by Lilian Darcy
Same story as before. No damage. Nothing taken.
The Gun Mart owner, a bad-tempered man in his fifties called Bill Rainey, had vowed he was done with these idiots, though. He was going to sit in the store the rest of the night, and for as many nights as it took, catch them at it and get them punished by the law. Take it into his own hands, if he had to. He’d been advised that this last plan was not a good idea.
Was the whooping coming from the Gun Mart? Harrison couldn’t tell, and didn’t have time to find out. He pulled up outside the Church Avenue address he’d been given and prepared himself for waking Annette and Gary Shepherd with what might well turn out to be the worst news they would ever hear.
When Kate arrived back at River Bend Park ahead of the highway patrol vehicle, Neve was still missing and the mood on the sand had shifted to chaos and hysteria. There were girls crying in each other’s arms. Jay sat huddled by the fire, wrapped in a blanket and lost inside himself. Lorelai Grey sat beside him but he’d shut her out, and her hand on his arm looked forlorn and unwanted.
Meanwhile, Kate recognized the Sheenan twins’ pickup truck grinding and blundering dangerously along the river’s edge downstream, far too close to where the spring snow-melt had undercut the bank. They were still looking for Neve.
“Tell those boys to stop,” she told the highway patrol officer, showing them the pickup. “Or this’ll end up a triple tragedy.”
She’d already accepted that Neve was lost… gone… drowned… dead.
You hoped for miracles.
Of course you did.
But she’d seen Neve go into the water with her own eyes, seen her flailing arms and the moment when the pink of her dress disappeared into blackness, and there’d been no sight and no sound since.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Neve had been drunk and probably drugged as well – one of those party drugs, supplied by Judd Newell, that meant you didn’t feel the cold, even when the cold was doing you damage.
That water was freezing. Even if Neve had, by some miracle, managed to haul herself out of the water farther down the bank, the cold would kill her with insidious speed. And she hadn’t hauled herself out. There’d been no sound, no sighting. She was gone.
Kate went over to the fire. “Jay, we need to get you home,” she told him, gentle and practical. “All of you. There’s nothing more for you to do.”
But they wouldn’t move, and she had no authority. At least the Sheenan boys were lurching their way back upstream now, so she could let go of her fear that their pickup would collapse the bank and send them into the river, too.
More vehicles arrived, the start of an official search. Suddenly, here was Harrison. He saw her and said, “Kate!” in shock and surprise, and before she knew it her hands were engulfed in his and he was rubbing them. Only now did she realize how cold they were.
She wanted to bury her head against his shoulder, but she couldn’t, and it was only their hands that touched, his intensely reassuring in their warmth and strength and size, hers half-numb and unable to move.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. His voice rumbled deep, and then caught a little.
“I saw the cars turning off. I was worried. Judd Newell, I’m sure he’s dealing drugs. But then he left, with his brother. I don’t know where they went. These are just kids. I know they’re eighteen, but I’m their teacher. I felt a responsibility, even though it seemed like spying. And then…” She shuddered, couldn’t repeat in words what had happened to Neve, and knew Harrison would have taken her in his arms if he hadn’t been in uniform, if this hadn’t been such a devastating scene. She could feel it in the air between them, a kind of pull, and a nakedness. She wanted the contact so much, but it would have been wrong.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Breathe, Kate.”
She breathed.
Him. His calm.
She breathed her memories of the other night beside his car, the way he’d been so tender and generous and skilled. She was so happy and relieved and—and nourished, somehow—to see him that she couldn’t even remember, at first, why there was a question hanging over their heads and then suddenly did.
He’d taken his house off the market. Did that matter?
He cut in on her thoughts. “You’re freezing. You’re not dressed for this.” He looked at her dress, at the thin shoulder straps and the curved neckline that showed the barest hint of a swell where her breasts began. Just the other night he’d touched her there…
She felt a fresh stab of vulnerability. He knew so much about her. Knew what made her body respond. Knew that she would let it happen, let it sweep her away, without any thought to consequences. “I stopped here on the way home from the prom. It was such a mild night, I didn’t even bring an evening jacket.”
