taped before? Or had it been sealed? She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. Once again, pregnancy could be blamed for her less-than-stellar memory.

Turning, she gazed at her desk in the corner, seeing her tape dispenser right where it always was.

But she could have sworn…

No, she couldn’t swear to anything. It was lunacy to think someone broke in here, opened this envelope, and read its contents—because it was just about the same weight as when her dad gave it to her, so nothing was taken. She hoped. She wondered.

She let out a noisy breath, rocking back on her heels. This was crazy. She could have easily put those bins back up there in the wrong order.

The envelope was still here, and it had probably always been taped, and she didn’t have a big, fat problem.

Except, the first person she’d mentally accused was the one person she needed to trust most in the world.

So maybe she did have a big, fat problem after all.

* * *

By ten o’clock, it was clear that today would be merciless. Two callouts already and he was down a man until eleven a.m. Ken barely had time to suck down some coffee and review a report log in between a kitchen fire and an old man with chest pains.

He’d sat down to concentrate when Pookie waltzed in and gave a treat to Sally.

“Is that all you wanted?” he asked. “Does Chief Banfield need something?”

“Chief Banfield needs a vacation.” She dropped into the guest chair uninvited. “And he could probably use a little smashup from Mrs. Banfield, if you catch my drift.”

Ken looked up at her. “Your drift is so highly unprofessional, it hurts.”

“Pah!” She flicked her hand at him. “Speaking of smashups…” She lifted a graying brow. “How’s Beth?” she asked in a singsong voice.

“You know, I really think you’re a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in a middle-aged woman’s body.”

“Oh, honey, I’m past the middle and into the final quarter. So, why should I bother with professionalism? You don’t look happy enough to have gotten laid last night, but I could be wrong.”

“You could be.”

She crossed her arms and stared at him. “Soooo?” She drew the question out. “How serious is it?”

“I’m not helping you win that bet.”

She leaned forward. “Hon, you know you’re my favorite.”

“Moonshine said you told him the same thing.”

“He’s too much of a redneck for me, to be honest, though he’s sweet and single. When you’re no longer single, he’ll be my favorite.”

He had to laugh and abandon any hope of finishing the email he was trying to write. “You’ll give up any chance of our finally being together, then?”

“Reluctantly. Plus, there is Fred, my sadly still alive husband.” She cracked a ravaged knuckle that looked like it had been on the receiving end of that action for many years. “But you could be my third, if we knock him off.”

“I’ll put it on my to-do list.” He narrowed his eyes. “Which is long. If you’re done flirting with me and prying into my personal life, Pooks, I need to get back to work.”

“Almost done. I have one more question—”

The alarm screamed, silencing her.

“Station one-six, engine five-five, squad two, respond to an accident with injury. In the intersection of Colonial Boulevard and Fowler Street. Map number 18-41. Time out, ten-o-six.”

“I’m going.” He was up in a flash and around his desk, his ears tuned for any more information from dispatch.

“Bystander reports victim is female, conscious, still in vehicle, and pregnant.”

He stumbled as the word hit, and swore under his breath.

Aware that Pookie stayed by his side, he bounded to join his crew as they turned the corner to meet at the rig.

“What was your question?” he asked before Pookie slipped away to the chief’s office.

“Never mind. You just answered it.”

He forgot about the conversation before he had his gear scooped up and thrown into the rig. They’d need to dress for an extraction, but dispatch hadn’t said it would be anything but an MVA with injury.

They’d beat the ambulance by at least three minutes, which could mean life or death for the victim…or the
unborn child
.

The rig blew out, full siren, before he even had his seat belt on.

His whole being hummed. It always did on every call, but the words
victim is pregnant
sucker-punched his chest like they never had before. He shook it off and grabbed the radio mic to deliver a departure time and get more information from dispatch.

“Victim is conscious and speaking,” the dispatcher said. “There’s a state trooper on the scene who reports that the victim is still in the vehicle, airbag damage.”

To her baby
. He squeezed his eyes shut, only able to see Beth behind the wheel of her Ford Explorer. No, he couldn’t go there. He, along with two of the men in this rig, were EMT2 certified. He had to think about this woman and this baby, not his woman and his baby.

Irish took a wide turn fast, shaving precious seconds off their arrival time, as the radio crackled with more information.

“Trooper reports that the vehicle was hit on the driver’s side, traveling south on Fowler.” He processed that, pictured the intersection. “Two cars involved, second driver and passenger not injured.”

Just the pregnant woman.

“Victim is hemorrhaging… Lee Memorial ER has been alerted.”

About fifty feet ahead, he saw a bottleneck, with someone in a red van refusing to move to let a compact car get out of their way. The screaming siren apparently meant nothing to that jerk.

