Never Let Her Go

by Gayle Wilson

  As she did every night, she laid the .38 down on the bedside table, right beside the book she had brought up with her. Her choices from the small bookshelf she had found in the parlor were pretty limited.

  At least this one was a novel. Maybe a mystery, she thought, going strictly by the sound of its title. The dust jacket that might have confirmed her guess had disappeared, a long time ago to judge by the faded binding.

  It felt good to get out of her clothes and into her long and roomy flannel nightgown. Its warmth and softness were comforting. It was a little bit of home. Something that was familiar.

  She turned back the covers and crawled into bed, stretching out gratefully. She lay there a moment, deliberately letting the tightness in her back and shoulders relax against the mattress. Deliberately letting her guard down.

  All week she had thought about why she had really come out here. Had thought about Nick. Because she had expected every moment to look up and find him standing in a doorway, the glint of his glasses trained somewhere near her face, ready to question her motives again. But she hadn’t, and despite her anxiety over the possibility, she admitted that had been a disappointment.

  As far as she could tell, Nick Deandro seldom left his room. And when Maggie went up and down the stairs to carry or retrieve his tray, she had volunteered no information about him. So it had been a damn long week, Abby thought again.

  Trying to put Nick out of her head, something that was almost impossible to do now that she was living in the same house with him, she reached for the book she had found. It smelled faintly of mildew when she opened it, leafing through the preface pages to find the beginning of the first chapter.

  WHEN SHE WAS JERKED awake by the noise, the low light on the table beside her bed was still on. The book lay across the hump of her belly, spread-eagled and mostly unread. Apparently she had been sleeping too soundly, like the drunks who stretched out on the benches along the river or curled in the sheltered doorways of the Quarter when the rain turned cold.

  She was disoriented for a moment, trying to remember where she was and what she was doing in this strange bedroom And when she did, a more important consideration moved into her consciousness. What had awakened her?

  She had some memory of the sound, something that had been loud enough to wake her—an unfamiliar noise in this normally quiet environment. What kind of noise it had been, however, she couldn’t have said if her life depended on it.

  She lay perfectly still a moment, holding her breath and listening to the still night around her. There was nothing else. No other sound except her own too-strong inhalation when she finally allowed herself to draw another breath.

  Her eyes shifted to the windows, but there was only darkness beyond the sheer curtains, gathered in folds across the black glass. She remembered finally to look at her watch. It was almost 3:00 a.m. Not Maggie, then, coming in to start breakfast. And the only other person in the house was…

  Nick. Who was blind. Could Nick have been responsible for the noise she had heard? Was it possible that he had gotten up in the night for some reason and then bumped into something? Or fallen over something?

  The unwanted image of that flight of steep stairs and of a sprawled, broken body at the foot of it tightened her throat. Her first instinct was to rush out into the hall. To call to Nick. To verify that he wasn’t injured.

  But she fought against that highly emotional response. She couldn’t take the chance that was what she had heard. Because, of course, this might be something very different. And her job, the reason she had been sent here, was to protect Nick Deandro from whoever had tried to kill him before and might try again. Despite the fact that the bad guys didn’t seem to be very interested in Nick Deandro anymore, she couldn’t afford to take the chance that they weren’t.

  Worse case scenario, she reasoned, fighting her panic over just the thought of Nick falling, was that there was an intruder in the house. And that whoever it was had come to finish what they had started six months ago. To permanently silence Nick.

  Anything less than that—a fall or accident of some kind—would be far better. And she had no choice about what she should do. No matter what her heart told her about getting to Nick as quickly as she could, she was here to play cop. To do her job and do it exactly as she had been trained.

  She could feel the adrenaline now, moving into her bloodstream, and she welcomed it. It seemed to have cleared the last of the cobwebs, because those thoughts and decisions had been shooting through her brain with lightninglike rapidity.

  She threw the covers back, pushing them the rest of the way down with her feet, and clambered out of bed. She hesitated, only for a second, again listening. Ears straining to hear movement. Straining to hear anything.

  She realized she was shivering, although the house wasn’t cold. Maybe that was just the abruptness of the change from deep sleep to waking. Or the sudden shift from being covered warmly by the sheet and a couple of quilts to standing here clad only in her nightgown, substantial though it was. Or maybe, she admitted, it was fear. Not for herself, of course, but for the man she was supposed to be guarding.

  She reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. Her hand unerringly dropped from the switch to the .38, finding the patterned grip even in the sudden plunge into darkness. She stood a few seconds more, still listening, as she allowed her eyes time to adjust. As it had last night, moonlight touched the house, fingering in through the curtained windows of her room.

  She tiptoed across the wooden floor and pushed aside the sheers that covered the glass to look out on the grounds. Below, she could see the walkway that led up to the front door and, beyond it, the drive.

  The trees cast wavering shadows on the pale dirt of the path. Nothing moved but the branches, stirring in the breeze she could see but couldn’t feel. But still, watching the shifting pattern the leaves made on the dirt, she shivered again.

  Whatever had made the noise hadn’t been in this room. Nor had it been outside the house, she realized. It had been too loud for that. It had come from somewhere beyond the door she was hiding behind.

