My chest constricted when I finally found him. He was in the third bay, bent over the mouth of a vintage Porsche. A metal toolbox lay next to his booted feet. His broad back eclipsed the car’s tiny engine, and like the other mechanics, he was dressed in a gray uniform shirt and black jeans. Razor-sharp creases that ran the length of his shoulders vanished under sleeves he’d rolled to just above his elbows. His shirt stretched taut across his V-shaped torso while he twisted a screwdriver. Sweat darkened the fabric beneath his underarms and a thin horizontal line of it shot down the center of his back.
Heat coiled in my belly as I watched him. “Hi.”
Trace jackknifed up and the tool bounced across the floor. He whirled around, jammed his knuckles into his mouth, and his brows pinched into a frown that flatlined once our eyes met. Blood dripped from his hand.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “Are you okay?”
With a scowl, he strode past me and punched a button on a console, bringing the noise to a blessed end. A first aid kit was tacked to the wall right next to him. The tinny sound of the metal lid smacking the cinder block echoed after he tore it open. Gauze and aspirin packs spilled out as he rifled through its contents. Finally, he found a bandage, but it fell in his haste to strap it on.
The profanity flew after that.
I approached him with caution. “Here. Let me.”
He quirked a brow as if surprised by my moxie. That was a good thing. Any reprieve from his colorful vocabulary and that dreadful music was a blessing. I examined the wound, dabbed it with gauze, but blood welled again within seconds. Grease-stained and callused, his skin felt hot, and the veined back of his hand was sprinkled with a silken down of sun-bronzed hair.
I opened an alcohol pad. “This might sting.” But he didn’t flinch, just glared at me while his blood trickled into my palm. His life essence dripping into my hand, staining my skin, felt oddly personal. Intimate.
“Damn near every time I’m around you, I bleed,” he said.
I studied him in tongue-tied silence, noting the subtle changes the years had etched in his face. While his eyes looked the same light amber shade of hazel, the sparkle was gone, giving them a dull, cynical cast. Fine creases bracketed the corners. I suspected they hadn’t come from smiling.
Adrenaline sluiced through me when I glanced at his chin. What was once a nasty slash now looked like a bee sting with whiskers. A purple smudge underscored his left eye, and a thin, red line centered his bottom lip.
I pulled my gaze from his, pressed a pad over his knuckles and secured the bandage with surgical tape. “All done.”
“Thanks.”
He looked me over one last time before snatching a tool from the floor; then he bent over the Porsche again as I cleaned my hands.
A minute later, he glanced at me. “Get me that wrench, will you?”
“Wrench?”
“On the table. Looks like a crab claw.”
I handed him the tool and stared past him. Next to a row of gray lockers sat an old Harley—Trace’s old Harley. I went to make a closer inspection as a vivid mental picture bobbed to the surface: the two of us roaring around Miller’s Pond with me at his back, the wind in my hair, and the sun kissing my skin. Another lost memory found. I tucked it away for safekeeping.
“You’re restoring your bike.”
He didn’t look. “Yeah.”
I stroked the seat. The worn leather was cracked in spots. Blue lightning bolts with gilded edges adorned either side of the faded black metal. His initials were scrawled in fancy gold cursive. T.P.D. Tracemore Phillip Dawson.
“Does it run?” I asked.
“It got me here.” He tossed the wrench and faced me. “What do you want? I said all I had to say at Home Depot.”
The room stilled. Even the droning fan faded as I approached him. His iron gaze, the hard set of his jaw, these I ignored. Instead, I unzipped my purse and gave him the envelope with the photocopy.
He eyed it with suspicion. “What’s this?”
“Just read.”
He dragged a stool over and sat, one foot hitched on a spoke, the other anchored to the floor. As he examined the pages, his expression morphed from bewilderment, to disbelief, to full-blown rage…and finally to something in between. When he finished, he lowered the paper and swung a hard look in my direction.
“You got ten seconds to explain this shit.”
I felt like a schoolgirl in the principal’s office. “If I could I would, but I haven’t the slightest idea who—”
His murderous look cut my words short. He tore through the pages, searching for a particular passage and read aloud. His sharp gaze arrowed to mine whenever he found something scathing.
“‘My mother also had sex with Trace in front of me,” he read, his voice spiked with bitterness. “Sometimes she held orgies where he serviced multiple male partners, all at her bidding. On one occasion, she got so inebriated she passed out on the floor while he sodomized her. When I threatened to tell—’”
“Trace—”
“Shut up! ‘…to tell someone, he promised to skin my dog alive if I ever breathed a word. Days later, he cornered me and said he was tired of my mother, and that he couldn’t wait until I turned eighteen so he could take my virginity. None of these facts came out during the trial since my family wanted to protect me. I’m not interested in filing charges. Frankly, I’m just afraid for my safety. I’ve had nightmares since the murder and have had difficulty with relationships—’”
“Please, put it away….” I begged.
Whether mercy or disgust stopped him, I wasn’t sure. “So this is what my mama saw?” He crushed part of the papers in his hands. “She wouldn’t tell me what was in it. Neither would Cholly or Bev. Now I know why.”
Desperation sharpened my voice. “Whoever wrote this…this filth sent it to your mother for a reason. Stop rolling your eyes! They wanted to inflict as much pain as they could. That’s why they went for her. They knew how much she meant to you. I could never have written those lies. I loved Miss Dottie, too.”
“Sure you loved her. Loved the way she scrubbed your mama’s toilets and polished her floors. Yeah, y’all loved the hell out of her.” He snorted. “Love.”
Spitting in my face would have been kinder. “That is so unfair and—” I blinked and jumped back when he bolted up and flung the pages. Then he kicked the stool hard. It smacked the wall and wobbled until it shuddered still.
Cholly burst into the garage like a herd of buffalo. “What the hell’s going on in here? I can hear y’all out at the pumps.”
Trace swung his head in Cholly’s direction, then looked back at me. “Nothin’. Miz Bradford was just fixing to leave.”
My muscles were petrified. I was grateful when Cholly didn’t offer to escort me. He just shook his head and disappeared behind the metal door, closing it soundly.
Trace sighed, braced the worktable. “I said, get out.”
Frozen with fear and anger, I stared at the floor. “No.”
“No?”
I elevated my chin a fraction. “That’s right…no.”
He twisted around. His expression made a gradual shift from vengeful to predatory. Our eyes battled in silence, then, like a prowling lion, he advanced, and I, his prey, retreated until I’d backed into a wall. When his shadow engulfed me, I had to tilt my head all the way back to stare up at him. The ice had thawed in his eyes, leaving twin pools of lava.
I looked at his mouth and the time I kissed him on his seventeenth birthday came to mind. Thirteen-years-old and smitten with a desperate case of puppy love, I’d snuck up on him as he’d sat asleep in the carriage house.