Officer in Pursuit (13 page)

He’d rolled by her house just after
dusk, then again a couple hours later. Then one more time, around
midnight. The house had been dark and empty every time – he knew
because he’d gone and knocked on her door around
midnight.

No answer, no nothing. Just
silence, a big fat
fuck you Brad
that still had his jaw tight and aching, even
after all the whiskey.

He knew exactly who she must’ve been
with, exactly what she’d been doing.

Had she guessed that he was back, that
he’d left that paper at her door and slashed her tires?

Probably not. She probably thought
she’d left him and all her promises behind in Kentucky, that she’d
gotten off scot-free. She’d never been too bright of a
thinker.

And so, he’d dropped the petty
bullshit, right then and there. No more subtle little hints, no
more impulsive shit he’d done more because he’d been mad than for
any other reason. He’d played the scout long enough, skulking and
spying on his own damn wife like he didn’t have every right to be
up in her face, giving her hell for what she’d done.

It was time to step out of the past
and into her life, show her that nothing was behind her and nothing
was forgiven.

* * * * *

“The guest rooms all look immaculate,”
Faye said, sweeping a hand through her short silver hair and
pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, “as usual. I’ve
got Jen vacuuming the halls and dusting the study before our
weekend guests arrive – thought I’d free up a little time for you
to work on things for the fall festival.”

“Me?” Kerry stopped just outside the
laundry room, balancing a stack of fresh linens on her
hip.

Faye nodded, her dangly earrings
swinging from delicate earlobes. Kerry had always thought she
looked like some sort of real-life fairy or sprite.

“Alicia’s going to be away on her
honeymoon for the next week, and I could really use some help
organizing things for the festival. It’s October now…” She glanced
out a window at the barely-altered landscape, then back at Kerry.
“I’d love your help. You’re organized and efficient – I know you’ll
do a great job. There’ll be overtime pay in it for you if you want
to work an hour or so past your regular shift.”

Well, that was something Kerry
couldn’t turn down. She was paid fairly for her duties as head of
the plantation’s housekeeping team, but the opportunity to earn
some extra was more than welcome. “Sounds great. What do you want
me to do?”

“Help me with decorations, mostly. I
got some brilliant ideas from the internet, but it’s taking me
longer than I anticipated to put everything together. I swear, I’ve
been drowning in tulle and sequins all week.”

“Sounds easy enough. I can’t stay late
this afternoon though – I have to be at Alicia’s wedding rehearsal
by 5:30.”

“Right. No problem. We’ll really get
down to business next week – for today, if you could spare just an
hour or two out of your regular shift, that’d be great.”

Twenty minutes later, Kerry was up to
her elbows in black tulle – the same stuff she’d seen Alicia
carrying around. There was more of it than she ever could have
imagined, as if someone had bought out an entire tulle factory.
Nearby, in what looked like a giant mixing bowl taken from the
restaurant’s kitchen, were thousands of sequins.

As she ran the tulle through her
hands, Kerry began to get a picture of what she’d gotten herself
into. “And uh, what exactly am I doing with this stuff?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Faye perched on
the edge of a stool – they were in a storage room – and motioned
for Kerry to sit in a chair that’d been retired to storage years
ago.

“This is a piece that’s finished.” She
reached into an open moving box and pulled out a length of
sequin-spangled tulle. Silver sequins had been attached to the
mesh-like fabric in random disarray, and they gleamed against the
blackness like so many stars.

“It looks like the sky on a clear
night. Is that what you’re going for?”

“Yes, and thank God I’ve pulled it off
– you’re the first person I’ve showed the finished product to.
Anyway, I’m going to use this tulle to create bunting. It’ll be
draped across all the festival tables and booths. That’s why we
need so much of it.”

“I see.” Now, the vast quantities of
tulle made sense.

“You probably think I’m crazy,” Faye
continued, “and to be honest, I’m thinking the same thing. But it’s
too late to back out now.” She tsked. “They made it look so easy on
the internet. Fifteen minute craft idea my ass!”

Kerry had never heard Faye swear
before. Apparently, arts and crafts provoked her temper more than
unruly guests, wandering gators, creeping felons or any of the
other dozens of strange things she’d dealt with during her years as
general manager at Wisteria.

Given that, Kerry got straight to
work, picking up a bottle of glue and scooping out a handful of
sequins.

“I started out sewing the sequins on,”
Faye said as she worked beside her, “but after about three yards I
slipped off my high horse and ran to the store for some glue. I
don’t think anyone will be able to tell, as long as we’re careful
with the application.”

Kerry worked with a steady hand. “They
won’t – you were smart to make the switch.”

Faye shot her a grateful look. “I
don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you to help me. I was
seriously considering calling my great nieces and trying to bribe
them to come and lend a hand.”

“How old are they?”

“Six and eight. They also live in
Charlotte.”

Kerry secured a glittering sequin with
a dot of glue. “You probably could’ve put an ad up online and found
someone to hire for a day or two.”

“After the trouble we’ve already had
with serial killers here? I think that’s the one thing I’m not
desperate enough to try.”

* * * * *

The wedding rehearsal dinner was held
at Liam and Alicia’s house. The modest bungalow was packed to the
rafters with people – the groomsmen and bridesmaids, plus Liam and
Alicia’s families and several friends of Alicia’s who’d traveled
from DC to be there.

Grey couldn’t breathe without rubbing
elbows with someone else. Alicia and Liam’s little terrier mix,
Holden, was zipping around the house, desperately excited by the
presence of so many guests. All in all, the crowd offered the
perfect excuse for Grey to escort Kerry outside.

