SQUALL
Nolan
SAM’S FOOTSTEPS ECHO ACROSS THE space that stretches around us, trapped between the beams of the distillery’s vaulted ceiling. Though I strain against the handcuffs, I don’t make any headway. The metal is flush against my skin. I try twisting my ankles, but that’s useless too, the duct tape wound in thick layers to bind my legs to the chair.
“There’s a great synergy to recording in this place,” Sam says as he brings a long, thin bag over from the mouth of the corridor and pulls a tripod from its interior. He takes a deep, dramatic sigh, inhaling the scent of fresh paint and freshly cut lumber. “Considering it was once the heart of Arthur Lancaster’s empire, interviewing another murderer here in the distillery that Lukas Lancaster is trying to bring back to life is a perfect way to tie all the pieces together. Don’t you think?”
I don’t answer. I have no intention of telling this man shit. Especially not on camera.
Sam smiles. It’s as though he can divine my thoughts right out of my head when he says, “We are going to talk, you and me. Or everything I know about Harper Starling will be thrown into this documentary, and trust me when I say, her life will be blown apart.”
“How do I know you won’t do that anyway, even if I do talk to you?”
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.” He shrugs, adjusting the tripod and then bending to retrieve his camera bag off a drop cloth. His eyes don’t leave mine any longer than they have to, as though he doesn’t fully trust
how thoroughly he’s incapacitated me. “Give me what I want, and I
promise I’ll leave her out of it.”
“And what do you want, exactly?”
His smile stretches. “The story of a lifetime, of course. And the recognition I deserve.”
I scoff, and Sam’s eyes narrow to slits of malice. “Recognition? Or do you mean ‘fame’?”
“I mean, acknowledgment. That my group has done what no one else could.” Sam presses a button on one of the black cords that surround him, and two portable studio lights flicker on. I squint against their blinding white glare. “We’ve solved cold cases when the authorities couldn’t. We’ve exposed criminals—”
“And now you’ve become one.” I jostle my wrists behind me, my arms hooked beneath the metal armrests of my chair. “Or did you conveniently forget that there are laws about abducting people at gunpoint and holding them against their will, to name a few?”
Sam approaches me with a wireless lapel microphone clutched in his fingers. He attaches it to my shirt, avoiding my unyielding glare. When he’s done, he returns to the mounted camera, putting his own microphone on before settling a pair of headphones over his ears. “You know, since before I even started the Sleuthseekers, I believed some rules needed to be bent for justice to be fairly served. But of all people in this fucked-up town, I thought that you would agree with that.”
Sam adjusts the lens and buttons on his camera until he seems satisfied with what he’s seeing on the viewfinder, and then he grabs the film slate from the floor. He positions himself between me and the camera, the clapperboard clutched in his hands.
“Action,” he declares, whacking the black-and-white striped arm down onto the body of the slate before he rushes behind the camera, exchanging the clapperboard for his notebook. I wait until he’s looking at the viewfinder before I roll my eyes. “Is your name Nolan Caius Rhodes?”
“You already know my name.”
Sam glares at me from behind the camera. “We can skip right to Harper Starling, if you prefer.”
My blood boils. I strain against the handcuffs. I’m desperate to tear his fucking throat out. To dig my fingers into his flesh and feel it split apart in my grip.
“Yes,” I grit out. “My name is Nolan Caius Rhodes.”
“Where do you live?”
“Gatlinburg, Tennessee.”
“Tell me about what brought you to Cape Carnage?”
I release a heavy sigh, as though this is the most ridiculous fucking thing I’ve ever been forced to endure. “Bird-watching.”
“Bird-watching,” Sam echoes, failing to keep his triumphant smirk from bleeding into his voice. He’s hardly the impartial interviewer, not that I expected any level of professionalism here. “That’s right, Irene mentioned something about that to me. I guess that makes a lot more sense now. Tell
me, do you ever observe starlings?”
I cut him with a vicious glare.
“Did you know that a starling can mimic the songs of up to twenty different bird species?” he continues. “They can even impersonate human speech.”
There’s something else behind the slow smile he gives me. Like he holds all the cards. Even the ones I don’t know about.
