Color Weaver (2 page)

He spotted a Saint Bernard standing near the easel, head bent, licking…Summer’s face.

She lay crumpled on the floor.

His gut clenched. Had that thing hurt her? He ran to the studio door and shook it.

Locked.

With one good kick, he broke the bolt.

The door flew open and crashed against the doorstop, thundering in the silence.

The dog bristled and growled. Saliva dripped from its massive jaws.

“I’m here to help.” Reese held out his hand to greet the Saint Bernard.

It crouched closer, sniffed, then seemed to sense Reese wasn’t a threat and stopped growling.

Reese petted the animal’s huge head and said, “Have to help her now, champ.”

The dog followed him as he made his way to Summer. He checked her neck for a pulse. Steady. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Summer hadn’t changed much since high school. Still beautiful. Long cocoa-colored hair fell around her shoulders. She had light bronze skin that made her look as if she had a tan year-round. Thick lashes, darker than her hair, formed half-moons on her cheeks, accentuating her high cheekbones. A sharp widow’s peak cut across her brow, and an expression of terror was etched in her face.

When he reached down to pick her up, her lids fluttered open. Cornflower-blue eyes focused on him. The haze cleared from them, then they grabbed hold of him. Her eyes had a way of gripping a person and not letting go. He felt that pull in his chest now.

“You…” She blinked up at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She struggled to get up.

“Are you okay?” He grabbed her arms, helping her up.

She twisted out of his grasp and shot him an uneasy look. “Thanks, I’m fine.”

At her cool reaction, his concern melted. He felt a little foolish for overreacting. His voice shifted back into utter authority. “What the hell happened here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me, Summer.”

Her eyes blazed at him as her expression turned defensive. “I’m not lying to you.”

“Explain the bloody pants I found outside, then.”

“I can’t.”

“Somebody was murdered, the evidence dropped at your door. Just like last time. Remember. Senior year. The fall harvest dance. Jason Smith’s bloody shirt found on the hood of your car. My father’s blood-soaked coat discovered later at your back door.” He shot her a scorching glance. “You know what’s happening, just like you knew back then.”

“I don’t know how that got there. I told your father that before he…” Her words trailed off.

“Go ahead and say it—’was killed.’”

“I was going to say disappeared.”

“Come on, we both know he’s dead, just like Jason Smith.” He glared at her, daring her to deny it. He’d had to resign himself to his father’s death just to get on with his life and stop looking for his father’s body. He’d always felt certain she knew where the bodies were disposed of but refused to reveal the location. “Tell me where this new victim is?”

She looked anxious, afraid, her bottom lip trembling. “I don’t know.”

“Was he taken to the same spot where my father’s and Smith’s bodies were dumped?”

“I had nothing to do with those disappearances. Nothing.”

“Who is this new victim?”

“I don’t know.” Tears gleamed in her eyes. “Oh, what’s the use? You’ll never believe me.”

Reese clamped his teeth together. Questioning her at the moment would be futile. He’d only lose his temper and that would get him nowhere. Later he’d get the truth out of her, he promised himself.

The dog lumbered up to her and licked her cheek. One swipe of the huge tongue and her whole face glistened wet. “Okay, Sampson, I love you, too.”

He looked away from Summer caressing the dog and focused on the easel. He studied the sketch. A bottomless sensation pulled his stomach down to his toes.

“You drew this latest abduction.” He pointed to the paper. “There’s the killer, looking in at you, holding the bloody pants. You control this killer. Admit it!”

“I don’t.” She trembled uncontrollably now, tears streaming down her cheeks. “And if you won’t believe me, you need to leave. Now!”

“I’m not going anywhere. This is a crime scene and you’re under arrest.”

“But I didn’t kill anyone.”

“So you say. When I find out who those pants belong to, you’re going down for murder.” In one smooth motion, he slid the cuffs from his belt and slapped them on her wrists.

Her eyes gleamed with a deer-in-the-headlights fear, and for a brief moment, he hated his job.

