FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series (4 page)

Mike’s signature reply whenever he was up to no good. His two buddies had the sense to remain silent.

“Cara, are you okay?”

The girl glanced back and forth among the boys. Stacey could have predicted the words that would come out of her mouth, given that high school was brutal and paybacks a bitch. “I’m fine. My dad just ran to the bank; he’ll be back in a minute.”

Huh.
She wondered if the opportunistic boys had seen the man leave and decided to have some mean-spirited fun. She wouldn’t put it past Mike.

“See?” he said. “No problem. We just stopped by to eat on our way to practice.”

Noting their gym clothes, she figured they really were on the way to the field. School started in a few weeks, and the coach was already working his players to death in the heat. Maybe it would sweat some of the aggression out of them. One could only hope.

She pointed at the two followers. “Go. But from now on, stop for breakfast somewhere else. Or better yet, stay home and let your mamas make it for you.”

Mike took a step, too, but Stacey stopped him. “We’re not done.”

His jaw thrust out in pure testosterone-laden male belligerence. “I’ll be late.”

“You weren’t worried about that before I came in, now, were you?”

The two other boys scuttled out sideways, as if they didn’t want to turn their backs on her. Cara dashed toward the phone. The obviously deaf and blind customer remained hunched over the counter, ignoring the situation. Staying out of it.

What would the guy have done if things had really gotten rough? She hated to think that anybody here in Hope Valley would be so uncaring of a girl in need, but that bystander hadn’t moved so much as a muscle since she’d pulled up.

“Nice job, mister,” she snapped, unable to help herself.

He flinched, then turned his head to peer over his shoulder. When she recognized him, everything suddenly made sense. Because prissy, fussy insurance salesman Rob Monroe hadn’t had a set of balls in the twenty years she’d known him. He still lived with his parents, never having moved away from Mommy the socialite and Daddy the ass of a mayor. It was all the more embarrassing since she’d actually gone out with him once in high school. To her consternation, he’d been trying to get her to repeat the experience ever since she’d returned to Hope Valley to serve out her dad’s term as sheriff.

As if
.

“Morning, Stacey,” he mumbled. “Is there a problem? I was reading the paper. …”

“Well, don’t let me keep you from it.”

He hopped off his stool. “What’s wrong? Can I help you?”

“Not on your best day.”

Their stares met and he had the audacity to look hurt. That why-can’t-you-love-me crap might have worked when she was sixteen and felt sorry for him, since he was the target of a little teen maliciousness. But no more. When she didn’t relent by so much as the softening of her frown, he slapped his paper down on the counter and stalked out.

Stacey immediately turned her attention back on Mike. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed him by the upper corner of his ear and squeezed. The kid was about her height, and probably had thirty pounds on her, but he yelped and followed her outside. “Hey, I didn’t do nuthin’!”

“The look on that girl’s face said you did. Now, I can’t haul you in for being a jackass, but if I hear you’ve been bothering her again, I will be visiting your house.”

Absolutely the only thing the teen feared was his own hard-edged father, who, if the rumor mill was to be believed, lived by the spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child motto. So the threat worked the way a plea or a suggestion that he follow in his brother’s footsteps would not have. He snapped an insincere apology. “Sorry.”

“Tell it to Cara at school next month. Otherwise, stay away from her.”

“Fine.” His fuming eyes fried her where she stood. “Can I go, Sheriff?”

She waved him away without another word, watching him take off running down the road toward the high school. His last defiant gesture, flipping her the bird over his shoulder as he ran, came as no surprise. “Tomorrow,” she reminded herself with a sigh once he was out of sight, “don’t complain about nothing ever happening.”

A half hour later,
armed with doughnuts and stuffed from the two Boston creams she’d scarfed down while waiting for Cara’s father to return, Stacey finally arrived at work. With things having started out so badly, the day could only get better.

When she parked in her reserved spot outside the station, however, she realized she might be wrong about that. Because before she’d even stepped out of her car, a snide voice called, “Running late this morning, Sheriff?”

