Morgan wrapped her arms around her knees. “Something’s going on with her. We’ve never been close, but she seemed guarded. Peach is a bucket mouth. She’ll tell anybody anything, whether it’s true or not. She didn’t even ask about Sean, and two days ago she was planning to quit her job and move in here to help him run the orchard.”
“Maybe she’s found someone else. You said her turnover time was faster than a bell clapper in a goose’s ass.”
She looked at him sideways. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Me, either.”
“Anyway, I was standing by the elevator, waiting to leave, and I heard one of the nurses say, ‘I sure am glad the man visiting Peach Davison is gone. He made me nervous.’ Then, she described Denny. Exactly. Down to the corduroy house shoes. It had to have been Denny. How many guys in Riverbirch look like forty-year-old drug addicts in corduroy slippers?”
“Why would your ex-husband go see Peach? Do they know each other?”
“Just from the bar, I think. The thing is, I went back to Peach’s room to ask her if Denny had been there, and she was gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Gone, vanished, not there. Her hospital gown was lying on the bed, and her closet was empty.”
He thought for a minute. “Let me see what I can find out. I do have some skills in that area.”
She smiled. “And other areas.”
“I wish I could get hold of her cell phone. Those things can be enlightening”
“Oh. Oh, my God. I have Harlan’s phone. I put it in my pocket after I found him, and it’s still there. I meant to take it to Sheriff Stallard yesterday, but I was so upset about Sean, I forgot.”
“Mind if I look at it?”
“Dad?” Jeremy stood behind them, peering through the screen. “I'm hungry.”
Gage laughed. “You’re always hungry. I’ll check out the phone after breakfast.”
“Guess the Maguire Diner is open for business,” Morgan said. “Eggs or waffles, kid?”
“Both.”
“Let me make them,” Gage said. “If you don't mind me cooking.”
“I would welcome your cooking,” Morgan said. “I would welcome anybody's cooking.”
Morgan made coffee, then sat on a kitchen stool while Gage and Jeremy fixed breakfast. The mood was unexpectedly light, and Morgan wondered if Jeremy and Gage’s talk the night before had cleared the air. Their easy banter seemed natural and spontaneous. The look of relief that kept crossing Gage's face whenever he looked at his son touched her heart. Between the laughter and the new-found circle of warmth that enveloped the three of them at the sun-drenched table, no one seemed to mind that the waffles were a little soggy and the eggs a trifle overcooked.
After breakfast, Morgan gave Harlan’s phone to Gage.
“Are you going to see Sean today?” he asked.
“They said I could come at two. They still haven't charged him with anything. How long they can hold him without charging him?”
“Not sure,” Gage said. “It varies from state to state. I have a call in to a lawyer I know in Atlanta. His secretary said he'd get back to me.”
“Thanks,” Morgan said. She turned to Jeremy. “Aren't you late for school?”
“It's Saturday,” Jeremy said.
“You're right,” Morgan said. “Hey, I need to stretch my legs. You want to take a walk with me while your father looks around our sad little bankrupt farm?”
“Sure.” Jeremy's face broke into a wide grin. “I'll get my shoes.” He slid across the polished dining room floor in his sock feet, then raced upstairs.
“That’s some kid you’ve got there.” The rasp in her voice deepened.
He reached out and took her hand. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She nodded.
“If you don’t mind, I'd like to look at the books, too.”
“Sure. According to Sean, there are two sets—one in the red, and one in the black. No pun intended. The printouts were on the desk beside Harlan’s computer the day he died.”
“Interesting.”
“I think so, too. Sean's computer is in the office. The password is apple42.”
“Forty-two apples in a bottle of apple wine?”
“Forty-two pounds in a bushel. I’ll be back in five. I need to run upstairs and put on my face.”
“The one you keep in a jar by the door?” The grin spreading across his face was identical to his son's.
“No. The one that keeps me from frightening small children and animals.”
She started for the door, and he reached for her. He slid his fingers down her arm to her hand, clasped it in his, and wrapped it around his waist, pulling her close. His lips were inches from hers. “I think your face is perfect the way it is.”
“Spoken like a true face connoisseur.”
He nuzzled the spot between her shoulder and her neck. “Are you regretting last night?”
“Of course not. There’s nothing I like better than a good old-fashioned case of arson. And wrapping dishtowels around my hands to break glass is a skill I don’t get to use often enough.”
He chuckled. “I mean us. You and me.”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“We did enough. Enough for me to realize you’re still the smartest, sexiest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“Well, that beats pleasant and polite, I guess.”
“You’re anything but polite.”
She caught her breath as he grazed his lips against the slope of her jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Didn’t you hear me say ‘thanks’?”
His laughter, sexy and low, rumbled in her hear. Warm breath drifted across her neck, sending a shaft of need rushing to her solar plexus. Her hands slid around his neck. She rubbed the side of her chin against his and breathed in the heady scent of his skin. She ran her fingers along the curved neckline of his white T-shirt, then bunched the soft cotton into her fist and held it tight.
