Deeper Than Need: A Secrets & Shadows Novel

by Shiloh Walker

  But the second Noah stopped working, Caine appeared in the doorway. As always, his lean face was unreadable. His face was like stone, his eyes like bits of glass, flat and emotionless. They’d worked together for more than a decade, and Noah knew next to nothing about the man. Noah was used to people like Thom or Hank or Lee, who talked nonstop, sometimes too much. But Caine gave up nothing.

  It was sometimes unsettling, but Noah wasn’t going to complain, because he really didn’t want to talk about what had happened here.

  Tugging his gloves up higher, he turned around and gestured to the floor. “You can see what’s been done. The entire floor wasn’t bad. Just that one area. It was an old cellar. I was…”

  He made the mistake of looking back at Caine.

  Caine was staring at the floor like he was mesmerized. The skin across his cheeks was flushed, flags of high color, and his huge hands curled into fists at his sides. “They know anything about her?”

  Startled, Noah shook his head. “Who?”

  “The body.” Caine’s gaze swung upward to meet Noah’s for a minute before dropping back down to the now closed off entry to that little pit of hell. He dragged a hand down his face and cleared his voice. “The body they found. Nobody is even sure if it’s a man or woman yet, right?”

  Something about the guy’s eyes was weird, Noah decided. Too intense. Too watchful and freaky, too focused on every little thing that happened here, for a guy who didn’t even live in town. “Ah, no.” Noah rocked back on his heels, gripping his hammer and keeping his tone casual as he shrugged. He went on to say something about what Jeb had said and just barely remembered he wasn’t supposed to—not common knowledge yet. “I don’t think they knew whether the person was male or female—too decayed. Didn’t look like either to me when I saw it, if I had to be honest. Body didn’t even look real.”

  Caine nodded slowly. Then, with a heavy sigh, he settled down the floor, opposite from Noah. “And the body was all they found down there?”

  “Yeah.” Noah kept his eyes on the man’s bowed head as Caine ran a hand down the smooth surface of the subfloor. “I’m ready to get this done. They can’t come home until this is finished. The floor was a hazard.”

  “This whole place is a hazard,” Caine said, his voice soft. Distant.

  * * *

  They got the floors finished, in both the cellar and the other areas out in the living room.

  That was one thing that Noah was very, very happy about, because the floor was one job that Noah absolutely did need help on and almost everybody he’d called to try to get out there had been booked up for the next few weeks.

  It was done and now he didn’t have to worry about having Caine out here again.

  Which Noah was pretty pleased with, because something was eating at the guy and whatever it was, it had him acting very, very off. With most people Noah would ask if there was anything he could do, but there wasn’t any point with Caine.

  Caine simply did not talk about himself.

  At all.

  That he’d even asked about the cellar, shown any interest at all, was out of character.

  As Noah stowed his gear, he nodded at Caine. “That should do it for what I need. Your crew can help finish up the rest. They’re doing a good job.”

  “I’ll be out with them after this. I’m done with the rest of the work I was doing,” he said shortly. He put his tools in the back of his rusted Ford truck, a model that was twenty years old, easy. As Caine slammed the trunk shut, little flakes of rust drifted off the top to float down to the ground. “I’ll be here Monday.”

  Wonderful.

  Noah waited for Caine to get into his truck, drive off. But instead, he headed back to the house and stood in the doorway of the kitchen. One hand curled over the doorjamb, knuckles white.

  Caine looked like he wanted to take something and tear it apart, shatter it.

  He looked like he wanted to destroy something.

  “You should talk her into redoing this room,” Caine said, his voice thick and rusty. “The windows. You need a bigger window—let more light come in here. Maybe even take down that door to the pantry, open it up. Some sort of hell happened here. More light would chase away all the shadows.”

  Then he turned and walked off.

  Noah stood there staring after him, confused … and more than a little uneasy.

  * * *

  Hey, Preach.

