Unforgivable (20 page)

“You sound funny again. Is someone there?”

“No one’s here but me.” That was apparently true.

“Has Silas been around? Have you seen him, Katie?” 

She let the bill drift down to the desk. “Just around town.”

“He followed you to work both mornings. I can’t emphasize enough how dangerous he is, sweetheart. Tate thinks Silas is the guy taking women. Please keep yourself safe until I come home. Okay? Promise?”

Her hand automatically went to her cross. “I will.” Stupid promise. Silas had been right there, and she’d let him get the upper hand.

“You know you mean the world to me. If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do. Do you love me, Katie?”

Her hand squeezed the cross, digging the edges into her palm. “I do love you, Ben. I always have, always will.” What would he do if she ever left him? The one time she’d left her mother…

“I love you too, Katie. More than anything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Once she’d hung up, she walked to the kitchen window and searched the woods. It was still light out, but she couldn’t see Silas anywhere. Once again he’d given her the slip and left burning questions unanswered. Spooky Silas. She shivered. He was spooky in more ways than one.

It was nearly nine o’clock by the time Katie had fixed dinner, returned everything in the office back to normal, and made sure every window in the house was locked tight. She wasn’t sure how Silas had managed to open the kitchen door, which made her completely uneasy.

Then she remembered the dog at the hospital. She had to check on her at least once during the night. Ben hadn’t even asked her about the dog or how she’d handled it. He’d only cared about Silas hanging around.

All that adrenaline she’d used earlier had drained her energy, but she readied herself to walk to the hospital. She’d done it a few times, when Ben was tied up with a patient and she needed to get home to start supper, but he hadn’t liked it.

She doused the lights in the living room and stepped onto the porch. She decided in favor of not being visible to having the security of the light when she returned. She’d left the office light on to guide her back.

The woods were alive with an evening wind that rattled the leaves and made it sound like heavy rain. The air was warm and slightly humid, and the breeze was a welcome addition. It also masked her footsteps, another bonus. Of course, it masked anyone else’s footsteps as well.

She hated feeling this trepidation over doing something she’d done for years: walk through the woods at night. But it was there, like a ghost, looming in the darkness around her. Silas’s voice whispered about danger. Ben’s voice warned her about Silas. Even Harold’s voice asked if she was afraid, being out here in the woods all by herself. She pulled her black sweater tighter and headed into the trees.

She’d only taken a few steps when she realized what she was hearing wasn’t wind in the leaves but the sound of a car coming down the drive. These trees weren’t big enough to hide behind, but she ducked behind a trunk anyway. She wasn’t surprised to see Gary’s vehicle pull up to the house. He looked full of himself as he swaggered up the porch steps. She couldn’t see him past that as the darkness swallowed him up. He knocked several times, then walked around the perimeter of the house. He even tried to look in the windows, making her wonder if he’d done that before.

He looked around at the woods, but unlike Silas, didn’t find her. She shivered again at Silas’s spookiness. Luckily Gary didn’t have whatever power Silas did. He finally got into his vehicle and left.

Her penlight led the way through the woods. Soon, the trees thinned out. She could smell pine and the scent of the fire that some kids had started a year ago when they were playing with matches. They’d had to evacuate the animals while the fire blazed. Luckily, it had been contained fairly soon, without going near the cemetery or their building.

Light glowed dimly from the recovery room, where she’d left a nightlight on to soothe the dog. The front light lit up the entry. She went inside and locked the door. And then, just in case, she checked each room.

The dog woke up when she snapped on the light. “Hi, there, Goldie,” she soothed as she opened her gate. “That seems like a good name for you.” Her tail thumped in agreement, and she leaned forward and licked Katie’s hand. “I wish you could tell me what happened.” She checked her lacerations. No sign of infection or shock. She sat with her for a time and gave her some loving before returning the room to its peaceful, dim state.