“Tell me, you were here when it happened?” he said. “You saw her fall in the water? Actually saw it?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.” She understood what he wanted from her, now. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. She and Jay Brown were arguing. She was wild, wanting him to dance in the water with her. She’d been drinking and who knows what else. She didn’t feel the cold at all. Party drugs can do that, can’t they?”
“Yes, some of them. Was she impaired by what she’d had?”
“Yes, significantly, I’m sure. She was splashing herself as if she was hot and wanted to cool herself down. Jay was telling her to take care, or be sensible, or something. I couldn’t hear the words, but it was obvious from their body language. She pulled on him and he pushed her, trying to get her to let him go, and she fell.”
“He pushed her?”
“Yes, but it was self defense more than anything. He wasn’t trying to make her fall, I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll have to talk to him. Don’t repeat what you’ve told me, okay?”
“No… no, of course not.” Over his shoulder, she saw Gary Shepherd approaching and her stomach lurched.
Two months ago, Gary and Annette had sat in front of her at school, telling her they were worried about Jay Brown and their daughter, and now Neve was… gone… and Jay was sitting there, slumped and hopeless, fighting to get warm after he’d spent twenty minutes lunging around in the water in search of her, desperate to find her, trying so hard.
Beautiful, dangerous Neve.
A daughter. A girlfriend. A woman.
No, a kid.
“What the hell is happening?” Mr. Shepherd demanded. “Why isn’t anyone searching?”
Harrison let Kate go, his warm palms sliding over her hands as if he really didn’t want to move. But he had to, of course. He took Gary Shepherd away, and Kate heard the low rumble of his calm, steady voice, and the higher, harsher notes of the stricken father trying to make the impossible into the possible through the sheer force of his will. “She can’t. It can’t. It has to—w”
It was horrible.
After a while, Harrison had a free moment and she said to him urgently, “Please tell me what to do. What’s happening? How can I help?”
“Get some of these kids home,” he answered, full of quiet authority. “You have a car?”
“Yes, my pickup, over there in the lot.”
“We’re getting them all home. We have more people on the way to search. I’m going to sit Jay in my vehicle now and take a formal statement from him. Find some of the kids who weren’t watching what happened and take them, can you? We don’t need to keep them here for this if they didn’t see anything.”
She nodded, and tried to think who those kids might be, while Harrison had already moved on to the next person who needed him.
Ren Fletcher and Ruth Wilson, she decided. They’d been lying on a blanket on the coarse sand near the fire, making out as if the world was about to end. Ruth’s prom date, Sam, wasn’t even here, and Kate still had no idea what had happened to sweet, studious Tully Morgan tonight.
Lorelai Grey, too, had been pretty thoroughly wrapped up in her date, Trey Sheenan, but Trey and Troy were
both looking like they would refuse to leave unless ordered to do so, point-blank. They knew this river and this park pretty well. “There’s a place on the far bank about a hundred yards down, where it’s undercut and there’s a heap of tree roots. If she made it there, she could be unconscious, or something,” Trey was saying.
“Yeah, look there. We’ll show you the place,” Troy came in, while his prom date Heather was one of the girls still crying and shivering over between the river and the fire. The fire was going out, now. The flames had stopped leaping bright in the air and there was a bed of coals instead, going grey with ash around the edges. No one had the presence of mind to keep it going, or maybe they hadn’t collected enough wood.
“Ren, Ruth, Lorelai, Heather,” Kate said to them, “Sheriff Pearce says I need to get you home.” She made it an order, not a request, and they were too bewildered and shaken up to argue. It had to be after one-thirty in the morning by now.