Gage glanced at her beneath half-closed lids. His lashes, black, and longer than hers, swept against the lean angle of his cheek. The memory of his mouth moving against hers the night before hadn’t been out of her head since she’d opened her eyes that morning. So when his lips found hers, she tried to prepare herself for the tremors of pure sensation that would soon be rocketing down her spine.
His tongue slid against hers. The bones in her legs began to dissolve. He let go of her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pressing her against him, deepening their kiss. Her mind coasted along, soaring down a mountain somewhere with the wind tearing through her hair and the sun hot against her face. She held on to the back of his neck and his T-shirt as if they were anchors keeping her rooted to the earth.
“I can’t find my shoes,” Jeremy called from upstairs.
Morgan stepped back and laughed. “Look in the bathroom,” she yelled.
“Come back here,” Gage said, pulling her to him. “I don’t want to let you go yet. Maybe not ever.”
“Things are zipping along a little too fast.” She traced the outline of his collarbone with her fingertips. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about the people we are now. Like this scar you don’t want to talk about. How’d you get it? And if you say from a gun, I will brain you with a waffle.”
He absently rubbed the scar with his right hand. “I misjudged a situation because I was in a hurry, and hadn't done my homework. It's always the easy cases, the ones where you let your guard down, that screw you over. I’d been following a man whose wife thought he was cheating on him, something I'd done a hundred times. I was leaning over the edge of a hotel balcony, trying to get a clear shot with the camera, and he looked up and saw me. He didn't care if I’d caught him with another woman, but he sure as hell wasn't about to let me photograph the four-hundred G's worth of crystal meth spread across his king-size bed. He pulled out a gun and shot me before I could focus my eyes, much less the camera. Th
e bullet hit two inches from my heart. The last image I saw before the world turned black was my son’s face.”
“So you quit your job.”
“No. I healed up, and went back to work. I only quit after Suzanne died. It wasn't a hard decision. Jeremy needed me. When I told him I wasn’t going to work for the agency anymore, he said, ‘I don’t care what you do.’ But as he was turning around, he couldn’t hide the look of relief on his face, and I knew I’d done the right thing.”
His dark green eyes held hers. A sudden flash of regret was replaced almost immediately by cold determination, a look he'd probably practiced for Jeremy’s sake to hide the fact that giving up the job he loved was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.
Gunshot wound or not, Gage Kirkland’s passion was going after the bad guys.
For years, she’d wondered what his life was like, if he was happy, if he had a family, if he had followed his bliss and was living quietly, practicing medicine somewhere in a Georgia hospital, charming nurses and patients alike. It had never occurred to her he would choose a life living on the edge, where dodging bullets and bringing dangerous criminals to justice were part of his everyday routine. Replacing the image of him she’d carried in her head with the real one was mind boggling. But she had to admit, that this side of Gage, a side she could never have imagined existed, seemed thrilling to her. It was like falling in love with Clark Kent one day and discovering twelve years later he was Superman.
Chapter 10
Morgan found Jeremy slouching in the front porch swing, reading. The kid always seemed to be reading. “Are you ready? I want to show you something seriously cool.”
“What is it?”
“A secret place.”
“It's not a garden, is it? That movie sucked.”
“It’s bigger than a garden.” She pointed to the hill behind the barn. “That’s called Pip’s Hill, but for slovenly, out-of-shape people like me, it’s a mountain. Are you up for it?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Sure. We can always roll back down if it gets too strenuous.”
Morgan laughed. “I like the way you think, kid. And you’re the only eleven-year-old I know who can use the word strenuous in a sentence.”
“I read a lot.”
“I talk a lot.”
They walked behind the barn, then hiked to the top and cut across the ridge to the woods.
“Jeez!” Jeremy said when they stopped to rest. “Is everything around here on a friggin' mountain?”
“Haven't you heard of the hills of Tennessee? Well, you just walked up one.” She pulled a bottle of water out of her jacket pocket and handed it to him. “Here. Save half for me.”
“I'm a kid, remember? I should get more than half.”
“You’re not a kid. You're a con artist.”
They followed the path through the dense hardwood forest until they came to a section of trees covered with kudzu vine. It dripped from the branches, wound around the trunks like green ribbon snakes, smothered the unlucky ones like dark, leafy shrouds. The air smelled mossy and damp. Shafts of golden sunlight cut through the green canopy, illuminating the tamped down dirt and grass. For a while, the only sounds they heard were the crunch of brittle sticks beneath their feet and the distant solitary cry of a bird.
Morgan cleared her throat. “Jeremy, you remember when I told you my parents died?”
“Yeah.”
“Their car was hit by a sweet little old man who had gotten confused and didn’t realize he was driving on the wrong side of the road. He didn't mean to kill them. It just happened.” Jeremy thrashed through a tall patch of weeds. “All I’m saying is that sometimes things happen, things we don’t have any control over.”
Jeremy picked up a stick and knocked it against a stump. He squinted at the treetops. “Didn't it make you mad?”
“Sure. For a long time. But one day, when I was missing them so much, I could barely speak, I remembered something my mom had given me.”
“What?”
“She loved quotes. She taped them on the fridge, left them on my pillow, put them in library books for others to find. This one was from Gandhi. Do you know who Gandhi was?”