The wind had kicked up even more by the time she walked outside again. Rain would be good, but not until she returned home. Luckily, it was a dry wind that blew her hair in her face. She glanced to the north, where the cemetery sprawled out in the glow of moonlight. She didn’t know why, but she was drawn to it. She wasn’t afraid of ghosts. As a child, before the bad thing happened with her mama, she used to come here just to prove to the other kids that she wasn’t afraid. She hadn’t been afraid of much back then. 

The only ghosts she saw were her younger self.
Chicken
!
I
’
m not afraid of ghosts. See, there
’
s nothing here.
She’d run all around the cemetery, and then tripped on a hole. She could still hear the echo of kids’ laughter.

She walked to the edge where the first cluster of graves sat. Moonlight danced on the gravestones like fairies. Though she couldn’t see the details, she knew the black iron fence surrounding this group had a lamb sitting under a tree molded into each section. She also knew someone left flowers here every once in a while. The scent of fresh earth tainted the air, even though no one had been buried here in many years. She lifted her nose, trying to trace the scent.

“Looking for ghosts?” Silas’s voice said through the darkness. 

She surprised herself by not jumping in fright. At first she couldn’t even see him. Then, slowly, he materialized out of the huge oak trees at the corner of the plot.

“Looks like I’ve found my first one.” She congratulated herself on sounding calm and cool, when that was the last that she felt as he walked closer. “Did you follow me here? Or do you regularly hang around graveyards?”

He stopped only a few inches from her. His face was in shadows, and his lips were shiny as though he’d just licked them. “Would you believe the latter?”

“Not really.”

“Good. Don’t trust anyone.”

“If you were following me, why’d you let me know you were here?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to walk this way. I didn’t want to scare you.”

That was so laughable, she did let out a burst of laughter. “But sneaking around, breaking into my house, and warning me that someone’s trying to kill me, someone I know, that isn’t meant to scare me.”

He didn’t share her humor, warped though it was. “That’s different.  What are you doing walking out in the woods at night, anyway?”

“No one’s been abducted from the woods yet as far as I know. I had to check on a patient.”

“Did you bring the gun?”

She glanced down at her empty hands. “No. I’m not used to being a gun-totin’ individual.”

He slid his hands down her arms and took her hands in his. “Don’t take any chances, Katie.” The graveness in his voice almost overrode the way his hands made her feel. In the distance she heard a car drive by, reminding her how far from civilization she was. 

She squeezed his hands, maybe because she didn’t want him to get away again. “Tell me what’s going on, Silas. I need to know for my own sanity.”

He squeezed back, pulling her close enough to feel his body heat, but not his body. “It’s easier to tell you like this…in the dark.”

“Why?”

He released one of her hands and trailed his finger down her cheek. “Because you’re going to look at me like they all do, and I don’t want to see that in your eyes.” 

She felt her chest squeeze at the vulnerability in his voice. “Why do I matter?” she whispered, wanting to matter so bad, it hurt. 

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “You’ve always mattered, Katie. More than you’ll ever know.”

He’d told her nothing yet, and still it was as though he’d reached right in and taken her heart in his hands. He met her gaze, though she could see nothing of what lay beyond those dark shadows. Moonlight danced over his face, too, as the wind shifted the leaves above them. For that moment, she saw a glimpse of his soul mirrored in his eyes. Moonlight skittered across her face and over their joined hands.

“Do you know what empathy is?” 

She nodded. “When you can understand what someone is feeling.”

“Because you can read their expressions and body language.” She nodded again, and he continued. “I know what people feel, because I
feel
what they’re feeling. The closer I am physically to someone, the stronger the feeling is. That’s how I knew you couldn’t shoot me.”

She started to pull away, but he held on tight. “You can read my mind?”

“No. Usually, I get a sense of what someone’s feeling, sometimes why they’re feeling it. But I can’t read their thoughts.”

“Is that why…they called you Spooky Silas?”

