by Jodi Thomas
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, PJ.” He wondered if that midnight voice ever whispered something sexy. He wouldn’t mind hearing that.
Probably not. Piper never dated, and anyway she was way out of his league.
They drifted another half mile downstream, both watching the shoreline. He’d already walked the area, but if Boone was floating at night something might have caught his eye. A light from a house? A road?
Piper whispered, “We might want to turn around. The shore up around that curve is pretty populated, folks laying trotlines by the midnight light might see us.”
She reached for the cord to start the little motor. The engine didn’t turn over. It didn’t even hiccup a cough that sounded like the beginning of starting.
Piper tried again, then again. Colby even tried twice.
“I guess we’re walking home. It would take hours to paddle upstream,” Piper announced as if it was her call. “It’ll take forever if we follow the bank. There’s a road that runs a few hundred yards from here. It winds right past your cabin and then into town.”
They both fought the flow of the river with splintery old oars until they were four feet from the bank. Colby jumped out, sinking to his knees, and tugged the boat to shore.
To her credit, Piper joined him when they were a foot out and helped him pull the boat in. She slipped once forward in the mud and again backward against him.
Colby pulled the boat onto dry land and offered his hand to her. Muddy fingers grabbed his. When she squalled, he laughed, then pulled her up the bank.
Once-white sneakers were now covered in mud, and her black clothes now looked camouflaged with brown mud and wet green leaves.
“You got someone who’ll help you get this tiny yacht home?”
“I’ll figure it out,” she answered quickly, making it plain she didn’t need his help.
“No, I’ll figure it out,” he snapped. “If you ask for help, people will gossip. If anyone sees me with this boat, I’ll just tell them that I had to go fishing to get my mind off of you and I accidentally stole your boat.”
“Great.” She fell into step with him as they reached the road. “Your new bar friends will probably riot if I try to file charges against you. I dock my boat by the old Honey Creek Café and everyone in town knows they can borrow it for an hour.”
“You wouldn’t ever press charges against me, PJ. I saved your life.”
“When?”
“If it wasn’t for me catching you, our beloved mayor would be dead in the water or look like a walking mud-man right now.”
“Thank you for that. I can swim so I doubt I’d die,” she said. “But if I arrived in town covered in mud you can bet it would be on the radio by eight.”
He laughed. “I never would have guessed you were so picky about your appearance. When I met you, you didn’t even have shoes on.”
“There was a time when a woman was considered insane if she wasn’t dressed properly.”
He looked at the mayor’s clothes spotted with mud. “There must be millions of crazy people hanging out at garage sales and discount stores, but, PJ, you’re not one of them. Even muddy and wet you look great.”
She laughed and stumbled over a bump in the road.
He caught her hand and didn’t let it go. “For safety’s sake,” he told her.
Chapter 12
Midnight
Pecos
Pecos was so busy thinking about seeing Kerrie tomorrow that he almost didn’t see the couple walking down the center of the farm-to-market road between town and his folks’ farm.
He hit his brakes, and the pickup swung crossways in the road. Leaning his head out the window, he yelled, “Are you crazy? Get out of the road!”
“Sorry,” the man shouted. “I was just walking the mayor home.”
Pecos jumped out of the pickup. “The mayor? Are you all right, Miss Mackenzie?”
“I’m fine, Pecos. Any chance you could give me and Colby a ride back to town?”
“Sure, but I’m an Uber driver so I’ll have to charge you.”
The man with the mayor swore under his breath.
Pecos decided he didn’t like the stranger. “Half price for the mayor but full price for you, mister.”
“We’re going the same way, kid.”
“I don’t care. Since I drove the Moody sisters around I charge by the person. And I’ll expect enough tip to cover the cost of having to wash off the mud you’ll leave on my seat.”
The stranger didn’t say a word. He just walked over and opened the passenger door. Pecos thought the man probably figured out the price was not negotiable after midnight. If he decided to complain to the Uber company, they’d just say they never heard of Pecos Smith. After all, Pecos hadn’t gotten around to telling them he was working for them.
The outsider offered his hand to the mayor, but she didn’t take it.
Pecos was too curious to not ask. “How’d you two end up out here this time of night together? This ain’t a sidewalk. I’m probably the only person who drives this road after dark.”
The man opened his mouth, but Piper spoke first. “I like to motor out and think at night.” She looked at her companion. “I ran into this idiot fishing. The motor got tied up in his line and Mr. McBride did nothing.”
“It’s dark out there.” Mr. McBride answered like he thought the whole thing was her fault. “Who in their right mind would go boating on a moonless night?”
That ended Pecos’s guess that they were lovers. He started the pickup and waited. “You have to pay first since you didn’t use the app.” He didn’t mention that he wasn’t on the app.
The stranger handed Pecos a twenty. “Will this get us the couple of miles back to town preferably without any more questions?”
Pecos held the bill up to the dashboard lights. “I don’t have change.”
The man swore. “Keep the change, kid.”
