Whispers at Midnight (32 page)

Standing on the sidewalk that ran between the strip of medical offices and the parking lot, Carly took a deep breath, inhaling with real gratitude the not particularly pleasant odors of sun-softened asphalt and exhaust from the few passing vehicles. Something about the smells’ ordinariness made the nausea that had threatened her in the vet’s office recede. The roar of an idling, muffler-impaired pickup and a honking horn accompanied by a hollered “Hey, Matt!” caused her to look toward the street. A gnarled hand was waving out the open window of a dark blue, rusted-out Ford. Matt waved back, the engine revved sharply as the light turned green and the truck was gone.

Now that she was outside, away from the sights and sounds and scents that had made the horror of what had befallen Annie so hideously real, Carly was starting to feel stronger, better, more capable of standing on her own two feet.

But she continued to lean against Matt. Matt made her feel better. Matt made her feel safe.

Although what she needed to be made safe from Carly couldn’t have said.

“Carly!” A white panel van rolled through the intersection, and a man yelled at her through the window he quickly opened. Glancing
up, Carly saw that it was Barry Hindley. “I heard about your dog. Is it okay?”

“She’s going to be fine,” Sandra called back when it became obvious that Carly was having trouble drawing enough breath into her lungs for a reply. Barry waved again and drove on.

“So what’s the plan?” Erin asked, her eyes flicking from her brother to Carly and back. The curiosity and speculation with which Erin had earlier regarded their togetherness had given way to a kind of interested acceptance of the two of them as a couple, Carly realized, then added in a little addendum to her own thoughts: if indeed a couple was what she and Matt were. At this point, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything, least of all anything to do with herself and Matt.

But thinking of couples caused Carly to notice that Mike stood close behind Erin, while Antonio was closer to Sandra. The first of those pairings was particularly interesting, or at least it would have been if she’d been feeling more herself. But she was still a little lightheaded, still a little nauseous, still a lot upset about Annie. Speculating about the state of others’ relationships would have to wait for another time. Heck, she thought, she wasn’t even up to speculating about the state of her own relationship, or whether or not what she had going with Matt could even properly be termed a relationship. It was, she realized with some dismay, actually more like a need, at least on her part. She needed to be with him. She needed his arm around her, needed him beside her, needed his warmth, needed his strength. She flat-out needed Matt.

Which, in light of what she knew about his predilection for
friends
and others, might not be such a good thing.

“Carly’s going with me,” Matt said, without bothering to ask Carly whether she had other plans or thoughts on the subject. Not that she did, of course. Basically, anything Matt wanted her to do she was willing to do, at least while she was feeling so drained and dependent and
needy.
It was just that making such a unilateral statement without consulting her wishes or preferences was high-handed, but it was also typically Matt. Good thing she wasn’t shy about protesting when and if she needed to. “Antonio and Mike will take you and Sandra
home, and then they’ve got to get back on the job. Right at this moment, we’ve only got three men working.”

“I’m supposed to meet Collin at seven at The Corner Café. He’s bringing his law school roommate and his wife. You know, Tim Bernard. The best man. From Atlanta.” Erin gave her obviously un-knowing brother a disgusted look, then glanced down at her watch. “It’s only six-fifteen, but I’ve got to go home and change first.”

“I’ll give you a ride,” Mike volunteered.

“That suit?” Matt asked Erin. She nodded. He looked at Mike. “You’re in your cruiser?”

Mike nodded. There were now two official sheriff’s department cars in the parking lot, Carly saw, plus her and Sandra’s van. She, Sandra, Erin and Antonio had rushed Annie here in the van, with Sandra driving and Carly holding Annie’s limp little body in her arms while Antonio rode, white-knuckled, in the back. Mike had led the way, lights flashing, siren wailing, in his cruiser.

The other cruiser in the parking lot, which had the words
SCREVEN COUNTY SHERIFF
painted on the driver’s door, obviously belonged to Matt.

“Okay, you take Sandra home,” Matt said to Antonio. He then looked at Mike. “Then after you drop Erin off you can head over to the Beadle Mansion and pick Antonio up. If things get slow, swing by the office. There’s a whole pile of warrants to serve.”

