He didn’t twitch, but there was a pause. “What kind of branch?”
“Yucca,” she repeated. “They have large white flowers that bloom in spires and grow on the river’s edge. Particularly near Zelda’s place.”
“Mmm, no,” he replied, a shade too quickly.
“Right,” she drawled.
“I don’t bring people flowers,” he pointed out.
“Ever?” she asked.
“Ever.”
“As a florist’s daughter, I’m inclined to ask why.”
“I don’t know,” he said with an insouciant shrug. “Too predictable. Too traditional.”
He was neither of those things, she agreed. She couldn’t help but admire that. “What do you bring people?” she asked.
He raised an indicative hand. “Charisma.”
She barked a laugh. “Cute.”
“Thank you.”
She told herself that he was being arrogant and to stop smiling. Her mouth didn’t get the transmission.
“Why’re you wearing red again?”
Her attention strayed from the page once more. “I always wear red.”
“Since you were, I don’t know, fourteen or something you’ve dressed like you’re going to Slash’s funeral. But you’ve been splashing red in since I moved to Zelda’s. Red sweater at her place that night at dinner. Red plaid at the orchard. I happened to see you wearing those candy-striped Jane Fonda tights to yoga earlier this week.”
“You saw those just before you decided to turn tail and run, did you?”
“How else do you evade someone?” he asked.
“You knocked over a lamp.”
“It was in the way.”
“I won’t ask how you managed to pass BUD/S.”
“Wasn’t blind then. Anyway, don’t change the subject. While you weren’t wearing much when I walked in on you yesterday in the storm…”
“I was wearing plenty. It wasn’t my fault you showed up uninvited.”
“True,” he granted, lifting the water bottle from the cup holder near his elbow. Methodically, he unscrewed the cap. “But you did paint your front door red.”
“It was always red.”
“Nope. It was black, too.” He took a long pull from the bottle, draining it most of the way. Pointing to her shorts, which were studded and frayed nearly to the point of disuse and red as a decadent pinot, he added, “So I have a theory. You want to snag my attention—”
“Toro toro,” she cheered falsely.
“—by making it easier for me to know where I’m going.”
“And I’m so haughty as to think the place you want to go is toward me?” she finished doubtfully.
He stared at her for a second too long. “Maybe it was me who left the yucca.”
Her heart picked up pace as he let the admission hang between them.
“Maybe I found it along the riverbank near Zelda’s, like you said. Maybe I thought it looked nice…what I could see of it. Maybe I thought, ‘It doesn’t smell flowery and it’s kind of prickly’ and I’m pretty sure I heard a ma gator growling at me while I was trying to saw one of those goddamn spires off with a pocketknife but I thought of you when I saw it so Prometheus and I dropped it off at your place on our morning jog.”
Mavis swallowed. In the confines of the back seat, practically shoulder to shoulder with him, looking, she saw the strain beyond the indifference that he’d been throwing off for most of the journey. She saw the infinitesimal beads of sweat starting to gather on his brow. She saw the tight muscles rimming his jaw. She could feel him searching.
“What would you say to that?” he asked, tripping through words packed with potential.
Fumbling, she took several breaths to cool the endorphins already going for a happy joyride in her brain. He brought me flowers. The man who doesn’t give flowers brought flowers.
There was some sort of inevitable and ill-advised countdown going on in her glands. He wanted to know if he was cleared to race and her body was waving the green flag. Boogity boogity…
Because it was Gavin, though…because of what she knew of his struggles and how well they knew each other—how well their families knew each other—she took another breath. He doesn’t need this now, she reminded herself. He’s raw. He might even be confused…
Why else would he want her?
She wet her throat again. Her lips were dry, so she wet them, too. Even wanting as she did to stroke the smooth side of his nose and the other side where scars had tried to write their name, she said, “Gavin—”
Errol slammed on the brakes.
Despite her seat belt restraint, her head took a fast dive into the cushioned back of the driver’s headrest.
