Nighttime Guardian

Sixteen months, she thought numbly, as her headlights picked out the last curve in the road before she reached her grandmother’s house. Michael had been gone for over a year. Sometimes it seemed like only a heartbeat ago that the two of them had been planning their future together. Sometimes it seemed like a lifetime. Those times were the hardest, when Shelby would lie awake at night, unable to remember what he’d looked like. Oh, she could recall his beautiful grey eyes, the sound of his voice, the way he smiled. But she had trouble putting all those features together, making him seem real again.

It’s time to let go, Shelby.

I can’t. It’s my fault he’s dead. If I hadn’t been late—

Lunt would have killed you, too. You know that.

Getting out of L.A. was a good idea, Dr. Minger had said. There were too many memories that bound her to the tragedy. She’d been trapped in a terrible limbo since Michael’s death, not seeing friends, not going to work. Their savings and the proceeds from the sale of Michael’s business had enabled her to let her career as an accountant slide into obscurity because she hadn’t wanted to cope with the day-to-day pressures of getting on with her life.

If it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s call for help, Shelby wasn’t certain she would have yet had the courage to break free.

Around the curve, the silhouette of her grandmother’s house, perched on wooden stilts, came into view, but the sight of flashing lights down by the river almost stopped Shelby’s heart. For one terrible moment, she thought she was back in L.A., back in her husband’s office, bending over his lifeless body while the sirens wailed outside.

Then she thought of her grandmother, but Shelby quickly reminded herself that she’d left Annabel little more than an hour ago. Her grandmother was safe in the hospital and slowly on the mend. This had nothing to do with her.

Her uncle James? No. James didn’t like the river. He had a place in town now. This was nothing to do with him, either.

But the reassurances didn’t stop Shelby’s hands from trembling as she pulled into her grandmother’s drive, parked the car and got out. The lawn ran to the edge of an incline that dropped gently to the river. Several police cars and a hearse were parked along the road, and she could hear voices down by the water. With increasing trepidation, she walked across the yard and stood at the top of the bank, gazing down. A flashlight caught her in its beam, and someone shouted up to her. After a moment, a policeman scurried up the slope toward her.

“Get back in your car, Miss, and move along. This is police business.”

“But I live here.” She waved her hand toward the house.

“Annabel Westmoreland owns this place, ma’am. I happen to know she’s in the hospital.”

“I’m her granddaughter,” Shelby said a bit defensively. “I’m going to be staying here for a while.”

The deputy cocked his head. “Shelby?” He shone the flashlight in her face, and she flinched. “Sorry.” He doused the light. “You are Shelby, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She still didn’t know who he was.

He chuckled ruefully. “Guess you don’t recognize me in the uniform. No one ever expected a Millsap to be on this side of the law.”

“Millsap?” she said incredulously. “Dewayne?”

He nodded and grinned. “Been with the county sheriff’s department almost ten years now.”

The Millsaps, along with their cousins, the Bufords, had once terrorized all of Cross County and half of Graves County. No one had ever expected any of them to amount to a hill of beans, as her grandmother would say.

“What happened, Dewayne?” Shelby asked uneasily. “Why are the police here?”

His expression sobered. “My cousins found a body tangled in one of their trot lines.”

Shelby caught her breath. “Oh, no. Who was it?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Guess it won’t matter if I tell you, seeing as how we’ve already notified his next of kin. His name was Danny Weathers. He was a local diver.”

“How did he…die?”

“Looks like a boating accident. The coroner’s down there now.” Dewayne nodded toward her grandmother’s house. “Look, maybe you best go on inside. This isn’t something you want to see.”

“But—”

“Hey, Dewayne!”

He turned at the sound of his name, then muttered a curse as a tall figure topped the bank and headed across the yard toward them. “Pardon my French, but I sure as hell don’t need this tonight,” he muttered to Shelby. He called to the newcomer, “Look, you got questions, you need to talk to the sheriff, Nathan.”

Shelby’s mouth fell open in astonishment. Nathan? Nathan Dallas? The boy who had once gotten her into so much trouble? Was it possible?

She’d heard Nathan had left this part of the country years ago. Like her, he’d migrated to a big city. Her grandmother had told her once that he was some hotshot reporter in Washington, just as he’d always said he would be. What in the world was he doing back in Arcadia?