“Get slow?” Antonio snorted. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“You never know,” Matt said, and glanced up at the clear blue sky. “Hell, maybe it’ll snow.”

“I’ll be there in about half an hour,” Mike said to Antonio, and then he and Erin headed out across the parking lot.

“Uh, if you want to give me the keys, I’d sure be pleased to drive,” Antonio said to Sandra, holding out his hand. Carly remembered their wild ride to the vet’s office, and couldn’t blame him. Sandra behind the wheel was not anything you wanted to experience twice.

For just a moment, as she watched Sandra’s expression, Carly thought Antonio might be in for a pretty pithy reply. But then Sandra appeared to remember just who it was who had insulted her driving.
She summoned a smile, fished in her tote and came up with the keys, which she dropped into his palm.

“Get on the radio and tell everybody to be at the office at eleven,” Matt said to Antonio. “We’re going to have about a fifteen-minute staff meeting and see if we can’t figure out how to apportion some of this extra work.”

Antonio nodded. Then he cupped a hand around Sandra’s elbow.

“Meet you at home,” Sandra said to Carly over her shoulder as Antonio escorted her away. Carly nodded, then watched the flirtatious way Sandra looked at him, watched the deliberately dancing earrings and the sexy little extra sway Sandra put into her walk and felt a spurt of envy. Good, old-fashioned lust uncomplicated by a yearning, burning heart was something she could only wish she was experiencing.

“Feeling better?” Matt looked down at her. Carly nodded and managed a smile for him. No, she thought then, meeting his eyes, which were dark and warm and full of concern for her, she had to take her previous wish back. Lust on its own couldn’t begin to compare with this. To get a rush like she was experiencing just from looking at someone, there had to be something more.

Something like love.

Facing the horrible truth, it was all she could do not to groan.

Another honk sounded as Matt, his arm still around her shoulders, steered her across the parking lot. Another hand waved from the window of a vehicle stopped at the stoplight. This time the vehicle in question was a tan car.

“Hey, Matt, thanks for speaking at the school assembly last week,” a white-haired man yelled. Carly stared, then gaped. Was that…?

“Glad to,” Matt yelled back.

“ ’Preciate it.” The man waved again and was gone as the light changed.

“Oh, my God. Was that
Mr. Simmons?”
Carly gasped. “Yep.” Matt grinned down at her, clearly as fully cognizant of the hilarious irony of the situation as she was. Mr. Simmons was—or at least, he had been—the high school principal when she and Matt had attended. He’d busted Matt so many times on so many different violations
that Matt had basically spent every lunch hour of his entire senior year in Mr. Simmons’s office.

“That’s funny,” Carly said.

“I have to say, I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d wind up being best buds with Simple Simon.”

The name the teenage Matt had always called the principal behind his back made Carly laugh, and laughing made her feel better.

“You’re good at this, aren’t you?” she asked, looking up at him as they reached the car.

“What?”

“Being sheriff.”

“I try.” His mouth quirked. “It’s not anything I want to do long-term though, believe me.”

“You don’t? Why not?” Carly frowned as Matt opened the passenger door for her and waited for her to get in. The vinyl seat was hot; the interior of the car was stifling. Carly realized that she still had not quite recovered from the shock of what had happened to Annie, because even such an overabundance of heat was welcome. Sinking down into the soft bucket seat, pulling on her seat belt, she finally started to feel warm enough again as the buildup of heat inside the car baked away the last of the chill that had held her in thrall. Knowing that Annie was likely going to be all right helped her return to something approaching normal, too.

Taking a deep breath, she was able to slowly let go of the sense of dread and fear that had roiled her stomach ever since she had first run outside to discover her poor little dog convulsing in the grass. Thinking about Matt as sheriff provided a welcome distraction as well. It occurred to her that she knew him so well, knew him on a level that felt almost biological, almost cellular, but there was a large chunk of his life that she had no factual knowledge of: the years between the time she had left, and the time she had come home again.

Matt slid in behind the steering wheel.

“Why not?” she asked again, resting her head back against the seat and savoring the heat on her neck as she looked at him.

