He looked up quickly. The night breeze ruffled his hair. “Did you see anything…odd there?”
She nodded. “I saw some woman working over Maude’s body. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was about to perform an autopsy.”
He held her gaze. “That’s what I saw, too, and I reached the same conclusion. I couldn’t believe it.” He shook his head. “What the hell is going on, Beth?”
She frowned deeply, searching his face. No sign of a lie there.
“I was getting ready to slip inside and confront her, whoever she was, when I heard something. I thought I saw you taking off in Maude’s car.” He shook his head. “My first instinct was that you were somehow involved in…I don’t know, something. Some kind of cover-up involving my grandmother. So I followed you here.”
She pressed her lips tight, told herself she was stupid to want so badly to believe him. “When I saw your truck there, I thought the same about you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Right. Me.” Shaking his head slowly, he glanced toward her cottage. “So you were too afraid of me to come home?”
“My home is this cottage, Josh, not Maude’s house.”
“I think she would disagree with you there, but I won’t argue with you.” He sighed. “So why haven’t you gone inside? What are you doing crouching out here in the cold?”
She held his gaze for a long moment, wondering if she dared trust him. God, she wanted so badly to trust someone. She had allowed herself to think he might be the one. Now…now she wasn’t so sure.
Maude had trusted him. That ought to be worth something. “Someone was in my house when I got here.”
He lifted his brows. “Are you sure? You saw them?”
“I saw…a movement. And shadows. I think.”
“I’ll go check it out.” Turning, he started toward the house, but she shot forward, gripping his arm. He might be hiding things from her, but he was still Maude’s grandson.
“Josh, don’t. Just…don’t. Something could happen to you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What could happen? It’s probably just some kids or—”
“No. Look, there are things in my past, things that…that might explain all of this.”
He turned slowly, staring deeply into her eyes. “Maude said you were haunted. Said you had more ghosts than any woman she’d ever met.”
“I have my share. But they’re my ghosts, Josh. The last thing I want is for any of them to hurt you. Or Bryan. Or anyone.”
He nodded slowly. “Something’s scaring the hell out of you, though.”
She lifted her brows, nodded, though it killed her to admit to such a weakness. “Yeah. Something is. But it’s not your problem.” She turned to stare at her cottage, wondering who had been there, and why.
She was still looking at it when it exploded.
The sound was deafening, the shock wave devastating, so powerful it knocked her off her feet and slammed her flat. She found herself lying on her back.
Her head was spinning, her ears ringing, her heart racing…and her body was pressed to the ground by the warm weight of Josh’s. He lay on top of her, his arms around her protectively as debris rained down on them, his head turned toward her cottage. Beth looked that way, as well, but there was nothing there. The cozy little place had been blown to bits. There was no fire, no smoke. Just rubble, scattered everywhere. It was like looking at the impossible. It was surreal, and she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what had happened.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She jerked her eyes back to Josh. He was looking at her now, his eyes concerned, his face very close to hers. “Yeah. I think so.”
He nodded, taking a careful look around before easing his weight from her body. He got to his feet, extended a hand. She took it and let him pull her upright, as well; then he frowned and moved her hair away from her neck. “You’re bleeding.”
“God, my house. My…everything. Oh, God…”
“It’s going to be all right, Beth.”
“How?”
“Hold still.” He slid his hand over her neck, fingertips gentle, then tugging and causing a painful stab. She winced. “Sorry.” He showed her the spear of wood he’d pulled from her neck. Then he covered her hand with his and pressed her palm to the spot on her neck. “Keep pressure on that until we get home.”
She frowned at him. “We can’t just…leave. The police…”
“Frankie will know where to find us. I think the safest thing is to get you out of here until we find out what happened.”
She pursed her lips. “I think I know what happened here. And you’re probably right.”
He searched her face, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
She pursed her lips. “No. I don’t want to, Josh. But I think I have to.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
Nodding, she let him lead her. He held her to his side, supporting her as if she were weak, when she was anything but. Everything in her world was shattering. And she knew in her gut it was Mordecai. It had to be Mordecai.
He’d found her.
“What happened to Maude?”
The words Sent by Dawn-S9 popped onto Bryan’s computer screen. He’d found the Internet hookup operational by the time they all got home from that disastrous dinner at Beth’s. He’d tried to contact Dawn then, but she hadn’t been online, so he’d sent her an e-mail—no details, just telling her that something had happened, and he would stay online that night, so she should log on if she could.
He hadn’t chatted with Dawn very long earlier, but long enough to figure out that she was close to Beth. She’d told him she was a former student, but he thought it went deeper than that. And he liked her.
He’d looked up her profile, just to check her out. There was a photo. And he supposed learning that she was drop-dead gorgeous had helped convince him that she was on the side of the good guys.
He’d left the PC on when he went to bed, just in case, and he heard the chiming tones that told him someone was sending him an instant message. Now the cursor blinked at him as if demanding an answer. He sighed, searching for a way to make the news easier to take. He had no idea if Dawn were close to Maude, or even knew her. But he figured there was no point in not telling her the truth.