“McCaid won’t talk to me, you know that. Come on, Dewayne, cut me some slack here, okay?” Nathan strode over to the deputy, his back to Shelby. “I want to know what the coroner found when he examined the body.”

Dewayne sighed. “And have my words splashed across the Argus? No thanks. Been there, done that.”

“You got burned once by my uncle,” Nathan said. “But you’re dealing with me now. If you say something is off the record, it’s off the record.”

“Yeah, right.”

Nathan ignored the sarcasm. “You don’t really think this was a boating accident, do you? Come on.”

“What else would cut a man up like that?” Dewayne said grimly. “He got caught in a boat propeller.”

…cut a man up?

Shelby shivered uncontrollably. She’d forgotten how dangerous the river could be, how unpredictable. She’d come here seeking solace from the violence of her past only to find more death, more horror. But surely this was an accident. A terrible, tragic mishap.

“It’s how he got caught in a prop that makes me curious,” Nathan persisted. “Why was he out there diving alone?”

“His wife said he liked to go night-diving.”

“Night-diving? In that river?” Nathan’s tone was clearly incredulous.

Dewayne shrugged. “He got too close to the surface and a boat ran him over. Probably thought they hit a log or something.”

“So that’s going to be the party line, is it?” Contempt crept into Nathan’s voice. “Are you even going to question Takamura?”

“That’s none of your damn business,” Dewayne countered. “You let the police handle the investigation.”

“Which means you’re not.” Nathan shook his head in disgust. “Takamura’s got an iron clamp on this town’s throat, that’s for damn sure.”

The deputy’s voice hardened with anger. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying, Nathan.”

“No,” Nathan said quietly. “I don’t imagine you do.”

Shelby had stood silently during this exchange, but Dewayne glanced at her now. “Look, I don’t have time for this. I have to get back down there. It was nice seeing you again, Shelby.”

“You, too, Dewayne.”

Nathan spun, peering at her in the moonlight. As Dewayne walked away, Nathan took a few steps toward her. “Did I hear him right? Shelby? Shelby Westmoreland?”

“It’s August now. It’s been a long time, Nathan.”

“At least you remember me,” he said.

“Oh, I remember you all right.” She wasn’t likely to forget the kid who had dared her to meet him down by the river at midnight so they could watch for the Pearl River Monster together. Nor would she forget that he’d stood her up that night. If he’d been there to corroborate her story, Shelby never would have become such an object of ridicule.

At least that was the way she’d felt back then. But time had put that night in perspective. It hadn’t been Nathan’s fault that her imagination had conjured up a monster, or that, after the initial terror, she’d enjoyed the rush of attention. It hadn’t been his fault that maybe, just maybe, she’d embellished her memory of that night because the spotlight had somehow made her abandonment more bearable. She’d been dropped on her grandmother’s doorstep that summer by parents who didn’t want her. Didn’t love her. But for a while, everyone in Arcadia had adored her.

Then, of course, they’d turned on her.

But Nathan hadn’t. He’d broken his word to her that night, but he’d stood by her in the humiliating days afterward.

Hey, Shelby, seen any monsters lately?

Where’s your monster, Shelby?

You shut your face, Nathan would tell the smirking crowd of kids who gathered around Shelby. Before I shut it for you.

And then, inevitably, a fight would ensue. Nathan had been so scrawny, he’d almost always gotten his butt kicked, but he’d never once backed down.

Judging by his conversation with Dewayne Mill-sap, Nathan was still just as stubborn. But Shelby doubted he’d be the underdog in a skirmish nowadays. He looked strong, capable, almost formidable in the darkness as he stared down at her.

He’d turned out to be an attractive man, from what she could see. She wondered what he thought of her.

He grinned suddenly, as if reading her mind. “Look at you, all grown up.”

“I should hope so,” she said dryly. “I’m thirty years old.”

“Where did the time go?” he said softly.

“It…vanished.” Just like my monster.

He tipped his head slightly, gazing down at her. “I heard you were living out on the west coast. What brings you back here?”

“I came to help my grandmother,” Shelby said. “She broke her hip.”

“Yeah, I heard about that, too. Is she going to be okay?”

