What I've Done

He pressed a hand to his solar plexus, where tension gathered. A sheriff’s department vehicle sat behind his Jeep, the red and blue strobe lights swirling in the night.

The same deputy who had responded to the protesters call earlier now took photos of the interior of Lance’s Jeep. He opened the rear door and removed the rock with gloved hands. He hefted it in one hand. “This sucker must weigh four pounds. Good thing it didn’t hit either of you.”

Every time Lance pictured the incident in his head, he wanted to hyperventilate. If the rock had broken through the windshield eighteen inches to either side, it would have hit Morgan or him. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it. He’d had no warning and no time to react.

“Any luck finding Adam Carter?” Lance asked.

The deputy carried the rock back to the rear of his patrol car, put it into an evidence box, and labeled it. “No. He wasn’t home. His parents thought he was in his room, but he’d gone out the window. They’re as desperate to find him as we are.”

“I’ll bet.” Lance couldn’t imagine losing one son and having the other go missing. The Carters must be devastated. The depths of their grief would only be aggravated by their guilt over not keeping better tabs on Adam. He might be an adult, but they would still feel responsible for whatever happened to him.

“We’re looking for him.” The deputy closed his trunk.

The pepper spray incident had been worrisome enough, but no one had been at risk of dying.

“That rock could have killed both of us,” Lance said. “If Adam threw it, his anger is escalating.”

Lance’s gaze returned to his windshield.

This was an act of rage.

Had it been planned? Had he been waiting for them or had he been running from Eliza’s house, seen them coming, and grabbed the rock from the ground? Lance considered the darkness.

“Look, we don’t know that Adam was responsible for this. You’re speculating. It could have been a random act of violence committed by any one of the dozens of protesters that were at Ms. Powell’s house today. How could he have known it was your Jeep coming in the dark? He would have seen headlights and maybe recognized the general shape of an SUV, but there’s no way he could have identified the actual vehicle approaching.”

Lance reviewed the incident in his head. “Unless someone was watching the house, saw us leave, and relayed our position to him.”

“Now you think more than one person was involved?” the deputy asked, his voice skeptical.

“It’s just one possibility,” Lance admitted. “But we already know he brought two friends. Maybe there were more.”

“We’ll consider it.” The deputy’s voice implied that Lance shouldn’t count on it.

The rough surface of the rock would be all but impossible to fingerprint. Yellow strobe lights blinked in the darkness as a flatbed approached. It pulled onto the shoulder of the road and beeped as it backed up to the Jeep.

“Let me get back to work. I’ll let you know if we find Adam.” The deputy got into his car and drove away.

While the driver hoisted the Jeep onto the flatbed, Lance called Morgan to give her the update.

“I could come over there and sleep on your couch tonight,” Lance offered. “I’m worried. At this point, we need to operate on the assumption that he threw the rock and that he’s clearly angry beyond reason. He either wants to hurt you for representing Haley or he wants to stop you.”

“Stella is staying over,” Morgan said. “And she brought good news. McFarland was denied bail. We don’t have to worry about him for a while.”

“That is good news.”

“And Grandpa says we can use his car tomorrow. Do you want me to pick you up in the morning or meet you at the office?”

Lance lived six blocks from Sharp Investigations.

“I’ll meet you at the office.” He would walk over. He wanted to go in early, and she would be tied up getting the kids off to school.

The truck driver waved at Lance. “I have to go,” he said to Morgan.

“See you in the morning then.” Her voice turned husky with emotion. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” His brain told him that Morgan and her sister were more than capable of taking care of themselves, but his heart didn’t listen to reason, and he would still worry. “Get some sleep.”

“I will,” she said, and the line went dead.

More than an hour later, the tow truck driver dropped Lance off in front of his house. The Jeep had been left at the body shop in town. Lance stared at his house. The lights were on. Someone was inside. Only two people had keys, and he’d just talked to Morgan.

