Katie backed up as he moved forward. His breath smelled like stale beer. “I don’t think I am. Really.”
“It’s time you showed me some respect. As an equal.” The muscle in his eyelid pulsed faster as he took a step closer.
The sound of a vehicle coming down the drive sent her scurrying down the steps. Please let it be Silas.
It wasn’t.
The sheriff’s SUV rolled to a stop behind the truck. Tate took his time getting out of the vehicle and sauntering to the bottom step where she remained. In her unease she’d forgotten about her appearance until he stopped short and blinked in surprise.
“Wow, Katie, you’re looking something else.” Not a compliment, just a frank appraisal.
She’d worn a bra this time, but still covered her chest with her arms. She glanced back at Harold, who was coming down the steps with the paintings.
“Howdy, Tate. Stopped by to show Katie some paintings I got in. Guess she didn’t like them.” He tossed them into the back of the truck.
“Didn’t know you did home deliveries.”
“For special customers, I do. Ben’s bought a lot of stuff from me over the years. Have a good day.” With a final challenging look at her, he climbed into his truck and left.
That challenge was whether she was going to mention their conversation to Tate. “Have you ever checked into Harold? I mean as being the one who’s taking the girls? You do think it’s someone local, don’t you?”
Tate laughed. “It’s someone local all right. But Harold? He’s a big guy, but he’s no devil. Katie, I think you have it in for everyone.”
Well, what had she expected? “What’s up, Sheriff?”
“I know you’re here by yourself and wanted to check on you, is all.”
She was glad he did, even if he wouldn’t consider Harold a threat.
“How’d you know Ben’s out of town?”
“He calls, asking us to make sure you’re all right. I think what he’s really after is making sure you’re not with Silas. We’re getting closer to nailing him, you know. We finally got some evidence.” And he was going to enjoy telling her. She reevaluated her previous thought about him looking like Mel Gibson. He had the intense, almost over-the-edge blue eyes, but he wasn’t nearly as good looking.
Her throat tightened, and she involuntarily covered it with her hand. “What evidence?”
Those eyes narrowed in amusement. “See, even you’re not sure about him, are you?” He walked up to the steps where she leaned against the column. “We finally figured out how the clever son-of-a-bitch hides the bodies. You probably heard about Grover Thompson being missing the same night the girls disappeared. Went out to feed the pigs and whoosh, he was gone. Last night his wife found a finger.”
He caught her wince. “But it wasn’t his finger, no siree. It was most likely Dana Westbury’s finger. The tests aren’t done yet, but her mama said she wore sparkly nail polish and the fingernail had the same kind. We cut open the pigs and guess what we found? Body parts, or at least what was left of them.” He took a step up. “He cuts them up with an axe. He cuts them up and feeds them to the pigs.” He ground in each word, and she couldn’t help recoiling. “That’s what your friend does.”
She didn’t want to think about that finger, or the other images that came to mind. “That’s…horrible.”
“Yes, it is. But he’s smart, you see. Gotta admire him for that. Knows pigs will eat anything flesh and bone. Now we just gotta figure out what he does with the clothes and jewelry.” He had closed the distance and now stood only a foot in front of her. She could smell male sweat and Old Spice. “Don’t you admire him for that?”
That steely gaze held her for a moment, but she finally broke free to ask, “You said Grover was missing. Maybe he’s the one doing this.”
“When we searched the barn, we found him buried in muck way toward the back. He went out to feed the pigs and caught Silas in the act. Understandably, Silas had to kill him.”
Not Silas. It was another image, more terrible than the rest in its implications: the cut on his arm.
“He probably stalked them the same way he stalks you. He does stalk you, Katie. He’s like your shadow, following you to work, peeking in your windows. He’s gone to the Baptist church a couple of times, too. I saw him go inside for a while the last time. Maybe trying to atone for his sins. Or maybe he’s challenging God to stop him. ‘Stop me if You can. I’m the other side of You, the darkness to Your light. The evil to Your goodness’. You think that’s what he’s doing, Katie?”
“No.”
Tate was getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of this little interrogation. But what he was doing was making her fear him, not Silas. “Interesting that you accused Gary of hurting that cat of yours when he was innocent. And now you’re siding with evil. Don’t you find that ironic?”
“No,” she said again, afraid to say more.
“Then there’s something else you should know. I’m only telling you this for your own good. I’m just trying to figure out why you trust Silas with your life. Don’t you realize that every time you’re alone with him, you risk never coming back?”
“I can’t say why I trust him. But I do.”
“Another woman trusted Silas, and she’s probably dead, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her name was Celine Carrigan. She disappeared from the Atlanta area in 1988. Guess who reported her missing?”
“Silas.” The word came out a raspy whisper.
“Smart girl. Not only that, they lived together.”
She swallowed hard. “They were friends. He told me about her.” Well, sort of.
“Did he mention she disappeared?”
“No,” she had to admit. “Did they…find her shoe?”
“No. But they don’t always find shoes. Sometimes he hides them well.”