Suddenly, she felt a movement behind her, and then the swish of fabric across her shoulders. “Put this on.” It was Harrison, draping a jacket around her. His jacket, she realized. Not part of his uniform, just a garment he must have had in his vehicle. It smelled of him, the clean, cottony scent she’d begun to know.
She was so cold by now that she didn’t argue. “Thank you.” She pushed her arms through the sleeves and felt as if she was wrapped in him not just his clothing. Wrapped in his care. Wrapped in his strength. The jacket was padded and zippered and warm, with a fleece collar that was soft against her bare neck.
He nodded in satisfaction when he saw her hands go to fasten the zipper, and for a moment their looks met and held. “It’s good that you’re here,” he said. “One of the few things that’s gone right for these kids tonight. The fact that you saw. That you can back up what Jay Brown is saying.”
“Yes.”
“Wish we could talk,” he blurted out, tight and fast.
“I know.”
“Stuff to talk about, I think.”
“I know that, too.”
But there was no more time for this now. They tore themselves away.
Ren and the three girls followed Kate to the pickup in silence, and in pairs. Ruth clung to Ren, while Lorelai and Heather seemed to be holding onto each other for physical support, as if they might otherwise fall. They carried their flimsy, spike-heeled shoes, and their bare, half-frozen feet looked far too soft and tender for the bitumen-coated gravel of the parking area, just like her own.
Ren took the front seat without discussion, and Ruth looked bereft at being forced into the back with the other girls. She and Ren really didn’t belong here, with these other kids.
“Tell me where you all live,” Kate asked them, although she already knew Lorelai lived above her family’s saloon, and Ren in a rather nice house halfway along Bramble Lane.
She dropped Lorelai off first, then Heather, then Ren, and was finally left with Ruth. Each time she’d stopped the pickup, she’d offered to come into the house with them, talk to their parents if they wanted, but none of them had. Grey’s Saloon had looked quiet and dark, and Lorelai had let herself in through a side door. Lights had been on at Heather’s place, and her dad had appeared as soon as he heard the car. At Ren’s place, Kate had seen both Fletcher parents in the doorway, and heard an exclamation from his mother. “Qu’est-ce que se passe?”
Ruth had moved to the front seat after Ren climbed out. She’d tried to get him to kiss her, but he’d shrugged her off and loped quickly up to the house. “I’ll call you, okay?” he’d muttered.
Now she was crying, and Kate repeated her previous offer. “Need me to come in with you?”
“Yes, please.”
So there was a scene at the front door, with Ruth’s mother making horrified noises and Ruth shaking and sobbing, and Kate felt so helpless and inadequate, she just didn’t have words.
She remembered what she and Harrison had said to each other only four days ago about what a sheriff sometimes had to do, the news he had to break, the scenes he had to witness, and she felt a moment of profound… blessing, that was the only way she could think of it… because Harrison was in her life, because he hadn’t looked at her tonight out at the park in a way that suggested he and his ex were getting back together, as if that was the reason his house wasn’t on the market any more. Instead, he’d taken her hands and engulfed them in comfort and warmth, and now she was wearing his jacket.
This was the only thing that kept her going, and it seemed so selfish. Neve Shepherd was drowned, but things might just about be okay, because Sheriff Pearce had held Kate’s hands in a gesture of promise and given her his jacket to keep her warm.
After Ruth and her mother had gone inside and the light on their porch had gone out, Kate sat at the wheel of the pickup for several minutes, trying to find some direction. She wondered if Annette Shepherd had anyone with her, and if fourteen-year-old Kira was sleeping through the nightmare of her sister’s disappearance.
With only a vague idea of what she was doing, she drove over there, remembering their Church Avenue address because it had been staring up at her from Neve’s file, that day she’d met with Annette and Gary to hear their concerns about their daughter. They actually lived next door to the Morgans.
On the way down their street, three houses away from the Shepherds’ home, she saw a figure walking along the sidewalk, shadowed by the trees that lined the manicured verge between sidewalk and street.
Dear Lord, it was Gemma Clayton.
