He was serious. Deadly serious.
Jeremy smiled. “It’s part of the training, you know. Not just because I care about her, but you know the drill. Protect and serve. Protect. Be the front line. That means you take the bullet.”
Joe nodded, then rose impatiently. “Just…You have to be careful with her. Really careful.”
“Because she…rushes in?” Jeremy asked.
“Because you never know quite what she’s seen,” Joe said. He picked up the check the waitress had left when she brought over their food. “You got my dinner last night. I can do lunch. I’ll call you when I’ve got something.” He picked up the files and headed out. Jeremy watched him go, then found himself reaching for his phone.
To his irritation, he found that Joe’s words had made him anxious.
But Rowenna answered on the second ring.
“Jeremy?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you?”
“Having lunch with my friend Dan from the History Museum. I was there this morning, and I found out all kinds of stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“Jeremy, men have been arrested through the centuries for claiming to be the Harvest Man.”
“Well, I don’t know who the Harvest Man is, but I do know that twenty people were executed for being witches and none of them really were,” he said. “I don’t see how the past has anything to do with a corpse in the field now.”
“The Harvest Man is a local legend—I’ll tell you about him later. But I think our guy is crazy, and that he thinks he’s the Harvest Man reborn or something,” she said.
“Well, our guy is definitely crazy in one way or another, and given the way that body was rigged up, I’m willing to bet he knows the area and its legends backward and forward.”
“You really have to go through the research,” Rowenna said. “Honestly, I’m sure I’m onto something.”
“Even if that’s the case,” Jeremy told her, “he’s still flesh and blood, very dangerous—and out there somewhere.” He found himself rising as he talked. “Where are you, exactly? I’m on my way over.”
She gave him the address of the little sushi place off the main drag where she and Daniel were. It was close enough that he decided to walk. He cut through the pedestrian mall, envisioning where Damien had set up his tent. Assuming he’d been the one to abduct Mary, how had he pulled it off? Somehow he would have had to close up and store his tent, then spirit Mary out of the cemetery. Of course, according to Brad the area had been deserted, so that meant no one around to see what was going on.
As he passed the shops, he noticed Rowenna’s friends Adam and Eve Llewellyn changing the display in the front window of their store. They seemed to be arguing as they arranged brilliant purple fabric to provide the backdrop for whatever merchandise they planned to feature.
Eve looked up, as if instinctively, and saw him. The scowl she’d been wearing disappeared as if it had never existed. She smiled broadly and waved, and elbowed Adam in the arm so that he could wave and smile, too. It was interesting, Jeremy thought. Adam hadn’t seen him, so he’d been arguing away, the tension in his features betraying his anger. But just like Eve, he slipped an instant grin onto his face and waved as if he were as happy as a clam.
With no alternative, Jeremy smiled and waved back.
Eve escaped from the window and reached the door before he could stop at a wave and keep going.
“Where’s Rowenna?” she asked.
“Having lunch with Dan,” he told her.
“Lunch? Where?” Eve asked.
“Some sushi place off the main drag.”
“Asaki,” Eve said knowingly. “Wait for me? I’m starving, so I’m just going to tell Adam to hold the fort.”
Before he could answer, she had hurried back into the shop.
Through the window, he could see Adam frown, then argue.
Eve ignored him and hurried back outside, wrapped in a long black cape and smiling broadly, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Smiling far too broadly, it seemed to him.
“Let’s go, shall we?”
She linked an arm through his. “Do you like sushi?” she asked brightly.
“Sure. I like just about anything. I’ve already eaten, though. I’m just catching up with Rowenna,” he said. “She was over at the museum researching something called the Harvest Man.”
Eve laughed, and it seemed as forced to him as her smile had been. “Well, I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you. Dan’s a nice guy, but he can be a little dull. I’m sure they’ve had their noses stuck deep into some old book all morning. How they think that looking into the past can help solve a modern murder…” Her voice trailed off, and she paused, shuddering. “Do they know who the woman is yet, or where she came from?”