His shoulders came down, and he brought his sandwich back toward him.
As strange as it might seem to someone else, he won me over with that small change. He’d been worried about Ahanti’s reaction. And I didn’t think it was worry because he’d been exposed for what he was. He wasn’t worried he might lose her. It seemed a lot more like worry that he’d add more stress to her when she already had enough.
“So explain it to me. Please. What were you doing there?”
“Once you told me the police couldn’t get a restraining order on the guy because Ahanti didn’t know who he was, I got worried. I thought if I could see someone we knew hanging around her place, it’d solve the problem.” He bit into his sandwich, swallowed, and grimaced. He ran a hand over his no-doubt scalded throat. “I’m no good at it. I fell asleep.”
His answer made sense. How many times had I gotten myself into trouble because I’d wanted to help someone that the police couldn’t aid? It was a good thing Mark couldn’t read my thoughts, because I knew his answer would be too many.
Geoff and I talked for a few more minutes, mostly me assuring him that Ahanti was okay and that I was putting what resources I had behind finding her stalker. Then he headed back to work.
Once he was out of sight, Mark slipped from his table over to mine.
“Do you believe him?” he asked.
I daubed the crumbs off my plate, stalling for time. His story didn’t have any holes in it that I could spot. He’d also seemed genuinely embarrassed by being caught and more concerned about Ahanti’s well-being than anything else. “I can’t think of any reason why he’d be stalking his fiancée or why he’d send a picture of himself with the face burned out to scare her. If he wanted to break up with her, he could have done it easier ways.”
Mark leaned back in his chair. “He didn’t seem like he’d want to anyway.”
He hadn’t. So why did I still feel all tangled up inside?
The logical side of me said it was because I’d learned to trust no one rather than because Geoff was guilty of anything worse than poor judgment. People had lied to me before, and I’d fallen for it. I’d thought people were innocent when they weren’t.
If pigs flew and he turned out to be her stalker, he also wouldn’t be the first friend who I’d helped convict of a crime.
I wasn’t going to gamble Ahanti’s safety on my desire to be a loyal friend to Geoff.
“I’ll have Rockwood Investigations look into him, maybe even tail him for a bit, just to be sure.”
8
“Is there something wrong with my neck?” Mark asked as we headed back to the car. “My skin feels tight and like my shirt collar is rubbing against something.”
I hadn’t noticed anything other than a distinct sunburn starting on his face. I leaned backward. His neck was cayenne pepper-red. “You’re definitely burnt.”
Mark gingerly touched his fingers to the back of his neck and flinched. “That explains the headache, too. I didn’t expect to get that much sun first thing in the morning.” He made a face like I’d asked him to drink a whole bottle of Buckley’s cough syrup. “I didn’t expect to be out there for hours, either. I could have played two or three games of basketball in the same amount of time.”
I tried not to laugh, but it was impossible. “We need to get you some aloe vera gel and ibuprofen.”
He managed a groan, but his feet dragged. He handed me the keys. “I don’t have the energy to face the traffic.”
The last time I’d driven Mark rather than the other way around, he’d had a broken wrist. It killed my desire to laugh, and all my mother-hen instincts flooded to the surface. It’s just a sunburn, I repeated over to myself.
Before meeting Mark, I hadn’t realized how nerve-wracking loving someone could be. I’d have taken his sunburn onto my skin if I could have. “Were those the only reasons you faked an emergency? My dad’s going to know what we were up to, by the way.”
Mark shook his head, cringed, moved a hand partway to his neck, and scowled. “He says he and your mom are taking the weekend off so we can take their yacht out on Chesapeake Bay.”
My hands jerked slightly, and the car veered a wheel into the other lane. A horn blared behind me, and I straightened out. Maybe I should watch the sky for pigs. If my parents were taking the weekend off, anything could happen. “They’re taking the whole weekend off? You’re sure?”
Mark nodded at the pace of a turtle. “You didn’t mention your parents had a yacht.”
He hadn’t answered my question about the golfing, and the way he’d phrased his statement about the yacht was almost too careful. Something had definitely happened on that golf course. “My parents have a yacht. We never went out on it much because they could rarely manage the time away.”
“I see,” Mark said.
I didn’t, but now didn’t seem to be the time to press it.
A text came in from Ahanti a few seconds after I parked the car in the pharmacy parking lot. Taking off early today. Too stressed to focus. Can you guys come over?
We picked up the aloe vera, along with a tube of the strongest sunscreen we could find, and I dropped Mark off at the hotel. He’d begged off coming back with me to Ahanti’s apartment, saying he needed to go sleep off his sunburn.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d feel worse tomorrow. I did promise to pick us up something for a late supper on my way back. When we got home, I really needed to improve my cooking skills in preparation for having a family. I didn’t want my kids eating takeout every night.
Ahanti buzzed me in. She’d pushed her couch back against one wall and had pulled out the boxes where she kept her mementos.
“I’m sorting through all of it and picking out the ones I think are from the stalker.”
I stepped over the circle of boxes and sat beside her, cross-legged. It was a great idea. Looking through the missives sent by the stalker would also help me prove to myself that it couldn’t possibly have been Geoff. “Hopefully we can find some evidence that points to Cary.”
Since so many people had already handled the mementos over the years, there wasn’t any point in wearing gloves to preserve fingerprints. We started with the earliest boxes. Ahanti might be a pack rat, but she was an organized one. All her boxes of mementoes were labeled with the year, and inside were smaller boxes and folders labeled with months.
Ahanti’s cheeks flushed. “Geoff teases me that it’s ego keeping all this. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to be an artist, though. When someone hates their tattoo, or a design, or you hear someone running down tattoos in general…”
I wasn’t an artist, but, on some level, I got what she meant. I’d be nice if lawyers had the same option. In a way, maybe I did in the friendships I’d made in Fair Haven by helping people. The first few months I’d been there, I’d been the town pariah, outcast because I wasn’t born there and because of all the rumors circulating about me thanks to a few malicious souls. It’d taken a while, but I’d carved out a place for myself. I was now accepted as one of their own.
My engagement to a Cavanaugh hadn’t hurt, either.
I got out my phone to take notes. I normally preferred working with paper and pen, but since I was living out of a hotel room, making them on my phone would keep outside eyes from seeing them, and it’d enable me to check them over whenever I needed to.