“The doctors think she’ll make a full recovery, but she’ll be out of commission for quite some time. She asked me to come back and run the shop for her.”

“Why not your uncle James?”

“He’s a busy man,” Shelby said. There was no need for further elaboration, because Nathan knew as well as she that James Westmoreland was not a man who could be trusted, not even by his own mother. That was why Annabel had been compelled to call Shelby for help.

James was so much younger than Shelby’s father that he was more like a cousin or an older brother in age, but he and Shelby had never been close. When Shelby had first come to live with her grandmother, her uncle’s coldness had hurt her feelings, but she’d learned to stay out of his way. Everything had been okay for a while, but then James had gone and told that awful lie, claimed the monster sighting had been his idea so the family business could profit from the influx of tourists. He’d been willing to tarnish his own reputation in order to defame a nine-year-old girl, and to this day, Shelby didn’t understand why.

Nathan had fallen silent, and she followed his gaze across the yard. They were bringing the body up the bank. The stretcher was covered, but Shelby couldn’t bear to look. She turned her gaze instead to the river. The water looked iridescent, shimmering like an opal in the moonlight. On the far side, trees crowded the bank, and the fronds of a weeping willow trailed like fingers across the glassy surface.

She wrapped her arms around her middle, shivering in the warm June night. “Why don’t you believe it was an accident?” she asked softly.

Nathan glanced at her in surprise, as if he’d forgotten her presence. “What?” Then, shrugging, he said, “It doesn’t add up. A lot of things don’t add up around here.”

“Such as?”

He hesitated. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

He didn’t strike her as the paranoid type, but then, she hadn’t known him since they were kids. “You mentioned Takamura earlier.”

“Yeah. Do you remember him?”

“Vaguely.” Shelby remembered one afternoon coming back home after a day on the river with Nathan. Her grandmother was sitting on the front porch, clearly upset, as a long, black car pulled away from the house.

“What’s the matter, Grandmother?” Shelby asked worriedly.

“That man!” Her grandmother’s tone was scathing. “He thinks he can barter for anything he pleases, but I’ve got news for him. Some things around here just aren’t for sale!”

Only recently, Shelby’s grandmother had mentioned Takamura again. She’d said he was still trying to buy the supply of freshwater pearls she’d acquired from a man named Wilson Tubb years ago. Most of the jewelry she sold in her shop now was made from pearls that came from the original collection, although she still bought from a few local divers. But the river pearls were almost gone now because the mussel beds had been so badly depleted by pollution and by dredging by people like Takamura.

“He takes and takes and takes,” Annabel had said with scorn. “But one of these days, the river is going to claim a price.”

Maybe it already had, Shelby thought, glancing at the shrouded stretcher being loaded into the hearse.

She could feel Nathan’s gaze on her and she glanced up at him. “You’re still a reporter, I take it.”

He shrugged. “Some might say that’s debatable. I work at the Argus now.”

“Your uncle’s paper?” Memories of past headlines flashed through Shelby’s mind. Virgil Dallas had pursed her relentlessly after her monster sighting that night. His stories had drawn reporters from all over the country, had made her a celebrity, but like everyone else in town, he’d turned on her after James had told his lies. “Why did you come back to Arcadia?” she asked Nathan. “As I recall, you couldn’t wait to get away from this place.”

Something flickered in his eyes, an emotion Shelby couldn’t define. “Things change.”

“Yes,” she agreed quietly. “They do.”

He paused, his gaze deep and unfathomable in the moonlight. “I’ve thought about you over the years, Shelby. Wondered where you were, how you were doing.”

The way he said her name sent a soft shiver up her spine. “I’ve thought about you, too,” she admitted.

“Have you?” He sounded surprised. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how the more things change, the more they stay the same? Look at us. For years we lived on opposite sides of the country, thousands of miles apart. And yet here we both are. Back where we started.”

“Full circle,” Shelby murmured. “Maybe it’s fate.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. But there was an edge of bitterness in his voice when he added, “Fate can play some pretty strange tricks all right.”

NATHAN CLIMBED into his Bronco and waited for the procession of police cars and the hearse to pull out so that he could fall in line behind them. From his rearview mirror, he could see Shelby standing in the yard, gazing after them. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but the way she lingered on the lawn, looking a little lost, reminded him of the way she’d seemed that first summer she’d come to live with her grandmother.