  Noah looked at the message on his phone as he unlocked the door to his house.

  He didn’t recognize the number, and the nickname was no help. Any number of people in town called him that, and it was a name the kids on the forum had dubbed him with.

  Locking the door behind him, he responded with: Hey back. What can I do for you?

  They took my computer away. That’s why I ain’t been online.

  Noah took a few steps and settled down on the bottom stair, rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to figure out who it might be.

  Can you help me out? I don’t recognize the number here, friend.

  A few seconds of nothing and then … CTaz. I ain’t been drinking. Trying not to because if you say it just makes it worse? Hell, I can’t handle it worse.

  Noah closed his eyes.

  Then he blew out a breath and ran his tongue across his teeth before he let himself answer. I wondered where you’ve been. Why was your computer taken away?

  They don’t like that I’m telling STORIES.

  Stories. A knot twisted in Noah’s gut. What kind of stories, kid?

  If I told you—

  Then there was nothing.

  You’re in trouble, CTaz. I know that. If you’d let me know who you are, where you are, I can help. I can get you help.

  Noah gripped the phone as he waited for an answer. It came slowly, like CTaz didn’t want to say anything, do anything. I know you’d try. But some things can’t be stopped. This is one of them. I can’t get away until they get bored with me. They say they making a man of me. Ain’t nobody gonna listen.

  Making a man—those words tugged at something inside Noah, but he didn’t know what. Other than rage. He surged off the steps, unable to sit still any longer. He wanted to put his fist through something, but that wasn’t going to help. Dread, nasty and slick, twisted him into so many knots, he couldn’t even see straight.

  “Gotta calm down,” he muttered. Hard to text when he was too mad to see straight.

  Son, listen to me, whatever it is, it won’t stop until somebody finds a way to make it. Talk to me. I’ll do everything in my power to make it. I’ll bust down doors to make people listen. I’ll shake people until they hear me. But I can’t do much of anything until you talk to me.

  There was another one of those long pauses and Noah wondered if CTaz was going to answer him. Then finally, one of the little message bubbles appeared on his phone. Bust down doors. Maybe that’s the answer. The door ain’t enough, though. We oughta tear that whole place down. Tear it down. Burn it down. Kill those motherfuckers so they can’t do this anymore.

  Then, as the knots in Noah’s gut drew even tighter, CTaz typed in: I’m gone, Preach. I needed to talk to somebody. Guess I needed to know somebody would listen if I tried to talk. Don’t try to call me or text me. This is one of those cheap-ass throwaway phones and I’m throwing it in the river once I’m done.

  Noah didn’t let that stop him.

  He dialed the number. No answer. There was no voice mail in place. Again, and again.

  But even after twenty minutes of calls, there was no answer.

  * * *

  “Hey there, Noah.”

  “Jensen.” He nodded at the petite woman striding up the steps. Holding the door open for her, he tried not to let the temper and the worry he felt come spilling out of him, but it was hard.

  Jeb hadn’t responded when Noah sent him a text earlier and he wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of talking to the man, but he needed to know if he’d found anything about CTaz or not.

&nbs
p; “If you’re looking for Sims, he’s not on this weekend,” Jensen said, shooting him a smile as they moved into the relatively cooler air of the small police station. “I think he said something about heading out to go fishing at his cabin or something.”

  “Fishing.” Noah closed his eyes and drilled the heels of his hands against his eye sockets while fury beat inside. Fury, helplessness.

  “Anything I can help with?”

  Lowering his hands, he stared into Jensen’s hazel eyes. Instinctively he went to say no. Jeb was the one Noah had always gone to when there were safety concerns on the forums. Jeb had always handled them. He’d always been discreet.

  Screw discreet.

  Bringing up the messages on his phone, Noah turned it over to Jensen and watched as she started to read.

  A line formed between her brows, and although she made no reaction, he could see it as her eyes went from friendly to cop in two seconds flat.