He nodded. “I’ve had this…I don’t know what to call it, ability, I guess, for as long as I can remember. I picked up feelings from my parents. Of course, I didn’t realize it was anything…different. I thought everyone had it. When I told kids I knew they were upset or mad or whatever, it freaked them out. I figured out pretty soon that what I had made me strange. Even my parents, especially my dad, got freaked out by it. I learned to hold it in most of the time. And to stay away from people so I wouldn’t feel anything.”

She couldn’t help but wonder what he felt from her now. Even she didn’t know what she was feeling when it came to Silas. “You said you had an uncanny ability to capture the victim’s feelings in your books.”

She saw a glimmer of a smile on his face. “You remembered.”

“I remember every word you’ve said. I just don’t understand most of it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand all of it, either.” He took a breath, released it slowly. “I get residual feelings, too. Sometimes I go to the victim’s place of residence and pick up whatever feelings they were having in that room last. There are times when I know the girl simply ran away, that she was going through a lot at home.” He let that sink in for a moment. “Do you think I’m spooky now?”

“I don’t know.” That was the truth. “But…how could you have known about the day I buried Boots? That sketch is, well, it’s exactly how it happened. Even down to my clothes. And…” She couldn’t ask him her ambivalence about marrying Ben. “Were you there?”

He bowed his head, raising their joined hands toward his chin. She felt the brush of his stubble against her knuckles, and then the startling feeling of his soft mouth against her skin. Her heart hiccupped, closing off her breath. 

He looked up at her finally, though he didn’t let go of her hands. His thumbs grazed over her fingers as he spoke. “Remember when I said that I held you right after you were born and knew you were special?” She nodded. “Something happened between us that day. It was like I…bonded with you. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I knew it had something to do with my ability.”

He’d wanted to protect her and keep her from harm. Something scurried through the leaves behind them, but she didn’t even look. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“I wanted to stick close to you, but my dad didn’t give me much free time. And we were never in the same school together. As we grew older, I started to realize what it was that bonded us: your feelings. I felt what you felt stronger than with anyone else. Even when you were nowhere near me. When you were scared, I could
see
what was happening through your eyes. Do you remember when you were seven and those boys saw you walking down the road by yourself? They circled you and told you to pull down your panties.”

She remembered too well. “There was no one around, and then…you walked by, lingered. That’s all you did. They took a look at you and left. They were afraid of you.”

“Spooky Silas,” he said without a trace of humor. “But it was enough to get them to leave you alone. I made sure you got home all right.”

“I remember wondering why you didn’t walk with me.”

He looked toward the graves. “When I was cleaning up the house after my father was gone, I found some…pornography.” He enunciated the word, “Child pornography. It made me sick. I was only a kid myself, but I knew it was wrong for my dad to be looking at little girls.”

“You didn’t want your father near me?”

“I didn’t want to be like him.”

Those words struck her in the chest. It took her a moment to get the air to say, “So you stayed away from me.”

He nodded, swallowing hard. “I’m not like that. But I was a kid, I didn’t know if that kind of thing ran in the blood. I don’t think he actually molested children. I think it was some kind of sick hobby.”

The impact of his earlier words was just now sinking in. This time when she pulled her hands away, he let her go. “Silas, what you’re saying…you seeing through my eyes when I’m scared—”

He wrapped his fingers around one of the iron columns. “Or whenever you feel anything strongly. When Gary threw your kitten—”

“You saw it happen? That’s why you believed me, because you saw it?” When he nodded, she said, “But why didn’t you come to me then?”

“That’s why I was trying to get the damn truck working. I didn’t know exactly where you were. And then you showed up.”

She remembered how surprised he’d been and how he’d asked about the kitten before even hearing the story. “And when Boots died…”

He looked up at the canopy of trees over them, stroking the length of his neck. “You were so broken up. I was in Atlanta. I knew you’d just married Ben, and it wasn’t my place to comfort you. But you just cried.” His voice went low, and he looked at her again. “And cried.”

Her throat went tight. “I waited until Ben left on farm calls before I let out my grief. I knew he wouldn’t understand. I wanted to be alone.” She looked into his eyes, those dark, mysterious shadows. “But I wasn’t alone.”