Scarlett Red: A Billionaire SEAL Story, Part 2 (In the Shadows) (10 page)

“Are you saying you get along with your parents all the time?

“My mom died when I was a baby and my dad’s not in the picture.”

He blinks at my comment, sympathy taking over his own anger. “I’m sorry. You don’t have any siblings?”

Amelia’s sweet cherub face and blonde hair comes to mind, but when I try to picture the details of her features, I can’t. My eyes suddenly water at the realization. I’m losing my memories of her.
Why did all the pictures have to burn in that explosion?
“My younger sister died when she was little.”

“I’m sorry.”

I nod and lift my head, letting the wind dry my eyes. “It’s just me and my aunt. We’re very low key. Never any drama.”

He snorts. “You can have mine.”

His wry comment takes the edge off my dark thoughts about Amelia’s death. “Your sister or the family drama?”

“The drama.” He grins. “I’ll keep the sister.”

I snicker. “I think I’ll pass. If tabloids are involved, it sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

Nodding toward the windshield, he says, “We’ve got about five minutes until we get to the festival grounds where I’m pretty sure this kid works. Do you have any enemies from your past who would try to impersonate you?”

When I shake my head, he continues, “What about your readers? Have any of them acted strange or displayed any kind of obsessive or stalker-like behavior?”

“No, none of my fans have been stalker-like that I’m aware of. Yes, they’re excited and supportive of my books, but they respect my privacy.” I furrow my brow, thinking further back in my past. “For a few weeks in college, not long after the story broke in the school paper about a professor using his authority over students to blackmail them into dealing drugs for him, I felt like I was being followed while the internal investigation was undergoing.”

“Why would someone follow you?”

“Because I was the ‘anonymous author’ of the story. In the article, I alluded to a certain well-loved professor who was involved with the drugs. I gave enough info so that anyone who went to school there would know whom I meant. Needless to say, once the story came out, students started coming forward. I wrote the piece anonymously to protect my source, whom I never gave up. Only my editor and my source knew I wrote the article, but I’m sure some suspected it was me.”

We pull in front of the festival’s main gates and park in the gravel parking lot. A few hundred people are spread throughout the festival’s grounds, children running from game to game, cotton candy or ice cream cones tight in their hands. Among the press of people, huge park rides rise up like odd-shaped towers. Bash and I walk past the center of the amusement park, beyond many big rides, then pass through the food and carnival games section until we reach an area along the back fence, where several artists are sketching drawings of people or painting elaborate temporary tattoos on their customers.

Bash bends close to my ear. “I’ll take the lead on this.” Before I can discuss strategy with him, he walks over to a thin, straw-haired boy of about ten who’s helping customers flip through a book to pick the art they want before they get to the tattoo artist’s chair.

“Hey, kid,” Bash calls.

“Yeah?” the boy says, eyeing Bash’s tall height.

Bash hands him a twenty, then points to an empty easel with a caricature drawing of an old man on it. “Can you go get the artist who drew that for me? I recognize his work and would like to talk to him.”

The boy’s attention darts between Bash and me before he quickly pockets the twenty, then nods and runs off.

“He won’t be back,” I say, expelling a sigh.

Bash crosses his arms, adopting a confident stance. “Yes, he will.”

I laugh and pull a twenty out of my purse. “Bet you the twenty you just lost.”

“I didn’t just lose—” He stiffens, then relaxes. “You’re on.”

After twenty minutes pass, I look at Bash and hold out my hand. He just grunts and walks over to the artist the boy had been helping. “Do you know where the kid who was helping you earlier went?”

The guy with pockmarked skin and a long black ponytail pushes his hair over his shoulder. “His shift ended thirty minutes ago. He won’t be back today.”

When Bash jerks a glaring look my way, I manage to hold back my laughter, but I can’t keep from grinning.

Annoyed, he addresses the artist as he points to the empty easel. “Where is the kid who owns that stand? I’m trying to find him.”

The tattoo guy’s dark brown eyes narrow in suspicion. “What do you want with him?”