He glanced at her as he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “I feel like I’ve been responsible for somebody or something
practically since the day I was born. I got away once, joined the Marines—” he slanted a grin her way, “—still can’t believe that, can you?—and thought I was all set. Oh, I sent money back to Mom, kinda kept tabs on her and the girls, but I was free and living my own life and having a pretty good time. Then Mom died, and what are you gonna do? There wasn’t anybody else to take the girls. They would have had to go to a foster home. They’re my sisters, for Christ’s sake. The foster home was not happening. So I came home. The sheriff’s department needed deputies—hell, we always need deputies; that’s the sheriff’s department in a nutshell. Anyway, I got hired on, worked as a deputy for a while, then when Sheriff Beatty retired he backed me and I got elected sheriff. It’s been a good gig; I’ve been able to take care of the girls, but let’s just say it’s not what I ever thought I’d be doing with my life. Lissa’s off to college next month. I’ll hang around here until I’m sure she’s settled, sure they’re all settled, which should be just about the time my term as sheriff expires. Then I’m out of here. I’m gone. I’m hopping on my Harley and riding off into the sunset with nobody to look out for but me.”

There was humor in his words, and he smiled a little crookedly as he said that last, but Carly knew that what she was hearing was, more or less, the sound of her heart cracking in two. She wanted him; he wanted his freedom. The two were incompatible. Was that the story of her life or what?

Not that she was about to let him know that he had just dealt her budding hopes of happily-ever-after a death blow.

“Speaking of Harleys,” she said, keeping things casual while she worked at replacing her pretty pipe dreams with gritty reality, “where’s your motorcycle?”

“It’s parked in front of your house. When I had to … uh—” he broke off, grimacing.

“When you had to drive Shelby home?” Carly finished for him, sweet as pie. The sheriff’s office flashed by outside the window, and she realized that they were heading toward her house. Was he taking her straight home? She didn’t want to ask, not until she had sorted out exactly how she felt about things. Like love. And sex. And Matt.

He slanted a look at her. “Yeah. Who told you that, anyway?”

“Does it matter?” she asked, her eyes fixed on his face. The sun’s rays slanted through the windshield to gild his lean cheeks. His expression was faintly wary as he glanced her way again. With his elegantly carved features and dark, slumberous eyes, with his black hair waving back away from his brow and the faintest suggestion of stubble roughening his jaw, he looked so sexy that she almost couldn’t breathe. He was her Matt, her too-handsome-for-his-own-good Matt, her best friend turned dream lover Matt, and yet, she realized with a sharp little stab of pain, he wasn’t. At least, he wasn’t really
hers,
no matter how much she might wish it were otherwise. If she had fallen in love with him way back when they were kids and the emotion had stuck, that was her problem, not his. He had made no bones about how he felt about her. He loved her. Just not that way.

Not the way she loved him.

Which pretty much sucked. For her, anyway.

“No. Hell, no. Of course it doesn’t matter. Could have been any one of dozens of people. Everybody knows every step everybody else takes around this place.” There was disgust in his voice. “Okay, yeah, when I had to drive Shelby home we went in her car. I made sure she was okay, then got a ride to my house and picked up my cruiser, drove back to your house, found your place deserted, called in to see if anybody knew what had happened to make a whole group of people I care about disappear, and heard about your dog.”

“And came right away.” She looked at him meditatively. He was handsome and sexy and she loved him and she wanted him and…

“Yep.”

“Why?”… she might not be able to have everything she wanted, she might not be able to have her happily-ever-after…

“What do you mean, why? Why do you think? I thought your dog was probably dead. I thought you’d be upset. I thought you’d be glad to see me.” He glanced at her, frowning. “I thought you might need me.”

“I did, yeah.”… but she could have some of what she wanted. He was hers for the taking, if she was willing to accept that it was just a short-term thing. “Thank you for coming, by the way.”

Half a loaf is better than no bread.
She could almost hear her grandmother
saying it. But was it really? Or did it just leave you hungrier than ever for the half you didn’t get?

“Matt?”

“Hmm?”

“Why, exactly, did you feel like you had to drive Shelby home?”