by Celia Roman
One foot in front of t’other. That’s all I had to do.
I inhaled slow and easy, exhaled even slower, and set off, pushing ever thing else outta my mind. Right foot. Riley’s hand twitched. Left foot. Had to help him. Right foot. A soft groan, but I couldn’t tell if it was him or me, and was beyond caring which.
It felt like the longest walk of my life.
For some reason, my mind flashed back to that day at the lake, the first time I saw Riley laughing under the sun. His hand raised high, on its way to hitting a volleyball to a friend. That snake darting through the water toward him. Time slowed to a standstill. I was gonna be too late. That’s what kept running through my head as I planted my feet against the lake’s muddy bottom and shoved hard, propelling myself toward him. I was gonna be too late to stop that snake from biting him. I was gonna be too late to save him an awful world of hurt.
I reached my hand out, and for a moment, we made a fine tableau. Riley arched athletically, poised half in and half outta the water. The snake coiled to strike. And me, frantically grasping thin air.
Then my hand come down on the snake and I caught it just behind the head, and before I knowed it, I wrung the snake’s neck, Riley missed the ball and splashed down, and his mama was standing on the shore, screaming at us to get outta the water.
That’s how I remembered the day I met Riley Treadwell. Saving him was the only good thing I done up ‘til then, and for such a long time after, it was the only good in me I knowed. Maybe that was why I liked him so much. Maybe he reminded me of a time when I still held the potential to be more’n what I was born to.
I dropped to my knees beside him, too bone weary to cushion the fall, and stroked a gentle hand over the back of his head. The hair there was matted with blood and sticky along the gash where the shovel connected with his head, but the bleeding seemed to’ve stopped. Not knowing what else to do for that cut, I checked his limbs. Nothing was akimbo or outta whack, far as I could tell, but what did I know? I weren’t no doctor.
But I knowed how to find one.
I glanced up the long walkway toward the house. Three long flights of steps stood between me and help. If I had my cellphone with me, I coulda called nine one one myself, but I left it in the Range Rover when we went into the party. Good thing, too, as the water woulda fried it.
Still. I sure did miss it now.
Oh, well. Nothing for it but to climb.
I hauled myself over Riley, careful not to jostle or step on him, and leaned hard against the railing. I could do this. Sure, I could. What was climbing three sets of steps compared to tracking down monsters armed with naught but Daddy’s hunting knife?
I repeated that truth over and over again in my noggin as I pulled myself upward, for a while anyhow, then a light breeze blew around me, cooling the wet clothes clinging to my body and, in turn, chilling me to the bone. By the time I reached the top who knowed how long later, I was shivering hard and cussing David’s granddaddy for building the house so far off the water.
The party was still in full swing, looked like. I stumbled across the porch toward the nearest entrance, the side door leading onto the back deck. David’d know what to do. He was a rock, he was. I searched for him through the crowd, looking for his mischievous smile and shining eyes.
A tinkling laugh cut through murmured conversations and my gaze zeroed in on Belinda.
The room went red. That bitch’d caused enough hurt in one lifetime to last a nation for a decade. David be damned. It was past time somebody made her pay for what she done.
I shoved my way through one cluster of people after another, ignoring shocked gazes and muted titters, and when I reached her, I grabbed her arm and yanked her around, and up my fist come, the one holding Daddy’s hunting knife. I jabbed that fist hard into her pretty little nose. Her head popped back and blood spurted down her ruby red lips, and I shook out my fist, satisfied with a job well done.
Hands scrabbled along my wet clothing. I shrugged ‘em off and stabbed a finger at her. “That was for clocking Riley, you heartless bitch.”
She clapped her hands over her nose as tears pooled in her wide eyes. “You broke my nose.”
“Oh, honey,” I said, all innocent like around the mean. “I’m just getting started.”
David surged through the crowd, his expression concerned more’n upset. “What are you doing, Sunny?”