She forced a tight smile and nodded at the older woman about to walk into the bank next door. Alice Covey was a hateful old harpy who tap-danced on her very last nerve even when Stacey was in a good mood. Which definitely didn’t describe today. “Everything seems to move a little slower in this weather, Mrs. Covey.”

God, how much would it be to ask to arrive at work a few minutes late and not have it publicly commented on?

You wanted this. You
chose
this
.

Yeah. She had. About two years ago, when her father had retired midterm, his arthritic knees so bad he couldn’t walk comfortably from his car into the station, she’d accepted the town’s invitation to come back here to fill his shoes. The timing had been right, considering what she’d been going through, and she didn’t regret it.

But, boy, her father had worn big shoes. They had been walked in not only by him, but by his own father as well. A Rhodes had been sheriff in this county for forty years. The others, however, had been males, which some people around here, like the timekeeping town busybody in the bank and the blowhard mayor, never let her forget.

She doubted they would have said a word to her father, or to her older brother, who everyone had assumed would take over, at least until he’d joined the marines and ruined their plans. “Maybe you’ll get the right sheriff next time,” she muttered, her jaw tightening. Because with Tim back home after twelve years in the service, some people thought she should be a nice sister and step aside for him during the next election, coming up in just a couple of months. Especially given his injuries.

Stacey had done well; even the most chauvinistic townies would concede that. But she was, after all, just a woman. And Tim, despite his lack of experience, versus Stacey’s law enforcement degree and six years with the VSP in Roanoke, was obviously the better Rhodes for the job.

Because he had something between his legs and she didn’t. At least, not often.

Frowning over the thought, she entered the station. “Hey, Stace,” Connie, their receptionist-slash-dispatcher-slash-911 operator, sat behind the front desk, all smiles and big hair. “Brutal out there already, huh?”

“Uh-huh.” Stacy placed the doughnuts on the edge of Connie’s desk, not wanting to discuss what she’d gone through to get them. “Hope it doesn’t last through the weekend. We’ll get called out to Dick’s Tavern every hour.”

“And how would that be unlike just about every other weekend of the year?”

The woman had a point. “How’s Dad doing this morning?”

“Oh, he’s fine, staying inside in the air-conditioning.” Connie looked down, busied her hands, and mumbled, “I stopped by and brought him something to eat on my way to work.”

Sure
. Stacey hid a smile, not wanting to embarrass the woman. Because Connie, at fifty-six, not only kept the sheriff’s office organized and cheery, she also managed to do that for Stacey’s father. She’d been dating him since the day he’d retired, both of them being too old-school to let anything happen between them while they worked together. Now that he was retired they seemed ready to move forward.

“Anything happening so far today?”

“Warren Lee threatened his neighbor’s dog again.”

She grunted. “When doesn’t he?”

“What’s he hiding on all that land, anyway?” Connie asked. “You’d think he’d sell it to one of those big-city developers, make a fortune, and go start his own army in some third-world country.”

The former army sergeant lived just outside of town on a beautiful piece of property with views to rival any on the Skyline Drive. But his home was hidden by thick woods and encircled by a six-foot-tall fence topped with razor wire. The KEEP OUT and FORGET THE DOG, BEWARE THE OWNER! signs demanded privacy. And most people in these parts gave it to him, sensing he was a little off.

She supposed she should at least be thankful her brother had come home from the service moody and silent, not downright mean and hostile, like Mr. Lee.

“Anything else?”

“Mitch is out sick. He was fixing his roof after his shift yesterday afternoon …”

Stacey’s eyes widened. “In this heat?” It had to have been close to one hundred degrees yesterday, and probably hadn’t dipped below eighty until well into the night.

Connie merely shrugged. “Men.”

She had a point.

“Said he broke his arm.”

“Oh, no.”

Damn.
Though maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. If Mitch were here, she’d have to tell him about the nasty antics his brother had been up to. Funny how different the brothers were. Mike was a punk, while Mitch was a good guy and a great deputy. He and nine others helped Stacey keep the town and the rest of the sparsely populated county safe without complaint.

“He swears he’ll be back in a week, but he’ll be in a cast for six. He said to tell you it’s his left hand, though, so he can still shoot.”

