Roan’s son brought up her meals as he had before, though he seldom stayed to talk. While it was a relief not to have to deal with his unspoken sympathy, his avoiding her seemed like a slap in the face. Roan himself hardly came near her. He had seen to it that she was unable to escape without detection, had assured himself that she was fairly well recovered, and was no longer interested in her or what she needed. Even Beau deserted her at times, loping off to follow Jake about his chores or on his dirt bike trips. That the solitary confinement was largely her own choice made little difference, Tory still felt like a burden, an unwelcome addition to the routine at Dog Trot.
If Sheriff Roan Benedict thought he could hold her like this forever, he was mistaken. She was going to leave as soon as she figured out how to escape without alerting the world.
She began her campaign near noon of the next day. It had been a sultry morning, with distant thunder that promised to shake a storm out of the gray sky before long. Jake was home instead of out riding or visiting with friends; she’d heard the beep and chime and ear-grating music of the video game he was playing earlier. Dragging on a pair of cutoff jeans and a “Kickin’ Country Y106” T-shirt, she set off in search of the boy. The cuff set off no alarm as she descended the stairs, so she concluded it was all right to leave the upper floor, at least. Not that she’d been in much doubt.
She found Jake in the kitchen, frowning into the pantry as he swung the door back and forth from one hand to the other. He looked up with an uncertain smile as she came into the room, but seemed happy enough to have someone else to help decide what was for lunch. They settled on homemade vegetable soup canned by Cousin Kane’s Aunt Vivian the previous summer. Jake introduced her to the delights of floating small cheese crackers shaped like fish in the soup and drinking milk over ice with it. It was comfort food at its finest, and went far to banish the constraint between them.
They talked of this and that, the fish he’d been catching on the lake, the baby shower given for Cousin Kane’s wife, Regina, the excitement over the coming baby. All the while, Tory mulled over the best way to approach the teenager about what she wanted to know. At the first lull in the conversation, she said, “You know, this cuff thing on my ankle is really starting to get to me. I can’t imagine having to wear it for months.”
Jake’s slim face mirrored relief, apparently because she’d brought up the subject. Until then he’d looked everywhere except at her leg. It was as though the cuff embarrassed him almost as much as it did her.
“I don’t see why you have to wear it at all,” he said. “It’s not as if you’re going to welcome the creeps who had you with open arms if they do show up again.”
“I think your dad is more worried about my running off to find them,” she pointed out in dry humor. “He doesn’t exactly trust me.”
“I tried to set him straight about that, but got the ‘You’ll understand better when you’re older’ lecture. Man.” He shook his head in disgust.
His partisanship was gratifying, but also disturbing. She studied the flush of color on his cheeks with distinct misgivings, wondering if he’d developed more than a mere liking for her company. He was at a susceptible age, old enough to feel the first stirring of infatuation, but too young to realize its brief nature.
Compunction, uncomfortable and unwanted, touched her just as it had that day on the porch. To rope in this boy, maybe to pit him against his father, made her feel on a level with an earthworm. And yet, what choice did she have? She needed help, and there was no one else.
“It’s like being watched,” she said with a small, brave smile. “Like some perverted little man is following me everywhere I go.”
“Nobody can see you,” Jake said in earnest reassurance. “It’s not a video camera or some fancy eye tied into a satellite surveillance system. Want me to show you how it works?”
Tory couldn’t have asked for a better offer.
The control center had been set up in the den as a central area with an available telephone line. She might have missed the simple white plastic box holding its computerized module if Jake hadn’t pointed it out. Set up on the end table beside the sofa, it received a radio signal transmitted by the cuff on a designated frequency, then sent data relating to all activities to the monitoring station in Baton Rouge via phone line. According to Jake, personnel at this station could tell if the monitor and its wearer were out of range, if the transmitter had been tampered with, if the battery was low, or if the phone line was out because it had been cut or from bad weather. Range for the unit was 150 feet. If she and her cuff moved farther than that from the house, the control center would dial up the monitoring center and another computer there dialed the phone number of the house. Voice recognition software could identify whether the person answering the phone was the wearer. If it wasn’t, or if the wearer didn’t reach the phone in a given length of time, the monitoring center immediately notified the sheriff’s office.
“And that’s when your dad comes running,” Tory said, and compressed her lips.
“Exactly.” The boy nodded in approval at her quick grasp of the mechanics.
“What I don’t understand is how the computer is supposed to recognize my voice when it’s never heard it,” she said after a moment.
“Yes, well, you’re a special case, according to dad, since you don’t have a criminal record. The control center is set up to okay a specific command in his voice instead of yours. He’s the only one who can call off the alert.”
Roan had left nothing to chance. She could almost admire him for that, even as it made her more determined to find a way to circumvent him.
Glancing at Jake, she mustered a sigh. “I know your Dad means well, but he has no idea what wearing this thing is like. I mean, it gives me the willies, flashing when I move, sending every little thing I do somewhere so strangers can keep up with me. I don’t suppose there’s some way to take it off now and then, say when I’m in the shower?”
