Like Sweet Potato Pie (33 page)

No good. I dug back inside the passenger’s seat for my purse and tried to shine my mini flashlight under the car, but the weak battery flickered and went out, leaving me just as stumped as before.

I heard a sound. The low drone of an engine. And when I popped my head up over the hood, what should stare back at me but a bright red Blazer—standing out against the bleached landscape like a warning flare.

I
stood up quickly and brushed myself off, but not before Chase had screeched the Blazer to a stop behind my car and slammed the door. He strode across the frozen ground in a dark, sleek leather jacket, thick and burly, fallen limbs crunching under his heavy boots. Face creased in a dark scowl.

“Where is she?” he demanded, voice coming out like a snarl. Shoulders bulging under his jacket, hands on his hips.

“Excuse me?” There was no time to hide. I leaned against the hood of my car in a casual position, tapping out a text message. Just in case I … uh … needed to call for help. And to hide my shaking fingers. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am.” He took a step closer. “Where’s Trinity?”

“I’ve never met you before in my life.” I looked up from my cell phone with a look of disdain and pushed off the hood. Moving ever so carefully as to keep the car between us.

Chase cursed and kicked my tire, and I felt its shock vibrate against my shoe.

“Hey! Stay away from my car!” I shouted, trying to make my face look stern. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I know who you are!” he hollered, striding around the car like a bull, steam snorting from his fancy pierced ears. “You work at the restaurant, and you went looking for Trinity last night! Somebody in the kitchen told me.”

“Somebody in the kitchen? That’s your source?” I laughed in derision. “And how do you know my car anyway? What are you, some kind of a stalker?”

“Apparently even the dishwashers know your car. What does that say about you?”

Marcos. Nosy, weasly little Marcos, always blabbing about everybody’s business! Wait ‘til I clock in tomorrow!

“It says that they’ve got nothing better to do than spy on other people.”

Chase circled around the hood of my car toward me, glaring ominously. “He told me you live out this way. Where’s Trinity?” His voice rose. I kept walking, keeping the car between us. Although it was getting difficult with Chase’s long strides. “Why would I know where Trinity is? I don’t keep tabs on people’s whereabouts. Especially somebody Trinity’s age, who’s certainly old enough to take care of herself. Now get out of here and leave me alone, or I’ll call the police!”

I shouldn’t have said that last part. I should have just done it.

But today wasn’t my day. Chase narrowed his eyes at me and, in a lightning second, lunged around the side of the Honda and grabbed me by the arm. He tore the cell phone out of my hand and threw it across the snow then shoved me hard against the side of the car. Knocking the breath out of me. My purse and keys fell down into the grass.

“You listen here,” he rasped, tattoo on his neck bulging. “You tell me where she is, or I’ll …”

At the faint sound of an engine motor, I screamed at the top of my lungs. I punched Chase away from me, trying to squirm free from his grasp.

As Adam’s truck grew closer, Chase abruptly dropped my arm and backed away, breathing hard. He crossed his arms angrily, beefy biceps bulging, then took a few steps toward his SUV.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” shouted Adam, leaping from his truck and jerking up a metal construction stake, ripping it from a section of faded orange netting. “Who do you think you are? Shiloh, what’s going on?”

“He’s nuts!” I hollered back, stumbling over the grass as I dug for my cell phone. “Stay away from him!”

“Oh yeah? You think I’m nuts? I oughtta …” Chase kicked my car again as Adam and I circled around toward each other, Adam still brandishing the metal stake.

Before anyone could speak, another rumble came over the hill, and a cloud of dust lifted as two battered cars roared through the trees. Rolling to a stop, one on either side of Chase’s Blazer, like a bad movie.

Well, well, well.
My brain raced, frantic, as I backed away, completely out of plans and out of luck.
Party at Smokewood Meade. And all I have are Rice Krispie squares.

Car doors squeaked open.

“Uh-oh,” I whispered, taking a step closer to Adam as two scary-looking guys got out, one dressed in leather and the other with a bandana tied around his head. “What now?”

“Run!” Adam whispered back, pushing me across the snow-littered ground and toward the trees.

G
ood thing I’d worn Mary Janes and not the high-heeled boots I’d originally planned for Frank’s party. We tore through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing, stumbling over limbs and scattered logs as footsteps pounded and shouts raised behind us.

