Sound of Secrets (10 page)

"You what?"

"I didn't say anything when you married Wes Summerfield, although I knew that one was a whopping mistake. All he had was a handsome face and a big wad of cash. He didn't know the first thing about keeping a woman like you happy."

"How dare you say that to me!"

"Now you're barely divorced a month and you come in here making noise about Gray," he continued as if he hadn't heard her. "Now I love Gray, I truly do. He's about the best friend I have in the world. But he'd be as wrong for you in his own way as Summerfield was in his."

Karen stared at him mutely, the blood rushing through her veins in a hot stream. She vaguely realized she’d seldom been this close to him. He was smiling at her, a half-grin that told her he realized he had stepped over the line she never wanted him to cross. She took a deep breath, intending to push him back over it with harsh words.

"For your information, Tyler, I don't need a guardian," she said stiffly. "If I did, I certainly wouldn't choose you."

To her chagrin, he smiled. Not the half-grin that was his trademark, but a wide, warm smile that lit his hazel eyes with green and gold sparks and made her face the fact that the skinny boy she'd managed to avoid for so long had turned into a determined, breathtaking man.

"Good," he said.

"Good?"

"Yeah. Good." He extended one of his hands until he touched her cheek. She was so shocked at the contact she didn't try to remove it. "Haven't you figured it out yet, Karen? I'm through standing on the sidelines watching you make a mess of your life. I'm not going to be your guardian. I'm going to be your lover."

She slapped away the hand on her cheek and jerked to her feet, staring at him in horror. She sputtered.

"Of all the rude, impossible..."

"I wasn't being rude, and I don't intend to be impossible. What I was being was truthful." He lowered his voice, and goose bumps danced over her arms. "I thought it only fair that I state my intentions. We're going to be lovers, Karen, and you're going to want it every bit as much as I do."

Karen had raised her right hand and slapped him before she knew that was what she intended. She watched the dull, red imprint of her hand take shape on his face and the stung look come into eyes she had just noticed were beautiful.

Then she whirled and headed for the exit of the bar, wanting desperately to get away from him.

Cara kicked at the covers binding her legs and thrashed on the hotel bed, knowing she was dreaming, knowing what was coming, but unable to wake up.

Darkness had descended, and gun-metal gray clouds obscured the moon. The air was still, with a muggy thickness that made it difficult to breathe.

Cara stood on the ground with her head bowed and her eyes shut tight, not wanting to look up into the sky at what she knew would appear as if from nowhere. Maybe this time, if she didn’t look up, it wouldn’t come.

The silence stretched, fueling her hope. Then she heard it. A deceptively soft flapping that got louder and louder until she jammed her hands over her ears. The air above her head stirred, rustling her hair until a number of strands stood on end.

Self-preservation kicked in, and she raised her head. Even though her eyes were still closed, she could see the eagle that soared no more than thirty feet above her, its wings spread in a span wider than a man is tall. Its sharp talons were poised to pierce her skin like daggers, its hooked beak ready to tear into her flesh.

The eagle swooped in a graceful, terrifying arc. Cara ran. She ran as though her life depended on it, her feet tearing through the thick underbrush of the open field, her breaths shallow and rapid.

The flapping sound of the wings grew closer, closer, until the air whooshed at her back.

She focused on the expanse of land in front of her, willing herself to run faster, and caught sight of something — someone — ahead of her. She was so shocked to discover someone else in the dream that she nearly stopped.

Ahead of her, the little doomed boy turned toward her, in much the same way he had when she’d stopped at Sam Peckenbush’s gas station with car trouble.

His features were still indistinct below his shock of dark hair, but she could tell from his posture that he was terrified.
 

The eagle screamed, and Cara turned, watching it dip out of the sky, its talons lowered in anticipation.

With a supreme act of will, Cara wrenched her eyes open.

The shadowed ceiling of the hotel room, and not the deadly claws of the eagle, greeted her. She sat up shakily in bed, trying to catch her breath while she dimly noted that both the covers and her nightgown were drenched with sweat.