For some reason the mayor thought this was funny. She poked at the stranger like he was a blow-up toy that needed air.
Pecos figured the pair must be drunk. Even if he told someone about finding them out here, no one would believe him.
They rode back to town in silence.
He let them out half a block from Widows Park, figuring she might not want the stranger to know her address. Her home where all the Mackenzie women lived wasn’t far and Pecos didn’t really care how far it was from where Colby McBride stayed.
The mayor headed toward town and Pecos figured the guy was heading toward Fisherman’s Lodge. The old lodge and the Honey Creek Café were the only two things down that road.
Pecos parked and watched them for a few minutes. She didn’t turn around as she walked toward the huge old Victorian house that had been turned into the Honey Creek Café, and the cussing man didn’t look back as he strode the other direction. In a blink the mayor disappeared behind the trees lining a driveway. Pecos figured she knew a shortcut home.
Pecos turned his truck and started back home, passing the stranger. Smiling about the twenty he’d just made, Pecos waved.
The stranger didn’t wave back. If he and the mayor had been out on a date, it must have been the worst ever. They hadn’t even said goodbye.
Chapter 13
Long after midnight
Sam
The almost preacher walked the sidewalks of Honey Creek by the low streetlights’ glow. Like the town, the concrete was uneven and broken in spots, forming interesting clusters of shattered pieces. Earthy mosaics reminding Sam of his life. The pieces didn’t fit together like a puzzle, but seemed more forged in place. The simple childhood, the quiet seminary, the constant march of the army and thrill of jumping into fires.
He was thirty-eight. What next?
Tomorrow he’d give his first sermon and the possibility frightened him more than going to war. Maybe he should just stick with some general theme like “we should all love one another,” but Sam had seen enough in the army to believe it could never be that
simple.
Hell, he didn’t even want to love himself most of the time. When he was fighting fires, he had a mission. He had a reason, a quest. But preaching to people who probably weren’t listening didn’t make much sense. How could it have made his father so content?
Sam remembered how his dad used to hum as he walked, like he could hear the hymns of Heaven whispering down from above.
Maybe Sam could preach about following the Ten Commandments. . . only he’d broken several of them. For a few years he’d used the ten dos and don’ts as a playbook on leave.
This living another life for a while didn’t seem to be working out. Maybe that saying “You can never go back home” was true. Sam had been nuts to think he could change his life so drastically.
As he walked to the edge of town where farmhouse lights sparkled like grounded stars in the distance, he thought about leaving Honey Creek before dawn. He could drive back to Denver and go to work. Vacation over/experiment done. No one could go back in time and live the life he first planned. No one.
He turned toward the church. Maybe he could leave a note that said he’d had a family emergency. A lie to cover a lie sounded about right.
But he had no family.
He had nowhere to go but back to work.
As he passed a bar across the street from where he and the mayor had eaten last night, he considered going in for a few drinks. But no, that didn’t seem right either. His collar seemed to tighten a bit around his neck.
A man almost as tall as he was was walking toward him. Sam recognized him as the guy who’d changed from scrubs to western clothes in the truck stop restroom the other day. Sam had been told by one of his new friends that this fellow was new in town. Looking to buy land. Courting the mayor.
“How’s it going, cowboy?” Sam said.
The cowboy seemed taken aback to see another person out in the night. “Fine, Preacher. And you?”
Sam stopped walking when they were three feet apart, and so did the cowboy. It was dark enough so that neither one of them could see much of the other’s face.
Total honesty ruled the darkness. More to himself than to this stranger, Sam said, “I don’t think I belong here.”
“Me either,” came the other man’s words. “Did you ever try to help someone who didn’t want your help?”
“That seems to be my new job description. A few hours ago a man asked for some advice about his drinking problem with whiskey on his breath.”
The cowboy nodded in understanding.
An old story popped into Sam’s mind. Three robbers were burglarizing a home. Two went in. One dressed up like a policeman and walked the city street outside the window where his friends had disappeared. He liked talking to the people, tipping his hat, being smiled at. He liked being an officer of the law. When his companions slipped out of the home’s window, the pretend lawman forgot he was one of them and blew his whistle. Clothes Make the Man.
But Sam didn’t think this was working for him. He’d been lost so many times in his life that he didn’t have any idea how to find himself. Here in the darkness he knew he’d met a mirror man in this stranger.
The stranger gave a salute, then continued on his way. Sam did the same. The cowboy melted into the night.
A few minutes later, when Sam turned onto the tiny walkway beside the church, he saw that all the windows were dark as if blindly staring at an imposter walking below them.
All but one.
The last one, Stella B.’s tiny office, where she kept the books.
He told himself that he’d slip by, not look over. If she was still working, seeing him pass might frighten her. Maybe she’d simply left the light on.
In spite of his best efforts, when Sam walked by, he looked in.
Stella’s head rested on her arm on the desk. The muffled sound of weeping seeped through the thin glass.
Sam swung up the steps and opened the unlocked back door. Five steps later he was in her office.
