Traceless (6 page)

Just a room. With beige carpet. And beige walls.

There was nothing that stood out or defined the space or... Emily. She was beige... almost invisible.

The panic started its dreaded creep beneath her skin. Her heart reacted, bouncing into a faster rhythm only to flail

helplessly like a fish dropped on the bank right next to the river's edge. Relief was in sight, but you couldn't quite reach it no matter how hard you tried.

The overwhelming sense of doom would descend next, and then there would be no stopping a full-blown anxiety attack. She'd had her first one six months after the murder. She'd taken several different types of antianxiety medications until she'd gotten fed up with the futile efforts and/or dependency and she'd stopped.

She couldn't be here right now.

Her purse and keys were in her hand before second thoughts could slow her. A drive would help. Give her a chance to think without any interference or static, no matter how well-meaning. Her mother was still on the phone with Emily's brother. Her father had settled into his recliner with the day's paper.

They wouldn't even know she'd gone.

Outside, the suffocating July heat and humidity still hung in the air even at quarter of eight. Emily wrenched the car door open and dropped behind the steering wheel. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and struggled to regulate her respiration, to slow her heart's frenzied pounding.

When she could breathe normally again she opened her eyes and stared out at the street where her parents lived... in a house that had never been home to her. They'd sold the house on Ivy Lane right after Heather's death. No place had felt like home since. Regret closed around Emily's chest in ever-tightening bands triggering another rush of adrenaline.

Just go. She shoved the key into the ignition and started the engine, then pulled out onto the street with no particular destination. The streets of Pine Bluff were pretty much rolled up for the night and it wasn't even dark yet. A couple of fast-food restaurants were still open. The neon glow from the Sack&Go reminded passersby of the dozens of brands of beer available most any time of the day or night.

Emily wound past a row of newly built houses in an upscale subdivision on the edge of town. Ten years ago the location had been just another field. As a child she'd felt certain that real life didn't exist outside Pine Bluff's city limits. Beyond those borders there had been only two things: cotton fields and sweeping pastures where cattle dozed in the Alabama sun.

Pine Bluff was nestled amid the mountains and lakes of northern Alabama. A place brimming with old-fashioned values, where folks shunned urban sprawl and big-city troubles.

Until one of those would-never-happen-here problems had found its way to her hometown.

Drive; don't think. Breathe, slow and deep.

The cotton fields on either side of the road gave way to fields of tall corn, some partially harvested already. The change prodded a vague recognition.

County Road 18.

She slowed at the turn that would lead to
his
house. Not that she'd actually intended to show up at his place at this time of the evening. But why not? She wasn't afraid of him.

What more could he do to her? Kill her? How did you kill someone who was dead already?

After making that final turn, she parked on the side of the dirt road next to a cluster of shady maples. The narrow, curvy road wound through the woods at the base of the mountain, finally reconnecting with 18. There wasn't another house for as far as she could see. The red Firebird was parked in front. He was home. His first night outside those prison walls.

She thought about those seconds this afternoon outside the courthouse when he'd stared right at her from across the street. He didn't look that different. There were small changes; his hair was shorter, his skin paler. He looked heavier or maybe just more muscled. There was a scar that hadn't been there before. On his left cheek.

But the eyes were exactly the same.

Her fingers clutched the steering wheel as she recalled the way that silvery gaze could reach right inside her and make her feel totally lost. He'd been very good at making her feel vulnerable and helpless ... and needy.

She'd fallen in lust with him at sixteen. No one in the world had known except Heather. Emily's best friend's crushes had fluctuated between Keith Turner and Marvin Cook, both football players, with their lettermen jackets and massive egos.

Not Emily. Nope, she'd picked a guy who'd barely managed to survive his senior year. He'd missed nearly as many days as he'd attended. Austin had had a bit of an ego himself, but his vast charm had rendered most females blind to its presence. Emily's father had called him a thug.

Em, you stay away from that boy. He's trouble.

She'd known it was true, but that hadn't kept her from fantasizing about him. After all, fantasies were supposed to be about the forbidden.

A detail as simple as the way his clothes had fit made her heart beat wildly and her foolish adolescent hormones surge. The T-shirts that had molded to his body, the faded, tattered jeans that had wrapped his lower anatomy, were nothing short of sinful. Everything about him, the way he talked, the way he moved, all of it, had been designed for sex appeal.

He would slide those dark sunglasses into place and spin out of a parking lot in that racy red Firebird and she would long to go with him. To have the wind rushing through her hair... to have him put his hand on her bare thigh and foster all those forbidden sensations that just breathing in the same airspace as him had the power to ignite.

She remembered the way his lips would tilt when he smiled. That sexy curl that no mere woman, much less a teenage girl, could hope to resist. He'd teased her, flirted with her ruthlessly. Each time, she'd turned her back on him. Pretended not to notice. She'd been a good girl; she hadn't associated with boys like him outside her fantasies.

At first he'd laughed at the way she ignored him. Then it became a sort of challenge to him. See just how far he could go before she turned tail and ran.

Once they'd even kissed.

At the movie theater he'd sneaked up behind her and put his hands over her eyes. She'd whirled around to face the culprit. He was the last person she'd expected to see. He'd never gotten quite that close before, never once touched her Shock had frozen her to the spot when their gazes collided and his fingers lingered against her hair. Something had shifted in her small world as he'd stared into her eyes. She had known in the deepest recesses of her soul that she was about to be kissed.

