“What did she use?” Emma asked, and Logan gave her a strange look. She supposed she should have acted more shocked and less genuinely curious.
“Why do you want to know?” Logan asked.
“I’m not here to get you in trouble,” Emma said, spreading her hands. “I want answers about my family. Help me out.”
Logan grunted. “It’s been a long time,” he hedged. “She probably bought what all the rich not-that-kind-of-junkie junkies bought. Valium, Vicodin, oxy, whatever their preferred flavor. A few at first and then more and then too much, and either they got clean, got in trouble, or got above my pay grade.”
“Above your pay grade meaning…” she prompted.
“Heroin,” he said simply. Emma gave him a skeptical look. “Never heard of the opioid epidemic? Eventually the semilegal stuff stops doing the job. But like I said, above my pay grade. If it wasn’t something you could at least theoretically get with a doctor’s note, I didn’t stock it.”
“Right. So how long?” she asked.
“How long did I sell to her, you mean? I think about five years,” Logan said, scratching his chin as he did the math in his head.
“Right under your dad’s nose.”
He smirked a little. “No risk, no reward, right? Besides, he’s not the white knight he likes to let people think he is.”
She thought of Ellis across the table, playing the concerned father figure while urging her to incriminate herself. How frustration had crept in quickly, his face turning red as his voice got louder.
“And what about now?” she asked. “Still selling?”
“Clean as a whistle,” he said. Leaned an elbow on the bar. Leaned in too close. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
His eyes fixed on hers. He did have pretty eyes, she thought. Maybe that was what Juliette saw in him. Or maybe it was only that he was so unlike what she was supposed to want. That, Emma could understand.
“Did my mother always pay on time, Logan?” Emma asked lightly.
He chuckled. “Nice try. I wasn’t even selling to her at that point.”
“So she got clean, got in trouble, or went above your pay grade?” she asked. She would have known if her mother was using heroin, wouldn’t she?
“Or she was getting it from somewhere else,” Logan said.
“Where?”
He worked his jaw, like he was considering not telling her. “I can’t say for sure.”
“But you have a theory,” Emma said, raising an eyebrow. He wanted to talk. He wanted her leaning in close, listening to what he had to say; he wanted to be important, and there were precious few opportunities to be important when you worked at a place like Wilson’s, lived in a place like Arden.
“It’s nothing.” Logan shook his head.
“Does it have to do with my father?” Emma guessed, and Logan froze. Something illegal, involving her father. Drugs wouldn’t have been her guess. Her law-and-order father thought they should bring the firing squad back, thought “druggies” should be rounded up and put in camps—preferably along with liberals, IRS agents, and anyone who called their pets “fur babies.”
But she was realizing more and more how little she’d known him—or any of them. Her parents, her sisters. She’d been so wrapped up in her own anger and misery, she’d never looked twice at the people closest to her.
Logan wetted his lips. “Emma. I was a cuddly teddy bear compared to some of the people out there. I was a dumbass with a lucrative hobby, and I don’t mind talking about it. Other people, they’re not going to be so nice, if you ask questions.”
“My father is dead. He’s not going to hurt anyone,” Emma said.
“Yeah, he’s dead. And someone killed him.”
“General wisdom says that was me,” Emma reminded him.
“Nah,” he said. “I never bought that.”
“You might be the only one.”
“I’m good at reading people,” he said. “You might act tough, Emma Palmer, but you’re a gooey chocolate chip cookie on the inside.”
“You have a way with words,” she said dryly.
He waggled his eyebrows. “It’s not the only thing I have a way with.”
“I’m married,” she told him.
“And does he make you happy, Emma Palmer?” Logan asked, jokingly.
“He makes me feel less alone,” she said. Logan fell silent, both of them startled by the answer. He shifted his weight, uncomfortable.
“Emma, all I know is that one of your dad’s guys paid me a hundred bucks to spend a night shifting cargo between trucks after hours. I don’t know what it was and I don’t know where it came from, but it can’t have been legal. But maybe go ask Gabriel Mahoney why his dad got fired. Or don’t. Like I said, there’s a lot of bad people out there. I wouldn’t want a nice girl like you getting involved with them.”
“I can look after myself.”
“You sure about that?” Logan asked. All that sleepiness was gone. His gaze was intent. Intrusive. He put a glass in front of her and poured a trickle of amber liquid in it, barely a swallow.
“I can’t,” she said.
“One sip won’t hurt anything, and you need it.”
She picked up the glass, staring at it for a moment. Whiskey. Her father’s favored drink, faithfully transferred to a crystal decanter each week. He didn’t often drink to excess, but he drank steadily, from the time he got home to the time he went to bed. This stuff was cheaper than that; she could smell it from here. She knocked it back. Hardly a swallow, but it scorched all the way down.
“That’s better,” he said.
Emma made an unamused noise in the back of her throat. “I should go.”
“But you don’t want to,” he replied, unsmiling.
He was wrong. She did want to go home. Because Nathan was at home, and she loved Nathan. Maybe she’d never fallen in love with him, but she loved him. She had to. Because he was the man who had never left her. Even when he had the option. She knew him. She knew his flaws and she knew the worst thing he was capable of.
That had been enough before. It would have to be enough now.
She rose, reaching for her wallet. “Thank you for the drink.”
“On the house,” he said. “And tell you what. Give me your number. Could be I think of a few things from back then. I can let you know.”
She didn’t trust Logan’s affability, that easy way he let things roll off him. There was a hard glint hiding behind those eyes. He let things go in the moment, she thought, but she doubted he forgot them.
Still.
She scribbled her number on a napkin and put a bill down on the bar. “Thanks again, Logan,” she said, and made her way to the door.
24
JULIETTE
Then
She’s aiming for the door. She almost misses, banging her shoulder against the frame and stumbling down the front steps.
“Juliette!” Logan is behind her. She stops, closes her eyes.
Not like that. She wanted it but not like that, and she shouldn’t have wanted it at all. She knows what she is. She knows it should be fine, but it isn’t, not for her, not for her father.
Logan, laughing, catches her arm and pulls her around. “Hey. Babe. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not—” she begins. She gestures. “I don’t like girls.”
“Aren’t all girls just a little bisexual?” he asks. He sticks a finger through one of her belt loops and tugs her against him. “Come on. It’s just for fun. It’s hot.” His breath is loud against her ear; he kisses her neck. He’s leaning forward, enough that she can’t hold up his weight, has to step back and back again, until her shoulders hit the rough bark of a tree. “Don’t worry. I know what you do like.”
He unbuttons her jeans. With her weight braced against the tree, his mouth against her throat, he works his fingers between her legs until she is stifling her cries, her eyes shut, her head tipped back. As soon as he’s done, a familiar feeling of shame floods through her, the need to not be touched or seen. She turns her face away.