  Jensen was the youngest detective on the small police force and the only female. She was also one of the few female cops the city had. She took a hell of a lot of flack, from everything that Noah had heard, and sadly, some of that flack came from Jeb. She didn’t seem to let it get in her way, though. Jensen Bell had one focus in life, and it had been like that from the time she’d been a child: She wanted to be a cop. Her mother, Nichole, had disappeared when she was young and that had been the driving force in her life.

  Jensen was a good cop. As she read the messages through once, then a second time, Noah had to admit that the glint he saw in her eyes made him feel like she was actually seeing the problem here. The last time he’d brought CTaz up to Jeb, it had been like Jeb would have preferred to just brush it off.

  Finally, after she’d finished reading the message through a second time, she looked up at Noah, a cool, flat look on her face.

  “Who is CTaz?”

  “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Elbows braced on the armrest, Noah had the pleasure of listening to a woman, who barely stood five foot two and probably weighed 105 at the most, tear a lawyer up one wall and down the other. “Don’t you give me the line that it’s Saturday and you can’t be bothered to bother a judge at home,” she bit off. “I’ve got good reason to believe there’s a kid in danger and he may or may not be planning an act of violence. You’re going to get me that warrant because if I have to start calling judges they’ll be a lot less impressed with my breakdown of the situation, you hear me?”

  She paused and then a colorful streak of cussing turned the air not just blue, but every shade of it.

  Noah arched an eyebrow as a couple of the cops around them shot them a look and then pretended complete ignorance.

  He’d never once seen a cop at work.

  He had to admit, it was entertaining.

  Jensen took his concern pretty seriously.

  Ten minutes later, she smacked her fist against the desk and shot him a flinty-eyed look. “I’m working on it.”

  Propping his chin in his hand, he said, “I noticed it.”

  She grinned at him. “It requires a lot of finessing, things like this.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “Yeah.” Then she sighed and rubbed her index finger against the tip of her nose. “I don’t get why I hadn’t heard about this kid. You said you talked to Sims about your concerns, right?”

  “A while ago. Maybe a week or two.” He tried to think back … he was almost positive it had been before the mess out at Trinity’s place—

  Trinity.

  Squeezing his eyes closed, he muttered under his breath and then cracked one eye open, checked the clock on the far wall.

  “You need to be someplace?”

  “I sort of have a date,” he said, shifting in the chair. Leaning forward, he folded his hands together. He blew out a breath. “I’ll call her, reschedule—”

  “Oh, no, you won’t. A date. When was the last time you had a date?” Jensen’s brows arched over her eyes.

  Running his tongue across his teeth, Noah pondered that question. “I’d say it’s been a while.”

  “Can you answer the question in months or would it be years or is it closer to decades?”

  “It’s not decades,” he muttered.

  “But close. Or at least close to a decade,” she said, grinning. “I bet I know who it is, too. You’re not canceling. You don’t need to be here for this. Honestly, Preach, there’s nothing you can do. But…”

  She grimaced and nudged the phone with her index finger. “I need the phone. Even if he did dump the one he had, your phone is the only connection we have for now. I don’t know how long I’ll need it, but it makes my job easier if you just let me keep it.”

  “Take it.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and shot the clock another look. He didn’t want to reschedule, at all. But he still felt very odd leaving right now. His gut was in a tangle over the very idea of it. “So, I don’t need to be here, but maybe I should just go home in case he calls.…”

  “You plan on living by your phone?” she asked softly. Her hazel eyes narrowed on his face. “How long you going to put your life on hold, Preach?”

  He opened his mouth. Then closed it.

  “Go on your date. It’s the new woman in town, right? Bought the Frampton house? Trinity, right?”

  He studied the battered toes of his boots as a curious silence fell across the room. “It might be.”

  He was acutely aware of the fact that he had suddenly become the focus of a great deal of attention. There were maybe ten people in there, most of them cops in uniform, although Noah had seen a deputy from the county sheriff’s office. Just about every single one of them was watching him, and nobody pretended otherwise.