“No way!” Jake exclaimed. “You have to use the right tool or they can tell you’re messing with it. Besides, water doesn’t hurt the thing a bit.”
Now they told her, Tory thought in irritation for her uncomfortable baths lately that she taken with one foot resting on the tub rim. At the same time, she frowned over the problem. The tool Jake was talking about was undoubtedly the little wrench device Roan had taken from his pocket to attach the cuff. Finally, she suggested, “I suppose your dad is looking after that, too?”
“Not exactly.”
It was in the house, then, or else there was a spare. Jake knew so much about the monitor that she had little doubt he also knew the location of the tool.
She turned her best and most cajoling smile on the boy. “Where it is? Give me just a tiny hint, please, pretty please, Jake? I’ll find it myself. You can look the other way. No one will ever know. I promise I’ll only slip the cuff off for relief, no more than a few minutes at a time.”
“Dad would have a spitting fit!”
She didn’t doubt that for a second. “He won’t find out, I promise. It would be our secret.”
Roan’s son looked away. He chewed on his bottom lip. Then he squared his shoulders and faced her again. With a shadow of condemnation in his eyes, he said, “I don’t keep secrets from my dad. That’s not the way it works around here.”
That was that. Forced to choose loyalties, the boy had sided with his father. She should have known that he would. He had been well brought up. Truth, justice and honesty forever, amen. It was, no doubt, the Benedict way.
“Never mind,” she said with her best attempt at a careless shrug. “It doesn’t really matter. Forget I asked.” She paused. “So. What shall we do this rainy afternoon?”
“Nothing. That is, I can’t right now,” Jake mumbled with hot color flooding his face as he looked away from her. “Got to go check on a dog that’s been off his feed the last couple of days.”
It was an excuse, Tory thought. He didn’t want to be around her, did
n’t like her quite as much anymore. That it would happen some time was inevitable, especially when she left Dog Trot, still, regret for it weighted her chest. It had been nice to have Jake’s uncomplicated approval. She was going to miss it.
The rain began not long after he left for the barn. Tory wandered from window to window, watching the swaying trees and warm downpour that splattered from the eaves, until she saw Allen sitting in his patrol unit on the drive, watching her. She waved as he lifted a hand in recognition, then retreated into the upstairs hall. Her bedroom held no interest, nor did reading or television. Idly, she climbed the steps to the attic again and wandered among the ancient keepsakes.
Rain pattered on the slate tiles overhead. The humid air through the eave soffits brought out the smells of dust and decay, mothballs and ancient sweat. It wasn’t hard to imagine ghosts of the Benedict ancestors hovering in the corners, whispering among themselves as they tried to determine who she was and what right she had to pry into their former belongings.
She glanced through boxes of old Christmas decorations and newer ones for Christmases she never expected to see. She smiled over ancient baby clothes and kids’ toys going back at least three generations, and flipped through stacks of 78 rpm records and eight-track tapes. The dust she stirred up caused her to sneeze, then sneeze again. With that reaction, and bothered by a feeling that she was poking around again where she didn’t belong, she turned to go.
Near the stairs, she caught sight of a collection of boxes that were unmarked and shoved helter-skelter into a nook formed by supporting rafters. They were in such contrast to the rest of the carefully stacked and organized attic storage that curiosity made her stop.
Inside the boxes were the discarded mementos of a married life. They had been thrown in without wrapping or noticeable concern for their value, sentimental or otherwise. There were the dried remains of what might have been a cascade wedding bouquet, a pair of champagne flutes tied with stained white ribbons and engraved Bride and Groom; a twisted garter, napkins stamped with names and a date, and a wedding photograph in a tarnished silver frame. The smiling bride was a fragile-looking blonde and the groom was Roan.
She was definitely prying, delving into Roan’s life just as she had the day she’d found the racing photo, but she couldn’t resist. She reached for the silver-framed wedding portrait and tilted it toward the overhead light. As it caught the full glare, she rocked back on her heels with a small winded sound.
It was silly, of course. The items so carelessly discarded were obviously from his wedding, perhaps put away after his wife left them behind. She’d known somewhere in her mind that there’d been a ceremony, guests, and all the other details that went into the celebration of a marriage. Yet holding proof in her hands made it all so much more real somehow. She had to force herself to relax her grip on the frame before she bent it out of shape.
The photo was a formal portrait like a thousand others, taken in a church with ribbon-decked candelabra flanking the couple and a stained glass window in the background. Still, as Tory stared at it, the sense of something not quite right prickled at the edge of her consciousness.
The girl was pretty in a winsome fashion, with the slender shape and undefined features of a teenager. She appeared almost doll-like in her floor-length white gown overlaid with lace, with her bouquet held tightly at her waist and a nervous smile on her lips. Roan was tall and stalwart, staring at the camera with a near defiant air. His tux was white and, though doubtless rented, fit him to perfection. Frozen in time and place, the couple seemed so young, yet at the same time strangely mature.
The pair must have shared dreams for the future and hopes of eternal union to go with the promises they’d made, yet they had been disappointed. The marriage was over, the promises ended, the hopes and dreams gone forever.
