Then she looked at the road, and knew everything she had just told herself was a lie. The route she was taking back to the hotel bisected a different, older residential neighborhood than the one Cara had driven to the newspaper.
This time, the slope of the road and the scenery were jarringly familiar. A portion of Cara's brain remembered the barrel-tile roofs on some of the older homes and the profusion of football fields, their goal posts erected on what were soccer fields in the summer.
The road gradually broadened from two lanes to four, unsurprising considering that increased traffic had forced lots of towns to widen their roadways. Except Cara didn't merely suspect that was what had happened in Secret Sound. She knew.
Her lungs felt starved for air, and Cara tried to calm herself, taking the long, deep breaths that the proponents of the relaxation exercises suggested.
There had to be a reason for the things that were happening to her, and the most logical was that she had been in Secret Sound before.
She reached for the cell phone she'd tossed on the passenger seat with shaking hands, noticing her battery was nearly dead. What’s more, she was fairly certain she’d forgotten her charger. She hit speed dial for the phone number of the only living person who could confirm this wasn’t her first time in Secret Sound, hoping the battery lasted the length of the conversation.
"Hello," a creaky, familiar voice answered after the phone had rung six times.
"Aunt Clarice? It's me, Cara."
"My lord, child. Is everything all right? You're not supposed to call until later in the week. I told you this trip to Miami wasn't a—"
"Good idea," Cara finished for her, deciding not to worry her aunt further by sharing her troubles. She'd already been repeatedly subjected to her aunt's opinion of a woman traveling alone to a strange state, an opinion that, strangely, she had agreed with even as she’d set out on the trip. "Please don’t worry about me, Aunt Clarice. Everything’s fine."
"Then why are you calling?" Her aunt's voice was suspicious, and Cara tried to think of a reply that wouldn't worry her. Since Cara's parents had died, Aunt Clarice had appointed herself Cara's surrogate mother, father and guardian.
"A silly reason," Cara said finally, opting for the truth. "I wanted to know if I'd ever been to Florida before."
"Wouldn't you know if you'd been to Florida before?"
Cara fought impatience while she navigated the road, wishing she had pulled over before calling. She wanted a quick answer, but her aunt wouldn’t provide one without an explanation. "Only if I were old enough to remember. Did Mom and Dad ever take me to Florida when I was really young? So young that I wouldn’t remember the trip?"
"Why do you want to know that?" Aunt Clarice asked.
Cara stopped herself from demanding an answer. She’d long ago gotten used to her aunt’s habit of answering her questions with a question. “No special reason, Aunt Clarice. It's just that some things here look familiar.”
“Maybe you're remembering pictures you've seen in magazines,” Aunt Clarice said. “Because you’ve never been in Florida before.”
Cara's heart plummeted. "Never? Mom and Dad never took me here?”
"They never did," Aunt Clarice said, her tone closing the subject. It felt as though someone had slammed a door in Cara's face.
"Are you sure?"
"For heaven’s sake, child. Your mother was my sister, and I lived next door to the woman from the time she married your father to the time she died. Of course I’d know if she’d ever taken you to Florida. I’m telling you, you’re probably remembering pictures."
Would Cara's reaction to Secret Sound really be so vivid if all she had seen were photographs? Could she have conjured up Skippy Rhett only because she'd come across his photo or possibly even read a story about the tragedy?
After telling her aunt her cell phone was almost dead and giving her a number where she could be reached at the hotel, Cara pressed the disconnect button. She felt vaguely guilty for not explaining the contact number was in Secret Sound instead of Miami Beach.
Then she laid the cell phone back down on the passenger seat, looked up at the familiar road and saw that it took a sudden ninety-degree turn to the right fifty feet in front of her.
She prepared to turn the wheel. Incredibly, it didn’t respond to her pressure. Disbelieving, she tried again with the same result.
The steering wheel, she realized with dawning horror, was stuck.