“Come on, come on.” Ken tensed and growled out the words under his breath as their speed slowed and Irish navigated around a bus that had pulled over. “Get the fuck out of the way, asshole.”

Irish threw him a look. “I got this, Captain.”

Damn it, he never showed emotion on the job. Never. It wasn’t even in his DNA.

But now that that DNA had created another human being? He felt…different.

Irish blew past the van, whipped onto Colonial, and had them on the scene in seconds. Ken snapped on latex gloves and leaped out of the cab, two men close behind, already knowing he was going in as the lead medic until the EMTs arrived.

He approached the vehicle, which was totaled, as the state trooper stepped aside to let Ken reach the victim.

He took a deep breath and looked at the bloodless, wrecked face of a woman he already knew was losing her baby.

If only he could save that baby…if only nothing really
was
impossible. But he knew better. Every single day in this job, he knew better.

Chapter Thirteen

The mood in the Endicott Development offices was tense. Beth didn’t get the usual bright smile from Jenny at the front desk, and no happy music played from her desktop speakers. In the back offices, most of the doors were closed, including her father’s.

Beth checked her watch, confirmed that she was on time, and turned the corner toward the conference room, nearly slamming into her stepbrother, Landon.

“Whoa there, sis,” he joked as they narrowly avoided a collision. “Are you that anxious to get to the meeting?”

“You’re here for the same meeting?” she asked. Then it couldn’t be about Ken or a twenty-five-year-old accident, she realized with a surprising amount of relief.

She greeted him with a quick hug, seeing a spark of humor in his hazel eyes and…something else. A pull and a tug. Maybe a few hair plugs in his thinning, but still dark, hair. Always striving, that was Landon.

“Looks that way,” Landon said.

“Anyone else?” she said.

He shrugged. “Not sure. He’s behind closed doors, and everyone seems to be breathing doom and gloom around here.”

“I noticed that,” she said, following when he gestured toward the still-empty conference room where she and Landon would no doubt engage in the only kind of conversation they ever had: small talk.

“So how are you?” she asked, already digging for something in common to talk about.

“Busy.” He was always busy. Landon ran a small investment firm over in Naples. He had four kids and was a soccer coach, Cub Scout den leader, and first in line for every recital. He collected old cars, golfed regularly, traveled extensively, and showered his wife, Rebecca, with nice jewelry and newly renovated rooms in their giant house on the mainland.

All in all, he had an ideal life and, honestly, Beth wasn’t entirely sure why he’d want to take over Endicott Development, but he’d made plenty of noise about it.

“How’s Rebecca doing?” Beth asked as she slid into a chair along the side of a long, mahogany table and he headed to the coffee bar in the back of the room.

“Oh, you know Rebecca.”

Actually, she didn’t. Like Landon, Rebecca was always a little distant and cool, like a woman wrapped in cellophane who you could see but not touch. “Busy with the kids?”

“Always,” he agreed. “She said she was going to call you, actually, because she wants to completely redo our master bathroom and thought you might have some ideas.”

The suggestion surprised her, but she liked being able to help family. “Of course, but I’m swamped with my own renovation nightmare right now.”

“I heard.” He turned from the coffeepot and placed a cup in front of her. “Black, right?”

“Actually, I’m off coffee at the moment.”

He lifted a brow, but the exchange was interrupted by the slam of a door. “Jennifer!” Josie’s voice echoed in the hallway. “Someone call 911! Ray is having a heart attack!”

Landon and Beth exchanged a quick look before they both shot out of their seats and darted into the hall.

“You call 911, and you will lose your job!” Dad hollered over the commotion of several people running in the same direction. “I am not having a heart attack.”

Landon and Beth reached Dad’s office at the same time, but Landon pushed in first. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Your father is having a heart attack.”

“I am not…” Dad ground out a few more words Beth couldn’t understand, but the anger underneath them nearly made her stumble.

“Dad, are you okay?”

He was standing behind his desk, the same crisp, white, long-sleeve button-down he wore to work every day. This one looked a little too large on him now, and he flicked at the collar as though he expected it to be tighter.

“I’m fine,” he shot back, but his attention was on Josie. “And I’ll have you remember that.”

She bristled, smoothing her hair. “I don’t like the way you look, Ray,” she said. “You’re pale and you were clutching your chest.”

“I was not clutching my chest, and if shoving me in the hospital again is your way of controlling this situation, it won’t work.”

“I’m only trying to help,” she said softly, her voice cracking. Immediately, Landon was next to her, putting a comforting arm around his mother’s shoulders.

“Should I call 911?” Jenny asked tentatively from the door. Behind her, three more EDC employees watched with concern.

“Absolutely not,” Dad said. “Josie is overreacting, and we just need to be left alone.”

Two of them backed away, but his admin stayed and gave a questioning look to Josie, as if waiting for the real order.

“Not yet,” Josie said.