It was her first.

His lips had met hers and she'd leaned into the incredible sensations... had reached her arms around his neck and let her trembling body rest against his strong, lean one. He'd kissed her long and deep, used his tongue in ways she'd only read about. His palms had cupped her face, those long fingers threaded into her hair. A kind of heat she'd never before experienced had flowed through her, settling between her thighs.

As if the voice of reason had suddenly kicked in, he'd drawn away, winked, then walked off without so much as a word. She'd been humiliated. Even that infuriating episode hadn't made her stop wanting him.

A deep shadow fell across the driver's side window and jolted her back to the present. She looked up, blinked. He stood right outside her open car window.

Fear exploded in her veins.

How could she have not heard his approach?

Her brain issued all the appropriate flight commands, but her hands... her fingers refused to act.

With her heart clanging and the blood funneling like a hurricane in her ears, she couldn't think. She couldn't piece together what to do next.

He didn't move, just stood there and waited for her to do or say something.

She reached for the ignition, but Heather's face, frozen in cameo on her gravestone, suddenly flashed in Emily's mind.

No.

This was a public road. It was a free country. She could park here if she damn well wanted to. He couldn't touch her, not without risking a violation of his parole.

Daring him, she wrenched open the door. He backed up a step to avoid being hit by it as she got out.

She grabbed on to her fledgling courage with both hands and pretended not to be scared to death. "Is there a problem?" she demanded, staring directly into those seething gray eyes, her hands planted on her hips in challenge. He was bigger than she remembered, taller... his shoulders broader. And then there was the scar, marring the angle of his jaw and the hollow beneath that lean cheek. She shivered at the idea of how he may have gotten it before she could stifle the reaction.

He looked away a moment, as if he didn't trust himself to continue holding that stare or even to answer her question. Or maybe he was just confused that she hadn't run. He'd better get used to that, because she wasn't the same scared little girl he once knew.

When that cold steel gaze latched on to hers once more, he demanded, "What do you want?"

Her pulse scrambled. It was the first time she'd heard his voice in over ten years. Not since the trial when, after the summations from both sides, he'd risen from the defendant's chair and told the jury what a mistake they would be making if they found him guilty. He was innocent, he'd insisted. He had stood there, wearing that cheap suit his court-appointed attorney had probably instructed his mother to buy, and met the gaze of every person in that jury box. He'd looked young and humble and... terrified.

Emily had barely noticed. Her entire focus had been on seeing that he got what was coming to him.

That old familiar fury kindled inside her. The one emotion of which she seemed capable of experiencing the full range. "What do I want?" She laughed, the sound laden with bitter contempt. He didn't really want to know, but since he'd asked, she would damn sure tell him. "I want you to make a mistake. I want you to go back to prison for the rest of your worthless life." She bit down hard on her lip to prevent its blasted trembling as the rage catapulted through her. "I want you to pay for what you did until you draw your last pathetic breath."

She blinked back the burn of tears. God, she would not cry in front of him. She'd cried enough and it hadn't changed a damned thing. Heather was still dead...
she
was still dead.

For the first time she realized just how dead. Her life was a road that went nowhere... an abrupt stop. She felt nothing... she was nothing. Because of him.

He started to turn away but changed his mind. A muscle in his tightly clenched jaw contracted before he spoke. "Your efforts would be much better spent,
Miss Wallace
, trying to find out who else was in your room that night and whether or not it was really you they were after. Otherwise, you should do yourself a favor and stop wasting your time on me."

CHAPTER SIX

Tuesday, July 16,

1:55 a.m.

Pine Bluff's finest had cruised by Clint's place at seven that morning, but he hadn't expected to find a welcoming committee at Higgins Auto Repair Shop as well. Guess that made him a celebrity.

As he pulled into a slot in the parking lot next to the shop, he recognized the officer at the scene. Ray Hale. So the chief of police himself had come to make sure the ex-con went to work like a good, law-abiding citizen. Would the chief be following him to the bank when he cashed his paycheck? Stocked up at the Piggly Wiggly? Took a piss?

Nothing should surprise Clint at this point. Having Emily Wallace stay parked outside his house until almost midnight despite his show of force had been surprising enough.

The idea that she'd sat out there watching him had made him madder than hell. He knew what she was up to; he just hadn't realized how deeply it would get under his skin. His every move had been watched and dictated in prison. He'd

had to learn to live with that constant surveillance; he didn't like putting up with it now.

Part of him had wanted to scare the hell out of her so she'd go away and leave him alone. But he couldn't do that. He needed her. So he'd stormed right up to her car with the intention of rattling her cage, of making her think twice about what she'd always believed happened that night.

And what had he done? He'd gotten caught up in looking at her. Big brown eyes and a wide, lush mouth that she had tried to hide with her long, silky hair back in high school. He'd dreamed of kissing that mouth long before he'd taken the liberty, even though she'd used it a million times to tell him to get lost.

Just hearing her voice again had damaged him somehow.

He had planned for ten stinking years what he would do and say when he had the chance, and he'd gotten that close and most of the things he'd intended to say had vanished from his tongue.

When she'd dared to get in his face to tell him off just like she used to, his gaze had ignored his objections and roamed every inch of her. The long skirt that only served to make him want to hike up the hem far enough to see those smooth thighs... to maybe get a glimpse of lacy panties. She had a nicely curved bottom and high, full breasts that wouldn't be disguised behind a buttoned-to-the-throat blouse.