This can’t be happening, Cara’s mind screamed.
She wasn’t traveling particularly fast, probably not even forty miles an hour. With sickening clarity, she realized that a car moving in the opposite direction would hit her head-on if she couldn’t coax the steering wheel into turning.
She was near the outskirts of town, away from the main street with its collection of businesses and shops and pedestrians. Traffic was mercifully light.
The sun glinted off the silver chrome of a fender, indicating a car fast approaching on the other side of the road. The vehicle was a metallic gray-blue, like the eyes of a man she might never see again.
"Turn, damnit, turn!"
She gripped the steering wheel and yanked with all her strength. Her car kept heading toward certain disaster, never deviating from its path.
Wrenching her foot off the gas pedal, she violently hit the brakes.
The car slowed. Sweet, short-lived relief flowed through her. Deceleration had a price. The tires spun, sending the car into a lateral slide.
She glanced up and saw the gray-blue portent of doom getting closer. Her car slid across the double-yellow line. She braced her body, locking her arms on the steering wheel, and waited for the crunch of metal on metal.
The blare of a horn fueled her panic. She screamed. The other car swerved into the lane in which she’d been traveling, neatly avoiding her out-of-control car.
Her heart beat so hard it felt like it would jump out of her chest. Her car continued to spin, a dizzying spiral that seemed to go on and on, affording glimpses of pavement, blue sky and green grass.
The car came to a jarring stop in the front yard of a house set back from the road. Her body jerked, the seat belt preventing her from slamming into the steering wheel.
Her head still spinning and her hands shaking, it took her three tries to turn off the ignition. Then she dropped her head on the steering wheel and shut her eyes.
"Jesus, lady. Weren’t you watching where you were going?" The gruff male voice that drifted through her closed window was more panicked than angry. The other driver. She said a prayer of thanks for his quick reflexes. "Do you know how close you came to getting us both killed?"
Cara allowed herself another moment before lifting her head. A beard covered most of the other driver’s face. His eyes were so wide she could see white all around his irises.
“Sorry,” she choked out.
Even as she apologized, she knew her power steering hadn’t failed by accident, not after she'd had the car thoroughly checked before the trip. Not after the barely concealed resentment her questions about Skippy Rhett had stirred.
Her heart hammered, and her breathing became shallow.
Somebody, it seemed, had just tried to kill her.
Gray DeBerg grimaced as the strong black coffee slid down his throat, tasting so cold and rank he repressed an urge to spit it back out.
Christ, he made an aggressively bad pot of coffee. He took another swig anyway. It was the caffeine he was after, not the taste.
He felt bleary and out of sorts, and he didn’t think it was because he’d met Curtis Rhett for fishing at six-thirty that morning. No, it probably had a lot more to do with the way he’d sat up until nearly dawn. He’d chain-smoked a stale pack of cigarettes he’d managed not to open for six months while he wondered what to do about Cara Donnelly.
He hoped like hell she didn’t have a contrary streak, because he’d done everything but told her he didn’t want her to discover what had happened to Skippy Rhett all thos
e years ago.
Hell, he didn’t want to find out either.
Just as some things were better left unsaid, some secrets should never be exposed. Gray didn’t have any desire to turn over a rock and examine the slimy things crawling underneath. The rock, he figured, served a better purpose in its place.
He took another, bigger swallow of coffee. His thoughts directly contradicted everything he’d learned at the police academy. The instructors there had taught him to probe, to uncover, to solve.
But it wasn’t as though he knew anything, he reasoned with himself. He suspected, which was an entirely different matter.
He picked up his pen and threw it down again. He was driving himself nuts, and it could all be for nothing. Cara Donnelly’s angry reaction when he’d doubted her reasons for being in Secret Sound could mean she actually was who she said she was: a reporter working on a story.
The information he’d gathered since coming into his office that morning didn’t prove differently. He’d run her license plate number and found out she wasn’t lying about her identity, then followed up with a call to the Sumter Police Department.