She digested the information. “Celine,” she said at last. “Isn’t that the name of his company?”
“Bingo. You’re smarter than you look. Who can figure out a woman’s mind? I’ve been trying for years with no luck. They fall in love with men who are incarcerated for violent crimes. They’re drawn to the dark side.”
“We all have a dark side; and a light side.”
That made him smile. “Yes, we do.”
The uneasy feeling that had started with Harold and then Tate’s arrival now sent the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. “How do you know Silas is looking in my window? The only person I’ve seen peeking in is Gary.”
His chuckle was even more unnerving than his smile. “Accusing Gary again? You never learn, girl who cried wolf. The only accusation you’ll make that people will believe is when you point to Silas. And if you keep hanging around with him, you may not be around to point any fingers.” He tipped his hat. “Good day, Katie.”
She leaned against the column as he walked to his vehicle. She hoped she didn’t look as drained as she felt when he gave her another glance before getting in. She straightened her shoulders and held his gaze until he got in and drove away.
Only then did she walk on shaky legs toward the woods. The sun was already warming the leaves and filling the air with the scent of pine when she headed toward Silas’s. She kept stopping suddenly to see if footsteps followed. Other than the birds hopping from branch to branch and the groundhog she’d spotted earlier, she seemed to be alone. Her thoughts were far more terrifying than anything physical.
She kept telling herself that Silas wasn’t a murderer. She’d gotten guff for that belief, but down deep she believed it. And yet, everything seemed to point to him. Even Silas had warned her about himself.
The whining sound sent chills scurrying down her spine. She remembered the sound from that first night when Silas had reappeared in her life. A saw.
It was Tate’s voice in her head saying, Cuts up women with an axe. Could be a saw, you know. I’ll bet that’s what he’s doing right now.
She tho
ught about sneaking up on Silas to see what he was doing. That was impossible, because he always knew what she was feeling if it was a strong emotion. She tamped down the fear and continued forward. When she neared the house, she pulled the gun from her backpack.
The whining noise muffled as it cut through something. She shuddered. He was inside this time, not out where she could see him. She tamped down her feelings and breathed in relief when the saw started again. He hadn’t felt her. Yet.
With the gun pressed against her leg, she crept up the stairs. The Boss was sprawled across the threshold. He lifted his head with some amount of effort. She kept out of view where she could see Silas standing at a homemade table of sorts. As she tried to see what he was doing, he turned around.
She couldn’t help but catch her breath at the sight of him. It brought back everything they’d shared last night. He wore the blue headband again. Not a speck of blood, not one body part anywhere. The only body was the gorgeous one with the low-slung white jeans and plaid shirt open to reveal a damp chest.
He cut the saw and set it down. His dark blue eyes lit with warmth and something she wasn’t sure she wanted to define as he took in her outfit. “Katie.” His expression changed when he saw the gun pressed against her leg. Instead of asking, he merely leaned back against the table and waited for her to explain.
“How’d you get the cut on your arm?” she asked.
He glanced at the gauze bandage wrapped around his right arm. “I don’t know.” He pushed away from the table and walked slowly around to her right. Like a wolf stalking his prey.
She turned to face him. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Katie, what’s this about?” He nodded toward the gun. “You know you’re not going to shoot me, so put it away.”
She lifted the gun at him. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said in a resigned voice. He walked up so close, she felt the brush of his shirt against her. He took her wrists in his hands and held them between them. “I know you better than you know yourself, I bet. I know you’re afraid of me, but you hate being afraid of me. I know you’re lonely and confused and feeling a little more than guilty about our kiss last night.” He released her hands and tipped up her chin. His voice went lower. “I know you want more of that kiss. I know it’s the first time you’ve felt this way.” He touched a strand of her hair that curled under her chin. “I know you’re looking for some part of yourself that’s been missing for a long time and you don’t know how to find it. You’re looking for that little girl you used to be, the one who felt life and passion and freedom.”
“Silas…” The gun dropped to the floor.
“Shhh.” He touched her mouth with his finger. “There’s more. Someone has you scared of me and you need answers to assure yourself that you haven’t kissed a serial killer. Am I right?”
She could only nod. God, how had he done that, gone right to her soul and pulled out every doubt and desire?
“I didn’t want to put you in this position. I never wanted to, and that’s why I never spoke to you whenever I came to town.” His finger had remained against her lower lip. “I knew…this would be between us.” He closed his eyes. “And Katie, if there was ever a bad time to want you, it’s now. And you don’t even want to think about wanting me, not now…not ever.”
She swallowed hard on those words, seeing that no matter what he said, he did want her. She would never forget the sight of desire in a man’s eyes. “I hate that you know what I’m feeling. Ben’s always talking about sharing feelings, but I’ve recently realized that I’m the only one sharing feelings in our marriage. Just when I’m starting to hold back my feelings, and keep them to myself, you come along.”
“I’m sorry, Katie, but you’ve been inside me for so long, I couldn’t even try to shut you out.”
