Page 11 of Carry on Wayward Son

Satisfied she’d made it home safe, I walked back to the Brewhouse.

The party had wound down while I’d wandered the beach. The parking lot had emptied, the noise inside reduced to the end-of-night register of a room in the process of calling it. I got in my truck and sat for a minute with the engine off, thinking about a woman who kept her weight on the balls of her feet and her hand near her hip and still managed to seem like someone just out for an evening walk.

Interesting was the word I kept landing on. The tension she’d carried wasn’t the ordinary anxiety of someone in an unfamiliar place. It was practiced. Habitual. The kind that had been built up over time in response to something real.

Not my business, the nature of the something, but fascinating just the same.

I started the truck and drove north.

The coastal road was empty at this hour, the sound visible to the left through the gaps in the dune grass. Thirteen miles of barrier island. I’d grown up running over every inch. Even after twelve years away, I drove this road like I’d never left, muscle memory filling in what time had tried to take.

Sutter House sat on its hill with the kitchen lights on, which meant Willa and Sawyer were still up. I came in through the back. Roy met me at the door with a single deep bark that cut off the moment he registered who it was, and then he was just a bigass black pittie pushing his head against my hand to demand pets before following me into the kitchen like I was the most interesting development of his evening.

Willa sat at the table with her laptop open, a mug of tea at her elbow, her reading glasses on, which meant she’d been there a while. Sawyer leaned against the counter with his arms crossed, his mouth half open like he’d been about to say something to his wife. At the sight of me, he recalibrated.

“There he is. We were starting to wonder.”

“Party wound down.” I pulled out the chair across from Willa and dropped into it. Roy arranged himself across my feet with the serene confidence of a dog who had decided this was his job tonight.

“Uh-huh.” Sawyer opened the fridge and produced a bottle of water, setting it on the table in front of me. “Rios noticed you left.”

“Rios will survive.”

“He will. He was also surrounded by approximately forty people who all wanted to shake his hand, so I don’t think he suffered.” Sawyer leaned back against the counter. “Ford definitely noticed.”

“Ford can mind his business.”

Willa glanced up from the laptop over the top of her glasses with that quiet, level stare. The same one I used to give her growing up, and seeing it aimed back at me was its own kind of strange. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

She held my gaze for a moment before deciding to let it go. “Madden confirmed the Unaccounted rep gets in tomorrow.” She pulled off her glasses and set them on the table.

Ah. The true crime podcast who was sending someone to help with the cold case investigation we’d all had a piece of.

“Do we know who they’re sending?”

“Someone Devon trusts. That’s all Madden said.” She closed the laptop. “She seemed confident.”

“Good enough for me.” I drank some of the beer. “How’s Rios doing? Really.”

Sawyer made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “He held it together well. Madden ran interference when he started to look like he needed an exit, which apparently she’s very good at.”

“They’re good together,” Willa said. Her tone said she’d decided this a while ago and was no longer surprised by it.

“Didn’t call that one,” I admitted.

“Nobody did. I think it surprised them most of all.” She traced the rim of her mug. “He’s going to be all right, Jace. He’s got people around him now. Good ones.”

“I know.”

“And so do you,” she added. Just leaving the truth there as if it were an afterthought.

I knew better.

I drank my water and didn’t answer. Roy shifted his weight across my feet, resettling.

Sawyer’s face morphed into that expression he always wore when he had a thing to say and was deciding whether tonight was the night to say it. He pushed off the counter. “You might consider doing something about the beard before the meeting tomorrow.”