Speak No Evil

by Anne Crosby Tanya

  Putting the car in reverse, she started to back out, then noticed the folded slip under her wiper and stopped abruptly.

  A parking ticket in the garage?

  She sure as hell wasn’t getting out to snatch it off the window. Right now, she just wanted to go home. She drove to the booth and a head popped up from below, scaring the crap out of her. She rolled down the window.

  The girl grinned sheepishly. “Sorry ’bout that! I was talking to my boyfriend—didn’t want anyone to see me on the phone.”

  At least she was honest, if stupid—on multiple counts. Caroline guessed the girl didn’t care much about her job or her life. “You ought to pay attention,” Caroline advised her, and suddenly felt guilty for insisting the booth be manned at this hour of the night. The girl was just a kid. Caroline was going to have to talk to the building managers again and work out a better solution. It seemed you couldn’t make one simple decision without considering all the consequences. No wonder her mother had shut down emotionally.

  “Oh, look!” the girl exclaimed, completely ignoring Caroline’s rebuke. “You have a love note under your wiper!”

  Caroline sighed. Oh to be young and in love, she thought, and gave the girl a wry smile. “I was going to grab it when I got home.”

  “Oh, no!” the girl exclaimed. “You’ll lose it when you get on the road. Let me get it for you!” She stretched out across the booth’s window and plucked it out from under the wiper, reading it first—rather rudely, Caroline thought—before handing it to Caroline with furrowed brows. “It’s just church people,” she said, sounding thoroughly disappointed.

  Caroline took the piece of paper from her, straightened it and squinted to read the computer-generated type in the dim interior of her car.

  Death and life are in the power of the tongue; those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18:21.

  Caroline automatically looked around the garage, her gaze skidding to a halt at a shadowy corner, where Brad Bessett stood smoking a cigarette in the dim light. The look he gave her—a half smirk—sent a chill down her spine, but then . . . she was starting to see everything as nefarious. He hitched his chin at her, acknowledging her, and then tossed down his cigarette, tamped it out and got into the little smoke gray Honda S2000 that was parked in the corner where he stood.

  Jack’s cell phone rang as he was tugging off his T-shirt. He struggled out of it, glancing at the clock. It was nine-thirty. Who the hell would be calling at this hour?

  He hoped to hell it wasn’t Kelly, and, at the moment, he was on the fence about Caroline. Every time they talked, it seemed there was another battle.

  Maybe that was never going to change, and the idea dismayed him. If he were a praying man, he would have predicted all his prayers would be answered by her return to Charleston. But that was not the way it had turned out; he was on the verge of wishing she would just go back to Dallas.

  His mood soured with his thoughts. It took him a minute to muster up the will to go after the phone, but it stopped ringing so he sat back on the bed, trying to figure out where the muffled ring had come from. More to the point, was there anyone he wanted to talk to badly enough to expend the effort to find it?

  The answer was no.

  But he was in the middle of an investigation that wasn’t exactly yielding results so he supposed he was obligated.

  It rang again.

  Was persistence a virtue?

  He couldn’t remember.

  He got up, staring at the pile of dirty laundry near his bed, resolved to find the phone. He bent, scattering a week’s worth of dirty clothes, but it stopped ringing for a second time.

  Now he was annoyed. Mostly at himself. But he was determined to find the goddamned phone, even if he told himself he didn’t give a damn who was calling. It was a matter of principle now. His house was a pit stop. The dishes stank. His clothes weren’t laundered. His face wasn’t shaved. His life was a wreck. And he really needed to find a killer before anyone else got hurt. The thing was . . . as determined as Caroline seemed to be to pin Amy Jones’s murder on Patterson, Jack was equally sure the guy was innocent.

  But he was starting to wonder about a connection to Amanda Hutto’s disappearance. After weeks of searching for the little girl without any leads, she was presumed dead, even if that wasn’t the official story. No body had been recovered. And that was the point . . .

  When his phone rang for a third time, he dove into the pile of clothes, locating the phone in the pocket of a pair of jeans he didn’t remember wearing. He dug it out, using words that would have made his mother proud, and finally answered.

  “Bad mood?”

  It was Caroline.

  “Slightly.”

  “Sorry to bother you at this hour . . . are you dressed?”

  Jack cracked a wry smile, his mood somewhere just south of reckless. “You’re either fishing for phone sex, or you’re on the way over. I’m guessing you’re on the way over.”

  “I have something to show you,” she said. “It’s probably nothing, though I called Josh because I thought it was odd . . . he thought I should show you.”

  “All right.” Jack ignored the little victory dance his heart did between his ribs. It was tackled immediately by his concern. “Come at your own risk,” he warned.

  “Funny.”

  He wasn’t remotely kidding. “You know how to get here?”

  “East Ashley, right?”

  “Past the Washout. Look for the naked yard with the unused kayak hanging out of the bushes and the half-built motorcycle in the carport.”

  She laughed. “I’ll be there in a sec. I’m just around the corner.”

  “See you then.”

  Jack hung up, and despite the warning he’d issued, he scurried to straighten up, shoving laundry into his closet and throwing away PowerBar wrappers.

