Cider Brook

Why had she decided to come to Knights Bridge now?

Why alone?

He sucked in a breath. Picturing her in a sleeping bag wasn’t helping him. He squatted by her destroyed camping gear and maneuvered his flashlight beam to the edge of the tent and then past it to something that caught his eye. He held the light steady on a red-covered journal or notebook. It looked intact, as if it had been dropped or had fallen there after the fire. Had it fallen out of Samantha’s backpack when he’d grabbed it for her? He’d been in a rush. Preoccupied. He could easily not have noticed.

He picked up the notebook. The cover was a little wet, but the inside pages looked to be dry, with no sign of fire damage.

Definitely a journal of some kind.

He tucked his flashlight under one arm and opened to a title page.

Notes on Captain Benjamin Farraday, Pirate and Privateer.

Please return to Samantha Bennett.

Neatly printed on the lines provided were her email address, telephone number and a Boston post office box.

Justin stood back. “Well, well.”

He took the journal with him and headed back outside. He could drive to Carriage Hill and return Samantha’s journal to her.

Or he could hold on to it, at least for now.

Either way, she would discover it was missing at some point, and she would want it back.

He had no desire to read her personal notes. He wasn’t the sneaky type. At the same time...

“Pirates.”

Damn.

He heard vehicles out on the road, through the woods. In another minute, a truck and a Jeep drove into the small clearing. All four of his brothers got out of the vehicles—Eric, the eldest, and their three younger brothers, Brandon, Adam and Christopher.

They had a six-pack and wood for a fire.

“Just like the old days,” Brandon said. “Except then it used to be a keg.”

“Sloan solidarity,” Eric said. He’d changed into jeans like his younger brothers.

Adam, who also worked with Sloan & Sons, dumped an armload of cordwood into a fire circle on the edge of the driveway. “Christopher says you pulled this woman out of the fire in the nick of time.”

Brandon grinned. “Our brother, the hero.”

“I just was here at the right time to help,” Justin said with a shrug.

“How’d she get into the mill?” Christopher asked. “Don’t you keep it locked?”

“She either broke the lock or picked it,” Eric said. “Or it wasn’t intact—”

“It was intact.” Justin heard the abruptness in his own voice. Olivia would have scowled at him, but his brothers barely noticed. “Good that she got herself out of the storm,” he said, less irritably.

“Better the mill caught fire than she was struck by lightning,” Christopher said.

Justin nodded. “Agreed.”

They left it at that and got the fire going and the six-pack opened. In a little while, more of the crew who fought the fire turned up, all of them volunteers like Justin.

Time to decompress.

An hour later, the impromptu gathering broke up. Eric insisted on driving Justin’s truck back to the converted antique sawmill where Justin had an apartment a few miles away, on another stream. The mid-nineteenth-century sawmill was owned by Randy and Louise Frost, Olivia’s parents. They ran a custom millwork business up the hill, on the same property. Their younger daughter, Jessica, had vacated the sawmill apartment a few weeks ago, ahead of her wedding that Saturday. Justin was renovating the place in exchange for rent.

He and Eric got out of the truck. Stars glittered in the night sky, and a quarter moon had appeared above the dark silhouette of trees.

“A missing padlock isn’t much to go on,” Eric said, “but let me know if you have any concerns about this woman.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“You know more about her than you’re saying, don’t you?”

Justin debated a half beat, then said, “Some. Not much.”

“I see. Well, I don’t see, but I’ll leave you to it.”

Christopher pulled up in his Jeep. Eric hesitated, then climbed in without another word. He was engaged to a great woman, a paramedic. Christopher was seeing someone in Amherst. Justin doubted it would go anywhere.

He wasn’t seeing anyone. Hadn’t in a while. Which wasn’t like him at all.

He climbed the narrow stairs to the small apartment. He’d added a few things of his own, but most of the furniture belonged to the Frosts. He’d always lived in Knights Bridge and always would, but he didn’t need a permanent address at this stage in his life.

His head was clear. He’d only had one beer. Eric had insisted on driving him because of the close call today, for him and for the woman he’d found in his burning mill.

He tossed Samantha’s journal onto the coffee table and sat on the couch.

Notes on Captain Benjamin Farraday, Pirate and Privateer.

“Uh-huh. Pirates. No surprise, Samantha. No surprise.”

Justin picked up a small wooden box he kept on a side table and placed it in his lap. He removed the lid and set it on the couch next to him, then lifted out a small padded envelope. He opened the envelope and slid out a gold coin about three inches in diameter, with faded etching. He’d found it at the cider mill as a teenager and figured it wasn’t worth much. He’d never had it appraised, but he’d thought it was worth keeping, a memento of the mill’s past.

He wasn’t one to hang on to things—he could move in one trip with his truck—but the coin was one of the few possessions he had never thrown out, given away or sold.

Now he wondered if the old coin had something to do with Samantha Bennett and her Captain Farraday.

He returned the coin to its envelope and closed up the box again.

He would take a shower and get something to eat, but he doubted he would get much sleep.

Six