The officer who answered the phone hadn’t known Cara personally. He’d promised Gray to find out what he could and call him back. The call had come less than an hour ago, although the other cop hadn’t been brimming with information.
Cara didn’t have a criminal record, and her only dealing with the police department was a rarely issued ticket that branded her as anything but a troublemaker. She’d been ticketed for traveling under the minimum speed limit.
She was thirty-five and single, the only child of Maude and Henry Donnelly, who had died within a week of each other a couple months back. She’d lived with her parents in a house that no longer had a mortgage, and her credit history was first-rate.
The only other pertinent fact was that Cara worked in the circulation department of a tabloid-type magazine called the Sumter Scene. The helpful cop said the magazine acted as a guide to happenings around town and the state.
Gray tapped the end of his pen on the desk while he thought. He doubted the magazine the Sumter cop had described would be interested in an article about small-town newspapers. However, Cara could be working on the story for another publication.
If Gray accepted that line of reasoning, he supposed her interest in Skippy Rhett’s death could be innocent, sparked by her research of the Rhett family. What other reason would she have to pry into a mystery that was thirty years old?
After their confrontation last night, it was even possible Cara had given up on the story and left town.
Instead of comforting him, the idea of never seeing her again was strangely troubling.
He’d meant to kiss her last night as a way of making a point. He’d never intended desire to slam into him so hard that it had taken a Herculean effort to let her go. He’d wanted, instead, to drag her down to the sand and bury himself inside her.
He rubbed a hand against his brow. She’d wanted him last night, too. Her mouth had gone soft and pliant underneath his while she moaned her pleasure. He wanted that to happen again. He didn’t want her opening that mouth to ask questions better left unasked.
"Chief, I got somebody out here wants to talk to you." Earl Young, a deputy he had hired straight out of the academy the year before, appeared in the doorway. His look was pained. "I told her it wasn’t procedure to file a criminal complaint after a one-car accident, but she won’t listen. She got into my squad car and said she wasn’t budging until I drove her here."
"Show her in, Earl," Gray said, cutting off the deputy’s spate of words. Hell, he sympathized with the boy. He’d handled his share of automobile accidents, complete with unreasonable victims. Besides, he welcomed the interruption from thinking about Cara Donnelly.
The woman herself walked through the door, long-legged, lovely and unquestionably upset. She was trembling, the same way she had been at the gas station when he’d found her screaming at nothing. Again, the urge to haul her into his arms and comfort her was so strong it was almost primal.
"I want to file a complaint," she said. At direct odds with her appearance, her voice was so forceful that she didn’t sound as though she needed comforting.
He shifted in his seat, trying not to show that her sudden appearance had any effect on him. "What kind of complaint?"
"A criminal complaint. Somebody rigged the power steering of my car."
His eyebrows rose, and she rushed to explain.
"When I tried to turn the wheel, it stuck. I lost control and drove into the path of an oncoming car. If the other driver hadn’t had quick reflexes, I wouldn’t be standing here."
"Are you okay?" Gray sprang out of his chair and was across his desk in a flash. His eyes ran over her, reassuring himself that she was in one piece. He reached out and gingerly touched her left cheek. "You have a bruise here."
Huge dark eyes gazed back at him, and he noticed that her chest was heaving and her color was high. She backed up, breaking off the contact. "The side of my face must have hit the window when I stopped."
Gray frowned and advanced a step, erasing the distance she’d put between them. The bruise was barely noticeable. If she had one injury, though, there could be others that weren’t visible. "I’ll run you down to the hospital."
"No." Cara backed up again and put her hand out, as though she meant to shove against his chest if he came any closer. "You are the pushiest man. Why are you always wanting to take me to a hospital? I’m fine, and a police station is exactly where I should be. Didn’t you hear me? I want to file a complaint."