Mentally he calculated the years, shocked again to realize how much time had passed since he’d last seen her. And yet the moment he’d heard her name, he’d felt that old, tingling sensation along his backbone. That old awareness.

She’d been nine that first summer, and Nathan had been ten. Older, wiser, he’d naturally stepped into the role of her protector, even though they’d been about the same size—and both small for their ages at that.

Shelby was still petite. When they’d stood talking, she hadn’t even come up to his chin. And she’d seemed frail somehow, as if maybe life hadn’t been exactly kind to her. The notion made Nathan a little sad because he’d always imagined Shelby Westmoreland living a charmed life, maybe because he’d never gotten over his first impression of her.

In his mind, he could still see her sitting so prim and proper on Miss Annabel’s front porch, nibbling a strawberry ice-cream cone that was the exact color of her dress. Even in the shade of the porch, her blonde hair had shone like new money, and her eyes were wide and clear, forget-me-not blue.

Nathan had been out fishing that day. His bare feet were muddy, and his clothes reeked of the river. To this day, he remembered how daintily Shelby’s perfect little nose had turned up in displeasure as he climbed the porch steps and held up a string of catfish for Miss Annabel’s inspection.

“Nathan, this is my granddaughter, Shelby. She’s going to be staying here with me this summer. I’m very lucky to have her, but I’m afraid she might get a mite lonely, what with just the two of us out here. How about you come around every chance you get and help me keep her company?”

“Okay,” he’d mumbled, tongue-tied, having not the faintest idea how one entertained such a creature.

But to Nathan’s amazement, he and Shelby had become best friends that summer. In spite of her delicate appearance, she’d been game for almost anything. The pink dress had soon given way to shorts and shirts that had grown, under his expert tutelage, almost as ragged and disreputable as his own clothing.

He’d taught her how to dig for worms in Miss Annabel’s flower beds, how to bait a hook, where to find the best fishing holes. He’d taught her how to clean a catfish and how to cook it over a campfire. How to run a trotline. How to dive. Where the currents were safest to swim and where they weren’t. He’d shown her his hidden spot—a secret he would have guarded with his life, if necessary—for finding the highly coveted mussels. He’d taught her everything he knew about the river, and then some. All the while, he’d kept his adoration to himself—then, and as they’d grown older—because he’d always been afraid that if she’d suspected his true feelings, she would be so embarrassed and disgusted that she would never want anything to do with him again.

Starting his ignition, Nathan turned on his lights as the last police car moved in behind the hearse. But he didn’t put the Bronco in gear because he couldn’t quite tear his gaze from the rearview mirror. It came to him, as he watched Shelby in the mirror, that she had seemed like a woman who was badly frightened of something.

Of what? Surely that summer night had long since faded from her memory. There were no monsters, nothing to be afraid of here. Not for her.

But the old protective instinct rose in Nathan anyway, and he had to fight the urge to swing his truck around and go back to make sure she was safe.

He tightened his grip on the wheel. They were adults now, and Shelby was a married woman. A lot of years had passed since he’d tried to slay dragons for her. And monsters. He was out of practice, and besides, the boy who had once had such chivalric tendencies had grown up to be a man with weaknesses of his own.

A man too flawed to be anyone’s hero.

NOT UNTIL the last flash of red taillights disappeared around the bend in the road did Shelby turn and start across the yard toward the house.

Police cars. A violent death. Not exactly a desirable welcome home. Certainly not a scenario she would have chosen.

Halfway across the lawn she hesitated, glancing up at the house. Rising on stilts, the looming white structure, so charming by daylight, had always seemed a little spooky to Shelby in the darkness. It wasn’t so much the house itself that was eerie as the area beneath. Enclosed in whitewashed latticework, the spider-infested space was used to store everything from garden tools to trunks of old schoolbooks.

Once upon a time, Shelby and Nathan had commandeered the enclosure as a secret clubhouse. But after that fateful summer night, Shelby had considered that cool, smelly dankness a prime hiding place for her monster. She wouldn’t go near it.

Even now, she could almost feel eyes staring at her from the darkness, and she hurried up the porch steps, resisting the impulse to glance down. Or over her shoulder at the river.