I whirled on him and pointed at Belinda again. “She knocked Riley in the back of the head with a shovel.”
David glanced over his shoulder at Gregory. “Call an ambulance.”
The Asian woman stepped forward and caught my eye. “Where is he?”
“Why?”
“I’m a doctor. I can help.”
I nodded real slow. A doctor. Good. That’s what I come up here for, right? “On the dock at the bottom of the stairs.”
She whirled around and quick stepped through the parting crowd like Moses and the Red Sea. Her husband and a couple of other bystanders followed along after her. Teus stood in the gap she left behind, his weird aqua eyes icy glints in his handsome face. For some reason, it fired my blood even hotter.
“You knowed, didn’t you?” I asked him, accusation heavy in my water raw voice. “You knowed she was dumping industrial waste into the water.”
He shrugged, casual and unconcerned. “I suspected.”
“You knowed,” I repeated in the sudden quiet what fell over the room. “That’s why you sent it here. You knowed she was up to no good and you was punishing her for it.”
“I didn’t do it alone,” Belinda said. Her voice was muffled behind her hands and was shed of its smarmy, holier-than-thou undertone. “We were all behind it.”
All. I hefted out a sigh, and the energy anger lent trickled away, leaving me empty and too cold. “The Greenwood Five.”
And that explained a lot. Phillip Oliver petitioning the County Commissioners to release treated water into the local streams. Guess he figured that’d be a hard enough sell, so they dumped the more toxic stuff where they thought nobody’d find it.
Only Belinda hired Harley Jimpson, more fool her, and he was too lazy and stupid to know good from bad. If he woulda dumped the waste on land, it woulda been a long time before it was found, but he dumped it in the water, and water always flows somewhere else.
Teus’d suspected something was wrong all along. Was that the reason them girls went missing? Did Belinda offer ‘em up as sacrifices to appease him?
The color drained outta David’s face. “No, Sunny. No. You know I’d never.”
Gregory dropped a hand to David’s shoulder. “It wasn’t you, Dave-o, but I swear, when I invested in the business, I didn’t know they were doing anything illegal.”
“You should’ve known,” David whispered, and I had to agree. A smart guy like Gregory knowed better’n to put his money anywhere without fully researching what the doings was first.
Outta the corner of my eye, I caught Phillip Oliver edging toward the door, one hand wrapped around his wife’s elbow. I blinked, and in that momentary lapse, Teus was there, blocking the exit.
I shook my head, blinked again. Nope, I weren’t imagining it. Teus’d hopped across the room in a heartbeat. He met my gaze evenly, sorta nonchalant like, and a small smile played around his lips.
Well, I’ll be durned. Guess Belinda spoke the rights of him after all.
Speaking of.
I rounded on her and held out my hand, palm up. “Give me the ring.”
She shook her head as she hunched away from me, her eyes wary. “I found it fair and square.”
“You stole it fair and square,” I retorted, “and now it’s time to give it back to its rightful owner.”
She shook her head again and backed up a step right into her husband. Tom looked at me over her shoulder. Sadness flicked across his expression and was gone in an instant. “Whose ring is it?”
“Missy’s.”
He shook his head slow and easy, for once not so sl
oshed reality sped by him. “I’m sorry, Sunny. Tell Fame that, will you?”
“I will,” I said, gentle like. Weren’t Tom’s fault Belinda thieved Missy’s ring, though he coulda done something to rein her in before now. “I can’t go home without it. You know what’ll happen if I do.”
He did. It was there in his eyes, the muted fear of facing Fame’s wrath, not to mention losing business the next time Trey or Gentry got caught on the wrong side of the law. Tom didn’t ask. He simply reached around Belinda, grabbed her hand, and slid the ring off her finger. I took it from him when he offered, and just like that, two cases was wrapped up.
Missy’d be grateful and that was payment enough. As for the other, after what’d happened that night, and what was gonna happen when all these witnesses stepped forward and tattled on Belinda and the other members of the Greenwood Five, I didn’t expect to receive a dime.