They walked with her arm caught up in
his, imitating the way they’d moved across the living room floor,
practicing for the next day. Probably the only reason Kerry seemed
to think it was so funny was because she’d had a glass of the wine
that was being served with the seafood buffet set up in the
kitchen, but Grey wasn’t complaining.

“It’s nice out here,” he said as they
stood leaning on the porch railing, “look at the moon.”

It was immensely huge and immensely
white, brilliant above pines that stood like shadowy sentinels
against the night sky, which was more velvet-grey than
black.

“It’s beautiful,” Kerry said. “I used
to look at the moon and think about all the other people who were
doing the same thing. Wonder what their lives were like, what it
was like where they lived.”

“They can’t have it better than we do
here,” Grey said, wondering if she’d had a second glass during one
of the few nanoseconds during which his gaze hadn’t been glued to
her, “especially not on a night like tonight.”

He’d had nothing to drink himself,
since he’d be driving home.

In the moonlight, he could see a
little dent appear in her lower lip, like she was biting
it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, hoping it
wasn’t something he’d said or done.

She was silent for a moment before
turning to meet his eyes. “Someone slashed my tires the other
night, after I took you home. All four of them.”

His gut knotted up, and not, he
suspected, because he’d had three helpings of Sasha’s homemade
gumbo. “That’s why Sasha drove you here?”

She nodded.

“I thought you just wanted to get lit
up.” It didn’t sound as funny as it had in his head.

She narrowed her eyes. “Not at all. We
all have to be up early in the morning. I’d point out that I’ve
only had one glass of wine, but I think you know that.”

He ignored her obvious reference to
the way he’d been watching her. He would’ve liked to joke around,
but the fact that someone had vandalized her car was eating away at
his ability to tease. Suddenly, the night seemed darker, the moon
farther away. Who could possibly have anything against
her?

“I guess you don’t know who did it,
then?”

“No. I spoke to the police – Jeremy,
actually – but I couldn’t tell them who might’ve done it. Maybe it
was just a random thing, like a kid might do, or…”

She looked back toward the moon, and
the idea of her wondering what it might be like to be someone else,
somewhere else, sent a ripple of uneasiness through him.

He reached out and touched her hand
before he could think twice about it.

She didn’t pull away.

“I bet you’re pretty creeped out.” He
knew she was – he could see it on her face and feel it manifested
in the tension that had her gripping the porch railing like a
lifeline.

“Yeah.”

“Tell you what – I’ll drive you home.
Make sure you get in all right.”

“You don’t have to do
that.”

“I’d be glad to. And I won’t try to
charm my way inside – I promise.”

The tiniest of smiles flickered across
her face. “Okay. I appreciate it. I stayed with Sasha last night,
and to tell the truth, it was pretty awkward.”

“Oh yeah?” He played coy, although
he’d seen Sasha and Henry together often enough to make an educated
guess at what Kerry meant. The sight of the two of them at the
beach together was practically obscene. Sasha was always tempting
Henry into rubbing sunblock on her in a way that Grey would’ve
killed to do for Kerry.

“I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Oh, I can imagine all right.” He
realized how weird it sounded after he said it, but then, of
course, there was no taking it back.

Kerry just laughed.
Luckily.

“I think even their dog was
embarrassed.”

“Poor Wolf. Until Sasha moved in, he
had no idea how weird people could be.”

Kerry snorted, and the door behind
them burst open, spilling light and sound out onto the
porch.

The people who walked through it were
none other than Sasha and Henry.

“
Oh, are we intruding on
something?” Sasha’s voice rang loudly from behind them. She stood
beside Henry, her fingers curled around the stem of a wine
glass.

“We were just getting some fresh air,”
Kerry said.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind us
joining you. It’s a little too loud in there, now that most of the
wine’s been had.”

While Grey silently mulled over the
irony of Sasha saying that, he couldn’t help catching Kerry’s eye
and grinning.

She returned his smile, albeit less
conspicuously.

“Henry and I were thinking of leaving
in a few, after dessert,” Sasha said, leaning on the railing now
too. “Is that all right with you, Kerry? We’ve got an early morning
ahead of us.”

“Actually, Grey volunteered to drive
me home,” Kerry replied. “So you don’t have to worry about it.
Thanks for the ride here though, and for last night.”

“Oh, did he?”

Grey felt Sasha’s gaze on his face,
though he refused to meet her eyes. The last thing he needed was
for her to say something outrageous and change Kerry’s mind. He
meant what he’d said about not pulling anything like trying to
charm his way inside her house – above all, he just wanted to ease
the fear he’d seen minutes ago in her eyes.

“Yeah, he did,” was all Kerry said.
“Nice of him, huh?”

Sasha murmured something indistinct
into her wineglass, then tipped it back. Unusually considerate, for
her.

“What do you think,” Grey asked a few
minutes later, when they were alone again, “are you ready to get
out of here, or is it too early?”

Kerry glanced toward the kitchen
window and at the crowd beyond. “Alicia and Liam are probably
anxious for us all to get out of their hair. I’m ready to say
goodbye.”

They made their rounds together, then
climbed into his car. Grey caught Kerry looking at the moon again,
and a weird feeling swirled in the pit of his stomach.

She looked like she was waiting for
all of it – the moon, the stars and the very sky itself, in all its
vast darkness – to come crashing down on her.

It made him want to reach out and pull
her close to him, show her that there were worlds other than the
ones she imagined from a distance, and the one she seemed to be
trying so hard to inhabit all on her own.