A suffocating blanket of unease seems to descend around me. “Ask me a relevant question,” I snarl.
“Sure thing.” The false brightness in his tone sets me even more on edge.
Sam flips a page in his notebook, tapping a pen to his chin. “Ah, yes. I have a relevant question. Why did you murder Trevor Fisher?”
My lips seal tight.
“What about Dylan Jacobs? Or Marc Beaumont?”
I say nothing.
“Or what about Jake Hornell? Would you happen to know anything about his disappearance on June seventh? Or how about you tell me what you were doing at the Ballantyne River last night? Because it seemed pretty fucking suspicious to me.”
Fuck. I never heard anything. Never saw a light or another car. It was a normal night at the river, except for the fact that Harper wasn’t with me,
which I’m so fucking grateful for now. But clearly I wasn’t as alone as I thought.
When I still don’t answer, frustration rolls from Sam, his shoulders stiff with tension. I don’t believe he’ll ever leave Harper out of this. I’ll never take him for his word. But if I can rile him up enough, if I can force him from frustration and into rage, maybe I can coax him closer … “Since you’re determined to make this difficult, Mr. Rhodes, we’re going to talk about what you know about Harper Starling. And then we’ll talk about what I know about her.” He flips a page in his notebook. “Harper was driving the car that crashed into you and your younger brother, Billy, four years ago. After the incident occurred, she drove away and left you to die. Isn’t that—”
A sudden sound echoes from the far side of the distillery. We both startle, Sam letting out a long breath as he shakes his head. “Fucking finally.” He checks his watch before pressing a button on his camera to pause the recording. “Vinny, I’m on the landing,” he calls out.
But there’s no answer.
Sam carefully withdraws his gun from where he’s shoved it between his belt and his back. Silence descends around us. It’s shattered by another metallic whack, like something striking one of the copper stills.
“Goddamnit,” Sam whispers. He checks my wrists and ankles, then moves toward the stairs that lead to the floor below, casting me a wary glare before he disappears. I hear his footsteps descend the rest of the stairs, and then he starts crossing the room, heading in the direction of the sound.
I resume my struggle against my bonds. But I stop the instant I see her.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss as Harper comes out of the shadows and into the bright studio lights. She crouches low, rushing toward me.
There’s a slight tremor in her hand when she wraps it around my arm as she examines my predicament.
“Saving your ass, obviously,” she replies, letting go of my wrist. She drops to my feet, starting to slice at the duct tape where it’s stuck against the chair leg. “At least, I thought I was. How did you let yourself get handcuffed?”
“Let myself? Who lets themselves get handcuffed?”
“You do, apparently. Like a fucking rookie. And if I recall correctly, this is the second time you’ve been played today.”
“Now is not the time, Harper.” I feel the give in the tape as it splits and she moves to my other leg. “You have to get out of here,” I whisper. “He’s
unhinged. He’s got a gun.”
“I noticed.”
“If he sees you here—” My words are cut short as we hear Sam’s boots scuff against the lower stairs. Harper manages to free my other ankle.
“Hide.”
Our eyes meet for only an instant, but in that moment, I see fear in them.
I’ve seen it in her before. I’ll never forget the terror and hopelessness that stared back at me from the abyss of the sea. But I also know that this time it’s different. She’s not afraid for herself. She’s afraid for me.
“Go,” I mouth, not letting any sound escape my lips.
Harper sneaks back to the corridor, her footfalls silent. She disappears into the shadows beyond the bright lights just a moment before Sam appears on the landing, the gun still clutched in his hand. He looks a little shaken, a little cautious. But his determination seems to take over as he returns to his camera and presses a button. A tiny red light flicks on.
“Now,” he says, then clears his throat, “where were we?”
“I believe we were at the part where I tell you that you’re fucking unhinged. You abducted me and you’re holding me against my will, and you can go fuck yourself.”
Though Sam keeps the gun lowered at his side, he flicks the safety on and off as a reminder of his power over me. Knowing Harper is somewhere in the shadows is the only thing about his quiet threat that gives me true fear. But if I can just draw him a little closer … “You know the thing about guys like you?” I ask, settling into my chair as though I have all night to play this game. “You’re not that much different than the people you claim to hunt down. You’ve just taken your true crime ‘infotainment’ ten steps too far. But you don’t have the actual skill to back it up.”