  Caroline found the house easily enough, but as always, she thought Jack was too hard on himself. Many of the houses on this street were summer rentals. Mottled with beach scrub, it wasn’t as though any of them were Yard of the Month candidates. The residents here were mostly low key, preferring bare feet over designer shoes—except in the intensity of summer, when the sand was so blistering hot that even sandpipers hopped about nervously along the white-hot sand.

  The lights were on inside his house, but the blinds were down, offering just the faintest glow. Along the beachfront, lights burned behind the heavy blinds of a long row of houses—like a train of luminaries.

  Caroline wondered which house was Karen Hutto’s, and felt a twinge of guilt for not calling to check on the woman. The longer her daughter remained missing, the deeper the despair she was bound to fall into, and Caroline could scarcely bear the thought of looking into her eyes. It was like watching her mother all over again—her inner fire burning a little colder every day, until it finally sputtered out.

  She parked her car next to Jack’s kayak-sprouting bush and made her way up the rail-tie path. He opened the door before she got the chance to knock and stood there, silhouetted by the soft amber light inside, his shirt buttoned haphazardly and one side tucked into his jeans.

  A shiver swept through her.

  She told herself it was the damp night air, but it was too hot for shivers.

  “Come on in.”

  She wasn’t ready for the memories that accosted her at the sight of Jack half dressed. He no longer had the lanky body of his youth. His arms were well defined and his chest sculpted—not like the muscleheads she often saw in the gyms in Dallas, just well defined, like a guy who wasn’t afraid of work or sunshine.

  Caroline stepped in around him, careful not to touch him, and peered around his humble house, catching sight of familiar items—the soft doe-colored leather couch he had bought for his first apartment—their first apartment—a red paisley sixties-era lamp he had pilfered from his mother’s house before she was locked up and the rent had gone unpaid long enough for the landlord to padlock the house and seize her belongings. Jack
had realized it was inevitable. He had bailed her out too many times, so he’d let them box up his baby photos and auction off the valuables before tossing out the trash—the mementos of his life. Later, after his mother was released, her body had been discovered in an alley downtown, in a condition no son should ever have to bear witness to—even if he was her only next of kin. He had refused any help from Caroline and he had never really talked about it much afterward.

  Caroline felt a twinge of regret for the way she’d treated him when she’d first come home. Dissing his mother was a low blow, and she had only done so because she was hurting. She realized that now.

  Jack was right. She was still mad at him for waking up in another woman’s bed thirteen days before their wedding—even though he had sworn he hadn’t had sex with her. It hadn’t mattered. She’d been furious at her mother for sending him home with Claire—angry at Jack for taking her in the first place—and even angrier at him for not calling to tell her that her best friend had nearly O.D.’d on her mother’s pills. To make matters worse, some part of Caroline suspected her mother had set the entire thing up to keep Caroline from marrying Jack.

  Well, it worked.

  She tamped down a sense of indignation over the memory.

  He was staring at her, eyes gleaming slightly, studying her reaction to his home. “Want something to drink?”

  Caroline lifted her brows, taking in the glasses strewn about—all bar steins. “Are there any clean glasses left?”

  He shrugged.

  Caroline smiled wanly. “Really, I only came to show you this.” She opened her purse and fished around for the slip. “At first, I thought it was a parking ticket. . . .” She handed the piece of paper to him.

  Jack took it and moved closer to the lamp, unfolding it.

  His eyes grew wide, and she saw something register there—for just an instant; then he shuttered his gaze, and looked up with a tight smile. “Where did you get this?”

  He was hiding something.

  “On my car. Under the wiper.”

  “When?” Even the single word sounded strained.

  “Tonight. When I was leaving work.”

  “In the garage?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded, his eyes shifting back and forth between Caroline and the piece of paper, and he suddenly seemed on edge in a way he wasn’t previously. Caroline knew instinctively that whatever he keeping from her was something important, but she also realized that he wasn’t going to tell her anything after she’d broadcast his last disclosure to the entire city.

  Do you really blame him?

  “Was it there during lunch?”

  Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  She could see the wheels turning behind his ocean-blue eyes. “Do you mind if I keep it?”

  She met his eyes, unblinking, trying to read him. “Do you think it means something?”

  He shrugged, setting the pious declaration down on his coffee table.

  She noticed he couldn’t discard it fast enough, but he chose a spot on the table that to someone else might seem unintentional—out of range of potential spills and away from all other articles. He even moved a glass out of the way that had no more than a swallow left in it.

  “Dunno,” he said. “Maybe. Could be just a Bible-thumper leaving his calling card. Was there a similar slip on anyone else’s vehicle?”

  “There were a few cars in the garage, but I didn’t see it until I was already in my car and I wasn’t about to get out to check.” She wondered if she should tell him about Brad, but decided not to. Brad had to have walked out after her, because she’d spied him talking to Frank moments before she’d left the office. The note was already on her car.

  He stared at the note on the table.

  “Good girl,” he said, and finally focused his stark blue gaze on her. The tension from his body permeated the room.

