by Cindy Dees
That made her giggle. She had a great laugh. “I’ve got it covered, Sparky. I wear brown contact lenses in public.”
“All right, then. You’re not an alien, and we’re getting married. Have we set a date?”
“I doubt the police will ask, but no. We’re trying to figure out where to live first,” she answered thoughtfully. “Are we considering moving to the NRQZ?”
He liked that idea. It would give them an excuse to poke around the local area openly. “Can you pull off a back-to-nature hippie persona?” he asked her.
“I can be anything you want me to be, big guy,” she answered flippantly.
For some reason, the comment set his teeth on edge. “How about you just be yourself with me? I don’t need or want pretense from my women.”
She looked shocked and fell silent as he guided the car to the Spruce Hollow gas station and its no-kidding, working pay phone. He mentally kicked himself for making that “my women” comment. No sense in leading the poor girl on.
He dialed the number of the police placarded on the side of the pay phone and reported Luke’s death. He was not surprised when he was ordered to stay right where he was and wait for a deputy to come meet them.
The remainder of the night went predictably. He and Sammie Jo described arriving at the cabin to find their “friend” gone and his dog bloody. They gave detailed instructions to the sheriff as to where to find Luke’s body. They followed a deputy back to the sheriff’s office in the Bronco and were ordered to come inside and make statements.
Fido had arrived at the police station to be held as evidence until a forensic pathologist from Charleston could come down and collect the dog to examine. He could be seen jumping around inside playing with a deputy, already on his way to being spoiled rotten. As Gray stared at the well-lit building, he glanced over at Sammie Jo in concern. She was in the middle of putting contact lenses in her eyes. “Are you going to be okay in there? It’s pretty bright.”
“Artificial light isn’t as bad as sunlight. I’ll survive. Gemma had these contacts specially made for me. They act like miniature sunglasses. I just can’t wear them for more than a few hours at a time.”
When they stepped inside, he rather missed the odd, but uniquely Sammie Jo, gold color of her eyes. In spite of the lenses, she squinted heavily and looked like she was in pain as they were seated at desks, pads of paper and pens shoved in front of them, and told to write down their statements.
He had a hard time concentrating on his because a deputy spent the whole damned time hitting on Sammie Jo. She rebuffed him steadily, but the guy just wouldn’t catch a clue. By the time Gray laid down his pen, his fist ached to punch something.
When Sammie Jo finished her statement, Gray stood up immediately and moved to her side. “C’mon, sweetheart. It’s been a long night. Let’s get back to our place and get some sleep.” Glaring at the deputy, he placed a possessive arm across her shoulder and pulled her to his side.
She was tall enough that her curves fit against him nicely. Her body was lithe and vibrant against his, softer than he’d expected, and a surge of possessiveness flashed through him. Stunned, he walked her to the Bronco and deposited her in the passenger seat in silence.
As he climbed in and started the car, she asked, “Are you okay?”
“Dim-witted bastard,” he muttered. “Couldn’t he see you were with me?”
As she popped out the lenses and stored them in their little plastic case, she commented, “Why, Grayson Pierce. Are you jealous of Barney?”
“Who?”
“Barney Fife. From The Andy Griffith Show.”
“Not familiar with it.”
“Good grief, man. You’ve lived a freakishly sheltered life! We must rectify this flaw in your upbringing!”
He doubted his grandmother would agree that his upbringing was flawed. At least not until his American mother divorced his British father and hauled herself and her son back to the States to live. He’d gone straight into high school and hadn’t had time or inclination for American television. He’d had enough trouble making the transition to this culture without trying to master that aspect of it.
“Did you get any good pictures of the body?” she asked.
“You tell me. You’re the one with supersight.” He passed her the digital camera and she peered at the pictures closely.
“God almighty, this is nasty,” she muttered. “Somebody really had it in for this guy. I’d love to blow these up on a high-definition computer monitor and have a look at them.”
