Too Close To Home

“My God, Katie!”

I couldn’t tell if my own words were a prayer or a curse, a thought or a scream. But my sister heard me.

She turned her head and stared at me.

I stared back.

“Brooke,” she whispered, and her tone told me nothing.

Then, suddenly, Katie went limp.

She collapsed down into the front seat, half turning as she pulled her knees up toward her chest and huddled on the seat. She was gasping, fighting to drag more oxygen into her lungs and not succeeding, no longer pulling the trigger but cradling the gun against her chest. Just as she used to hold on to her rag doll whenever she was scared.

I leaned into the car as I decided what to do.

Missy was dead. I couldn’t help her.

My sister might die. I owed her more than my life.

The decision was surprisingly easy.

I ignored Missy, frantically searched the front seat for the small purse Katie always carried with her. But I saw only the larger purse, now wide open. So I pulled open the glove compartment and dug through its contents, finally locating one of the backup inhalers we carried in every vehicle. From long habit, I gave it a quick shake, then shoved it between my sister’s bluing lips and pressed down on the plastic plunger.

I heard Katie’s quick intake of breath, knew she was trying to pull the medication into her lungs. She didn’t resist when I took the gun from her and replaced it with the inhaler. Then I supported her shoulders and helped her lift her trembling hands to her mouth once again. Another quick blast of medication, another gasping breath, and I began to believe that Katie might live.

By then Gran was there, standing in the doorway behind me.

I turned my face toward her, expecting her to elbow me aside, to take charge as she usually did. But she just stood there, her wrinkled face illuminated by the wash of light from the interior of the car, light bouncing off her glasses, her head slightly tipped. She was slack-jawed and openmouthed.

“She didn’t take care of her children,” Katie said in a whispery voice. As if that explained it all. “Bad mommies must be punished.”

Gran stared at me and Katie, then at Missy, then at me and Katie again.

“No,” Gran said. “No, no, no…”

She said the word over and over again. Quietly. Tonelessly. Volume and cadence unchanged as she just shook her head. Back and forth. Back and forth. Slowly. While I held my sister, who was now a cold-blooded murderer, in my arms. And wondered what I was supposed to do next.

Katie’s eyes filled with tears, the skin around her nose reddened, and she began sobbing, forcing out words between ragged, gulping breaths. She held her arms out toward our grandmother.

“Don’t be angry, Gran,” she wailed. “Katie’s still your good girl, isn’t she?”

Katie’s plea snapped Gran from her stupor. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, gave her head a quick shake. Suddenly she seemed more focused. Less aged.

“Yes. You’re still my good girl,” Gran said, her voice weary and terribly sad. Then her eyes sought mine. “Get on out of there, Brooke. Let me take care of your sister.”

By now, tears were plugging Katie’s nose and throat, and she was choking, wheezing, panicking again.

As soon as I slid from the van, Gran crawled in. She grabbed Katie’s chin, lifted it, forced Katie to look at her.

“Stop that at once. You’re making your asthma worse.”

Katie, like the good girl she was, hiccupped, sniffled and did as she was told. Gran reached past her to turn off the dome light, then the headlights and plunged us into darkness.

It was still dark when I disposed of Missy’s body in a place many miles away from Camp Cadiz. The only light I had was the emergency flashlight that had been in the glove compartment. I released the brake, then watched as the van disappeared beneath the water. Soon, I told myself, crayfish would strip the flesh from Missy’s body and silt would cover her bones. The secret would be hidden forever.

Most of the flashlight’s remaining life was used up as I tried to assure myself that, come daylight, no hint of my crime would be revealed. Only a dim glow lit my path away from the steep bank of the swampy river basin. So I walked as quickly and far as I could before the light gave out.

Then I was alone. There was no moon and no stars. And dawn was hours away.

I settled beneath a tree whose trunk was as large as a garden shed, whose height I could only guess at in the darkness. I leaned against the tree, the flashlight clutched in my hand, now useless for light and probably equally useless as protection. Gran had taken Grandfather’s gun with her. When I’d dropped her and Katie at the Cherokee Rose, she said she’d hide it somewhere safe. For a moment, I regretted not having the gun now. But I wasn’t all that sure I’d be able to use it. Not after seeing what its bullets had done to Missy.

The night wrapped around me. Not private or comforting, as I’d always found it before, but crawling with unseen terrors. Exhaustion and fear honed my hearing and dulled my ability to think rationally. Every moment that passed was potentially the moment just before Missy escaped her grave and came after me with mud-caked fingers, her bloody mouth stretched in a silent scream of revenge.

At daybreak, the forest was once again transformed into a safe and familiar place, and Gran could see well enough to drive. I hiked back to the intersection where she had promised to pick me up with Aunt Lucy’s car.

