Murder Off the Books by Tamara Berry

Author:Tamara Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

Chapter Fifteen

Tess blinked a few times, certain she must have conjured the young man out of thin air—or, at the very least, mistaken him for one of the other loggers. But no. The faster she moved her eyelids, the more he came into focus. She’d have recognized those swooped locs covering one eye anywhere.

“It’s you!” she cried as she ran over to greet him. She half expected him to take one look at her and run off—or to at least show alarm at being caught—but all he did was stare. “Darcy. Your mom’s name is Darcy. You left your book at my store.”

“Uh…are you okay?”

“It’s me,” Tess insisted. “Tess Harrow. The author.” She stabbed a finger at her own chest as if that would help clarify things.

“Congratulations?” he said again, this time with a flick of his one visible eye over her shoulder. “Am I supposed to do something with this lady, Zach?”

“You can try to ignore her, but it doesn’t work. She’s one of those bored housewives who’s always peeking over the fence to see what’s going on in someone else’s yard.”

Tess didn’t appreciate this description at all. “You know I’m standing right here?” she asked. “And that I’m not a housewife? I have a full-time job. Two of them, if you count the bookstore.”

Zach made a big show of looking around the logging site, which was buzzing with dozens of men and women who had full-time jobs of their own. “Do you? Huh. My mistake.”

Since Zach’s sarcasm seemed heavy enough to linger, Tess returned her attention to the young man. “We had a whole conversation the other day at my bookstore. About serial killers and your mother.”

“Uh…” The young man began backing away.

“No, no. Not like that. Just that you were looking for my book—the one about a serial killer—because you wanted it for your mom. You said she couldn’t come to pick it up for herself because she doesn’t like to travel.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jay,” Zach said with a note of authority that made him sound almost like Mason. “I’ll take care of her. Just make sure you get all the equipment cleaned off before you sign off this time, okay? If you let the mud cake on the tires overnight, it’s like trying to scrape off concrete.”

The young man—Jay—offered Zach a crooked grin. It was the exact same grin Tess had seen him flash that day at her bookstore. “Sure thing, boss man. You won’t find a speck of mud anywhere. I promise.”

Tess knew she’d been beaten and that for whatever reason, Jay had no intention of admitting he’d come to her bookstore, but she couldn’t help asking one last question of him.

“Why’d you put it back on the shelf? Who were you leaving it for?”

Jay’s eyes—both of them—met hers. He flipped his head in an expert move that gave her a brief flash of his full face. She realized why he wore his hair that way less than a second later. The eye hidden by his hair was lighter than the other by several shades of brown.

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