Bash waves like it’s no big deal. “Just to ask him a couple of questions.”

I notice we’ve started to draw attention among the artists lined up along the back gates. Many have glanced up from the their work. Just before I say something, a big hulking guy, his brown hair cut in a bowl style, speaks in a very deep voice behind Bash. “He’s not here. You can leave now.”

Bash turns from the artist to address the tall guy, who has to be almost seven feet. He’s massive. “We’re going to stay and enjoy the festival.”

The giant clamps a beefy hand on Bash’s shoulder, his face folding into a scowl. “You would’ve bought a festival bracelet. I don’t see you wearing one, so you need to leave.”

Tension grips me when Bash grabs the guy’s massive hand and yanks his grip away from his shoulder. The next thing I know, he has the big guy’s arm twisted behind his back. “I’ll leave when I’m ready to leave,” he says in a hard voice.

“Wait!” I touch Bash’s arm, pulling him back. Something about the giant’s face had snagged my attention. Taking off my sunglasses, I step around his huge body to stare into his face. No facial hair whatsoever. My God, he’s young! Like twelve-years-old, young. Apparently, this kid happens to reside in a body that can crush a car.

“What’s your name?” I say to the hulking boy, holding my hand out.

He shoots Bash a dirty look, but when he looks back at me, pink floods his cheeks, even as he folds his oversized hand around mine. “I’m Howie.”

I can barely get my fingers to touch either side of his wide palm to shake it. “Hey Howie. My name is T.A. Lone, but you can just call me T.”

“Hey, T.” When Howie nods while continuing to hold my hand, I smile and gesture to the empty easel. “Can you help us find your brother?”

Releasing my hand, he grins from ear-to-ear, green eyes full of excitement. “I can’t believe you guessed that Hank and I are brothers. No one ever guesses that!”

I smile back. “Can you please ask your brother to come talk to us? He’s not in trouble or anything. I just need to ask him something. In exchange, I’ll be happy to pose for one of his drawings and sign it. Then he can auction it off however he wants.”

The big guy’s eyes widen. “Are you famous?”

I hold my pointer finger and thumb close together. “Just a little popular, but one day, I hope to be a huge bestseller. I’m an author and I’d really like Hank to draw me. I’d love to use his drawing as my online avatar. Can you please tell him for me?”

I barely finish my sentence before Howie runs off into the crowd and disappears behind the Ferris wheel.

“How’d you know?” Bash asks, appreciation in his voice.

I turn to him. “Know what?”

“That they’re family.”

I nod toward the artists who’ve resumed their work now that the excitement has died down. “I think this whole artistic group considers each other family. I saw a couple of them send signals, I think to tell others to warn Hank. But the way Howie came barreling over here…well, only a very close relative does that.”

“Or those who’ve become like brothers during extreme circumstances,” Bash says, sounding a bit nostalgic with an edge of sadness.

He didn’t mention any brothers earlier. Is he talking about close friends? Did he lose some friendships? He must still be close to Trevor. I don’t know anyone else who works another guy’s job just so he can take a vacation. The sun shines through Bash’s aviators, allowing me to hold his gaze. I smile. “That too, I’m sure.”

While we wait for Howie to find his brother, Bash lets a boy, who’s walking around juggling three throwing balls, rope him into playing a knock-the-milk-bottles-off-the-stand game. Twenty-five dollars later, Bash hands me his prize with a wry smile: a black beaded necklace worth about two bucks.

“You do realize you just got taken, right?” I tease, putting the necklace on as we walk away.

He lets out a manly grunt. “It’s a matter of pride.”

“Can I really draw you and you’ll sign it?” A teen boy says off to my left, snagging my attention. He’s a couple inches shorter than me, but judging by his deeper voice, he’s at least fifteen.

I smile and walk over to sit in the chair next to his easel. “Will this be all right?”

Nodding, he sets a narrow wooden box on the edge of his easel and pulls out a couple of charcoal pencils, his dark blue eyes already assessing my face. “What did you want to ask me?”