Summer took in the institutional white paint, the small table and two chairs, and remembered this interrogation room. Hardly bigger than a closet, it was the only one in King Charles’s sheriff department. Yet on her last visit there, Harland McMurray had sat across from her, not his son.

She looked at her watch—7:00 a.m. Suddenly she felt drained and tired and just wanted to go home. Reese didn’t seem fatigued at all. His indigo eyes gleamed at her like a wolf assessing its prey. He had questioned her for the past two hours, and she could see his frustration building because he couldn’t trick her into changing her story, or force her to admit at having been involved in the disappearance.

“For the last time,” Reese said, his voice full of a warning, strangely sounding a lot like his father’s, “what do you know about this latest abduction?”

“I’ll say it again,
nothing
.” She rubbed her dry, burning eyes.

Reese leaned forward in his chair, the thick plastic creaking. He was a hulking guy, six foot five, all gristle and sinew. His broad chest filled out his uniform and left nothing to spare. A taut Windsor knot hugged close to his thick neck, the gold in the tie stark against the uniform’s drab brown. His linebacker shoulders seemed to stretch from one end of the table to the other. His buckskin-colored hair was cropped so short she could see the pink of his scalp. A day’s worth of facial growth darkened his face and neck, accentuating an old football scar. It hooked downward from his nose, almost touching the corner of his mouth, then curled toward the dimple in his chin.

She remembered the night he received the mark. Most of the games he had quarterbacked, she had managed to avoid. She hadn’t been able to watch him get beaten to a pulp. But that night had been a homecoming game. He’d begged her to go, kissed her in that soft, melting way and she had relented.

Twenty minutes into the game, she had regretted it. He had been tackled by a mountain of players and someone’s cleat ended up in his face. All that head gear and still blood everywhere, a deep gouge in his cheek.

She had been so upset she had hopped the fence and run across the field to get to him. She’d ridden in the ambulance and held his hand while an E.R. doctor sewed up his face. She had kept reminding him how much she loved him. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Did you hear me?”

The sharp question brought her back to the present. “What?”

His heavy eyelids added a deceptive languor to his expression, the kind of bedroom eyes that could lure anything out of a woman. But she wasn’t taken in by them. When he was aggravated or angry, his irises turned the color of a stormy sea at night. And right now they blazed purplish black and looked right through her. She watched a swollen vein pulse in his temple.

“Did you know Brad Lacy?” he asked.

“No. I already told you that.”

“Sure about that?”

“Never heard of him. Who is he, anyway?”

He shuffled some papers and read a report. “Lived in Richmond, the Brackets’ nephew. The pants belonged to him, and he’s been missing for eight hours.”

She knew the Bracket family. They lived a mile from her cottage. “Never saw him or met him.” That was the truth and Summer hoped it came across as that.

“Was he ever inside your home?”

“No, why would he be?” He was goading her, trying to trip her up. She wasn’t falling for it. She kept an even voice and said, “You searched it, did you find any evidence he’d been there?”

He didn’t answer her. The pulse in his temple throbbed faster. “The M.O. from twelve years ago matches his disappearance. Bloody clothes dumped near you. Admit it, you had something to do with this latest murder.”

“Like I said, I don’t know why the abductor tried to frame me with the bloody clothes. I had nothing to do with the disappearances years ago, or this latest one. It’s just as much a mystery to me as it is to you.” She stared at his sheriff’s badge gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights.

“You’re lying.” A frustrated scowl inched across Reese’s whole forehead, tugged at his brows, thinned his lips. The vein continued to pulse in his neck. In that moment Summer detected the worry lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. This wasn’t the boy from high school sitting before her, but a much older man with a lot of responsibility to shoulder. The biggest one: charging her with three murders.

She couldn’t stand this badgering any longer. She leaned across the desk and grabbed the edge. “Then you need to prove it. I’m done here. I know my rights. You have to give me a phone call. And I’ll clue you in—it’ll be a lawyer and I’ll be out of here like that.” She snapped her fingers and cut her eyes at him.

He said nothing for a full two minutes. Their gazes locked and battled. He narrowed his eyes at her. She watched his heavy lids drop a fraction. His thick lashes hooded those shrewd and unsettling dark eyes. By sheer will, she forced herself not to glance away. He wasn’t going to win this battle.