“Another movie that sucked?”
“Gandhi was a wise man who said, ‘There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.’”
Jeremy turned to her. His eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to my mom. I don’t even know where she is. They wouldn’t let me go to the funeral.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Morgan said.
“Can you find out where she is? Can you ask my dad or something? I don’t talk to him about her.”
“Not talking about something doesn’t make it go away.”
He blinked up at her. “You sound like my therapist.”
Morgan playfully bonked him on the head. “I’m going to take that as a compliment. Unless she looks like Sigmund Freud in drag.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.” The forest had opened into a small, flat meadow. “See those trees?” Morgan pointed to a row of ancient chestnuts growing in a straight line along the upper edge. “We’re going to count down five trees, and turn left.”
Jeremy counted as they walked. After the turn, she said, “Now, look back where we came.” She placed her hands on his thin shoulders. “See the huge knothole at the top of the fifth tree? If you ever come here and get lost, use that as a marker to lead you out.”
“Where’s the secret place?”
“Behind that big rock. But be careful. I've always heard there are sinkholes and caves down there, but Sean and I could never locate them.” She looked at the vine covered trees. “I don't think I've ever seen so much kudzu. It loves it here.”
“Kudzu loves it everywhere,” Jeremy said. “It’s all over Georgia, too. I read that it came from Japan, and the government got farmers to plant it to stop soil erosion. Then it took over.”
“Like green wildfire.”
“It’s cool, though. The trees look like giant alien families. Aliens who live in the ocean. The arms grow down like seaweed, then sway in the wind.” He pointed behind him. “See, the biggest one is the dad. And the mom’s beside him. The little trees are the kids, I guess.”
“Or maybe they're alien soldiers getting ready to attack.”
“Or maybe they used to be ordinary people like us—”
“—until they danced around the forest one night during a full moon, and got beamed aboard the Giant Alien Kudzu Ship.”
Jeremy laughed. “You’re weirder than me, Morgan.”
“We're here.” She stopped. “Do you see anything? Take your time. Look around.”
Jeremy turned completely around, craning his neck. “Nope.”
“Follow me.” Morgan waded through the thick underbrush. She climbed around a large rock and stood beside a mound of kudzu slightly shorter than her head. Then she leaned down, put her hand through a thick web of vines, and pulled. A door opened.
“It's a car!” Jeremy squealed. “A car’s hidden under there! Are we the only ones who know about it?”
“I’m sure someone else knows. It would be easy to see in winter. Kudzu turns brown and dies after the first hard frost. Want to climb inside? You're not afraid of spiders, are you?”
Jeremy grinned and shook his head no. The elated expression on his face warmed her heart, a heart that had long ago hung up a “Closed for Business” sign where children were concerned. This must be what Gage had talked about missing with his son. This is what he’d been grieving for. It would take time for Jeremy to trust that his world was secure again, but she could already see a change in him.
The kid had been forced to grow up too soon, covering for a mentally ill mother who used him as an instrument of revenge against her ex-husband. If Jeremy had been Morgan’s son—and, oh, God, she wished he had been—she would have done everything humanly possible to safeguard his innocence. She would have put him first, protected hi
m at all costs, loved him more than— She stopped and put her hand on her heart. The old familiar pain raked across it like broken glass, stabbing it until she couldn’t take a breath.
What was she thinking? She’d had a child growing inside her. Gage’s child.
And she hadn’t been able to protect it at all.
Jeremy crawled into the abandoned Ford Fairlane. He clambered over the split upholstered seat, then cleared away a trailing cluster of vines until he could scoot beneath the steering wheel.
Another wide grin spread across his face. “You're right, Morgan. This is seriously cool.”
****
Gage stood in the middle of Morgan's dining room, gazing from one end to the other. Where the hell could it be? He had searched everywhere, and one thing was clear—he had lost his edge. There was a time when he would have been in and out, recovered object in hand, in a matter of minutes. But his instincts had officially become defunct. Old houses were full of hiding places. A flag could be rolled up or folded. It could be anywhere. He closed his eyes and tried to channel Morgan. If he could think like her, maybe he could figure out where she'd stashed the thing.
He slipped Harlan’s cell phone in his back pocket and tromped upstairs again to her bedroom. Women liked to keep the things they treasured near them. He stood in the doorway. His gaze flicked across her now familiar belongings—from the calico skirted dressing table to the colored glass bottles lining the window sill to the collection of dulcimers hanging on the pale blue wall. She was everywhere. He could feel her watching him, sensing he was violating her trust.
Traces of her perfume—the sweet, soapy, vanilla-spice thing that drove him to distraction—wafted through the air. He glanced at the unmade bed. Images from the night before flooded his brain—Morgan's eyes, half-closed with desire, her soft hands roaming across his back, setting his nerve endings on fire, her sweet lips seeking his with a hunger that matched his own. Christ, he’d wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anyone. He’d never stopped wanting her, or wishing he could make love to her again. Last night, on that sweet-smelling tumble of sheets, his wish had almost come true.
“Enough,” he said, shaking his head. “Focus, dammit.”
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