Feeling awkward, since he wasn’t the type of person who was good at knowing what to say, Cal shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“I had an episode a little while ago,” he found himself saying. “A flashback. A car backfired, and I took Ainsley down to the floor. I thought we were under fire.”
Ben turned his head, eyes narrowed. “Since she didn’t look any worse for wear, I’m assuming she’s okay.”
“She is. Physically. She talked me through it.”
Ben considered that. “Are you? Okay?”
“Not really.” Cal didn’t know why he’d started talking about this, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “I mean yeah, I’m functioning and I’m not going to go off the deep end. But I’m not okay. Sometimes, bad shit happens and there’s just no way to be okay with it. But you learn to deal with it. And it helps when the burden of dealing with it isn’t…” he drew a deep breath. “When it isn’t entirely on your shoulders. When someone else is there telling you that it’s okay if you’re not. So, it’s okay. If you’re not okay. This is a shitty, shitty thing for you to have to deal with.”
Ben opened his mouth and then closed it. Finally he nodded. Maybe he didn’t trust himself to speak.
“Your cousin,” Cal continued, because apparently he wasn’t done with the diarrhea of the mouth. “She might be a comfort to you. If you let her. And I’m pretty sure you’d be a comfort to her.”
Ben rocked back on his heels. “I think I was more comfortable believing you’re an asshole.”
“Oh, I am. You’re just catching me at a weak moment.”
The door opened behind him, and Cal turned to see Ainsley framed against the dying daylight. “Um, Ben?” she said, squinting to adjust her eyesight to the dimness. “You might want to come out here for a minute.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WHO is he?” Ainsley murmured to Cal after she’d resumed her place in his passenger seat and he was once more leaning against the truck.
“Jason Prescott,” he said, explaining the handsome auburn-haired man who’d driven up while she’d been waiting for Ben and Cal to finish inside the old store. “He’s Tanner Cross’s vineyard manager, I guess you would call it. And according to the town grapevine – no pun intended – his special friend.”
She jerked her gaze toward Callum. “Tanner Cross is gay?”
“No one knows for sure,” Cal said. “Except Tanner, of course. And whoever he’s banging. But there’s lots of speculation. He’s considered a grand catch, and lots of the ladies around town have gone fishing, but he never nibbles at the bait.” Cal shrugged. “And he and Jason spend lots of time together, on and off the job. They’ve been tight since high school.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Cal looked down at her. “Disappointed?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that every single woman must be in want of a rich husband.”
He grinned. “You’re the one who had lunch with him, Ms. Austen.”
“I’m trying to decide if the fact that you understood that reference cancels out the fact that you’re being a pig. He doesn’t look happy.” She nodded toward where the other man – Jason – stood with hands on hips, arguing with Ben.
“He’s pretty, ah, protective, I guess would be the right word. He’s probably afraid that if Ben discovers any evidence of accident or injury here that it will come back to bite Cross on the ass, legally speaking. My guess is he’ll be pushing for Tanner to file charges against us for trespassing.”
“Sadly,” she agreed “there is a precedent for people who’ve been injured while trespassing suing the property owner. A countersuit for trespassing can put the parties in a sort of legal Mexican standoff.”
Cal slid her another glance. “Know any good lawyers?”
Ainsley opened her mouth to offer a retort, but Ben started walking their way. The vineyard manager hopped into a late model pickup truck and drove off, shooting gravel from his spinning tires as he went.
Clearly, the man was not pleased.
Ben approached Cal’s truck. “It would be best if you two go ahead and leave. I’m going to wait here for my backup to arrive with a forensics kit.” He hesitated. “Are you going to be in your hotel room tonight, Ainsley?”
“I can’t imagine where else I would be.”
When Ben’s eyes shifted toward Cal, Ainsley barely restrained herself from kicking the former with her medical boot. Make that the former and the latter, she amended upon noticing Cal’s smirk.
“I have a couple things. To talk over,” Ben continued. “With you.”
He wasn’t normally so hesitant in his speech, so Ainsley assumed that whatever it was must be serious. Or at the very least discomposing. “I’ll be there.”
Ben nodded, and then glanced at Cal. “If you have any other bright ideas about where Sabrina might have been recently, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me first rather than dragging my cousin into legally questionable activities.”
Ainsley waited for Cal to say something cutting, but Cal merely nodded. “Will do.”
Ainsley’s eyes narrowed. Something had changed between these two, though she wasn’t sure how or why. She wondered what they’d talked about when they were alone in the building.
Ben nodded again at Ainsley before striding back toward his vehicle, and Cal waited for her to face forward before closing the passenger door. When he climbed into the driver’s seat, she pinned him with a look.
“What?” he said as he started the engine, tilting his chin to avoid Beau’s ecstatic kisses – a move that met with only mediocre success.
“You and Ben were remarkably civil just now.”
“I’m a civil guy.”
She snorted.
“That’s not very ladylike.”
“I was a tomboy growing up. I’ve embraced certain aspects of my femininity, but acting prim and proper isn’t one of them. Aside from that, I work in a male-dominated environment. Having a tendency toward the vapors is like chumming the waters.”