Oh, well. At least Belinda’d get what was coming to her for once.
The faint ring of sirens parted the gossip whispered behind hands. I stuck the ring in my sopping wet jeans pocket and trudged back down to the dock toward the man what still needed my help.
The paramedic pried Daddy’s knife outta my hand. My fingers was so cold and stiff, I couldn’t let go on my own. I shoulda protested, but since he let me ride in the back of the ambulance with Riley, I kept my mouth shut. Weren’t too hard. The paramedic threw a blanket ‘round me soon as I sat down, but my clothes was still wet and a chill rattled my bones, knocking my teeth together.
David followed behind in his car, bless his heart, leaving Gregory to sort out the police and the guests still lingering in his house. I sure didn’t mean to break up the party the way I done. I tried apologizing once, and David just looked at me all hollow-eyed and bleak, like he lost the best part of himself.
Seeing as how his significant other was now neck deep in legal trouble, and maybe him, too, I reckoned he had.
Not a soul populated the emergency room when we arrived save the staff nurses and a yawning doctor. I shuffled outta the way while the paramedic and an EMT unloaded Riley, and slapped away the hands of the nurse clucking over the state I was in. I survived worse. No need for a fuss over a piddling scratch and possible hypothermia.
David come in looking about as tired as I felt. He steered me toward the waiting room, shoved me none too gentle into a chair, and plopped down beside me on a long sigh.
I matched it with one of my own. “I’m real sorry, David.”
“Don’t, Sunny. Just…” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tucked me close to him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I huffed out a weary laugh. “You think that, me and you musta lived different nights.”
“I’ve wanted to punch Belinda a time or two.”
“She had it coming.”
“Sounds like.” He rubbed a hand up and down my arm through the blanket, and pecked a kiss to the top of my sopping wet head. “He’ll be ok.”
“I know.”
A long pause followed, filled by echoing beeps and shuffling footsteps and muted voices speaking over one another in the ER.
Finally, David said, “I have just one question.”
My eyelids slid closed. I turned my face into his chest and breathed him in, the faint hint of cologne and the spices he cooked with and something underneath tying it all together. “Shoot.”
“What in the world were you doing in the lake at this time of night?”
It was an honest question, so I treated it as such and laid out the entire evening from the time I left the party to the time I rejoined it, not sparing a single detail of what I could remember. David hmmd and ohed and listened along, and when my words petered out, he said, “You’re such a strong woman, Sunny. A good woman.”
I shook my head. “Ain’t nothing of the sort.”
He jostled me with the hand holding my arm. “You are, and that’s the last I’ll hear of it. What now?”
I had no idea and didn’t rightly get a chance to form one. Riley’s daddy stomped into the waiting room in his sheriff’s uniform. His eyes, so very like Riley’s, landed on me and anger roared outta him in an oddly clipped tone.
“What have you done to my son?”
I planted a shaky hand on David’s belly and eased upright. “Belinda—”
“Don’t you dare pass the blame.”
David’s eyebrows furrowed and he sat straight up. “Sunny didn’t lay a hand on Riley.”
Sheriff Treadwell’s expression turned to stone. “What drugs did you give him?”
David went rigid beside me. “Now wait just a damn minute.”
My hand clenched into a fist around David’s shirt. “Forget it, David. The good sheriff here ain’t never believed a word my family uttered.”
“Fame Carson,” Sheriff Treadwell spat, and I nodded, like I was agreeing. Fame Carson, indeed. Bad blood stretched between them two and always had, far as I knowed. It was high time I listened to reason and let well enough alone.
Like I had a shot at keeping Riley nohow.
Sorrow slammed into me, stealing my breath. I stood on shaky limbs and met the sheriff eye for eye. Chip, he was called, but never by me. “You take good care of Riley now, Sheriff Treadwell, you hear? Else it won’t be Fame Carson coming after your carcass.”