Sam might not move from behind the camera, but I can almost feel the heat of his rage.
“You don’t know shit about how to interview a witness. Or how to legally do … well … anything. Do you really think flying drones over Lancaster Manor or trespassing on private property or, I dunno, fucking kidnapping will stand up in court?”
“I don’t care about what you think.” Sam surges closer. He trains the muzzle of the gun on my smirking face. “I care about the truth.”
His thumb shifts. The safety clicks off.
“Tell me the fucking truth,” he snarls.
“You want to know the truth?” My heart pounds so hard against my bones that they could break. “The truth is, I’m not the one you should be
worried about.”
“I am.”
The instant Sam turns at the sound of Harper’s voice behind him, I stand and spin. The metal chair smashes against the backs of his legs. He loses his balance, pitching forward. The gun falls from his hand. A deafening bang crashes through the distillery when it smacks the floor and slides into the shadows.
I go down hard on my knees, my shoulder and face hitting the floor. But my eyes never stray from Harper. She rushes at Sam, keeping her body low as she seizes her opportunity. She slams into him while he’s still unbalanced and wraps her arms around his legs. Her cry of fury echoes across concrete and metal as she uses every ounce of her strength to push him toward me.
Harper releases Sam with a final shove. He tumbles backward onto me.
And then I lift with my knees to catapult him over the railing.
His arms and legs wheel through the air. I think we’re in the clear until one of his feet catches between the metal rungs and then twists. His boot locks at a sideways angle against one of the cross rails. The audible pop of dislocating bones and torn tendons fills the air, followed by his agonizing screams as he dangles from the landing.
“Fucksakes,” Harper says between panting breaths, her hands braced on
her knees. “That must really hurt.”
Sam begs for help.
“Are you okay?” she asks me, ignoring Sam’s pleas for assistance as she helps me to my feet instead. Worry is vibrant in her eyes. She holds my face
between her palms, skimming a thumb over the blood that drips onto my cheek from a cut above my eye. “The gun—”
“I’m fine. Just lost my balance. Are you?”
“Yeah. I’m good.” Harper’s gaze softens, dropping to my lips and lingering there. “I thought you left.”
My brows furrow. Harper’s eyes meet mine only briefly, her cheeks flushing crimson. “Left?” I ask, and she lifts a shoulder. “No. Of course not.
Why would I leave?”
She doesn’t look at me, her attention caught on the shadowed corridor.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
I know that whatever is happening between us might feel different to me than it does to her. The only reason she’s had to trust me was because she didn’t have a choice, so it makes sense that she thinks I would cut and run if I had the chance. But she doesn’t understand that she’s all I’ve thought about for the last four years. Every single day, her presence in my mind has given me something to fight for. It’s given me purpose. Maybe that obsession looked very different when it started. But it hasn’t stopped. It’s just transformed.
“Harper …” I sigh when she looks away with a shake of her head, trying to hide the shine at her lashes. “First, how about you get me a key?”
“Right. Key.” She snaps out of her momentary crisis of confidence to head for Sam, where he flails from the railing, his panicked cries and furious expletives bouncing through the room. She lies on her belly and reaches down to his pockets, letting out a triumphant squeak when she finds what she’s looking for. When she returns with the key, she unlocks the handcuffs, and the moment they’re free, I let the chair drop from my arms and wrap her in an embrace.
“No,” I say, burying my face against her neck and crushing her to me. I inhale the sweet aroma of her distinctive scent. I relish every breath she takes against me, every touch as her hands slide across my back to hold me just as tightly. “I did not leave. I told you already. You’re mine, and I’m not letting you go.”
She nods. Maybe she thinks they’re just pretty words. She might not realize that it’s a promise. A vow that has no end. But when I pull back just
enough to capture her mouth in a searing kiss, I show her. I press my lips to hers and steal her breath and lavish her tongue with mine. My hand threads into her hair and I hold her close. I know she’s not ready to hear the words.
They hardly even make sense to me. But I love her, and with my touch, I prove it.