She reached over and snapped on the light, trying to chase away the darkness that had once again invaded her life.
 

"It was just a bad dream," she said aloud, pushing her hair out of her face with shaking hands. Even as she said the words, she knew it was more, much more, than that.

The eagle had been menacing her dreams for as long as she could remember, regularly swooping with terrifying ease into her safe little world.

She’d always known the eagle that haunted her by night and the panic attacks that struck her by day were related. She’d never had an inkling as to how or why.

For years, she’d been fighting her demons in the dark, keeping them secret from her family and friends while trying whatever relaxation exercise or deep-breathing technique the latest book advocated to get rid of them.

She’d succeeded, up to a point. Sometimes, she managed to keep the dream and the attacks at bay for weeks at a time. But they always came back. Just as they were back now.

Only this time, they hadn’t returned to her life in the same yawning vacuum as they’d come. This time, she had clues.

Whereas before she’d never understood what brought on an anxiety attack, she knew the last one had been triggered by the odd sense of deja vu she’d experienced while driving into Secret Sound.

And, whereas before she’d always been alone in her dream, this time Skippy Rhett had been with her.

She swung her shaking legs off the bed, intending to leave Secret Sound even before the sun came up. But as her legs hit the floor, the room seemed to dissolve into the same sort of misty darkness that pervaded her dream.

She blinked, trying to dispel the eerie gloom. It did no good. She no longer seemed to be in a hotel room. The carpeting and fresh paint on the wall were gone, replaced by cement flooring and stacked bricks. She squinted, and she could barely make out a shovel and a couple of rakes standing upright, leaning against the wall.

At first she thought she was alone in the room. Then she saw a shape huddled in the far corner. She took a few tentative steps away from where the hotel bed had been while her heart pounded in her chest.

When she was close enough, she saw that the shape was a small boy with his head resting on his knees. He looked up at her approach. The freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheeks stood out against his pale skin, and his huge, dark eyes seemed haunted.

Tears spilled and trickled down his face, marking his fear so clearly that it nearly broke Cara’s heart.

"Is that you, Skippy?" Cara asked, her voice breaking on the unnecessary question. She knew, without a doubt, who was silently crying in the corner of the room.

She took another step, intending to comfort him. Without warning the eerie gloom dissipated and the boy disappeared. She willed him to come back. It was no use.

She was again alone in her redecorated hotel room, standing between a cherry armoire and the double bed that had housed nightmares she couldn’t hide from any longer.

The conviction that reared up in her was so strong that she sat down on the edge of the bed.

She knew, with a startling certainty, that her attacks and the eagle were connected to the mystery of why she’d seen the little boy die again.

She’d gone to sleep counting the hours before she could leave Secret Sound. Now she knew that the decision she’d made on the beach was the wrong one.

She looked down at her hands and saw that they were trembling. She wanted to run so badly that she almost got out of bed and packed her suitcase. Instead she lay back down and pulled the covers up to her chin.

If she turned her back on the little boy reaching out to her from the grave, the bald truth was that she’d never shake her demons.

Nor would she ever be able to look at herself in a mirror again without seeing her own haunted eyes looking back at her.

Karen Rhett stomped through the hallway of the Secret Sound Sun, imagining with every stride that her high-heeled shoe was stepping not on the linoleum flooring but on the face of the man she’d left in the conference room.

How dare Stoney Gillick demand the features section print a retraction. If Gillick hadn’t wanted to be included in a story on domestic violence, he should have declined to be interviewed.

Instead, Gillick had given detailed accounts of the beatings he’d administered to both his first and second wives as well as a vow that he was through using violence to get his way. Mandy Smith, whom Karen had added to the features reporting staff a year ago, had in turn written an informative, moving story about the ravages of domestic violence.

Karen had a hard time believing Gillick's bullying days were behind him, especially since he'd threatened to sue the Sun for libel. He was a short, muscled thug in his mid-fifties who'd thrown his weight around Secret Sound for longer than Karen had been alive. He claimed he’d never struck his second wife and had only "slapped around" his first in the distant past. Incredibly, he seemed to think he could intimidate her into printing a retraction.

