She hangs up and lets out a deep breath, oddly calm now that the scream is gone.
Her sister didn’t ask her to drive up there. She seized the opportunity like a parachute in the midst of a harrowing freefall.
“Are you serious? You’ll really come? I can’t believe I don’t have to deal with this alone. I know how busy you are and can’t believe you’d do that for me.”
I wouldn’t, Noreen thinks, as she pulls out onto the main road, ready to begin the long trip back to Mundy’s Landing. I’m doing it for me.
Standing by his open locker, Mick reaches for his jacket, then thinks better of it. He still can’t find his good down coat, but this building is too overheated to consider putting on even the lightweight windbreaker he wore this morning. He fights back another wave of nausea, thinking that he can’t get sick now. He has to find Brianna, has to—-
“Going somewhere, Mr. Mundy?” a voice asks as he puts one arm into his sleeve.
He turns to see Mr. Goodall, the principal.
He isn’t alone.
“We’d like to have a word with you, please.” The uniformed police officer with him is familiar. He’s the same cop who offered Mick a ride home from Dunkin’ Donuts last Saturday night. The Eagle Scout who once knew Braden.
He isn’t smiling today.
“Is it about Brianna?” Mick asks, heart pounding.
The two men exchange a glance.
“We’ll talk in my office,” Mr. Goodall says.
“But—-”
“Come on.” The cop rests a strong hand on Mick’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
For Casey, the decision to take care of Rowan Mundy today was born of frustration and practicality. The storm in the west is bearing down on the country’s midsection. If it hits with its projected ferocity, that would mean being away from here for days, maybe longer.
And that wouldn’t be good.
Casey was in Rhode Island for weeks last summer after that storm. Free moments were scarce, but every one of them was spent searching for a suitable stand--in. It was dangerous to strike in such an insular location.
Yet you took the chance.
And now you’ve been taking chances again. If you take another one now—-the wrong chance—-you’ll never get back to Rowan.
Funny—-Casey almost doesn’t care much what happens after that. The plan was to make things right, and then put all this in the past and move on.
But maybe a fresh start someplace else, as an artist or a craftsman, is too ambitious or too . . . mundane.
If this is going to be your claim to fame, why give up now? Why not continue?
This might have begun as an effort to punish Rowan Mundy, and that hasn’t changed. Rowan Mundy will die. But she doesn’t have to be the last one.
Especially not now that Detective Sullivan Leary has reared her lovely red head.
Cobblestone streets lined with charming old houses, mom--and--pop shops, vintage lampposts, and towering trees: Mundy’s Landing is precisely the kind of village where Sully imagines herself living whenever she’s fed up with homicide and city stress—-which isn’t, surprisingly, every single day of her life.
“Are you kidding? You’d go stir crazy in a place like this, Gingersnap,” Barnes informs her as they park in a diagonal spot along the town square, decked out for the holidays and dotted with fountains and statues, benches, and an old--fashioned bandstand that currently houses a lit Christmas tree.
“I would not go stir crazy. I’d sit in that nice park with a book.”
“You can do that back home.”
“Yes, but here, no one would bother me. Look how peaceful it is. No crowds, no panhandlers, no naked raving lunatics—-”
“There was just one naked raving lunatic and that was a few years ago.”
“That’s one too many. Plus,” she continues, “there are no sirens, there’s no construction . . .”