“The last time a local deputy discharged his weapon, it was when one of Dad’s guys had to put down a poor, dying deer somebody had hit out on Blanchard Road.” Stacey might wear a semiautomatic comfortably on her hip, but she’d never had to pull it out for anything other than cleaning or occasional practice at the shooting range.

She turned to walk away. But she hadn’t gone two steps when Connie whispered, “Wait!”

Tensing, Stacey glanced back and saw someone at the front door. A familiar someone. “Oh, no. It’s Wednesday.”

How could she have forgotten? This weekly ritual had been going on for almost a year and a half. Every Wednesday. Talk about an unwelcome dream repeating itself and never having a better ending. Not for her and not for the woman whose heart she broke four times a month.

Stacey’s eyes shifted toward the bulletin board hanging by the door. On it were handwritten notes, FBI Most Wanted lists, and statewide bulletins about bank robbers who didn’t know places like Hope Valley existed. A copy of the weekly on-call schedule hung there, as well as a sign for an end-of-summer barbecue for all the deputies and their families.

There was also one section marked, MISSING PERSONS.

In the past, that area might have been crowded with crayon-drawn flyers offering rewards for the return of Spot or Baxter or some other lost pet. In a town like this one, kids still felt free to ask for help finding a beloved puppy who’d last been seen chasing the ice-cream truck.

Not anymore, though. Now, out of respect to the woman walking into the station, that section of the board held just a single sheet of paper. Yellowed at the edges, curling at the corners, it was forlorn in its solidarity.

Much like Mrs. Winnie Freed.

“Mornin’, Sheriff,” said the woman as she pushed into the station. She brought a stifling blast of summer air in with her. And about a ton of sorrow.

Stacey noted the shapeless dress hanging off the woman’s bony shoulders. Mrs. Freed, who was probably only about fifty, looked twenty years older. She’d been aged by decades of working as a maid at a chain hotel up in Front Royal. Bending over to strip and remake beds had curved her entire body into a human-size comma. Her thin, red hands told tales of endless buckets of hot water and cleaning chemicals. And the way she kept her head down and her eyes averted revealed a lifelong habit of staying nearly invisible to the customer, remaining unobtrusive, unnoticed.

The physically demanding job hadn’t been entirely responsible for turning Mrs. Freed into the frail woman she was today. In the past seventeen months, she’d appeared to wither away. Anguish had gouged deep lines in her already weary and careworn face. Her graying hair hung loose and tangled around her shoulders, as if she lacked even the will to brush it on her day off. The eyes … well, the glimmer of hope that drove her here every Wednesday was barely visible behind the sadness.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Freed.” Stacey reached out to take the woman by the arm, almost afraid she’d fall down without support. “I have no news for you.”

Winnie bit her lip. Beneath her hand, Stacey felt her body sway a little. Wondering if the woman’s sorry excuse for a husband ever even made sure she had a decent meal, she murmured, “Why don’t we go into my office and sit down.”

“I made coffee, and we have fresh doughnuts.” Connie rose from her desk and hurried out from the receptionist’s cubicle.

Stacey led Mrs. Freed down the hallway to her office, helping her sit in a visitor’s chair. She tossed her jacket and hat onto a wall hook, then sat down. “Are you all right?”

The woman ignored the question. “You really haven’t heard nothin’ about Lisa?”

Stacey shook her head slowly.

“But you been lookin’?”

“I have. I promised you I wouldn’t give up, and I meant it. I run Lisa’s name all the time. I make sure to keep her missing persons report active and updated.”

Not, in Stacey’s opinion, that it was going to do any good. Lisa Zimmerman, Winnie’s twenty-three-year-old daughter, had apparently dropped off the face of the earth. The way Stacey saw it, that was how the wild young woman wanted it. If she ever did get hold of the girl, she’d be sorely tempted to slap her.

Be fair
. Breathing deeply, she forced the angry thoughts away, knowing they were inspired only by her sadness for Mrs. Freed. And because, once upon a time, Lisa had been a sweet child, and Stacey her favorite babysitter.

Difficult to believe the pretty, smart little blonde had gone so bad. And hard to reconcile that used-up druggie with the nice kid Stacey had once tucked into bed.