Sighing, Tory replaced the frame in its box, then closed the cardboard flap. It was as she left the attic, heading back down to her room, that the niggling puzzlement over the wedding picture was solved.
The problem was the expression on the face of the groom. If his wedding day had been a joyful occasion, he hadn’t let it show.
11
As time for the early dinner hour kept at Dog Trot neared that evening, Tory sauntered into the kitchen and took a seat at the butcher-block table. Roan looked up from where he stood over the stove frying chicken. Tory held his gaze, her own straight and inquiring. He tilted his head, as though considering. Then he calmly asked Jake to set another place. She felt as if she had won a major skirmish in an undeclared war.
While they ate, Tory took careful, if furtive, note of the enemy, mentally comparing Roan to the attic photograph. His expression gave little away as he talked with Jake about the sick hound and a truck-car accident in the center of town. She came to the interesting conclusion that Roan had a solemn personality, or at least he didn’t smile too often.
She had thought that he was somber around her because of her invidious position as a suspect, but perhaps it was simply that he didn’t find much pleasure in life. It was a side effect, possibly, of constant exposure to the seamier side of human nature through his job. But it might also be that he was simply unhappy or unfulfilled in some way important to him. She could understand that all too well.
She offered to help with the dishes, but was firmly refused. Either Roan didn’t want her underfoot, or he was wary of letting her get too close. Whatever the reason, it made her feel useless and in the way, especially as he and his son moved back and forth in a choreographed routine, as if they’d cleared away together a thousand times. They didn’t need her help, didn’t need her; that was plain to see.
Still, she hovered near the door, uncertain whether to go or stay and unwilling to say good-night and retreat once more to her empty room while it was still daylight. As she stood there, Beau heaved himself up from in front of the window and padded over to her to nudge his big head under her hand. She accepted the hint, smoothing her hand over the short, silky hair on his head and scratching behind his ears as she considered the idea that Roan thought her incompetent. She might lack something in the housekeeping department, but she was more than proficient in the kitchen. There was a lot she could show him about his battering and frying techniques for chicken, for instance. Telling him wouldn’t work nearly as well as showing him, she suspected. She just might do that, too. If she stayed around that long.
The bloodhound, watching her with soulful eyes and a mournful mien, reached out with his nose to sniff her wrist, then gave the palm of her hand a slurping lick. She wiped the wet patch on the side of her shorts, but smiled at the big dog anyway. At least somebody at Dog Trot approved of her and was willing to offer a little companionship.
“Come on, Beau,” she said. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Don’t go too far,” Roan said from where he was drying the frying pan.
She hadn’t realized he was watching. His words, she thought, were a reminder, or possibly a warning, as if he sensed somehow that she might be planning something. The look she gave him was cool as she opened the outside door. She didn’t bother to answer.
Roan stepped onto the back porch and walked to the railing, leaning to brace his hands on it as he scanned the garden and wooden areas between the house and the lake for Tory. She hadn’t gone far, even if it had been a while since she left the kitchen. He’d known that, of course, since the monitor’s control box remained silent. That didn’t keep him from being relieved to catch sight of her and Beau among the trees.
She was leaning against the trunk of a pin oak with her fingertips thrust into the pockets of her cutoff jeans. Something about the slope of her shoulders and tilt of her head made her look pensive, remote and, yes, even lonely. Then she sensed his presence or possibly recognized that the closing door meant someone had stepped outside. Calling to Beau, she pushed away from the tree and started toward the house.
He wasn’t going to have to drag her bodily back into the house at least. He wouldn’t hav
e put it past her to force that on him for the principle of the thing.
She wasn’t happy with the monitor and he didn’t blame her. At the same time, she’d been mighty quiet about it so far. He’d like to think it was because she held no grudge, but that seemed unlikely. It made him uneasy, rather like holding a firecracker with a burned-down fuse. He couldn’t decide whether it was going to go off in his hand or turn out a harmless dud.
The rain had stopped an hour or so after he got home. The storm clouds were trailing off to the northeast, leaving behind a few streamers that caught the pink and purple of the last evening light. The orchestra of insects was just tuning up for its nightly performance. He breathed deep, inhaling the rainwashed freshness of the air and rolling his shoulders in an attempt to relieve the tension in his neck.
What the hell was he going to do with his prisoner?
Donna was disrupting his routine, stealing his sleep and complicating his life. He’d checked in with Allen a dozen times today by radio. That was in addition to talking to Jake. He’d also fielded messages having to do with her all day long. A few callers had expressed civic concern, but a couple of elderly women had almost hyperventilated with curiosity over the sleeping arrangements at Dog Trot. That was in addition to a former teacher of Jake’s troubled over his being exposed to the “criminal element.” Aunt Vivian had rung him up to ask if he needed a casserole brought over, and the mayor had reminded him about the police escort from the nearest airport when his gambling consortium guests arrived. For all the work he’d got done, Roan thought, he might as well have stayed home where he could look after his prisoner and his son himself.
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