  Caroline felt nervous merely standing near him.

  “There’s something else . . .”

  He tensed, the muscles in his biceps flexing.

  “I ran into Patterson in the market yesterday.”

  His brow furrowed. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Briefly. He asked me, in his words, ‘nicely’ to stop harassing him.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “Not really.”

  He moved toward her, the look in his eyes anguished.

  Caroline sucked in a breath, startled by the advance.

  “Caroline, promise me from now on you’ll go home when the rest of the world goes home . . . you don’t need to prove anything to your mother.” He reached out to touch her face. “Promise me,” he pleaded.

  Her hand automatically moved toward his, intending to pull it away. “Jack . . .”

  “I warned you to come here at your own risk,” he reminded her, his eyes swirling with emotion.

  Caroline didn’t pull away.

  She didn’t want to.

  She held her breath as he cupped her chin and leaned into the caress.

  That was all it took.

  Ten years of yawning, unsatisfied hunger was unleashed with a simple touch. Jack took her into his arms, his hands sweeping over her body, his mouth lowering to hers. He kissed her, and Caroline dropped her purse on the floor and threw her arms around him, her body responding in a way it hadn’t ever responded to anyone, ever. She groaned, kissing him back, pressing into the firm contours of his body, craving the warmth of his skin against her bare flesh.

  The next thing she knew, his hands were lifting up her skirt and she let him. He reached between her legs, beneath her panties, found her wet and growled deep in his throat.

  Tiny orgasmic spasms wracked Caroline’s body with that simple touch and the next thing she knew, her clothes were on the floor . . . and so were she and Jack.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jack wasn’t sure what got into him—something primitive and possessive.

  They fucked once on the living room carpet, like animals. The sight of her naked was a little like taking a starving man straight out of the desert, ribs sunken with hunger, and standing him before a table overflowing with all the sustenance he could possibly want.

  Afterward, he brought her into the bedroom to love her with his heart, making love to every inch of her body the way he had imagined doing for ten long years.

  He spread her legs, found the precious button he loved and feasted on the rich nectar of her body, drinking it in when she came on his tongue. He traced the outlines of her breasts, remembering the contour with his lips, the valley between and the pert nipples that pebbled against the warmth of his tongue.

  Every time he had ever been with Kelly—anyone for that matter—he had been thinking of Caroline. Every time he satisfied his body, he wished the communion were with Caroline. He didn’t want to make love to anyone else—ever.

  Only Caroline.

  Jack came three times through the night, but he was pretty sure Caroline did at least twice as often. Like fireworks in July, each culmination of her desire came in rapid succession, one after another, making her toes curl and filling his heart with warmth.

  They made love, gently, one last time and when they were done, she purred happily and he rolled to her side, thrusting his hands into her hair, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “I love you,” he whispered. “I have always loved you.”

  She remained silent. But that was all right by him. He’d let her go slowly, knowing she needed to do this on her own terms. If he pushed her, she’d shut down and he didn’t want to take any more backward steps. As Neanderthal as it might sound, she was his, always would be—proof of that was in the way she’d responded to him—but he could afford to wait until she realized it all on her own. They had waited ten years already.

  She peered up at the clock and Jack’s arm snaked around her waist, reading her mind, locking her into his embrace.

  It was two twenty-two A.M.

  “I should go home,” she said, smilin
g.

  “But you’re staying right where you are,” he told her with certainty. “Unless I’m coming with you, you are not leaving my house at this hour of the night—even if I have to tie your ass to my bed.”

  She giggled, and gave him a sultry look that heated his blood all over again. He didn’t think he had anything left in him. “Yeah? And what will you do to me then?”

  Jack hardened fully at the question and repositioned himself on his knees, lifting a brow as he peered down at her suggestively.

  There was one condom left in the drawer.

  Her wide-eyed expression when she realized how fully she affected him brought a wicked smile to his lips. “Let’s find out,” he suggested with a roguish grin.

  As an invitation, she tossed off the covers, gloriously naked, offering him her wrists to bind.

  He didn’t need further encouragement.

  Make a left-hand turn instead of a right . . . and later you hear you missed a three-car pile-up. But you listened . . . and you’re safe at home, pouring a glass of wine and flipping through news channels . . . feeling superior because . . . you knew.

  Instincts.

  Everyone had them. Most people ignored them. Even in absolute innocence, a child knows when to be wary—they feel it down in their little pile of twisting guts—an “uh oh” feeling that sends them wailing after Mommy’s skirts.

  The Hutto girl knew better.

  She’d followed him anyway, wanting to see the turtle nest he promised to show her.

  At some point, most people stopped listening to that inner voice.

  Then one day, you’re thirty-five, you’ve got kids at home and gray hair peeking through a dye job, and you’re alone in a parking garage when a guy approaches asking for directions.

  Maybe you think he’s cute, despite the scruffy, three-day beard and the hand buried in his hoodie . . . or maybe the color of his skin makes you feel guilty because your first instinct—your most primitive instinct—is to roll up the window and drive away.

  Or maybe you’re just stupid.