“What’s wrong?” He sounded as panicked as she looked. “Has something terrible happened?” His brain was swearing and praying at the same time. Praying he didn’t have to preach a funeral for someone and cussing himself for being so self-centered.
Stella gulped back tears and tried to speak, but only a squeak came out.
“An accident? A murder? A fire?” He felt like he was on a game show and had no idea what the question was much less the answer. “A tornado. Someone robbed the church?”
She shook her head.
He moved around the desk and gently took her shoulders. “Stella, you have to tell me. Are you in danger? Are we in danger?”
“No,” she finally whispered. “I’ve run away from home. Will you help me, Pastor?”
Chapter 14
1:30 a.m., Sunday morning
Colby
After talking to the preacher, Colby walked to the nearest bar. It might be half an hour until closing, but he could drink enough to wash away a few memories of tonight.
He hadn’t slept in two days, the wound at his side still throbbed, and he hadn’t made any real progress on the case. This idea for putting himself on the fast track toward becoming a Ranger didn’t seem to be working, and the mayor was one step away from hating his guts.
Boone Buchanan was still missing, and no one seemed to care except the press.
After two beers, Colby switched to whiskey. He kept wondering why he’d said that to the preacher. Just because they once passed each other in a roadside restroom didn’t mean they had to be honest with each other.
What kind of preacher says he doesn’t belong here? Maybe he was living a lie, too, playing a part just like Colby. Most preachers were out of shape, even a bit rounded, but Sam Cassidy looked like he worked out. Most preachers had a sunshine smile even when it was raining. Colby had never seen Cassidy smile.
The preacher was hiding something. No doubt. Come to think of it, half the folks in town looked like they needed to stand in a lineup.
Maybe he was an ex-con planning to act like a preacher so he could break into homes. After all, everyone opens the door for a man of the cloth.
Colby turned his thoughts back to the mayor. All he was trying to do was help her out of this mess, but it often felt like she was fighting him. Maybe she just didn’t like him. But which side of him? The guy who was trying to court her, or the trooper trying to locate her boyfriend.
Who wasn’t really her boyfriend, or so she said. He’d looked at the press photos. She did look bored in every one.
Colby ordered a double and rolled the empty glass across his throbbing forehead. He couldn’t think. Or actually, he couldn’t stop thinking—memories of Piper flashing across his mind like ground lightning.
Holding her hand. Pulling her up against his chest when she’d almost fallen. Putting his hands on her waist to lift her up. How could a woman so proper feel like dynamite in his arms?
It was like cell memory from a hundred lifetimes ago. He knew the feel of her. Even when they were arguing, he cared for her, protected her.
It made no sense. He liked women . . . for a short time anyway. Then they started asking too many dumb questions, like “How do I look?” There is no winning on that one. Even if you say great, they get mad because somehow that wasn’t good enough. Or, like “What are you thinking?” Better to say nothing and let her think you don’t think than mention anything.
Most men who count the number of dates before they plan to break up have had their hearts broken, but not Colby. He’d figured out from the beginning that falling in love was a trap. The first few dates are great, but once she says “I think I love you,” it’s all downhill from there. Before she settles into a “happy ever after,” she wants a remodel of you. Then when you change for her, she reminds you as she walks out that you’re not the man you used to be.
Colby stood, leaving his last drink untouched and a twenty on the table. When this was over.... when all was solved.... it still wouldn’t be over between them. No
t for him, anyway. Mayor Mackenzie would still be in his thoughts long after this job was finished.
He’d made it almost to the door when he recognized the other customer in the bar—it was the mechanic who’d worked on the Harley he’d bought. “Evening, Daily.”
The man looked up with eyes so bloodshot Colby wondered if he could see.
“Evening, Colby. You get the girl?”
Colby stepped into cowboy mode. “Nope, she hasn’t come to her senses yet. She thinks she can do better than me, but I plan to put up a fight for her heart.”
Daily was mumbling something about having a girl once who died in a car wreck. His words weren’t clear, and Colby didn’t try to untangle his meaning.
As Colby helped the mechanic make it out the door, he noticed three little kids sitting in a wagon across the street. “Those yours?”
“No,” Daily said. “They’re not real.”
“They look pretty real to me, Daily.”
The drunk turned away, and headed down the street.
To Colby’s surprise the three kids started following Daily. Colby shook his head. Another mystery he didn’t have time to look into.
Now, as the moon passed behind clouds, Colby began to walk back toward town. In a little while he passed a big, old house close to the water. After a moment he recognized it as the café where he and Piper had coffee this morning. From the sidewalk, the place was so overgrown near the road he wouldn’t have seen the turnoff if he hadn’t been walking.
And now that he thought of it, hadn’t Piper been walking in this direction when they had parted ways earlier?
Only one light was on near the back of the house. He wouldn’t have noticed it, but the reflection floated on the water like a spirit who’d met a watery end. The big three-story home of a sea captain was almost enveloped in hundred-year-old trees from this side. As he walked closer to the water he saw a balcony one floor up with open French doors to let in the night air.