“Um—” I glanced off, distracted. Corncob man was leering at my breasts. I looked away just as pizza-face gave another liquid belch. Horrified, I focused back on Cholly. “I, ah, understand you’re still doing renovations on your club. Trace said you’re having some contracting issues. Do you need me to look into anything for you?”

Fontana raised his brows and his hairline slipped back half an inch. “Now why would you do something like that?”

His hostility felt as oppressive as his cologne. “I sold you the building. Why wouldn’t I be concerned?”

“I can handle it.”

“O-okay.” When he just stared back at me, I blurted, “Is Trace here?”

He cut his eyes from me, sauntered around the counter and strolled to a metal door marked ‘Employees Only.’ Its handle thumped the wall after he yanked it open. He ducked beneath the arch, disappearing from the chest up behind a late model gray Porsche suspended atop a hydraulic lift. The door smacked shut.

“Hey, man,” Fontana called. “You got company.”

A muffled curse followed. Next came a loud clank. After that, an earsplitting crash reverberated. The other two whispered behind me. I refused to ponder their remarks.

Something vulgar, no doubt.

Fontana reappeared, dropping into his former seat on the other side of the counter. He focused on the TV again. “Trace says he’s busy.”

Okay, so he wasn’t in a reasonable mood. I drew a strengthening breath, and stalked to the metal door, ignoring Cholly’s, “I wouldn’t do that.”

Petroleum-scented heat and a musical mash-up of Christian Bale’s profanity-laced tirade hit me once I stepped inside. The techno-ripped dance track blared from hidden speakers. I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected Cholly’s dreadful song choices were his way of telling the town what he thought of their boycott.

The air was hothouse humid, and beads of condensation wept down the row of windows on the bay doors. After I hung my coat on a peg, I glanced around. The garage was larger than it appeared from the outside. What looked like kitty litter blanketed the concrete floor. My boots made a crunching sound as I ambled along.

Toward the rear, right above a shelf crammed with tires and hubcaps, a circular fan spewed hot air from a corner perch. Three orange strings were tied to the fan’s silver cage. They waved furiously while the powerful head rotated back and forth.

“Trace?” I called, but the music drowned out my voice.

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—’”