Despite her strong statements, her voice wavered. She was such a mass of contradictions that Gray didn’t know what to make of her. He didn’t know what to make of her complaint, either.
"I did hear you," Gray said slowly, "but I can't figure out why you think having your automatic power steering fail has some ulterior meaning."
Before Cara could answer, Gray's secretary June, a matronly woman in her fifties who favored bubblegum-pink clothing, popped her head around the door frame.
"Sorry to interrupt, chief,” she said. “I thought you’d want to hear this. I just got off the phone with Sam, and he said a preliminary inspection shows the rubber coupling connecting the steering gear box to the steering column failed. He says that was probably the problem."
"Sam Peckenbush?" Cara's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. "Are you actually saying that your deputy let Sam Peckenbush tow my car?"
"Thanks, June. That’ll be all," Gray said mildly before turning back to Cara. "Sam has a contract with the town to tow any accident vehicles on town property."
"I don’t want him working on my car,” she said, passion emanating from her. “I want it towed somewhere else immediately."
"That’s your prerogative, even though I’d advise against it. Sam’s the best mechanic in Secret Sound."
"You’re not listening to a word I say,” she cried. “Sam Peckenbush is the one who rigged my steering! Since he towed my car, it’s already too late to prove that. That doesn’t mean I’ll let him work on my car and do something even worse to it."
Gray lifted his eyebrows. She’d finally succeeded in refocusing his attention from her to her complaint. Still, it didn’t make sense. Sam was gruff and uncommunicative but nobody, as far as he knew, had ever accused him of anything like this. "I suppose you have some basis for your accusation?"
"Of course I do." She sounded exasperated. "He told me flat out to leave town after he sent his pit bull after me."
"Wait a minute." Gray stuck out his hand, palm up. "Back up. Are you saying that Sam ordered his pit bull to attack you?"
"No. I’m saying that he turned the animal loose in his office when I was in there." She put her hands on her hips. "I don’t know if he intended for the animal to rip me apart or if he only wanted to scare me.”
"I take it the pit bull didn’t rip you apart?"
"Only because his son happened along bef
ore the dog could attack!"
Gray sat on the edge of his desk and rubbed his chin. "Humor me. Let’s say Sam did turn his pit bull loose on you, and let’s say he did rig your car so you’d have an accident. You’re saying he’s doing these things to get you to leave town, right?"
She nodded, so he continued. "What I’m wondering is exactly why you think he wants you to go?"
Her mouth thinned. "I’ve been asking questions he doesn’t want to answer."
"Questions about this story you’re writing on small-town newspapers?"
"Yes."
"And what does Sam have to do with newspapers?" Gray asked.
"As if you didn’t know. He was driving the car that killed Skippy Rhett!"
"Yes, he was," Gray said slowly. "But considering that he was never charged with anything, did it occur to you that maybe you’re the one harassing him?"
"Me? Harassing him?” She shook her head. “Come off it, Chief. You might not want to believe it, but Sam Peckenbush tried to hurt me."
"That’ll awful hard to prove without evidence," he said and saw that she was getting ready to argue with him again, "but I suppose I could talk to him."
"Chief," June said, appearing at his office door once again, "we’ve got a complaint over on Fifth and Vine. Seems like Grady O’Malley caught some kids stealing the CD player out of his car. He’s holding them until you get there."
Gray swore under his breath. Of all the complaints he handled, the ones dealing with juveniles bothered him the most.
"Sorry." He slanted an apologetic look at Cara and rose. "We’ll have to finish this another time."
"What about talking to Sam Peckenbush?" she asked. "You can’t let him get away with this."
"I’ll do it tomorrow morning," he said as he headed to the door. "By the time I finish with this, Sam’ll be shut down for the night."
"I want to come with you."
Her words stopped him. Gray turned, considering. It was an unusual request, one he usually wouldn’t honor. But since he seriously doubted Sam was trying to drive her out of town, it wouldn’t hurt for her to hear what he had to say.
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