“At a glance, the wounds strike me as too surgical to have been inflicted in uncontrolled rage. I think the killer wanted to send someone a message.”
She looked up at him sharply. “It would be a heck of message. Who would the killer send it to?”
“That’s what we have to find out.”
“Hey, I’m a desk jockey. I don’t do the whole dangerous, chase-after-psychopathic-murderers thing.”
He glanced over at her in surprise. “With your eyesight? I’d think Winston Enterprises would put you out in the field nonstop.”
“Doc Jones has been keeping me close to home for testing, and that’s fine with me. I’m a big ole chicken when it comes to scary stuff.”
Somehow he doubted that. She’d been fearless trekking through the woods earlier. He commented dryly, “Welcome to the big leagues, kid.”
“And what league is that, exactly? You’re a spy, right? Who for? Please tell me you have tons of field experience and aren’t in over your head here.”
“Sorry. I can neither confirm nor—”
“Oh, stop,” she interrupted. “If we’re going to be working together, you might as well tell me. Besides, if my life’s in danger, I have a right to know who I’m depending on to keep me alive.”
Depending on. The words staggered him. No. No! She mustn’t! Panic ripped through him. He failed the people who depended on him! He couldn’t be responsible for more violence, more death...
He realized he was about to rip the steering wheel out of its column and forcibly relaxed his fingers. He couldn’t work with her if she was expecting to depend on him. She had to get out of here. Far, far away from him. He’d call Jeff when they got back to the motel and tell him to pull her off this op.
How he managed to guide the Bronco the rest of the way back to their motel, he wasn’t quite sure. It all passed in a haze of terror. He parked the vehicle and turned off the ignition. “You need to leave. Now. I’ll call Jeff and have him send a jet for you in the morning.”
“I don’t bail out on people because the going gets tough, Gray.”
“This isn’t about abandoning me. It’s about your safety. I won’t risk your life—”
“Really. Stop. I realize you’re some sort of mega-protective, do-the-right-thing type, but get over it. I’m not leaving.”
He closed his mouth on his next protest because it threatened to become a scream of agony. She didn’t understand. He couldn’t be responsible for her. Not for anybody ever again. He fought his way back to a modicum of sanity by focusing on Sammie Jo. He replayed her protest in his mind. A faint note of desperation in her voice had caught his attention. Something that said no matter how dangerous it got here, she’d rather face this than face whatever waited for her back home.
On a hunch he asked, “What are you running from?”
That stopped her cold in the act of pushing her car door open for herself. “I beg your pardon?”
He took advantage of her distraction to go around and open it for her. He took only a single step back, which forced her to slide past him at a distance of about two inches. When they were chest to chest, he repeated, “Who are you running from, Sammie Jo?”
She hesitated for an instant and then moved past him to the bungalow. As he turned on the lights, she slid a pair of sunglasses over her eyes. He stared at her featureless gaze expectantly.
“Dang, you’re good,” she commented neutrally.
“Well?�
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“I just broke up with a ginormous jerk, and I happen to find a change of scenery refreshing at the moment.”
“Is he violent?”
“Possibly.”
“Psychotic?”
“Definitely.”
His heart was pounding far too hard. She needed protection, and he couldn’t possibly do it. She mustn’t depend on him. “Anything else I should know about you?” he asked tautly.
“Hey, you’re the one with all the secrets, not me,” she declared.
And that was how he planned to keep it. There were some things he would never speak of. Ever.
“Now what?” she asked, startling him.
“I don’t understand.”
“Our only lead on what this Proctor guy’s up to is dead. How do you want to proceed with investigating his cult or whatever it is?”
“After I put you on a plane in the morning, I plan to drive up into the mountains and find that road again. Then I’ll follow it and see where it leads.”
“Why wait till morning? I see great at night. I’ll be your eyes.”