A light shone through the lace curtain at the front door, and Shelby breathed a sigh of relief. Her grandmother had said Aline Henley had been keeping an eye on the place since the accident and had come by today to tidy up and stock the refrigerator. Annabel must have cautioned Aline to leave a light on for Shelby.

Using her grandmother’s key, she opened the door and stepped inside, glancing around at the familiar surroundings. This was better, she thought. Homey. Comforting. Nothing the least bit frightening in here.

Everything was exactly the way she remembered it, although the plank flooring was a little duller, the furniture a little shabbier. But with her grandmother’s touch almost everywhere, it still felt more like home than any place Shelby had ever lived with her parents.

The living room was to her left, a long, narrow area decorated with an old-fashioned settee, velvet tufted chairs and a Tiffany-style lamp that gave off a soft, greenish glow. There were ferns everywhere, hanging at the windows that looked out on the river and in terra-cotta frogs and turtles flanking the brick fireplace. The fronds stirred gently under the ceiling fan, and the sluggish movement, coupled with the verdant lamp glow, gave the room an odd, underwater feel that Shelby had never noticed before.

Leaving the front door open, she went back out to the car to get her bags. The scent of the river followed her back inside. Setting her suitcases in the hallway, Shelby turned quickly to close and lock the door as a sense of aloneness settled over her.

She wondered if Nathan was still her nearest neighbor, and wished suddenly that she had asked him earlier if he was living in his father’s house. Knowing that Nathan was nearby had once been a great comfort to Shelby.

But he was right. Things had changed since then.

She recalled what he’d said about fate playing strange tricks. His words disturbed her, not because of the melancholia they invoked, but because of the edge of bitterness she’d heard in his voice. The hardness she’d glimpsed in his eyes. When she’d thought about Nathan Dallas over the years, she’d pictured him traveling the world, living the fascinating, adventurous life he’d always seemed destined for.

As a kid, Shelby couldn’t imagine how he could ever top diving for pearls. It had seemed like the most romantic profession in the world to her then, and she’d thought Nathan just about the bravest, most exciting person she’d ever known. She’d suffered from a bad case of hero worship that first summer, but, of course, she hadn’t let him know that. He’d been too full of himself as it was.

As Shelby had grown older and learned more about the pearling industry from her grandmother, she’d come to understand what a truly grueling occupation diving was. And dangerous, with the river’s treacherous currents and all the fishing nets and lines to contend with.

Not to mention loggerhead turtles, she thought with a smile. Those particular bottom-feeders had been Nathan’s secret terror, he’d once confided.

She’d liked knowing that even Nathan Dallas was afraid of something.

Picking up her bags, Shelby carried them upstairs and down the hallway to her old bedroom. An alcove of windows, draped with lace, looked out on the river, and almost against her will, Shelby crossed the room and stood staring out at the water.

After a moment, she started to turn away, but a movement on the water stilled her. A series of circles, undulating in the moonlight, grew wider and wider until they lapped gently at the bank.

Chapter Three

“Nathan? You got a minute?” Virgil Dallas’s booming voice carried over the usual pandemonium of the newsroom. He stood in the doorway of his office, and when Nathan glanced up from his monitor, his uncle motioned him inside.

Clearing his computer screen, Nathan smothered a groan. In the three months since his uncle had offered him a partnership in the paper, Nathan had had difficulty asserting his autonomy as editor. He’d entered the relationship on one contingency: that he be allowed complete editorial freedom. He would run the newsroom while Virgil would remain at the helm as publisher and business manager.

But Virgil couldn’t quite relinquish control. He’d managed every aspect of the paper for over thirty years, and he couldn’t help offering unsolicited advice on everything from the editorials to the obits.

His uncle’s obstinacy sometimes grated on Nathan’s nerves, but he knew he had to suck it up for one very good reason. He had nowhere else to go. He’d once been an award-winning reporter for one of the most respected newspapers in Washington, D.C., but by the age of thirty, he was finished. Unemployable. A has-been. A freelance hack for the tabloids because no reputable newspaper in the country would touch him after one of his stories had been repudiated as a fraud. He’d trusted the wrong source, and just like that, his career was over.