Gavin cursed in a loud, long torrent.
Zelda twisted, half of her profile sheathed in white Hollywood shades and an O’Hara-worthy wide-brimmed hat she held in place. “It’s all right! It’s all right, kids! Just some bastard in an eighteen-wheeler trying to turn us into sardines.”
Mavis groaned, blinked. “Wow.” She lifted her hand to cradle the side of her head.
Something wide and warm beat her to it. It spanned her ear, covered her cheek and chin.
“Shit, Frexy,” Gavin spat. “Are you all right?”
His tone in no way mirrored the ginger care of his hand. She blinked several more times, not because he was fuzzy. On the contrary—he seemed too far in focus. Almost as if she needed to tamp down on a zoom function she hadn’t known she possessed. “I’m okay.”
He scanned her. His glasses were down. His eyes were a torrent of colors and tempests. As he turned his head to the others, muscles were drawn against the hard frame of his face. “How the hell did you not see an eighteen-wheeler coming at us?”
“I’m okay,” Mavis repeated. He was shouting.
“Put me in the driver’s seat,” he continued. “I may be blind, but I’d probably do better next time a frigging bus tries to run up our ass.”
“Errol,” Mavis said, planting a hold on Gavin’s thick upper arm. She reached around the front seat to pat Errol on the shoulder with the other hand. “Can you stop somewhere, please?”
“Yes,” Zelda said with a firm nod. “I think some air would do us good.”
She could feel Gavin straining against the fast line of respirations coming through him. She held his arm until the Caddy found their exit and they rolled onto the grassy shoulder of a cracked bucolic strip of highway. Admittedly, she was the first one out of the car. Hanging on to the open door, she watched Gavin pace past the interstate on-ramp sign, steps choppy, kicking up dust. He paused, his back to them, lifting his face to the sun.
She saw his shoulders drop. His head came down after them, chin against his chest. She held on to the door tighter, wishing her ear wasn’t ringing so she could go after him. The heat was intense. There was no breeze, but the air wasn’t still. It seemed to rise in heated waves, transparent and trapped in a primordial shimmy between clay-baked earth and hard, empty sky.
As Mavis counted the seconds it took him to double back, she tried not to think about the shimmy she’d felt in his palm against her temple. He’d been on edge the entire ride. Why hadn’t she noticed sooner?
He’d hidden it. He didn’t want her, or anybody else, walking on eggshells around him. And he’d told her, too, that he’d had several good days after running. Maybe he’d let his guard down and had just earned himself a tough lesson for it.
Gavin.
“He’s coming back,” Zelda murmured.
Mavis jumped a little, breaking mentally with the longing thought process. Glancing around at the older couple, she said, “He didn’t mean it.” She directed the sentiment to Errol, especially.
Errol’s eyes slanted down at the corners and were so blue they looked watery. Reticent, as he always was, he moved hi
s mouth in a way that showed her Gavin’s outburst hadn’t fazed him.
Mavis wished Gavin could see the understanding there, to know more of what lay behind it. But an anonymous roadside was hardly the time or the place for either man to bare his soul to the other—especially since neither was the soul-baring type.
When she heard Gavin’s footsteps closing in, she moved toward him. “Feel better?”
“Fine,” he said, clipped. In the hard slant of the sun, she saw the first rasp of five-o’clock shadow on his cheeks. “The head?”
She lifted her hand to it again. “Intact.”
“You sure?” he asked. He was back to searching, even if he was doing it now at a safe distance. “You don’t need a hospital? I’m sure there’s an urgent care place somewhere here in BFE.”
“Mavis hit her head?” she heard Zelda say with surprise and concern.
Mavis batted off the apprehension. “I’m all right,” she said. “I’d just like to get where we’re going.”
When Gavin only frowned at her, she moved to slip back into the car. He was there, too, quickly, cupping her under the shoulder to help lower her to the seat as if she were made of something ridiculous, like porcelain. The hopped-up covey of butterflies in her stomach roused into a frenzy.