Karen would never consent to correcting a story that had been the God's-honest truth. Mandy had only been out of college a few years, and Karen didn’t intend to disillusion her by failing to stand up for what was right.

Karen’s Uncle Curtis had advised her to approach the meeting with a cool head and try to talk Gillick out of taking legal action. That made sense to Karen, but her determination to keep cool had lasted only until Gillick called her reporter a liar. That had been all of ten minutes.

She’d ended the meeting by telling him she’d see him in court and slamming the door in his face, something that wouldn't please Uncle Curtis.

“Did it go okay, boss?" a hesitant voice asked when she was almost to her office door.

Karen probably would have ignored the question if it had come from anyone besides Mandy, who deserved an answer. She paused in her imaginary face-stomping.

"It could’ve gone better," she said in a monumental understatement, "but you let me worry about that. You wrote a wonderful story, and you know I’m behind you all the way."

She didn’t wait to hear Mandy’s murmurs of thanks, continuing to the sanctuary of her office. The door, which she was sure she’d left closed, stood open.

In the center of her desk was a generous bunch of hibiscus, their showy red blooms spilling over the sides of a large glass vase. Karen stopped at the door and stared at the gorgeous flowers in bafflement.

In her experience, most men never bothered to find out which flowers a lady favored, instead sending long-stemmed red roses by default. On the few occasions her ex-husband had given her flowers, that’s what he’d done, even though she’d mentioned more than once that she didn’t like their sickly sweet smell.

Whoever had sent her these hibiscus had either made a lucky guess or was paying attention. Karen was so partial to the flowers that, in high school, she’d had a shirt covered with their likeness. She’d worn it so often it had become faded and torn. Sometimes, if she were going to a party, she’d tuck a hibiscus behind one ear.

A white card leaned against the base of the vase. Karen slowly walked toward it, daring to hope that Gray DeBerg had paid attention. Not able to stand the suspense any longer, she snatched the card and tore open the card.

I forgive you for the slap
.

Karen pictured the sexy half-grin Tyler Shaw had worn at the Dew Drop Inn when he’d arrogantly told her they were going to be lovers. She saw red an even deeper shade than the flowers.

She extended her arm and swept the vase off her desk, jumping backward when it crashed to the floor in a mess of water, broken glass and flame-red color.

For a moment, she stood there, staring at what she’d done. The flowers, which had looked so beautiful on her desk, appeared sad and forlorn against the backdrop of the floor. Flowers so lovely hadn’t deserved so ugly a fate. Regret quickly replaced the anger.

"Damn you, Tyler," she muttered, walking around her desk and pulling out a vase she kept in one of the drawers. Carrying the vase in one hand, she dragged the wastebasket across the floor with the other, and got down on her hands and knees. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "You’ve got a hell of a nerve sending me flowers after telling me you'll fix the mess I've made of my life. It hasn’t even occurred to you that nobody can fix it. If you were here, I’d slap your insolent face again."

The three raps that sounded against the door were so soft Karen wasn’t sure she’d heard them. The employees with desks close to her office had probably heard the vase crashing to the floor, but they were well enough versed in her moods to know when to leave her alone.

She turned her head, half-convinced she’d imagined the knocking, and saw the woman who had left the newspaper the night before with Gray and his father. The woman she suspected had kept Gray from following through on his plan to meet Tyler at the Dew Drop Inn, thus keeping Gray from her.

A new surge of pique washed over her.

"What do you want?" she snapped.

The other woman’s question was hesitant. "Are you Karen Rhett?"

"That’s what it says on the door, doesn’t it?"

The woman licked her lips and swallowed, venturing a step into the office. "I’m Cara Donnelly," she said.

Karen stared at her, wondering why the woman thought supplying her name would explain what she was doing at her door. She had to admit, reluctantly, that the other woman was even prettier up close. Not that she did much with her looks. Makeup could have enhanced her dewy complexion and big brown eyes. Her clothes, too, were wrong. She would have looked great in pastels. The nondescript summer dress that hung on her figure like a sack was a washed-out beige.