“Thanks.” Lance tipped the driver and walked to the front step. It was doubtful that a burglar would have turned on the lights, but better careful than dead. Standing to the side of the doorframe, he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“It’s just me,” Sharp called out.

Lance went inside. Removing his jacket, he hung it in the hall closet, then walked back to the kitchen.

Sharp was pouring whiskey over ice. Other than the occasional organic beer, Sharp rarely drank alcohol. Normally, his whiskey consumption was limited to a single glass on Christmas Eve.

“I couldn’t settle down and decided to go for a walk.” He took down a second tumbler, poured a finger of whiskey into it neat, and handed it over.

Lance took it. “Been a hell of a day.”

“It has.” Sharp sipped his whiskey, wandering out of the kitchen. He walked past the grand piano that sat in the dining room in lieu of a table and into the adjoining living room. Stopping in front of the glass patio doors, he stared out into the blackness of the yard.

When he hadn’t spoken for a few heartbeats, Lance went to his piano and sat. Sharp would talk when he was ready. Lance took a swallow, then set his whiskey on top of the piano. He stretched his fingers over the keys, not thinking. The first few chords of “Desperado” felt right. Always his outlet, the music flowed through him and cleared his head.

After the final notes faded away, Sharp rattled the ice in his glass. “Haley’s first birthday was a hard day for Eliza. Ted should have been there. He’d been gone about nine months by then. Eliza didn’t have any family in Scarlet Falls, but she threw a party anyway. Some of the SFPD came. I was there early, did the things Ted would have done. Went out for ice and beer. Put burgers on the grill. Eliza did her best to celebrate an important milestone. After everyone left, she put Haley to bed. I cleaned up for her. Then we sat out in the backyard with a couple of beers, not talking, just being sad and missing Ted.”

Sharp drained his glass and stared at the ice. “I don’t know how it happened, but before I could think, I was kissing her, my best—dead—friend’s wife. And I was married then. I felt like a total shit. I didn’t even apologize. I just left.” Sharp shook his head, disappointed. “I felt so damned guilty. It wasn’t even sexual. Not really. Eliza and I didn’t have a romantic relationship. What we shared was pain. There wasn’t anything healthy about starting something between us, and we both knew it.”

Lance picked up his glass and swallowed some whiskey.

Tension radiated from Sharp as he drew in a deep breath. It hissed out between his teeth. “A week later, she called me to tell me she was moving. She needed a fresh start. But I also think she wanted to put some distance between us. It was almost like neither one of us could heal. Whenever we were together, our grief amplified. It’s supposed to be the opposite, right? Friends help each other cope. But not us. We were trapped in some mutually destructive pattern, and she was the one who was brave enough to break it.”

“That was a long time ago.” Lance sipped his whiskey.

“My wife left not too long after that. My marriage was in trouble before Ted died. Afterward, I spent more time helping Eliza and Haley than making any attempt to save my own relationship. But the divorce followed right on top of Ted’s death and Eliza leaving town. There were no shining moments in my life at that time.”

Lance counted the years. Soon after all this had gone down, Lance’s father had disappeared, and SFPD detective Sharp had been assigned the case.

“I assume you lived up to the cop cliché and threw yourself into your work?”

Sharp’s grin was ironic. “You know it.”

Was the fact that his personal life had been in shambles part of the reason Sharp had immersed himself so deeply in Lance’s father’s case and taken a paternal interest in Lance?

Lance didn’t want to think of how his life would have turned out if he and his mentally ill mother had been on their own. Sharp had made all the difference. Once he’d figured out that anxiety crippled Jenny Kruger, Sharp was the one who made sure Lance had a ride to hockey practice. He gave a scared, lonely boy a safe place to stay when his mother had especially bad times. He’d gotten Jenny help too.

He and Sharp had been brought together by multiple tragedies. But as a young boy, Lance had been oblivious to anyone’s pain but his own. Now it seemed that he’d given something back to Sharp.

Sharp sighed. “I promised Ted I would look after his family, but I let them walk away. I never called her. I didn’t check up on them.”