“Bry? I know you’re online. Tell me what happened.”
Bryan realized there was no easy way to share bad news, so it was pretty stupid wasting time trying to think of one. “Maude didn’t make it,” he typed. “I’m sorry.” He studied the words, drew a breath and clicked Send.
“OMG!” appeared on his screen. He flinched, but another message followed immediately. “Is Beth okay?”
“She’s taking it hard. Spending the night here at Maude’s place, with my dad and me.”
The cursor blinked, steadily, emptily. She didn’t reply, so he typed some more. “Were you close to Maude?”
“No. You?”
“Not really.”
“I thought she was your great-grandmother?”
He swallowed hard, licked his lips, hoped he hadn’t blown it. “I hardly ever saw her.”
“Oh.” There was a long pause, then. “What about Beth?”
“She went out a while ago. I think my father did, too.”
“Together?”
“I don’t know. I’ll check. BRB.” He got up and went to the window, noting the empty driveway. Then he returned to the PC. “Both cars are gone.”
“Do you trust your father?”
Bryan frowned. “That’s an odd question. Why do you ask?”
“Cuz people are after Beth. Maybe he’s helping them.”
“He’s not.”
“You sure?”
“I swear.”
She waited a long moment. Then she wrote, “You already knew she was in trouble, didn’t you? You weren’t even surprised.”
Bryan pursed his lips. “I think they’re back. Gotta go.”
“Who are you, really, Bryan?”
“See you later.” He quickly hit Send, then logged off before she could reply. He went to the window and looked outside, because he really had heard something. But the driveway remained empty.
Swallowing hard, Bryan went to the bedroom door, pulled it open and stepped slowly out into the hall. Something rattled. A doorknob? Were those footsteps he heard crossing the porch?
What the hell, was Maude back for a visit?
A shiver tiptoed along his spine. Bryan shook it off and crept down the stairs, wishing he had a baseball bat. Then, just before he reached the bottom of the stairs, headlights flashed through the windows as vehicles pulled into the driveway. He heard the engines shut off, and he heard his father’s voice. Then he watched the door open, and his dad came in, his arm around Beth, holding her as if she couldn’t walk on her own. She had one hand to her neck, and when his father snapped on the lights, Bryan saw blood there.
He shot into the living room. “What’s going on? What happened?”
Beth lifted her head. Her eyes looked wide and slightly dazed.
“Bryan, grab a first aid kit, will you? I think there’s one in our bathroom.”
Bryan nodded at his father and ran back up the stairs to get the first aid kit from their shared bathroom. He was back in less than a minute. By then Beth was sitting on the sofa, and his dad was on one knee in front of her, dabbing at her neck with a clean, wet cloth.
Bryan set the first aid kit on the coffee table, flipped open the top, took out some premoistened antiseptic wipes, tore them free of their wrappings and handed them to his father one at a time. His dad cleaned the blood from the small cut on Beth’s neck.
“So what happened? Where did you two go?”
Beth glanced down at his dad, then up at Bryan. “I couldn’t sleep. I decided to drive back to my place, but when I got there…”
There was a knock on the door. Frowning, Bryan went to get it, and was surprised to see Frankie Parker, in full uniform, on the other side. Her dark-blue shirt was tucked into navy pants with a stripe up the outsides. She wasn’t a small woman, and the belt on the pants changed her softly rounded shape from one bulge into two. The gun, handcuffs and nightstick hanging from that belt seemed so out of place. Her face looked like someone’s grandma—the kind you’d picture baking cookies and wearing a flowered apron.
“Is Beth here?” she asked.
Bryan opened the door wider, turning toward where Beth sat on the sofa, and Chief Frankie, as Bryan was coming to think of the woman, stepped inside. “Beth, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Your cottage…exploded.”
“Exploded?” Bryan repeated. He sent a wide-eyed look at Beth.
She nodded at him. “That’s what I was just about to tell you, Bry.” She looked at Frankie. “I was there. I was just pulling in to get some things when it happened.”
“Then you saw it?” Frankie asked.
She nodded. “I’d have stayed to wait for your arrival, but a piece of it landed in my neck.”
Chief Frankie crossed the living room and leaned closer. Beth moved her hand so she could see. “Hell.”
Josh laid a gauze pad on the spot and applied tape to keep it there.
“Do you have any idea what happened, Beth?” the chief asked.
Beth glanced at Josh. Something passed between them—a message. Maybe a secret, Bryan thought, and he wondered what was really going on. Then Beth shook her head. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Neighbors heard the blast and called 911. Must have been some blast, since the nearest neighbors are quite a distance away. Fire department arrived before I did, but there was nothing to put out. Russ Powell—he’s the fire chief—says he suspects a gas leak,” Frankie said. “Of course, we haven’t confirmed that. Once it’s daylight, we’ll get a better look at things and probably call in the state fire investigator. But I can’t think of anything else that would set a house off like that.” She frowned. “You might want to have a doctor take a look at that, Beth.”
“In the morning. Maybe.”