I climbed into the car, settled wearily into the passenger seat, and no doubt looked as exhausted as I felt. But the emotions I saw on my grandmother’s face—emotions that tightened her lips and narrowed her pale blue eyes—had little to do with my disheveled condition. Mostly, I suspected, her expression reflected frustration and anxiety. Her night blindness had forced her to rely on me to hide a murder that, if revealed, would expose the Underground and destroy the secret network that Gran had protected all her life.

But I knew, even then, that the Black Slough would not easily give up its dead.

“Don’t worry,” I said before she could ask. “It’s all taken care of. No one will ever find her. The Underground is safe.”

My eyes opened to the familiar darkness of my bedroom. For a moment, I lay very still, staring at the luminous numbers on my clock. Afraid, but not sure why. The memory of Missy’s murder was so familiar that it no longer produced fear. Only sadness and regret.

Three-twenty in the morning.

For another few heartbeats, I continued to wonder what had awakened me. Then the out-of-place noises registered above the hum of the window air conditioner. The scrunch of tires on the gravel driveway. The sound of an approaching car.

I rolled over, suddenly alert. The view out the bedroom window was of the side yard and woods, so I didn’t bother peering outside. Instead, I slipped my hand beneath the bed, immediately locating the locked box that held my SIG-Sauer P239. As I listened to the engine turn off and a car door slam, I twisted the key that remained in the lock unless I had company in the house and slipped my hand around the security of the compact pistol’s rubber grip.

I listened as Possum briefly woofed a greeting. A moment later, the back door opened, then closed softly. Highball didn’t raise an alert, which meant that either the noise hadn’t roused him from his deep sleep or he, too, recognized my visitor.

“It’s just me,” a familiar male voice said. The announcement was loud enough that, if someone in the house was awake, it would be heard and quiet enough that it was unlikely to awaken a sleeper.

By the time I heard Chad’s footsteps across the kitchen floor, my gun was under lock and key and my heart rate was back to nearly normal. Though I was tempted, I didn’t leave my bed.

The hallway light was switched on and, as Chad walked past my room, his shadow broke up the sliver of illumination that peeked beneath the bedroom door. A moment later, I heard the bathroom door close and the shower running.

Ignoring the thrust of pure lust that accompanied the image of Chad naked in my shower, I rolled over, thumped my pillow and tried to go back to sleep.

A few minutes later, the shower stopped running.

My renegade mind offered images of Chad stepping from the shower and me there with him. How long had it been since I’d used my tongue to catch the droplets that caressed his muscular, golden body? How long since his lips had followed some rivulet’s errant path down my breasts and along my curves?

Too long. Far too long.

I turned my head as I heard footsteps in the hallway, this time the sound of bare feet on a hardwood floor. Once again, Chad’s shadow blocked the light flowing from the hallway. He stood there for a time, on the other side of my bedroom door.

My breath caught in my throat as I waited in the bed we’d often shared. Wanting him. Determined not to want him. If there had a been a future for us—if the two of us had married—I already had Gran’s permission to reveal the secret of the Underground’s existence to him. That secret, I knew he would willingly protect. But he was too good a cop—too good a man—to condone murder. And a cover-up. I’d always known I could never reveal the secret of Missy’s fate. It had taken longer to realize that I couldn’t build a happy life on such a horrific deception.

“Brooke?”

It was Chad’s voice on the other side of the bedroom door. He spoke only that single word and it was not much more than a hoarse whisper. But in it I was certain I heard the echo of my own longing.

Don’t be stupid, I told myself. He probably just wants to talk.

I was in no mood for talk.

I couldn’t trust myself just to talk.

So I buried my face in the pillow, gritted my teeth as I willed away an ache I couldn’t ignore but would not give in to. For many months, lust had happily coexisted with my lies. But then came love. And love deserved better than lies. Chad deserved better than me.

Eventually, he walked away.

Eventually, I slept.

Chapter 5

The smell of frying bacon awakened me.

I opened my eyes, glanced first at the window—still dark outside—and then at the clock. It was 5:00 a.m. I shut off the alarm, which wasn’t due to ring for another thirty minutes, stretched, then slid from my bed. When I opened the bedroom door, the aroma of hickory smoke was joined by mellow undertones of coffee and a hint of sweet vanilla. Pancakes or French toast, I guessed, as much from experience as from an intimate knowledge of the groceries I had on hand. Though I couldn’t smell them, I knew that there would be scrambled eggs, too. Chad enjoyed a big breakfast and was an enthusiastic cook. Something I’d never complained about.

Lack of barking from the kennel and the kitchen meant that he’d already fed the dogs, too. No doubt he’d doubled Possum’s morning ration because Possum would have greeted Chad—and the sight of the food dish—with a brown-eyed, starved-puppy look and tail-wagging enthusiasm. Highball was far from being a puppy of any kind and definitely more dignified. But he would undoubtedly have received a double ration, too, because Chad took pride in being a fair man and, besides, loved the old dog almost as much as I did. As I got dressed, I thought about the canine ability to manipulate mere humans. Especially soft-hearted guys like Chad.

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