Yep. Feelings, she noted, and closed her eyes to the obvious truth.
* * *
“SOMETHING’S UP WITH this place.” Gavin braced one hand on the hood of the Cadillac. He’d lifted the screen of his sunglasses to view the field. “The light’s wrong.” Scanning the sky, he tried to breathe through the immense heat. “Smudgy. Yellow. Like old newspaper.”
Mavis spoke from the trunk where she gathered the ghost-hunting gear. “The air quality’s crap. The index will be a hundred and five before noontime.”
He’d grasped the last part. He never thought he’d crave lying in the icy blue surf of Coronado or cold showers between assignments overseas again. He sniffed and got a lungful of hellfire and ozone. “So it’s not just me.”
“It’s not just you.” Mavis drew even with him as she adjusted her pack, passing equipment off to Errol. “It’ll make for a fair lightning storm before dusk.”
He tried to assess her. “You up for this?”
The question brought her head around sharply. “I told you I was fine, Gavin.”
The tone bordered on tetchiness. He grabbed what gear she’d kept for herself to carry. “Let me take this.”
“I’m fine,” she argued.
“Mavis, you invited me,” he told her. “I can’t much observe. At least let me be the pack horse.”
Zelda descended on them. “My friend Julian says we’ve got the run of the place. The house is open. There’ll be some tours later for real estate agents to snap photographs of the house and grounds. We can use the bathrooms and whatever water we need from there.”
“Is it air-conditioned?” Mavis wondered.
“Electrical’s up and running,” Zelda said. “Julian says it’s cool enough inside if we need a breather. He drew me a crude map of the grounds. There’s plenty of pasture for us to cover and more woods, but he’s highlighted the hot zones. Well. Campground. Cemetery.”
“Cemetery,” Gavin repeated.
“It’s small and part of the lore, apparently,” Zelda said. “There’s some riding paths from ATV vehicles, but they’ve been abandoned and the undergrowth’s taken over. We’ll have to rough it. Julian does, however, have a golf cart. He gave me a walkie-talkie if we need a lift back to the house or car.”
Gavin took the initiative, shouldering Mavis’s pack before she could protest again. “How does this work?”
“We’re the trained professionals,” Mavis said. “Leave that to us.”
“Okay, Venkman,” Gavin said. He drew up short when he heard the wheeze of a low laugh. “Errol. Is that you?”
Zelda edged into Errol’s personal space, winding long arms around his neck. “Give us a kiss, darlin’, for luck.”
Mavis groaned and set off for the large house at the mouth of the pasture. He waited for Zelda to finish sucking good vibes from her cabbage boy. She broke with a gusty sigh and offered Gavin a “Your turn!”
Gavin held up a hand. “I’m good.” He followed as Zelda began to trek off through the high grass. “What do you need luck for? Your job is to find nothing.”
Answering from under the brim of her straw hat, Zelda fixed the strap of what looked to be a vintage Nikon over the front of her shockingly pink blouse. “Julian doesn’t want us to find any anomalies. It seems some fast turnover is needed. He says our inspection report will look good with the rest.”
“Next to Terminix’s?”
“Sure.” She beamed at him. Her sharp-angled facial structure was striking even in the shade of his disability. She somehow managed to look exquisite in this light. “Why not?”
“You two really do take this seriously,” he said.
“We can’t count you in on that. Not yet.” Zelda patted him, low around the back of his beltline. “Give it time.”
“You know I only signed on for one field trip?”
Zelda removed the round white-framed sunglasses from the neck of her blouse and placed them over her eyes. “We’ll see about that, mister. Mavis!” she called. “The old well covering. Do you see it yet?”
“You’re not going to split up?” Gavin asked.
“Hell no,” Zelda said. “You never separate, especially outdoors. Say you encounter something amazing and there’s no investigator to back up your claim. People would laugh themselves silly.”