“Whatever you think is best. Did you see anything at the house, before it blew to kingdom come?”
Beth shook her head. “No. Nothing.”
Bryan saw the look his father sent her. As if he knew better. But he didn’t say anything out loud.
“Were you there, too?” Frankie asked, addressing Joshua.
“I was alone,” Beth said before Joshua could even get a word out.
Josh licked his lips, lowered his eyes. “I arrived after it happened. I didn’t see anything, either, other than Beth lying on the ground bleeding.”
Bryan thought Frankie was looking at his father oddly. As if she suspected him of something. “This is a whole lot to be happening all at once,” she said. “Maudie dying the way she did. No warning. And then Beth’s house blowing to hell and gone.”
And all right after he and his father showed up in town, Bryan thought, putting his own interpretation on the look in Chief Frankie’s eyes.
Frankie sighed. “All right. I may want to talk to you again tomorrow. You both going to be here a while?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Joshua said. He said it with a look at Beth, as if there were more to the words than was apparent.
“I’ll give you a call tomorrow, then.”
“Thank you, Chief Parker,” Beth said. To Bryan, her voice just didn’t sound right.
“You best get used to calling me Frankie,” the chief told her. She nodded goodbye, an act that made her tight copper curls bounce, and then she left.
Bryan closed up the first aid kit. “I think I’m going to brew some of that tea of Maude’s—she’s got all the jars labeled. I’m going for the one that says, Tranquil Sleep. Anyone else want a cup?”
“I’d love one,” Beth said. “Thank you, Bryan.”
He went into the kitchen, but he made sure he could overhear the conversation he sensed they were going to have the minute he was out of the room. Something major was going on here. And he wasn’t sure his father would tell him if he asked. But he was sure he wanted to know.
Chapter Eight
“You lied to the police chief,” Joshua said, watching Beth’s face. “You didn’t tell her you thought you saw someone in your house just before the explosion.”
She shrugged. “I don’t trust the government.”
“Frankie’s not government. She’s a cop. You don’t trust cops, either?”
She shrugged. “Cop, ATF, they’re all variations on the same theme, right? All working for the same system.”
“Frankie was Maude’s friend. You know that, so I don’t follow.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to. All you need to know is that I’m poison, Josh. You and Bryan should stay as far away from me as you can possibly get.”
He frowned. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“Bryan’s in danger just by standing too close to me.”
“In danger from what?”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to know that.” Then she lifted her eyes slowly. “I’m sorry, Josh.” She got to her feet, and went up the stairs, knowing that in the morning, she needed to think about getting the hell out of here. Hell, it was already morning. But later. Later.
She hadn’t planned to run from Mordecai. Not again. She had decided she would face Mordecai down, end this thing once and for all. But now there was more than her own life at stake. There were Josh’s and Bryan’s. God, this was the very reason she’d avoided personal involvements all this time.
Beth went up to her corner room in Maude’s house, washed up in the adjoining bathroom and wished she could change out of the T-shirt, but she knew she no longer owned any clothes other than the ones she’d been wearing today.
She crawled beneath the covers, but she couldn’t sleep. She could only lie there, running through an endless litany of things she had lost. All her clothes and books. Her television and furniture. Every bit of makeup. One of her guns, leaving her with
nothing but the tiny derringer, which held only two bullets at a time and wasn’t nearly lethal enough for her peace of mind.
Especially not now.
He’d found her. She knew it deep down in her gut.
She thought about her photographs of Dawny. Gone, every one of them. She would have been devastated by that, if not for her certainty that Jewel would make new copies for her.
The soft tap on her bedroom door surprised her. “It’s open.”
Josh opened the door, a mug in hand. “Bryan thought you might still want the tea.”
She nodded, and he came the rest of the way inside, closing the door behind him. He put the mug on the nightstand, then sat on the edge of her bed. “It might help you sleep.”
“I suppose so.”
“According to Maude, her teas are good for just about anything.”
She smiled, slid upward until her back pressed to the headboard, then reached for the mug. “Maude only served it in her antique china cups.”
“I guess Bry figured if a little was good, a lot would be better.”
“Typical male reasoning, I guess.” She took a sip, grimaced. Bryan had made the tea far stronger than Maude ever had, and he had neglected to add the honey, which was the only part that made the stuff bearable. Licking her lips, she set the mug aside. “So why are you really here?”
“Here in Blackberry?” Josh asked.
“That, too,” she said. “But let’s start with why you’re here in my bedroom.”
He had looked alarmed at her question, but only for an instant. He was good at covering his emotions, she thought. Maybe a little too good. It was almost as if he were used to doing it.
“I got the distinct feeling down there that I might just wake up tomorrow morning and find you gone, Beth. And I don’t want that to happen.”
“No? Why not? God knows you’d be safer. Your son would be safer. Hell, I might even be safer.”
He shook his head. “There’s nowhere on the planet where you would be safer.”
“Oh, that makes sense, when my house just got blown to smithereens and my best friend died under unexplained circumstances, doesn’t it?”
“The doctor said her heart stopped.”
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