I shambled past him, ignoring the arctic chill of his stare. Only one thing kept me moving forward, a single thought circling through my mind like a buzzard hovering over road kill. I shoulda knowed I couldn’t keep Riley. I shoulda knowed.
Chapter Seventeen
David found me standing in the parking lot still wrapped in the blanket the paramedic give me. He guided me gentle like to his car and drove me home, then led me inside, stripped me down, and put me under a hot shower.
I protested not a word. Just didn’t have it in me right then, nor when he stripped off his own clothes and climbed in behind me, or when he took the soap and washed me from head to toe, or when he gathered me to him while silent tears poured down my face under the warming spray.
Somehow he got me out and dried me off and tucked me into bed. That part was a mite hazy in my mind. Him sitting down beside me on the bed fully clothed grabbed a bigger chunk of my attention.
“Sunny.” He leaned forward and run a hand over my bone dry hair. “I have to go back home. Will you be ok?”
“Yeah,” I grated out, then cleared my throat and tried again. “Gregory needs you.”
David glanced away. If he meant to spare me his sorrow, he done a poor job, but maybe like recognized like, ‘specially where matters of the heart was concerned. We both suffered under that burden.
I drug a hand out from under the covers and clapped it over his knee, comforting him the way he done me. “He loves you.”
“I know.” David shook his head, attempted a rueful smile, let it slide away. “Call if you need me.”
“No phone.” It was still in Riley’s Range Rover. Reckon I’d never get it back now. I tucked the burst of fresh pain away for another day when I was better able to deal with it without blubbering my fool head off. “Thank you.”
“What’re friends for?”
He kissed me gentle on the mouth, then stood and walked away, silent and stalwart and ever thing David weren’t. Soon as the door clicked shut behind him, I closed my eyes and fell into the dreamless sleep of the broken hearted.
A warm body snuggled behind me, spooning me.
“Riley?” I murmured, then my brain caught up with the previous night’s events and I knowed without a doubt it weren’t Riley in my bed.
I shot a sharp elbow back and connected with hard flesh. A soft male oomph wheezed outta the intruder and a hand scrambled along my side in a futile attempt to pin down my flailing arm.
“Sunshine!” Teus snapped.
I wiggled around and faced him in the bed. My legs brushed bare flesh and something hard what shoulda been soft, and my cheeks flushed hot. “What’re you doing nekkid in my bed?”
Teus tucked an arm under his head and smiled, smug and knowing. “I’m here to accept tribute.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
“You killed my pet.”
“It was trying to kill me!”
“It was delivering you to my home.”
“Same thing,” I muttered.
Teus shrugged a bare shoulder. The sheet covering him slithered down his side, finally halting at his elbow. “I can afford to be lenient in the matter. You did learn the identities of those polluting my river.”
I arched a single eyebrow. “Your river?”
“The Tallulah. I won it in a card game in 1807.”
“That was before Georgia was even a state.”
His sigh was as long suffering as his expression. “Sunshine, love, Georgia became a state in 1788.”
“Well, it was before the county was formed, leastwise.” I tucked the sheet under my chin. Let him show off his skin if he wanted. I was fine all covered up. “Time to go, Teus. You found your way in. You gotta know the way out.”
“Not yet.” He brushed a finger down my nose and tapped it for good measure. “You belong to me now.”
I shook my head. “Oh, no. I weren’t a willing tribute and I ain’t no virgin. Pretty sure I gotta be one or t’other to measure up.”
“I can afford to be lenient,” he repeated, only this time his accented voice was low and husky. He leaned forward, angling his head like he was gonna kiss me, and I scrambled away from him and outta bed, taking the sheet with me. It slid off him, revealing toned muscles under sun kissed skin and an erection the size of my forearm.
My eyes went round as dinner plates. “Holy cow, Teus. Put some dadgum clothes on.”
His smile widened. “When I get what I want.”
“You don’t want me,” I retorted. “You just want somebody.”