He looked amused as he negotiated a curve in the road. “I’m trying to figure out how the term ladylike equates to fits of the vapors. But I guess the Jane Austen reference should be a clue. You’re a closet romantic, are you?”
“Pride and Prejudice is a classic.”
“A classic romance.”
Ainsley sniffed. “What would you know about it.”
“Obviously I know enough to recognize the opening line, as you’ve already pointed out.”
Ainsley frowned. She was going to have to stop making judgments about him based on his appearance. It irked her that every time she thought she’d pegged him, he didn’t quite fit in the hole.
Which wasn’t the right metaphor, she realized, feeling her cheeks grow warm. It was a square peg in a round hole, and…
She really needed to stop thinking about pegs and holes.
“I’d give a lot of money,” he said “to know what you’re thinking right now.”
“Nothing.” Dear God, had her voice actually squeaked? She cleared her throat. “Nothing you need to know about, anyway.”
His smirk returned, but luckily this particular stretch of road demanded most of his attention. Leaves blew from the trees, gathering on the road and partially obscuring it in places. Dusk had fallen quickly, as it did at this time of year, and Cal switched on the headlights.
“There’s a chance Sabrina wasn’t alone when she pilfered the cash register keys.”
“What?”
“I didn’t think of it before Ben pointed it out, but the window out back is a little high for her to have boosted herself through. Not to mention that the cash register itself is likely cast iron, and heavy as hell to move. Plus, Ben found a wadded up cocktail napkin covered in blood over by one of the tables. I’m no crime scene investigator, but if I had to create a scenario I’d say that Sabrina leaned against or sat on that table and held th
e napkin to her foot, which was obviously bleeding pretty good at that point. There was no blood around the area of the cash register, but I did see several more drops on the floor by the table. So maybe she stopped there to take care of her foot, and her companion went on and pried off the keys for her.”
Ainsley chewed on her lip as she considered. “Given the fact that her car was found abandoned not far from here… if she wasn’t alone, whoever was with her was probably still with her then, right? Maybe with her when she called me – or tried to.”
“Unless she met the person at the store and they went their separate ways afterward.”
It was possible. “But if that were the case, wouldn’t someone come forward to say that they’d been with her right before she went missing? To offer any information they might have?”
“Unless they didn’t want to admit to trespassing. Or they didn’t want anyone to know they’d been with Sabrina.”
“Because they did something to harm her.”
“It’s one possibility,” Cal admitted.
Ainsley knew, of course, that it was. Maybe even that it was a probability. But until they had more concrete evidence to the contrary, it was also possible that Bree was simply… lost. In the wilderness. For closing in on a week. With an injured, bloody foot, the smell of which would attract predators.
“There’s no good scenario to explain her disappearance, is there?”
Cal hesitated. “None that I can think of,” he finally said in a quiet tone. “But there are less bad scenarios, so don’t give up hope yet.”
“Believe me, I’m not.” Her words were as fierce as his had been gently spoken. “And no offense to any women of a certain size, but if I see one starting to sing I might run them over. Metaphorically speaking, of course.” She stared out the window. “You said the road where they found Sabrina’s car is nearby?”
“Yeah,” Cal said. “Old Mill Road. You want to have a look?”
“Would you mind? You’ve already put yourself out.”
“I’ve been putting myself out since the moment I met you,” Cal said. “I’ll tell you when I start to have a problem with that.”
She probably should have found his answer annoying, but couldn’t deny that he had a point.
He turned down a road that wound further into the mountains, following a rushing stream. They passed a group of mailboxes at the end of a steep drive disappearing into the woods, and the remains of the abandoned mill for which the road had been named. Beyond that, the thin veil of civilization fell away and Mother Nature reigned supreme.
“It’s beautiful,” Ainsley said. “Desolate, but beautiful.”
“It’s only desolate if you consider human habitation necessary to your happiness.”
“You don’t? You could see yourself living as a hermit?”
“Too easily,” he admitted after a brief pause. “The road ends right up here,” he said before Ainsley could ask him to elaborate. “It intersects with another north-south running highway, if you could call it that. More of a backroad that the state maintains. Anyway, I’m not sure exactly where they found Sabrina’s car, but it had to be somewhere along this stretch.”
He pulled over, his headlights illuminating wisps of fog that had started to creep up from the ravine off to their right. Ainsley studied the woods, deep and dark on either side of the road, and imagined Sabrina, perhaps having car trouble, perhaps stopping for another reason. What could have happened that fleeing into the trees, with a bleeding foot, seemed preferable to staying with her car? And why hadn’t she taken her cell phone with her?
“If she was gathering up things that represented old, abandoned Dahlonega,” Ainsley finally said “maybe she stopped at the mill we passed. That could explain why she came this way.”
“Possibly,” Cal agreed.
“I’m sure Ben and his people have already checked out all of the houses in the area. Damn it, Bree, where are you?”
Cal reached over, took her hand. Ainsley turned, her gaze locking with his as he brought her fingers to his lips. The gesture was so unexpected, so… tender, that Ainsley could only stare.