“I think we’re pretty much running that risk already.” Mavis entered his field of vision and he slowed. “What is it, Frex?”
“I need my pack.” She circled him, yanking down the zipper. “Bend backward. I can’t see.”
He tried to do what she told him. To his left, Zelda was taking shots of the field with the Nikon. “Shouldn’t y’all be doing this under the cover of night?”
“Would you come out here after dark?” Zelda asked him, clicking away.
Gavin shrugged. Mavis made a discouraging noise behind him and he stilled. “I might, if it meant meeting Slimer.”
“You ever buy a ticket for a hayride?” Zelda asked, amused.
“Oh, sure. Who doesn’t love when the freaks come out for Halloween? No offense.”
Mavis came around his front, ripping tape from an electrical roll. “Would it be uncouth to tape his mouth shut?”
“Seeing as it was you who brought him along…” Zelda chuckled to herself, stuffing the Nikon into her pack and pulling out a fussy-looking camcorder.
“What’re you doing now?” he asked as Mavis rolled the tape around something small.
“Rigging you up.” She bent, grabbing him by the pants pocket.
“Hey now.” The warning held nothing of alarm. He didn’t dance away from her as she clipped the device to the outer lip of his pocket. “We’re not alone.”
“You wish, don’t you?” she murmured.
“Mmm.” He touched the device and earned a slap on the wrist. “Do I at least get to know what it is?”
“It’s a hands-free voice recorder.” She straightened, holding his attention. “Which means when we count down from five, you’ll need to be vewwy quiet, mister.”
If it wasn’t so damn hot and weird around here, he’d have smiled at her. “You’re kind of cute when you mock me.”
“Now I know why you wouldn’t kiss Errol,” Zelda said slyly. “Oh, I almost forgot. Julian said to look out for the wild horse.”
“The what?” Gavin and Mavis said as one.
“It lives on the property,” Zelda went on. “The previous owners abandoned it. There were two, apparently. This one survived. They’ve been trying to catch the poor thing, but it’s feisty. He said there’s not a wrangler
in five counties who’s been able to catch it.”
“The owners just left it here to die?” Mavis cried. “That’s criminal!”
Gavin studied the lines of her, sharp and real. She was always real. But in this light, in this heat, in these surreal circumstances, she looked realer.
“There’ll be more people today,” Zelda assured her. “Maybe they’ll catch him.”
“Then what?” Mavis demanded. “What’s Julian going to do with him? Sell him to the highest bidder and send him up for glue?”
Gavin cautioned, “Don’t get any more heated than necessary.”
“Oh, so I’m supposed to ignore animal cruelty?” she asked, sidestepping the advisory.
“It’s being seen to,” Zelda said. “Let’s work, hmm? I’ve got a hot date planned for tonight and we’ve already sunk half an hour into prep time.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CEMETERY WAS indeed small, the headstones sunken into unkempt grounds. Most of them were no longer legible.
“‘Real Joe Willeker,’” Zelda read. “Makes you wonder where ‘Fake Joe’s’ buried and what led to the misunderstanding.”
Gavin tried to shake his unease. The only times he’d visited a grave site was when a buddy had died in arms. Boots was buried in a decorated service animal plot in Maryland. Benji was buried in the city of Monroeville where he’d spent the better part of his childhood. Gavin had been to both burials but had zero visitations to his name. “We done here?” He swatted a fly. The gnats were worse amid the deep foliage. The no-see-ums were biting.
“Mavis is finishing the perimeter. Anything?” Zelda called out.
“We’ll have to listen later. Maybe audio picked something up,” Mavis responded.
“I didn’t hear anything.” Gavin stared at the crown of her head as she bent to his waist again. “Really? In a cemetery, sweetheart? That’s wicked.”
“Ha ha, funny. I’m not your sweetheart,” Mavis said half-heartedly.
“Some people see it as life-affirming—sex in cemeteries,” Zelda piped up. “Not that I’d know.”
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