And apparently, she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at nearly 3:00 a.m. Far be it from him to admit that he was beat and would rather sleep. He picked up the car keys resolutely. “Let’s go, then.”
Finding the dirt road wasn’t hard. His sense of direction was unerring and he went right to it. But it got weird when Sammie Jo announced from the passenger seat that she’d spotted the tire tracks leaving the drop-off point. All he saw was gravel stretching away into the dark in the headlights.
“Slow down,” she ordered, leaning forward in her seat. “Okay. Go straight ahead through the intersection.”
They followed the tracks for maybe a mile. Then they ran into a paved road and the tracks turned right. But the dust had worn off the tires in a few hundred yards, and Sammie Jo shook her head in disgust. “Lost the tracks. Drat. That vehicle could have gone anywhere from here.”
“Let’s head back to the motel and get some rest. We can talk to the sheriff tomorrow and see what he’s come up with.”
“You think he’ll work with you?” she asked doubtfully. “He seemed the type to resent outsiders, and he wasn’t exactly friendly to us. Now, Deputy Barney seemed all kinds of eager to work with me. I could probably pump him for some—”
“No.” She looked far too pleased at his knee-jerk response. He scowled. “Have you got any better ideas?”
“Well, yeah,” she answered. “We have to stop being outsiders.”
“Come again?”
“Let’s move into the area. Settle down.”
“What are you talking about?” He was lost, and he considered himself to be a reasonably bright fellow.
“Think about it. We’ve already established ourselves as a couple. I mentioned to the sheriff that we’re thinking about moving off the grid and into this area. So let’s rent a little place. Meet the neighbors. They’ll be a lot more likely to talk to us than if we’re tourists passing through.”
The idea of setting up house sent figurative butcher knives slashing through his body. It was a cover, dammit. Just a cover. An act. Lord knew he’d become a hell of an actor over the past few years. He could put on this fake skin and live in it for a while if he had to.
“Where do you suggest we move to?” he asked.
“Spruce Hollow, of course.”
“It’s a bold gambit.”
She grinned over at him. “Are you in?”
“Your middle name is trouble, isn’t it?” he grumbled.
“With a capital T. Just leave it to me. I’ll set up the rest of our cover tomorrow. All I need you to do is get some of the kind of clothes you normally wear.”
“That I normally... What are you talking about?”
“You look like a pig dressed up as a showgirl.”
“Excuse me?” he exclaimed.
“Well, you don’t look like an actual pig. You’re quite a hottie, in point of fact. But you look totally uncomfortable in those jeans and that ridiculous flannel shirt. If you’re going to blend in, you have to look like yourself.”
He frowned. “I’d have to make a trip to a real city to shop.”
“You do that and I’ll take care of the rest. By the time you get back, I’ll have all the arrangements made.”
He stared at her in shock. Steamroller, thy name is Sammie Jo.
* * *
He got back to the motel room after his road trip to Charleston at about noon and found a note on the kitchen table.
G.—I took the liberty of packing your stuff—nice silk boxer shorts, BTW. Check out of the motel and meet me at this address. And for God’s sake, wear some uptight rich-guy clothes.
—S.
She’d checked out his underwear? Vixen. He’d have to return the favor sometime. He noticed belatedly that the sticky note was pasted to a hand-drawn map. What had she gone and done?
Bemused, he followed her instructions to Spruce Hollow’s one and only side street and pulled up in front of a one-story brick ranch house that looked straight out of the 1950s. Oh, God. He couldn’t do this.
The house was low and rectangular, nothing like the neat, craftsman-style home that flashed into his head with blinding clarity. A home with blood everywhere. Death. And that horrible, primal scream that wouldn’t stop.