“What did you do?” Adam hollered, cheeks red with cold as he threw a thick fallen tree branch behind us to block our path. The construction stake still tucked under one arm.

“Why does everybody always think I did something?” I yelped, waving my arms as we came to a ditch-like gully. “And why did you call me anyway?”

“Call you?” He awkwardly grabbed my hand and helped me jump over a muddy section choked with dried limbs and withered leaves, jerking me so hard through a clump of pines that my teeth rattled. “I told you I wanted to talk. You haven’t spoken to me for how long?”

“Of course I haven’t. Not after you kissed me and then—” I twisted around, hearing the shouts closer, and ran harder, straining my lungs and the muscles in my calves. Good thing I ran nearly every day; my life might depend on it.

“And then what?” Adam jumped to a slightly dryer section of mud and pushed me ahead of him, through a thicket of brambly stuff that grabbed at my tights and dress. Snatching at the ends of my scarf.

I left my scarf hanging in the briars, but Adam indignantly grabbed it up and stuffed it under his coat. “Don’t leave anything behind, Shiloh! They’ll follow us!” He jerked my arm toward a stand of winter-gray elms, framing the bleached sky with spindly branches. “Over there! Go! Hurry!”

Twigs clawed at my face and arms as I jumped over a jumble of rough stones protruding through the tattered carpet of brown leaves and pushed through the elm limbs. Between broken strands of rusted barbed wire and rotten fence posts and a scatter of empty Guinness bottles where people with snootier tastes in beer apparently indulged after dark.

“Eliza Harrison,” I gasped, scrambling over a tangle of twisted tree roots. “Need I say more?”

“What?” Adam yelped, coming to a complete halt in mid-duck under a thick tree limb. “What does she have to do with anything?”

“I saw you,” I panted, pausing just long enough to turn and meet his eyes before I bent over to catch my breath, hands on my knees. “In the Sunday school room.”

“What Sunday school room?” Adam shook his head in bewilderment and lowered the stake, a twirling, taupe-colored leaf landing on his head. He brushed it off in irritation, chest rising and falling as he let out his breath. “What are you talking about? Especially when—”

Someone tore through the briars behind us, and I lunged ahead, sprinting through the muddy, pine-needle-littered ground. “Especially when what?”

Adam caught up with me, pulling me faster by the elbow of my jacket as a loud
pow
rang out through the trees. “Those guys might have guns, Shiloh! This is serious!”

“Finish what you started to say,” I gasped, ducking a jumble of broken limbs.

“Rumor has it you went out with Shane Pendergrass. Are you dating him?”

I ran smack into a branch, right between my eyes, and fell on my bottom. Knocking the breath out of my lungs.

“Are you kidding? Shane?” I gasped, as Adam dragged me to my feet. “I never went out with Shane!”

My tailbone smarted. I jumped over a tangle of briars and scooted up a muddy hill, stumbling twice and catching myself on my knees and elbow. Pushing free with one hand. “How dare you accuse me of something like that! My car broke down, and he picked me up. I never—” I flailed my fists through a patch of thick dried weeds. “Why on earth am I explaining this to you anyway?”

“I believe you.” He skidded down the other side of the rise, swerving around a tree stump, and grabbed some branches for support. “But this is a small town, Shiloh. News travels fast.”

“Don’t give me that!” I hissed, shaking my finger at him. “You’re one to talk, whispering in a Sunday school room with Eliza Harrison! Talking about marriage? I’m not stupid, Adam. I’ve learned quite a bit about the male species these days, and it’s all been pretty rotten.”

The land leveled, and we turned in a circle, not sure which direction to go.

“Are they gone?” I whispered as an eerie silence descended on the woods. Just faint cheeping of nuthatches and a low whistle of wind in the pines. I shivered, suddenly feeling the bitter chill. My fingers smarted, red with cold.

Something crashed in the underbrush, and we both whirled around. Just as a coat-clad figure shouted, lunging for my arm. I screamed, jerking away and sprinting through a patchy grove of trees with peeling bark. Just as a bullet whined past me, splintering some dried limbs of a white pine tree. They quivered and fell to the ground in a heap.

“Watch out!” Adam shouted. “They’ve split up!”