Those words slithered through her and tightened her stomach. She had to push onward. “Who’s Celine?”
He took a step back, but recovered his surprise quickly. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before they found out about her.”
“If you’d told me everything up front—”
“You weren’t ready to hear everything then. What would you have done if I’d dumped all this on you at our first meeting?”
“Run scared,” she had to admit. She’d been different then. Silas had changed her. Instead of being comfortably unhappy, she was uncomfortably happy. And completely messed up. “So who’s Celine? Is she the friend you lived with in Atlanta?”
“Yes.”
“You named your company after her. She must have been important to you.” She couldn’t quite admit that she wanted to be the only important person to Silas. If she’d lived inside him, if he’d felt her across hundred of miles and years of separation, shouldn’t she be the only important woman in his life? She pushed aside those selfish thoughts.
“She was important to me. She changed my life in some ways. We hooked up in Atlanta and along with a couple of other people rented a run-down place to live. Eventually the others moved out and Celine and I handled the rent on our own. We looked out for each other.”
There were other questions Katie wanted to ask, but she settled with, “Did she know…about your empathy?”
“Anyone I know for a period of time finds out one way or the other. It bugged her, too.” He studied her face. She tried to look down, but he tilted her chin up. “Did I love her? In a way. We gave each other what we needed. I protected her, and she gave me affection. We were together for about five years. She’d been in a real bad situation for most of her life and had run away five years earlier when she was fourteen. She came down with me when I tried to see you.”
“She knew about me?” Katie asked in a croaky voice.
He nodded. “She said I was in love with you. I told her she was wrong, because I was twenty and you were only fourteen. I was too afraid of being like my father.”
“The child pornography you found.”
“But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t feel lustful toward you.”
And had he toward Celine? She couldn’t let herself picture them making love or let herself feel jealousy.
He glanced away. “She disappeared in 1988. Just like that, poof, she was gone. I went to work as a bartender at a bar around the corner one night. She worked there too, as a waitress. She’d worked the afternoon shift and we saw each other briefly before she went back to our apartment. She never made it home.”
She heard the pain in those last words. “What happened to her?”
“I never found out. I hounded the police to find her. They did a cursory investigation, but figured she’d just taken off. So I kept looking. I started investigating, taking notes and interviewing people who were on her route home.” His voice went so low, she could hardly hear him. “She’d vanished without a trace. I know someone took her, but I have no idea who or how.” He cleared his throat. “I kept a journal as I went along. I wrote an article for the newspaper, hoping they’d run it and get some leads. They liked my writing style and thoroughness. That’s how I got into what I write. And that’s why I named my company after her.” She could see the pain across his features. “Did you think I’d killed her? Is that why I got an uneasy feeling from you just a bit ago?”
She sorted through what she’d been thinking and feeling. “I didn’t think you’d done it. I just wanted to know the story. Wanted to know who Celine was.” She paused when she saw how her trust had warmed his expression. “You still miss her?”
The warmth left as fast as it had come. “There’s no use missing someone who’s gone.”
She reached out and grabbed his arm. It startled him, since he’d been looking in the other direction. As she opened her mouth to say something, she felt him. Not his feelings, exactly, but an odd sensation that invaded her senses. There was a vague sense of pain and a larger sense of him, of Silas inside her the way she’d been inside him.
“I feel you, Silas. I feel you,
” she said, enunciating the words. He pulled his arm away, but she was still stunned by it. “Let me share your pain. You’ve been sharing mine all these years. It’s only fair.” She started to reach for his hand again, but he gripped her wrist.
“Nothing’s fair in life, Katie.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re supposed to be the protector. That’s your role, with me and with Celine. It’s okay for you to shoulder all that yourself, but God forbid if anyone tries to protect you once in a while. Or comfort you. It’s that giving/accepting thing again, isn’t it?”
He sat on the top step of the porch. “Giving’s easy. You just give. That’s it, real simple.”
“And what’s so difficult about accepting?”
“Taking, and all it implies, makes things complicated. I don’t know how to deal with that part of it.” He picked up the gun from the floor. “You want to know how I got this cut. Demanded to know, as I recall.” He handed the gun to her.
His swift change of subject had her almost dizzy, but she nodded and put the gun in her backpack. “They found Dana’s finger at a farmer’s pig pen. The killer is cutting them up and…feeding them to the pigs.”
“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes and looked as horrified as she probably had when she’d heard the news. A minute later, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “And you think that’s where I got this cut?”
She let out a long sigh. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I guess I don’t have to tell you how confused I am. You’re right, I don’t want to believe it’s you, but things keep pointing at you. Tell me what’s going on. Why did you come back here, why are you trying to protect me? Why are you so sure it’s someone I know?”
“Who told you about Celine? Gary?”
“No, Tate.” She fidgeted with her cross. “Would you think I’m crazy if I said I was afraid of him?”
“The Sheriff? No, I wouldn’t think you were crazy. Why are you afraid of him?”
Unforgivable (Romantic Suspense) Page 22