  Wonderful.

  Benjamin Thorpe, one of the uniformed cops, stood in the doorway, grinning widely. “You got a date, Noah?”

  “I think that was just mentioned, Ben,” he said dryly. Rising, he fished his keys out of his pocket and looked over at Jensen. “I guess if there’s nothing else you need from me, I’ll head out.”

  She propped her chin on her fist. “I’m good.”

  “Are you?” The question slid out before he could stop it. “Is everything okay with you and your family?”

  Her eyes slid away and she shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I guess. It’s … peaceful, I guess, knowing. Frustrating, knowing that Theo Miller is rotting away in jail but won’t answer for what he did. Son of a bitch killed my mother but…” she sighed and shook her head. “He’ll rot in hell soon enough. Doesn’t feel like enough, but we work with what we got, right?”

  “That we do.” He wanted to say something, do something, to make this easier, to take the pain away. But more than most, he understood that sometimes words just didn’t cover it. “I’ll head on out then. You call if you need me.”

  “I will.” She smiled and winked. “Have fun on your date. I’d tell you to be good, but … well…”

  Noah felt the heated rush of blood crawl up his neck.

  Jensen chuckled and then turned back to her desk. Her gaze dropped to the phone and the humor died, fading away. “I’ll be in touch about this, okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He nodded and told himself he’d have to let it go for now. He’d done what he could. Please, God … let them find the kid.

  * * *

  “I like the cherries.”

  Looking up, Trinity met Ali’s gaze in the mirror before shifting her attention back to her reflection. “It’s kind of…”

  “It’s perfect,” Ali said, a faint smile on her face. “It’s sort of sweet and old-fashioned, but it’s still sexy as hell.”

  “Sexy.” Trinity shook her head. “I’m going out with a guy who used to be a preacher. Everybody in town still calls him Preach. I don’t know if sexy is the look I should go for.”

  “Well, you’re not dating everybody in town and everybody in town isn’t who you should concern yourself with. I think Noah will like it
.” Ali absently stroked a hand down her braid and shrugged. “But if you’re more worried about what they think than what Noah will think when he sees you? Sure. Change.”

  “That’s a dirty trick.”

  Ali’s grin took on a devious slant. “Well, it’s not wrong. Look at it this way: The dress isn’t short. It’s not tight. You’re more than adequately covered. If you weren’t worrying about what others would think, I bet you wouldn’t think twice about wearing that dress.”

  Trinity made a face and then looked back at the mirror. No. The dress wasn’t short. Or tight. It went a good inch past her knees, and the skirt was cut full and wide. She wore a petticoat under the stupid thing. The retro pieces like this just worked better with one. The dress skimmed up close over her torso and cupped her breasts closely, but it wasn’t tight.

  It was understated sensuality, through and through, and she’d always felt gorgeous when she wore this dress. Yet she still didn’t know if she should wear it tonight.

  “You’re nervous. That’s the whole problem.”

  “Okay, Dear Abby,” Trinity muttered. “I’ll wear the stupid dress.”

  Ali laughed. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Yes.” Snagging a pair of black heels from the minuscule closet, Trinity sat on the edge of the bed to slip them on. She still needed to deal with her hair and makeup, but instead of doing that, she just sat that there, staring at the floor. “I’m so nervous, it’s almost stupid, and it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Have you dated much since Micah was born?”

  “Not at all.” She wrinkled her nose and shrugged it off. “But that’s not the problem, really.”

  “You sure?” Ali came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Up until I finally managed to get things working with Tate … well…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

  “Tate.” Trinity smiled, thinking of the guy she’d met only once. He was something, that was sure. Edgy, hot, more ruggedly handsome than anything else, and he all but oozed sex appeal. The way he looked at Ali was enough to make anybody feel a pang. He was stupid in love with her. That was the only way to describe it. “You two look good together.”