Chase dove at me from around a shadowy bend, and I managed to squeeze through a couple of tight-fitting trees and out of his grasp. Crawling on my belly under a rusty fence and into a patchy thicket that bled into a cow pasture.

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Adam lean into Chase with the construction stake, doubling him over, and then scoot under the fence right behind me. Shouts ringing up through the trees.

“Use your cell phone!” I hollered, wind cutting across my face in the open field and nearly sucking my words from my mouth. “Call the police!”

“It’s in the truck!” Adam hollered back.

I groaned, sprinting to the edge of the cow pasture, where black-and-white Holsteins lolled in comatose bliss under the waning December sun. Adam caught up with me, breathing hard, and then abruptly jerked my arm back under a thick canopy of hemlock trees with pungent branches of tiny green needles.

“I know where we are.”

“What?” I swiveled to glare at him, out of breath. “What do mean where we are? We’re being chased by a couple of madmen who—”

Adam surprised me by slapping a hand over my mouth. “Can you be quiet for two seconds, Shiloh? Just wait. I know this pasture. It loops around near the truck. If we can get them to pass by us, we can double back.”

“And get in your truck,” I finished, pulling his hand away from my mouth with shaking fingers and lowering my voice. Still annoyed at his “be quiet for two seconds” comment. “Do you have your keys? Because I don’t have mine.”

Adam jingled his pocket in reply.

“But you have to be quiet. And get down.” He pushed through a thick section of limbs, opening a shadowy hollow, and ducked his head, motioning with his hand. We crouched there against the tree trunk, branches around us so thick I could hardly see out.

I pulled my skirt tightly around my knees, gaping holes ripped in my once-sleek stockings. Shoes caked with mud.

“Sorry about your clothes,” Adam whispered, nodding toward them as I hugged myself, shivering.

“I’m more sorry about Eliza Harrison.”

Adam shook his head and let out a sigh, resting his forehead against the dirty metal stake. “You don’t understand, Shiloh. I’ve never even dated her!”

“What?” I tried to keep my teeth from knocking together as I massaged my cold fingers. “But you said …”

He peeled off his coat and stuck it around my shoulders in an annoyed sort of huff, not the gentlemanly way I’d expected. Then he shushed me again with a glare, putting a finger to his lips. “Let me finish. I said something to Eliza about marriage, right? Well, our parents had this … I don’t know …’thing’ about us getting married. Since we were practically babies.”

I bristled, reluctantly sticking my arms through his coat. Which smelled … like Adam. I tried to push it out of my mind.

“You
shh
this time.” I smacked his shoulder, which now sported only a dark blue sweater and some kind of ugly plaid shirt underneath. “I hear somebody.”

I caught my breath as one of the guys stomped past us, shaking the leaves. Adam tucked his head down, pressing my head practically into the dirt with his arm. We huddled there in breathless silence, listening to him snap a twig and kick old clumps of branches, cursing in low tones.

I squeezed my eyes closed, praying, until silence fell again. A squirrel whisked across a branch overhead, chattering, and I thought briefly of Tim’s deer stew. Wonder what wild animal Becky’d tossed in the Crock-Pot for tonight?

“So go on. Tell me about Miss Harrison,” I sniffed, sitting up slightly and pulling Adam’s coat tight against my neck and—although I’d never admit it—basking in its delirious warmth.

“There isn’t anything to tell,” he whispered, brushing hemlock mulch from the side of my face. “That’s how we grew up, Shiloh. Eliza and I actually had nothing to do with it. Our parents thought the idea was cute.” He rolled his eyes, voice barely audible over the gentle brush of wind through the leaves. “And then when she left Staunton to go to college, she eloped with this guy named Greg without so much as an e-mail to any of us.”

“So she’s … married?” I clapped a hand over my mouth.

“For nearly two years. Her mom found out by accident, and everybody was upset at her and worried about me.”

“So how did you feel?” I scowled. “Heartbroken?”

Adam scowled back. “No. I just wanted her to stop feeling guilty and go on with her life. She’s not right for me anyway. Just … not my type at all.”

Yeah, and you’re not mine either, buddy!
I wiped at a muddy spot on my skirt.

Adam released a long breath. “And then she showed up on Sunday, and we had our little awkward talk about leaving everything in the past and being friends.”