She’d sensed that he could be dangerous. She just hadn’t realized that the danger he presented might be to her heart.
He executed a three point turn, heading back toward the main road.
“It’s getting pretty dark,” he said. “But if you want to come back up here tomorrow, have a look through those houses, I’ll drive.”
“That’s…” definitely dangerous “very generous of you,” Ainsley said.
But the moment was shattered when another vehicle came flying up behind them, bright lights shining in their mirrors.
“Asshole,” Cal muttered, letting go of her hand so that he could keep both of his on the wheel as they negotiated a curve.
And then the other vehicle bumped them.
SHOCK rendered Cal momentarily immobile – but only momentarily. A combination of training, instinct and adrenaline kicked in and he regained control of the wheel, jerking it to the right. The other vehicle – something high off the ground, another pickup, most likely – had caused him to drift into the opposite lane. On a blind curve.
Thank God another car hadn’t been coming. They would have collided head-on.
“Oh my God,” Ainsley said, jerking around so that she could look out the back window. Beaumont stood up between them and barked. “They must be drunk.”
Cal considered pulling over alongside the road to let the idiot go past them, but there was a tree-dotted rock face to the right of him, and a significant drop off to the left. The ditch between the road and the rock face ran with muddy water. If he pulled over, he’d probably get stuck.
He glanced into the rearview mirror. The other vehicle had dropped back, but still followed them more closely than he liked. Drunk or not, they were a menace. Only lunatics drove so recklessly on winding mountain roads.
They rounded another curve, Cal’s headlights illuminating the yellow sign that warned heavy trucks of a steep grade over the next few miles. He started to suggest that Ainsley grab his cell phone from the cup holder and give her cousin a heads up that this idiot behind them needed his license revoked, when the lights in his rearview mirror drew closer.
“Shit. Grab the dog,” Cal said to Ainsley. “And hang on.”
There wasn’t even a ditch on this piece of road. It was rock face or steep drop. And accelerating was out of the question, given that they were already speeding down a decline. Cal didn’t want to risk losing control when he entered the next curve.
He was braced for the hit this time, though it didn’t make the collision any less disconcerting. Ainsley and the dog both yelped as the truck lurched forward, the right front tire catching the edge of the pavement, causing the wheel to shift beneath his hands. Cal swore aloud as he fought to steady it, to bring the truck fully back onto the road without overcorrecting. Thank God the rain they’d had over the past few days had finally stopped, or he’d be hydroplaning all over.
“He’s crazy!” Ainsley said, one hand clutching the dog while the other braced against the dash. Cal couldn’t argue with her assessment.
The other truck dropped back again, a bit further this time, but Cal wasn’t fooled. Those bumps very clearly had been no accident.
His gaze shifted from the rearview mirror to the road in front of him. There were a few lights shining through the trees up ahead, which he thought corresponded to the road they’d passed earlier. It was a sharp turn, and one that wouldn’t be easily made if he didn’t slow down considerably.
But if he slowed down, he risked alerting their pursuer of his intentions. And he had a feeling that simply running them off the road wasn’t what the other driver was after.
“Hang on,” Cal warned Ainsley again. “This might get a little rough.”
They were closing in on the side road when the truck behind them came in for one more hit. The other driver’d allowed more distance to develop between the two
vehicles this time, which Cal suspected they intended to use to build up more momentum. The side road was at the head of the curve, with a steep drop facing it on the opposite side. If Cal missed the turn, or if the other truck hit him hard enough, they’d almost certainly go over. There were trees there to slow their descent, of course, but slamming into an old growth oak at a high rate of speed was hardly preferable.
Cal’s conscious thought processes shut down at that point, adrenaline drowning out everything except the familiar sound of his blood rushing through his veins. Like being in the midst of a battle, his body began to operate almost independently of his brain. One small corner of his mind processed the fact that Ainsley sat beside him, her safety at this point utterly and completely in his hands, but then everything went both fuzzy and sharp and time seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time. He heard a scream, followed by the sound of tires squealing as he jerked the wheel to the right. The other vehicle clipped the side of his rear bumper instead of hitting them full on. The good news was that they hadn’t pitched over the side of the cliff.
The bad news was that it sent his truck into a spin that he couldn’t correct.
It was out of his control at this point, so he threw out his right arm toward Ainsley. The steep incline of the side road acted almost like a runaway truck ramp, slowing their forward motion. But it wasn’t enough to keep the bed of the truck from crashing into a tree.
Everything went momentarily red as the other trucks taillights illuminated the cab before disappearing around the corner. But then the airbags went off, filling Cal’s field of vision. Despite the seatbelt, Cal felt himself jerk forward and immediately get knocked back while the terrible sound of two solid surfaces meeting with tremendous force seemed to physically rip the air.
And all of it happened within the space of a couple heartbeats.
Then everything went still. The airbag deflated, sending up a cloud of dust that caused Cal to cough and wince. His jaw – still a little tender from its collision with Ben’s fist earlier that morning – felt like he’d just gone another round, and now his nose had joined in for good measure. The airbag packed one hell of a punch.
The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set Page 43