CHAPTER NINE
Gemma had her shoes in her hand and she was limping as if her feet were blistered and bruised—as well they might be. Was it possible she’d walked all the way here from River Bend Park? It was around two hours since she’d run tearfully after Judd and Garth’s departing car. The walk would have taken about that length of time. Lordy, no wonder she was limping.
Kate slowed and Gemma turned at the sound of the pickup. She looked frightened, and Kate quickly lowered the window to call to her. “Gemma, it’s me, Kate MacCreadie.”
The fear evaporated from Gemma’s face, to leave her looking wrung out and oddly empty. Sheer exhaustion, probably. “Oh,” she said, then didn’t move or say anything more.
“Get into the truck,” Kate prompted her. “You must be frozen.”
“No, I’m fine thanks.” She used that high-pitched, overly polite tone that some teens adopted when they were talking to older people and had a strong desire to conceal what they were thinking. Kate knew it well. She heard it almost every day.
“You’re not fine,” Kate said. “And you must get in the truck and get warm, and rest your poor feet. Where are you going?”
Gemma walked slowly and obediently toward the pickup and Kate leaned across to open the passenger door. She’d put the heating on high to warm herself and the kids coming back from the park so it was toasty in here now, and she kept the engine running so it would stay that way. Gemma seemed to respond to the heat like a living force, and for several long minutes she simply sat there in silence, as if she was clinging to the warmth for sheer survival.
“I don’t think you’re fine,” Kate suggested gently, once more.
“Really, Miz MacCreadie, it’s okay.” The bright, tinkling voice again. “I’m just cold, and tired, that’s all.”
“I’m not surprised. You walked that whole way back?”
“Whole way back?” She seemed frightened again, confused about what Kate was suggesting.
“I was out at River Bend Park,” she explained, still speaking gently. “I live out past that way. I’d seen on my way home that the party was happening there, and I wanted to make sure everything was all right. I saw Judd and Garth leave you behind when they roared off.”
Gemma closed her eyes and nodded. “Okay. That’s what you meant. I didn’t see you.” After a moment, she opened them again and said, “But I’m fine. Really.”
“I’m going to take you home,” Kate told her. “Is that where you’re headed?”
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“Um, no, this isn’t my street. I was going to Neve’s.”
“To Neve’s?” Kate echoed blankly.
“See if she was home yet, from the after party. Just… hang out and talk and stuff, you know? I’m not sure if she ended up going out to the Sheenan ranch after the park, or what.”
Oh dear God, of course she doesn’t know. She left before it happened.
The night was such a muddle of drama and cold and sadness, Kate had lost track of the order in which everything had taken place. Gemma had run after Garth and Judd’s car before—
“Gemma, I need to tell you something.”
She didn’t even know how she managed to break the news. There was no good way to say it. Gemma took it in, silent and motionless—so motionless, it was almost as if she was afraid to move—and when Kate tried to coax a response from her, she blurted out, “I’m going to throw up,” and almost fell against the door as she opened it, before stumbling into a kneeling position on the grass and heaving.
Kate went to help her, bringing a wad of tissues from the evening bag she’d had at the prom, half a life-time ago, but Gemma waved her away. “I’m okay.”
“Please take the tissues at least.”
Gemma took them, then Kate coaxed her back into the truck. “Take your time. I’m here to help, okay? This is a terrible, terrible thing.”
Gemma nodded, dry lips pressed together. There were traces of tear-stained mascara around her eyes and her honey-blond hair hung in rat tails around her face. Her lipstick had gone long ago.
They sat some more.
Two cars came down the street. One turned into the Shepherds’ driveway, while the other parked at the curb. It was Gary Shepherd and Sheriff Pearce. Both men emerged slow and stiff from their vehicles, and Harrison put a gentle arm around Gary’s shoulders and helped him toward the house with the care of a brother. Gemma saw them and said, “That’s her dad. Has he—?”