I watch Bash take up residence behind me and fold his arms, leaning against the festival’s gate, then I turn back to wait until Hank begins sketching to speak. “A few months ago you purchased a voucher from the Hawthorne hotel.”

When Hank starts to deny my statement, I raise my hand. “You’re not in trouble. I just want to know who sent you to the hotel to buy it for Mr. Sheehan?”

Hank’s attention strays to Bash as if he doesn’t quite trust him. I get it. Bash can be intimidating when he wants to be. “He’s okay, Hank. I promise.”

Hank shrugs, then resumes his drawing. “A woman just showed up at my easel one day. She asked me to go to Hawthorne and purchase the voucher in that man’s name. She gave me a piece of paper with typed out instructions.”

“A woman?” I say, cutting a surprised look to Bash. “Did the paper have a hotel crest or special markings on it in any way? Do you still have those instructions?”

“No crest, just plain paper. And no, I tossed it,” he says right before he begins to speed through the drawing, a talent that only comes from years of practice. Pausing, he gestures to my hair with his pencil. “She had red hair like you. Though hers was darker, more brownish red. And she was a bit taller.”

Anxious, I lean forward in my seat. “Did you know her? Or recognize her from somewhere around Edgartown or here in West Tisbury before?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’ve never seen her before. She came to my easel late in the day when the sun was almost down and asked me to buy the voucher at Hawthorne. She gave me cash to pay for the voucher and promised a couple hundred bucks.” Rubbing his nose with the back of his charcoal-covered hand, he continues, “I got the first hundred for buying the voucher and the second hundred when I delivered it to her.”

“Where did you meet her to deliver it?” I ask, hoping that location might narrow down the pool of candidates some.

He swipes his pencil across the page a couple of times as if putting finishing touches on it. “She came back here a few days later to pick it up. I’ve never seen her here before or after that. Honest, I promise.”

A couple minutes later, he says, “I’m done,” then steps back from his drawing. “I um, kind of switched it up a bit.”

He didn’t draw me in caricature like I expected. Instead, he’d drawn a lifelike picture of me. Actually, he’d made me far prettier than I really am, but hey, if I’m going to have this as my avatar, it may as well be a supermodel-worthy rendition.

I take the pencil he offers and scrawl out my fancy T.A. Lone author signature in the corner of his masterpiece. “This is fantastic, Hank. You really are very talented.” Handing him the pencil back, I take a picture with my phone so I can create an avatar later.

Once I put my phone away, Hank says, “Can I ask you why you’re asking about a voucher I bought for some guy?”

I nod. “I asked because this mystery woman who came to you sent that man the voucher inside an invitation as if it were from me.”

His eyes widen and his face pales slightly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

Bash steps into place beside me, his stance more relaxed. “If someone offers you too-good-to-pass-up money to do something for them, I guarantee you, it’s not for anything good.”

When Hank grimaces in guilt, I pat his shoulder. “You didn’t know. So what are you going to do with your drawing?”

“What kind of books do you write?” he asks, eyes lighting up.

I smile. “I write mystery.”

A wide grin spreads across his face. “I’m going to hold onto it. I just know you’re going to be a big name one day.”

Laughing, I shake my head. “I don’t know about that.”

He rocks on his heels, his eyes sparkling with confidence. “Yeah, you will. The way you found me. All this investigating you’re doing. I just know it.”

“Well, thank you for the vote of confidence, Hank. And for the cool new avatar. If you keep drawing like this, I think you’re well on your way to becoming famous yourself one day.”

When Hank gets all choked up and turns to rub his eye, mumbling about dust, I step up and grab the pencil again, saying, “And since you’re keeping it…” I add a note above my signature, then hand Hank the pencil.

“To Hank, the best artist in Martha’s Vineyard,” Howie reads my note out loud, pride in his booming voice. “Told you she was smart
and
pretty.” Grinning, he slaps his brother on the back, sending Hank stumbling forward a couple of steps.