“In all the years I’ve worked dispatch I’ve never seen the like. A murder, a missing person, and an assault case all in one day? It’s like one of those signs of the Apocalypse, that’s what it is.”
Kevin jammed his hat on his head. “I’m outta here.”
“You be careful.” Harlene always made the words sound like a direct order.
“Don’t worry,” Kevin said. “If anybody’s getting hurt today, it’s not gonna be me.”
Randy Schoof was on the road toward Lake George when he heard the siren. He floored the gas pedal, one eye on the road and another on the rearview mirror.
When he saw an intersection ahead, he slammed on the brakes and fishtailed into a turn. He immediately stood on the gas again, sending the truck leaping forward on the deserted road, and when he spotted a farm stand whose sign read CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, he didn’t hesitate. He spun into the U-shaped drive and bumped over the dying grass to pull in behind the small wooden building. He killed the engine and rolled his window down.
The siren wailed through the rapidly cooling air, faint and getting fainter. He waited, his heart pounding, until he heard nothing. Then he started up the truck and headed for Route 57.
He had had the idea in the back of his mind the whole time Lisa had been talking about hiding out at a buddy’s cabin or finding a motel. The problem with both those ideas, he figured, was that wherever he was, somebody would know. But there was a place he could go-at least for tonight-that no one would know about. He wouldn’t have thought of it if it hadn’t had been for his earlier visit to Reid-Gruyn.
The old mill. He could park his truck right in the regular employee parking lot. No one would think twice about it being there-there were always cars and trucks around, and if anyone realized his truck was there and he wasn’t, they’d put it down to a mechanical problem. Then he could hike over to the old mill and sneak inside.
He grinned. Lisa would be pleased. It was the perfect spot. No one ever went there. No one would ever think to look.
Despite having the bathroom door shut tight to keep the steamy warmth in, she heard the kitchen door open as she shut the shower off. The rectory was an old house, and it thumped and creaked and popped with every change of pressure, whether it was a door opening or a footstep on the floor or a stair tread swelling and shrinking as the humidity rose and fell.
Good Lord, it had better not be Deacon Aberforth, coming back for another round. She had barely escaped intact that last time, when he asked her what she had been so apprehensive about. She had stammered something about the fund-raising for the roof repairs and stuffed him out the door.
But no, she couldn’t imagine Aberforth letting himself in. It had to be Hugh Parteger, stopping by on his way to the bed-and-breakfast where he would be spending the night. She had been surprised he hadn’t arrived before now; although New York City was light-years away from Millers Kill in every way that counted, it was only a four-hour drive.
She grabbed a towel and bent over from the waist, flip-ping her hair down before wrapping it into a terrycloth turban. She lifted her robe from its hook and slipped it on, belting it firmly. She stepped out of the bathroom in an explosion of steam and checked herself out in the mirror at the top of the stairs. Swathed in white toweling from her head to her ankles, she looked like someone auditioning to be an extra in a remake of The Mummy. Hugh would be amused. She briskly rubbed at her hair through its wrapping, then took the towel off and tossed it over the banister.
She padded down the stairs. “Hey,” she yelled. “Is that-”
Russ was standing next to her sofa table.
“-you?” she finished, her voice gone small.
“Uh,” he said. “Um, I was on my way back from the ME’s office…” His voice trailed off. He was holding a picture of her with her family, taken this past summer when she had gotten away to Virginia for two weeks. He tried to put it back, but he was watching her instead of his hand and wound up bumping the heavy silver frame against two others, knocking them down.
That got his attention. He tore his gaze from her and started propping the pictures up, nearly tipping over three more in his haste to clean up after himself. “Sorry,” he said. She could have sworn he blushed.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I shouldn’t have so many on that table anyway. They’re bound to fall over.” Part of her was thinking at how pleased her grandmother Fergusson would have been to hear her taking the blame on herself, like a good southern belle. Another part of her was acutely aware that under her all-enveloping robe, she was naked.
That thought must have occurred to Russ as well, because when he turned back to her, he looked not at her face but at the tie belted around her waist. Her heart was trip-hammering, blood like heated honey flowing through her veins, raising her body temperature until it seemed the cloud of steam was still with her, enveloping her in dampness and warmth.
He looked at her, his blue eyes that crackled like the glaze on a Japanese pot, and the fierceness and the ache she saw there dropped the bottom out of her stomach and made her go loose-limbed.
She stepped toward him. Something flared in his eyes. She took another step. She wasn’t going to stop. She couldn’t stop. She was alone with him, in her own house, on her own time, and they were both adults, and why should she stop? She wanted, and she realized that everything she believed in, everything she placed between this man and herself, was just another robe, and she could shrug it off and be naked. Be nothing more or less than who she was.
She took another step. It was easy. She wanted to laugh. She took another-
– and he looked away. Turned his whole body, so that he was edge on toward her, and she thought stupidly, Oh. So that’s the cold shoulder.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice tight.
In an instant, every cell in her body was icebound. She had never been so mortified in her life. “I’m sorry,” she managed to get out through her constricted throat. “I’m so sorry. I was-”
“For chrissakes, Clare, it’s not that.” He wouldn’t face her. “What, do you think I don’t want you?” He clenched his hands. “I can’t be responsible for both of us. You sashay across the room with your eyes saying, Take me, take me-what do you think I’m going to do? I’m not a monk.” He turned back toward her.
She stared at him. He stared at her. She felt her lips twitch. Then grin. Then she started laughing, hard, clutching her stomach through the robe.
“Okay, okay.” He sounded abashed, but he was grinning, too. “The monk remark was not well thought out.”
Sighing from laughter, she wiped her eyes. “I love you,” she said.
She had never told him that straight out, without an apology. He looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I love you, too,” he said.
They stood there, three feet apart, not knowing what to say. Clare glanced down to where her feet were peeking out from underneath the robe. “Well,” she said finally. “Now that we’ve covered that, would you like some soup?”
She walked to the kitchen without waiting for his reply, knowing that doing something, keeping busy, was the safest course. And even though she wasn’t the least bit hungry at the moment, she also knew she’d be starving once he left.
She had her head in the fridge when Russ pushed through the swinging doors separating the kitchen from the living room. “What kind of soup?” he asked. She could hear it in his voice, too, a deliberate attempt to be casual, as if the two of them hanging out in her house while she was practically undressed was a normal thing.