  She crossed the room and then paused beside the closed door. There was no sound from the hall beyond. She reached out and caught the knob, turning it soundlessly with her left hand, pulling the door slowly inward. Her right hand was occupied with the gun, trained on the widening opening.

  Nothing happened. And there had not been a repeat of whatever she had heard initially. Quiet as a tomb out here, Mickey Yates had said. And now it really seemed to be.

  She slipped through the narrow opening, her eyes examining the hall that stretched silently before her, almost ghostly in the dim moonlight. Shadows aligned themselves out of the darkness into familiar shapes. The newel post. The linen press at the end of the hall. Nothing here that shouldn’t be.

  The head of the stairs was at the opposite end, right outside Nick’s door. Which was open, she suddenly realized. The rectangle where the closed door should show, pale and regular as those of the rooms between them, was black instead. Nick’s door was open, but she couldn’t be sure what that meant.

  She was moving now, hurrying to get to him. However, all her senses were alert, with both hands fastened around the grip of her gun, one supporting the other, as she hugged the wall. Her first stop was the bathroom, the most logical place Nick might be in the middle of the night.

  It was across the hall from her room. Its door was open as well, and she stood in the frame, sweeping the gun before her in a semicircle, muzzle following the careful survey of her eyes. Nothing. There was no one here. One possibility eliminated.

  She moved down the hall, hurrying to the door of the next bedroom. It was closed, so she turned the knob and pushed the door slowly inward, her eyes examining the interior. The unoccupied room was dark except for the silent presence of the cold, silvered moonlight. And it was empty.

  She didn’t bother to close the door behind her, and she increased her speed now, moving purposefully on ba
re feet across the hall to the next. But there was nothing there either, and she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more apprehensive.

  All that was left to check was Nick’s room. She stopped beside his open doorway, listening to the darkness. Listening for his breathing. For what would be the reassuring, yet unfamiliar sound of Nick’s snoring. Listening for anything that would give her a clue as to what was going on. And she heard nothing.

  The door was only partially open, and she couldn’t see the whole room as she had been able to with the others. She put her left palm flat against the wood and pushed gently. The door moved noiselessly, the opening slowly widening. She stepped inside, her eyes seeking the bed, trying to find its occupant.

  “Deandro.” The whisper was right at her ear. Nick had stepped out of the shadows behind her, leaning over her shoulder to speak. “Downstairs,” he added, just as softly.

  So softly both words had been almost soundless. Her breathing had frozen at the first whisper, but by the time he had spoken again, her brain had accepted that this was Nick and not a threat.

  She didn’t flinch when he put his hand on her shoulder. It tightened briefly, and she questioned what that pressure was supposed to mean—reassurance or identification. But he had already spoken to her, and in doing so had revealed his hiding place. She wondered how he had known who was entering his room.

  He hadn’t released his grip on her shoulder. Had he touched her because he intended to go downstairs with her? Using his hand there to guide him as he followed her through the darkness?

  If that was what he was planning, she thought in panic, then he could damn well think again. The logistics of that nightmare journey invaded her head when she should have been thinking about the intruder. About whoever was downstairs.

  She turned her head to the side, putting her mouth nearer his ear. “You stay right here,” she ordered, trying to keep her whisper as low as his had been.

  She began to turn, but his fingers tightened over her collarbone, digging strongly enough into her flesh to prevent her from stepping back out into the hall. Strongly enough to elicit a small gasp of response.

  “I’m going with you,” he whispered.

  She shook her head, furious with him. If she allowed him to go downstairs, she wasn’t sure she could keep him safe. She needed him up here. She needed him to be where he couldn’t get hurt. Out of harm’s way.

  He didn’t react, and she finally realized that he couldn’t see what she was doing. “No,” she breathed. She raised her hand and pushed angrily at his fingers. They didn’t respond, except to tighten again, painfully. “Stay here,” she demanded.

  “Listen,” he ordered.

  Despite the softness of the command, she automatically obeyed. The noise from below was almost as quiet as their voices, indistinct and distant, whispering up the stairs from the darkness as her perfume must have floated to him that night.

  “You call the sheriff?” Nick asked.

  “No,” she admitted. “Not yet.”

  “Do it,” Nick ordered.

  “By the time he gets here—” she began, trying to convey her frustration and at the same time keep her voice quiet enough not to endanger him.

  “You don’t know how many of them are down there,” he interrupted. “Call for back up, Sterling”

  “I’m armed, and—”

  “Your room. We both go. You make the call. Do it now, damn it.”

  His hand was still controlling her. She probably could have broken away from him, but he was right, of course. By now, she had realized they were safer here. For the time being, at least.

  And no matter what was happening below, her job was to keep Nick Deandro safe. Not to go rushing into a situation she didn’t have enough information about, maybe getting herself shot in the process. Calling the sheriff made a whole lot more sense. It’s what she should have done in the first place, and she was sure Nick was thinking that.

  “Okay,” she said finally, giving in to his logic.

  She took a step, half expecting the punishing grip to tighten again over her shoulder. She would have a bruise there tomorrow, she knew. Maybe she even deserved one.

