Page 74 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

Then he heads toward the greenhouse, radio in hand, leaving the rest of us on the porch with Pepper’s reports and the swamp waiting beyond the trees.

The moment he is out of easy hearing range, the strength drains from my shoulders.

“Before we turn this porch into a command center,” Wes says, “you need a minute.”

“I’m fine.”

Pepper snorts.

I glare at her. “Your support is overwhelming.”

Wes steps in front of me. “Scarlet.” His voice is quiet, stripped of the authority he used with Tom.

I look up.

“Can I scent you? I think it will make us both feel better.”

Heat rises beneath my skin, despite the ruined garden and my grandmother’s note sitting ten feet away. “Yes.”

He moves slowly. One hand settles at my waist while he lowers his face to the curve between my neck and shoulder. His cheek brushes my skin, then my hair, cedar spreading warm and deep over me. My heart softens so quickly, my knees nearly follow.

Wes doesn’t comment. His mouth presses once below my ear, brief and warm. When he lifts his head, Roman is still holding my hand. I tug him closer. He understands without making me explain. His lips touch my temple, then the back of my hand. Cardamom settles over the cedar.

Pepper looks toward the swamp with exaggerated interest. “Done?” she asks after a respectful pause.

“No,” I say.

Roman laughs against my hair. The sound loosens the last tight place in my chest.

“Now I’m done.” I step back.

Wes’s thumb moves once at my waist before he releases me.

He takes a marker and spreads Pepper’s map over the porch table. “Roads don’t explain the sample locations.”

He circles three sites: the springs, the old sweetheart path, and the east marsh. Then he draws lines through the water instead of the roads. Flood channels, old fishing cuts, and routes that open during rainy season and vanish when the water drops.

I point before thinking. “That channel connects farther east. It doesn’t show on the current map because the county filled part of it, but the water opens again during flood season.”

Roman leans closer. “So someone could move between these areas without using the main road?”

“If they knew the timing and the old cuts.”

“We need a boat,” Roman says.

Pepper makes a face. “Deputies get lost near designated picnic areas.”

Tom’s voice carries from the greenhouse. “I heard that.”

“Consider it citizen feedback on the need for wilderness training,” Pepper calls back. She looks at us. “Luckily, I know a guy.”

Ten minutes later, Ollie Crane answers Pepper’s call on speaker, his voice too cheerful for the occasion. “Pepper Vines. Tell me this is gossip related, because I heard⁠—”

“Ollie, I need an airboat.”

“For science or bad decisions?”

I lean closer to the phone. “Both.”