“Fucking help me, you fucking psychopaths,” Sam screeches, shattering our moment.
I rest my forehead against Harper’s, leaving a bloody stamp behind when we part. “I guess we should do something about that asshole.”
Harper lets out a long sigh, her eyes fluttering closed for just a moment as though she’s still savoring my touch. “Yeah,” she says before she steps back. “You’re probably right.”
With a brighter smile, Harper pivots on her heel and heads for Sam, kneeling to slide her hands between the rungs of the railing on either side of
Sam’s boot.
“W-what are you doing?” he stammers.
“Helping, clearly.” She tugs at his laces, loosening the bow. “But I didn’t say who.”
Harper rises and gives a swift kick to his boot. Sam’s foot slides free of the shoe. His screech is cut short as he lands on the floor one level below.
“Christ. The silence is nice, isn’t it,” I say as we peer over the railing to look at his unmoving body. Blood seeps from beneath his head to creep across the concrete.
“Yeah, he was getting on my last nerve.” Harper grabs his boot to chuck it over the landing. It smacks his face before bouncing off to the side.
“That’s going to be a bitch to clean up. We’d better get to it. We’re pretty far out of town—the nearest property is old Mr. Talbot’s farm a half mile south, and he’s pretty hard of hearing, but you never know. Someone still could have heard that gunshot and called it in.”
“Hey.” I lay a hand on her wrist, stopping her progress toward the lights that still shine behind us. She looks up at me with a question in her gunmetal eyes. “I know you thought I could have left you, but you could have left me too. I’m not sure how you figured out how to find me. I’m grateful that you did.”
She nods. It takes her a beat before she finally says, “Sure. What are friends for, right?”
I give her a dead-eyed glare. “We are not ‘friends.’”
“Yeah, I think I remember you saying that already,” she replies, but I know she can tell what I really mean. That she’s so much more than that.
It’s in the way she flashes me a shy smile that lodges like a splinter in my heart before she turns away to start working on dismantling the lights. I know we both went back to that moment when we first faced off in her garden. It was supposed to be the defining confrontation that would seal our destiny. Bounty and executioner. Crime and justice. But maybe I’m just ready to leave that behind for the other memories that are starting to eclipse it. Anger served a purpose for me in the beginning. But in the end, it was a cage. And guilt is an equally vicious prison, one Harper is clearly still trapped in.
For the first time, I wonder if I can help her escape it when I had a hand in putting her there.
That thought haunts me as we pack Sam’s equipment, bringing anything that connects him with us to my rental and Arthur’s Jaguar where they’re parked at the back of the building, out of sight from the road.
After debating the best plan for the body, we agree that we should leave Sam here at the distillery, but take a final sweep through the space to ensure we’ve erased our presence so it looks like the unfortunate accident it was … almost.
If we remove him from the scene, it will only pique the interest of the Sleuthseekers. They’ll be rabid for details, and they won’t stop until they unravel the mystery. But if it’s an accident, we might have hope for fewer problems. And if Vinny wakes from where Harper clocked him in the head back at the inn, it will be his word against mine. His wild story about his unhinged boss kidnapping me for an interview probably won’t hold much weight with the pragmatic Sheriff Yates, particularly not against my alibi of sleeping soundly at Lancaster Manor’s cottage with my girlfriend at my side.
We’re heading down the slope to the lower entrance of the distillery for a last check of the scene, still talking through the finer details of our plan,
when we hear the sound of a car engine and gravel crunching beneath tires.
Harper and I both stop abruptly, holding our breath. But there’s no way we’re mistaken, not when we hear the engine cut out, followed by the creak and thud of a car door closing.
Someone has pulled to a stop at the main parking lot of the Lancaster Distillery.
“Maybe it’s the drone guy,” Harper whispers as we peer through the windows at the body just visible in the dim light.
“Maybe,” I agree, though I clasp a hand around her wrist, ready to pull her back toward the path that leads to the vehicles. A flashlight sweeps across the windows at the opposite side of the building. Slow, careful footsteps make their way toward the entrance, followed by the creak of the
door as it opens and shuts.
We turn and jog toward the cars.
“But I don’t think we should wait around to find out.”