After what seemed like years but had only been thirty seconds, he said, “You can go, but don’t leave the area.” He leveled a warning glance at her.

She stood too fast. Feeling dizzy and light-headed from anxiety and lack of sleep, she lost her balance.

Abruptly a pair of strong hands grabbed her around the waist.

She stared up into his face. How he’d leaped around the desk so quickly and caught her, she’d never know. Maybe the quarterback in him sprang to life. Either way, they were so close his hot breath brushed her face. Their lips were inches apart. Her right hand was trapped against his hard chest and her own body. She could feel his heartbeat pounding against her palm.

Her own heart quickened and matched his. Sensations of overpowering maleness wrapped around her. Weightlessness floated in her belly, a familiar feeling that she had always experienced when he held her. She could almost believe the past twelve years had vanished, and they were still dating, still in love….

He frowned at her as if he were uncomfortable with the contact, then he stepped back as if he’d been stung. “You okay?”

Reality rushed back to her. What had she done? Almost made a complete fool of herself by clinging to the past, that’s what. She felt a blush rise up her neck and into her cheeks. “Thanks, just a little dizzy, is all,” she said, her voice trembling.

A quick knock on the door boomed inside the small room, startling Summer. The door slowly opened, and Steven Creasy stuck his head through the gap. “Hey, Summer.”

“Hey.” She knew Steve. He and Reese had been on the football team together. That’s how they had met in high school. He shared Reese’s affinity for law enforcement, and had been on the force for seven years.

Steve looked disconcerted that he had to greet her in the interrogation room, then he glanced at Reese. “Uh, Sheriff, sorry to interrupt, but my shift is ending. You said something about waiting until you’re done with Summer. You want me to stay and process her?”

“Not enough evidence to arrest her, at the moment.”

“You want me to give her a ride home?”

“I’m taking her.” It wasn’t a response, but an order.

“Right.” Steve nodded an uncomfortable farewell to Summer, then hurriedly slid out the door, closing it behind him.

Summer inhaled deeply, fighting a need to get as far away from Reese as possible. “Look, you really don’t need to drive me,” she said.

“I brought you here. I’ll take you home.”

“I can call someone.”

“No.” His deep voice held a soft lethal authority aura that brooked no argument.

Oh, Lord! She didn’t want him anywhere near her house, or her person. He was in danger. The wendigo could strike again. Not to mention she’d just made a cake of herself when he’d kept her from falling. This was horrible, but she knew how stubborn he was. Arguing with him now would only make him more determined to take her home.

She turned and hurried out the door, feeling his overpowering aura hot on her heels. This would be the longest car ride of her life.

Summer decided the only good thing about the ride home was the sunrise and the clear blue sky stretching before her. A perfect morning following a horrible night.

Thankfully, Reese hadn’t spoken to her since they’d climbed into the car. His fingers gripped the wheel in a white-knuckled grasp and he gritted his teeth so tight that the tendons in his neck protruded. The friction in the air between them felt like sandpaper against her body.

She listened to the radio dispatcher talking to another deputy on duty as she glanced at the mobile computer and stand that separated the seats. High-tech equipment for a county sheriff’s car, but she guessed it was standard issue nowadays. An officer could run plates and warrants on the spot. Made life easier for the cop on a traffic stop but not so for a criminal. Was she a true criminal? She might as well be. She was the Color Weaver in her tribe, and she had the ability to bring things to life through her drawings. Somehow she had drawn the wendigo into existence. But how? Ever since she found out about her gift she’d been very careful about what she drew. But not last night. She remembered falling asleep on the couch and waking up in front of the easel.

A miserable queasiness pulled at her and she squeezed her eyes closed.

“You okay?”

His deep voice startled her. She rubbed her eyes and said, “Just tired.”

“You hungry?”

She felt the car slow as they neared Katie Bo’s, a little restaurant on Route 30, only open for breakfast and lunch. Panic at having to share a meal with him caught at her as she said, “I’m not hungry. I want to go home.”