Melinda Di Lorenzo - Undercover Refuge

She knew she should probably be asking for some more details about their destination. How far away was it? Would there be a phone? Other amenities? Would anyone else be staying there, too, or was she stuck with the stone-faced—but undeniably attractive—driver? But her usually overexcited tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. And after a few more moments of weighted silence, she settled for closing her eyes and performing one of her mom’s favorite breathing exercise instead.

In-in-out. In-in-out.

Deep in.

Out-out-in. Out-out-in.

It was almost enough to distract her. Or it might’ve been, if the man called Atkinson hadn’t chosen to cut through her moment with a throat-clear. At the sound, Alessandra’s eyes flew open, and her head swiveled toward her reluctant tour guide. He was staring straight ahead, his hands tight on the steering wheel.

“So which is it?” he said, his abruptly gruff tone making her blink.

“Which is what?” she replied.

“Al, or Alessandra?” He sounded annoyed by his own question.

Alessandra frowned. “What?”

“Your name. Which do you prefer?”

“No. I mean. I know what you’re asking, but—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “Never mind. A lot of people call me Al.”

“Like Jesse.”

“Yes.”

He went silent again. Brooding again.

The moments ticked by, the air thickening with some unnameable tension.

Alessandra breathed out and started to close her eyes once more. But her companion spoke again, his tone just as irritated as it had been a minute earlier.

“Think I’ll just stick with calling you Red,” he told her.

“Fine by me,” she replied curtly.

She tried again to shut her eyes, but then narrowed them at him instead.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“What do you prefer to be called? Mr. Sunglasses or Surly Stranger?”

“I’m not surly,” he said.

“You are,” she argued. “But that wasn’t an answer to my question.”

“It’s Rush.”

“What’s a rush?”

He tipped his head in her direction for the briefest second, and she could swear his lips were twitching with amusement. “My name.”

Her face warmed. “Oh. That’s...”

“Unusual,” he filled in.

“Yes.”

She noticed that his hands had relaxed a little.

“My dad named me,” he explained. “He said my mom was always in a hurry. Couldn’t even wait until she got to the hospital to have me. I was born in a convenience store parking lot.”

Alessandra surprised herself by laughing. “That can’t possibly be true.”

“I’m afraid it is.” His tone was rueful now, rather than resentful. “Probably the source of my surliness.”

“I thought you weren’t surly.”

“Yeah, well...maybe just today. It hasn’t exactly been ideal for me.”

“Me neither. Falling into a hole then being pawned off on a stranger wasn’t exactly on my to-do list for the day.”

He paused, one thumb moving restlessly on the wheel. “What was on your list?”

The question was casual, and the paranoid part of Alessandra’s brain asked if it might be a little too offhand.

Relax, she said to herself. It’s just small talk.

She let out a silent exhale. “Well. I guess I assumed that Jesse would show me the town. Maybe take me for a bite to eat so we could catch up.”

His thumb stopped its movement, and his hands squeezed tighter. “You’re old friends?”

Alessandra frowned. She was starting to think his fingers were his tell.

“Our parents were,” she said. “What about you? How long have you known Jesse?”

The fingers held their knuckle-whitening position. “Just a few weeks. I was looking for work, and a mutual acquaintance referred me.”

“So you’re in property development, too?”

“Hardly.” His hands relaxed, just marginally.

“What do you do, then?” Alessandra asked.

Tight fingers. “Anything your friend asks me to, apparently.”

The words had an undeniably ominous ring to them, and Alessandra couldn’t suppress a shiver. What instructions had Jesse left him with? And just how far would he take “anything”?

She swallowed nervously and tried to push down the need to open the door and jump out. “Sorry.”

Rush turned his head her way, and she sensed some heavy scrutiny behind those mirrored sunglasses of his.

“Sorry?” he repeated.

“I’m sure you’ve got better things to do,” she replied. “So if you want to just leave me at the cabin or whatever, I get it.”

“And risk getting fired?” He said it lightly, but his hands gave him away—they were so tense that it looked painful.

She forced a laugh. “I’m sure Jesse wouldn’t fire you for not wanting babysit me.”

“Oh, yeah? When was the last time you told him he couldn’t have what he wanted?”

Alessandra couldn’t help but notice that the question reflected her own earlier thoughts on Jesse. But she didn’t comment on her wholehearted agreement.

“Honestly,” she said instead, “if I’d known he was going to be too busy to have me here, I wouldn’t have come.”

As soon as the words were out, she realized they weren’t true. Her reason for accepting Jesse’s invitation had nothing to do with the man himself, and everything to do with her need for answers about her father’s note. Nothing would’ve kept her away. It occurred to her—a little belatedly—that Rush might be able to give her a clue. Or at the very least, help her decide whether or not Jesse, the note and her father’s death really were connected. The way she was starting to dread they might be.

She tried to think of a way to steer the conversation in a direction that would flow naturally in the direction she’d need it to take. But for some reason, she couldn’t think of a subtle segue into, Hey. Does your boss’s business include anything shady? You know...like the untimely death of an old friend and a creepy, postmortem note that led me here? Thankfully, though, she didn’t have to. Rush kind of the led things there himself.

“So you were saying that your parents and Jesse’s parents were friends?” he said, picking up the previous thread with that the same too-casual tone.

She nodded; there was nothing to hide about their shared pasts. “Our dads were, anyway. Before they each died.”

Rush’s jaw ticked, and a quick look at his hands told Alessandra that the topic was far from comfortable for him. It made her curious, and for an odd second, knowing why seemed more important than anything else.

“My dad was killed in an accident,” she added, carefully gauging his reaction. “Jesse’s was killed in a police incident a little while before that. Less than a month apart, actually.”

Now Rush’s profile was as rigid as his grip. “Sorry to hear.”

“It was a long time ago now. But it was definitely a hard time in both our lives.”

“It made you close?”

The question sounded almost like an accusation, and Alessandra frowned, but shook her head and answered honestly anyway. “No. I was only eleven—almost twelve—at the time. Jesse was fifteen or sixteen. So not a ton of common ground.”

Rush persisted. “Still. A loss like that could create a bond in spite of an age gap.”

“I guess it could. But I had my mom, and we leaned on each other a lot. And Jesse...” She trailed off, thinking about it.

What had happened to him after his dad died? Alessandra had fuzzy memories of the senior Garibaldi’s funeral. She knew Jesse had been there. She recalled specifically that he was a pallbearer, and that he’d given a brief eulogy. And after that, she couldn’t remember much of anything. It seemed funny, now, that she hadn’t really put much thought into what he’d gotten up to. Her own father’s passing had happened so quickly after, and her plate had been full of her own problems. The only thing she really had a clear memory of was a phone conversation she’d overheard about a year after the fact. Right that second, she could actually recall it quite vividly. She’d walked into the kitchen to grab an apple from the bowl on the counter. Her mom, dressed in her typical flowing skirt and embroidered blouse, had been standing with her back to Alessandra.