  She should have made that call before she left her bedroom. It would have been the smart thing to do, but she hadn’t done it. Instead she had rushed out into the darkness, despite her attempt at rationality, because the image of Nick lying injured at the bottom of those stairs had been too compelling. Too frightening.

  His fingers rested lightly now on the top of her shoulder, and he followed as she walked, careful to stay in the center of the narrow hall because she was aware she was his guide. Back down the route she had just traversed and into her room. When she reached the phone, she picked it up and punched in the single digit Rob had told her would put her in touch with the sheriff.

  She was surprised, however, when he answered. “Blanchard,” he said, his voice fogged with sleep, but still official.

  “This is Sterling,” she whispered. “We have an intruder.”

  “On my way,” he said. “Front door.” And then the connection was broken.

  A man of few words, Abby thought, carefully putting the receiver back in its cradle. She was suddenly aware that Nick had removed his hand. He was still standing beside her, but he was no longer touching her.

  “Five minutes,” she said, repeating what Rob had told her.

  He nodded. There was enough light in the room that she could see the movement of his dark head. If she had been alone, she would have gone over to those windows, where she had earlier looked out on the moonlit drive, and watched for the sheriff.

  Instead, she moved to stand in front of Nick, putting herself and the .38 she was still cradling in both hands, between him and the door. And they waited together until the siren destroyed the stillness.

  “WELL, WE DIDN’T find your intruder,” the sheriff said, “but we think we pretty much know what happened.”

  Abby was standing in the entry hall, her arms crossed over her breasts, rubbing her left hand unthinkingly against the soft flannel of her right sleeve. Her right hand still held the .38, but her grip on it had relaxed

  She had waited here after she opened the front door, letting Blanchard and his sleepy-eyed deputy make the search of the downstairs without her.

  “What happened?” she repeated, questioning the wording he had used.

  “Raccoon Maybe a possum. You got a pretty big mess in the kitchen, but at least you don’t have a human prowler.”

  A raccoon, Abby thought, feeling the hot blood sweep upward into her throat. She had called the parish sheriff out in the middle of the night because of a raccoon?

  “How could a raccoon get in?” Nick asked from behind her.

  She hadn’t even realized he had come downstairs, but then she had followed the sheriff down the hall toward the kitchen, away from the foot of the stairs Nick had just silently descended.

  “Window left open, maybe. Loose screen. They’re pretty ingenious.”

  “And the alarms?” Abby asked. “Why didn’t the alarm go off?”

  The sheriff shook his head, but his eyes hadn’t moved back to her face. They were examining Nick’s instead. And when they finally did, he had no answer for her.

  “I can’t tell you exactly how it happened, Abby. How something wild got in. But based on the look of the kitchen, that’s our best guess as to what you heard. The garbage can’s turned over. Stuff is scattered all over the floor like he was prowling through it. That doesn’t look to us to be the work of an intruder. Leastways not the kind you folks are worried about.” There was a touch of amusement in that, and Abby resented the implication.

  “I don’t understand how a window could be open and the alarm not go off,” Abby said stubbornly, trying to think about any way that might have happened. If Maggie had left a window open, then the alarm should have sounded when Abby switched the system back on after she left. That was the way it was supposed to work.

  “Sometimes
…” the sheriff began, and then he hesitated. He shifted his feet a little, and the leather belt creaked with the movement of his body. “Sometimes these things just happen. You think you’ve got the thing turned on, and…” He shrugged, seeming uncomfortable for the first time since she’d known him.

  “I turned it on,” Abby said softly. She had. She knew she had. She had a very clear memory of arming the system after she had locked the door. “So it should have gone off.”

  “Well…” the sheriff said again. He shrugged, holding his hands out from his body. “Maybe there’s a short,” he said finally. “Who knows? You should get somebody to check it out in the morning, I guess.”

  “You talk to Maggie?” Nick asked.

  Maggie, Abby thought. Where was Maggie? Was it possible she had slept through the arrival of the patrol car, its siren splitting the night?

  “Maggie sleeps sound, I guess,” the sheriff said. At the question, his eyes had shifted again to Nick, assessing. He put out his hand. “Sheriff Lannie Blanchard.”

  Abby didn’t move, and she couldn’t think of anything to say that might help. After a moment of having it ignored, the sheriff lowered his hand, and his gaze came back to hers. Questioning. She shook her head mutely, feeling the flush that had begun when he said “raccoon” spread into her cheeks. Except now she was embarrassed for them. For the two men.

  “Well, thank you for coming, Sheriff Blanchard,” she finally said into the awkward silence. “I’m sorry I got you both out of bed on a wild-goose chase.”

  Blanchard grinned, apparently recovering his customary poise. “Wild something chase, anyway,” he said easily. “That’s what we’re here for. Don’t you hesitate to call on me any time, Abby. Any time at all.”

  The last invitation had been softer. A little too personal. A little out of place.

  “I won’t,” she promised, despite the discomfort she felt. Her response had been automatic and unthinking, because she liked him. “I’ll see you to the front.”