Innocent Prey. Maggie Shayne

hours later from the bottom row of the bleachers at the Whitney Point High School’s baseball diamond. Mason was sitting beside me, his nephew Josh beside him, and Myrtle was lying on the ground in front of Josh’s feet. Possibly on Josh’s feet. She was the president of the eleven-year-old’s fan club. She was smiling with her bottom incisors sticking out over her upper lip, and every time the kid stopped petting her, she batted him with a forepaw.

      “And you’ve come to this conclusion based on...?” Mason asked.

      “Everything. The pitches are too fast, the hits are few and far between, the scores are too low—”

      “Baseball scores are supposed to be low.”

      “He’s right, Aunt Rache,” Misty called. She and Christy, my sixteen-going-on-twenty-five-year-old twin nieces were sitting on the top row, as far as possible from us. They only insisted on being part of our conversation if it meant an opportunity to correct their too-long-out-of-high-school-going-on-spinster aunt.

      I twisted my head around. “You’re saying this? You, when your game last week ended because your team got so many runs ahead that they had to invoke the mercy rule?”

      She shrugged, and returned to avidly watching the game, while her twin never looked up from the screen of her phone. Her thumbs were moving at the approximate speed of sound. Misty whisper-shouted, “Jeremy’s up!”

      So I turned to pay attention. Misty and Jeremy were an item, though neither had admitted it yet, and nothing was official, as far as I could tell. But it was on. I’d have known that even if I’d still been blind.

      Thank God I wasn’t, because it was one gorgeous spring evening. The sky was bluer than blue, not a cloud in sight, and Mason was beside me, a situation I liked way better than I had, up until now, admitted to myself. Admitting it to myself now gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I liked things easy and casual between us. I didn’t want to screw it up by wanting more.

      Jeremy was crouching low, elbow up, bat moving in little circles behind him as he awaited the pitch. Then it came. He swung, and crack! It was outta there.

      I shot to my feet, whooping and clapping and grinning so hard my face hurt as the ball sailed out of sight and Jeremy jogged the bases while we cheered. I glanced at Mason. He was smiling harder than I was. He met my eyes and nodded.

      Yeah, I heard him. It had been a rough year for Jere. Last August he’d lost his father. In November his baby sister had been stillborn. At Christmas his mother had gone off the deep end and now she was in a locked psych unit. On top of all that, Jeremy had shot a man dead to save Mason’s life, and mine along with it. That he was still upright and not curled in a corner, drooling, was a triumph, in my opinion.

      “Okay, maybe I spoke too soon about boys’ games not being as exciting as girls’,” I said as he rounded third and headed home. We sat down again as the applause died down. “That was freaking awesome.”

      “And it means ice cream sundaes,” Josh added. “You promised, Uncle Mace. If he hit a home run, we get sundaes.”

      “I guess I have to pay up, then,” Mason said.

      “Don’t let him bullshit you, Josh. He’d have paid up either way.”

      Josh grinned, probably because I’d said “bullshit.” Hell, I forgot again. I was lousy around impressionable youth. Yet another reason to keep things right where they were with Mason. He had kids now. I was not mommy material. I was eccentric aunt material. I had that gig down.

      The inning ended, and during the approximate lifetime it always took for the teams to change sides, toss balls around and warm up the pitcher, I leaned closer to Mason. “So what did you find out about Jake?”

      We’d gone our separate ways after we’d questioned Stephanie Mattheson’s ex-boyfriend. Mason had dropped me at home, where I’d played on Facebook and Twitter instead of writing my daily ten pages, changed clothes and walked Myrtle. He’d gone back to the PD to talk to the chief and run a background check on Jacob Kravitz.

      “He did eighteen months in Attica,” he said.

      “Shit, you were right.” I clapped a hand over my mouth and glanced down at Josh, but he was oblivious. On the ground now, rubbing Myrt’s belly in just the right spot to make her leg go, and laughing like a freckled hyena. “What did he do?”

      “Pissed off Judge Mattheson.”

      I frowned.

      “Turns out that when Stephanie and Jake ran off together, she wasn’t quite eighteen yet. They crossed state lines. The judge made sure Jake got the maximum.”

      “That motherf— That prick.”

      He grimaced at me. “Not much of an improvement there, Rache.”

      “It’s a slight improvement. So then Jake has good reason to hate the judge.”

      “Yeah. And to keep his distance from Stephanie. He’s also got a pretty powerful motive for wanting revenge.”

      I nodded. “You think he’s hiding her somewhere? That the two of them planned this?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Or that he did something to her? For payback?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “I don’t think he’d hurt her. Maybe he’s gonna hold her for ransom, only maybe she’s in on it, too, and they’re going to run off to Tahiti together once the judge pays up.”

      He stared at me like I’d sprouted a unicorn horn. “What?”

      “I’m telling you, Aunt Rache, you’ve got a novel in you.” Misty had moved three levels down and was sitting behind us, leaning her head down between ours. “Now, what’s all this about kidnapping and ransom?”

      “Hello? Private conversation here.”

      She gave me an exaggerated pout and still managed to be gorgeous. “Then have it somewhere private.”

      “She’s right,” I said to Mason. “We shouldn’t be working at a game. Baseball is way more important than work.”

      “Is that from one of your books, Rachel?”

      “No, but it should be.” I pulled out my phone, tapped the little blue birdie.

      “You’re Tweeting?” Mason asked, using the same tone he might use to say “You’re reproducing by mitosis?”