Chapter 4
He’d done some hard things in his life, seen and survived horrors that would have broken a lesser man—at least that was what the shrinks told him. But turning the Bronco into that little ranch house’s driveway, parking it and climbing out like he wasn’t screaming in terror inside his head was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
Two women emerged from the house as he stood by the SUV fighting every warning his body could shout at him to turn and run until he couldn’t take another step. The yard was overgrown and full of weeds, but a neat carpet of green swam in his mind’s eye. Paint peeled from these shutters, and a rusty rain gutter dangled from the front porch. That other house had been fully restored to pristine perfection.
He forced his mind to a place of calm. No emotion. It had been a long time since he’d had to set a date for himself, but he did so, now. One month from today. If the pain had not subsided by then, he gave himself permission to contemplate ending his life on that day. And with the mental exercise came a modicum of peace. It had been the only way he’d survived those first few years. Making bargains with himself that, if it all became too much for him by some set date, he could check out of life’s mortal coil.
He eyed the ranch house critically as he climbed out of the SUV. The roof looked sound and the brick siding looked solid, but that was about the best he could say for the place.
One of the women on the long front porch wore a business suit that screamed Realtor. The other one looked like June Cleaver, complete with pastel-flowered dress, full skirt and a demure little belt cinching in a tiny waist. Her coloring was creamy and soft, her eyes dark, her hair in a French twist.... Good God. Her red hair.
He barely recognized Sammie Jo. She looked sweet. Domestic. Gentle, even. Gone was the leather, the loud makeup, the in-your-face swagger. The change staggered him. He climbed out of the Bronco in minor shock.
“Honey, you’re here!” Sammie Jo cried. “Isn’t it cute? We’ll have so much fun fixing it up. Oh, our first place together,” she gushed.
Oh, God. One month. He could keep up this horrible charade for one month. Jeff Winston deserved that long from him in return for all Jeff had done for him in his darkest days. Gray put one foot in front of him. Then his other foot. One step at a time. One second at a time. Just keep going. Keep moving.
Sammie Jo rushed up to him excitedly. “I knew you’d love it, so I went ahead and started the paperwork. We’ve only rented it for six months. If you hate it, you won’t have to live here that long.” She smiled up winningly at him.
“How could I say no to you?” he managed to choke out.
She threw her arms aroun
d his neck and kissed him soundly on the mouth. He was so stunned he just stood there and let her.
“Well, don’t you two make the most darling couple?” the Realtor cooed from behind Sammie Jo.
Couple? A tiny voice wailed in the back of his mind, Nooooooo. One. Month.
He shook hands and murmured appropriate inanities as Sammie Jo introduced him to the Realtor. In a fugue state that made him feel more robot than man, he followed the women inside and duly signed a lease.
He roused enough from his state of horror to register faint surprise at Sammie Jo’s signature. Samantha Jessup. Samantha, huh? Suddenly, the idea of calling her Sam didn’t seem so wrong. As a derivative of Samantha, it wasn’t nearly as masculine and awkward as he’d thought it was. Thankfully, as soon as she dropped a hint about him officially carrying her over the threshold now that it was theirs, the Realtor laughed and took her leave.
“Are you okay?” Sammie Jo mumbled in concern as soon as the Realtor’s car door slammed shut.
“What have you done—” he started as they stood on the porch and watched the woman’s car pull out of the driveway.
“Inside, sweetheart,” she murmured, sotto voce. “The neighbors will be watching.”
“In that case...” He bent down and swept his arms around her. He lifted her in his arms and strode toward the front door. But Lord, the price of it. Using techniques a trauma therapist had taught him, he blanked his mind completely. And then, bit by bit, he let in the details of this one moment. The cool air. The autumn smell of burned leaves. The weight and softness of the woman in his arms. A hint of roses as she shifted slightly. The way his breathing deepened in response to her.
Laughing, she reached down to open the door for him. He added the sultry delight in her laughter to his inventory of sensations.
Carefully, carefully he reached past this moment to the next safest thing: his job. This was a cover. They had to establish themselves as a couple. Being absolutely certain to let no emotion creep into him, he paused in the doorway and leaned his head down to kiss her.