Whispers (9 page)

Eddie frowned. “We know our neighbors here.”

“
No offense intended.”

“
Mac said they were speeding,” Eddie said. “That’s why he noticed.”

“
I’ve talked to Brendan about driving fast,” Gracie said. “He doesn’t listen. I think teenagers are missing the connection between their ears and their brains.”

Reilly stifled a grin but not before Gracie saw it. She didn’t have to ask why. She sounded like a mother. That was fine. She was a mother.

“
The sun set about seven fifteen. I was at the Buckboard, having dinner. At about seven thirty my radio went off. Monica over at the municipal office said Carolina Beck had called in, all upset and shouting. Said there was trouble out at the springs. Said to get my ass out there right now.”

“
She said that?” Gracie asked. “She said ‘ass’?”

“
According to Monica she did.”

“
I never heard her use so much as a ‘darn.’ ”

“
Maybe Monica threw the ‘ass’ in for effect. However it happened, I jumped in my car and went straight there. That was just about the time the storm blew in. It was lightning like there was a short in the sky. I haven’t seen a storm like this in years. Hell, the rain alone is enough to dance about. We’re going on a ten-year drought.”

“
Eddie ... my daughter?” Gracie prompted before he could go on too long about the drought. She’d heard it enough times to know the subject of drought in a conversation could last almost as long as the drought itself.

He nodded. “When I got there I didn’t see anything. Not a damn thing. Then as I was turning, I saw the truck perched at the edge of the ravine where the springs used to be. Lights were out, and it was so dark, I almost missed it. So I backed up and aimed my headlights and that’s when I saw your grandma.”

At last. Gracie braced herself. “Are you going to tell me what happened to her, Eddie?”

Eddie made a face and scratched the back of his neck, looking for all the world like he didn’t know how or what to say that would describe what happened next.

“
Before I could get out of the car, I saw the truck start to rock. Still couldn’t see anyone in it, but it looked like it was shaking.” He lifted a hand and made a back-and-forth motion. “Then Carolina, she shouts at it. I couldn’t hear her over the wind and the thunder, but she was screaming like a banshee. Then right in front of my eyes the lightning just snaked down and got her.” He looked up, shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe what he’d seen. “Just nailed her, Gracie. She didn’t stand a chance. I came running but there wasn’t nothing I could do. By the time I reached her, it was over. She was dead. Then I looked back at the truck and I saw the kids in the front seat. They were staring out and….” He paused, his face a picture of utter disbelief. “They weren’t looking at me or your grandma. It was like they were looking through us. Like they were seeing something I couldn’t. I don’t know how else to explain it. I tried to get to them, to get them out, but it was like the wind was against me and lightning was hitting all around. I thought I was going to be laid out next to your grandma in a minute. I could see the kids, though. They just screamed and screamed and then the truck went over.” He whistled and made another gesture. “It all happened so fast.”

“
Oh my God,” Gracie breathed. It was almost too horrible to believe. Her grandmother wasn’t the first Beck woman to lose her life at the old springs. Gracie’s mother had died there when Gracie was just an infant. And now it had nearly taken Analise.

“
I jumped on the horn and called for help,” Eddie was saying, “and then I got my winch and fed it out into the hole.”

Eddie stood and paced a few steps. “It was damn quiet down there. Can’t explain that right either. It was like being inside a vacuum. I couldn’t hear the storm. Couldn’t hear the kids. Couldn’t hear nothing. Like being in a tomb. I ain’t ashamed to tell you I was spooked, ‘cuz I sure as shit was.”

“
How did you get them out?” Reilly asked.

“
The truck caught not far from the edge. Don’t know how or on what yet, but it was just dangling. I was scared to death I was going to tap it and it would just go. I got to your daughter’s side first, Gracie. The boy was unconscious, but she had enough wits left to help me get her out. About that time, backup came and we pulled Brendan up too. That’s what happened, I guess. It was just an accident, really. But with your grandma out there struck dead and the kids screaming…. I guess it kicked my imagination into overdrive. Because it didn’t feel like any other accident I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot, small town or no.”

The seriousness of his last words left both Gracie and Reilly silent. She wanted to ask, what
did
it feel like, but the look on Eddie’s face was answer enough. He’d been shaken by it, and Eddie Rodriguez was not the kind of man who was easily shaken.

Chapter Nine

AFTER Eddie left, Reilly and Gracie stood in the entry-way, silent, each absorbing his strange tale. Reilly didn’t know what the hell to make of it. Eddie had been freaked out—delusional in Reilly’s opinion—scaring himself in the dark like a little girl. For once, though, he’d kept his opinion to himself. He didn’t think he’d win any gold stars for his effort, but he didn’t get kicked out of the room, either. Small, but a victory all the same.

He took a step forward and the horse-dog pricked its ears, watching him with a predatory look. Now
there
was something to be scared of.

He wanted to talk to Gracie. He wanted to ask about her life, about the years since she’d left Diablo Springs, but he knew this wasn’t the time. Still, the questions and the deep desire for the answers gummed up his reactions and made it difficult to know what to say to her right now.

“
So,” he said after a moment of silence. “What do you think about Eddie’s story?”

Gracie shook her head. She looked numb, her eyes glazed, like she’d chased a couple of downers with a beer. “I think I’m too tired to think. This has been the longest day in history.”

He nodded. “You look tired. I mean, you look good. But tired.”

“
You had it right the first time.”

“
No, really. You look good.”

Tired, stressed-out, and road worn, she looked better than most women did fresh and ready to paint the town. Her eyes darkened, as if she’d read his mind, and something flashed in them that hit him down low and hard. But before he could put a name to what he’d seen, it vanished and in its place he saw cold anger. He couldn’t blame her. A hundred years couldn’t erase what he’d done ... what he hadn’t done. He might apologize for it, if he thought it would make a difference. He didn’t.

“
Your daughter really resembles you,” he said.

“
I don’t think she’d appreciate that, but thank you.”

“
So where is your husband?”

He’d meant to ask in a more roundabout manner. Maybe start with a casual,
Does she look like your husband?
or
Can you see her father in her?
But somewhere in the passage from thought to words, the question became what it was: blunt and insistent. It was none of his damn business, but when had that ever stopped him?

“
I don’t have a husband,” she said.

And then she turned and began switching off lights, followed closely by her canine sentry. She checked the door and then started up the stairs. End of conversation. He got it.

“
It’s wild being back here, isn’t it?” he said, picking a safer topic as he followed her and the enormous dog up.

She glanced at him from over her shoulder. “It’s hell.”

There was no subtlety to the subtext that went with her words. Her eyes said it all. She hated his guts and wanted him out of her house. Who could blame her? If he’d known she was going to be here, if he’d known about her grandmother, her daughter, maybe he wouldn’t have come. Maybe. But he hadn’t known, and now that he was here, now that he’d heard Eddie’s wild account of what had happened at the ruins, he had no intention of leaving.

He didn’t believe in all the psychic bullshit Chloe dealt; the only spirits in Diablo Springs came from a bottle at the Buckboard. Yet, his instincts told him that there was a story here and even though he’d admitted to himself that he’d come to settle his past, if he happened to stumble over inspiration and a viable story—hell, he’d take it.

So what if Gracie Beck didn’t want him to write it? His name was already blackened as far as she was concerned. Nothing he could do about it now. Obviously, she hadn’t moved on—honestly, he never thought she would. She had every right to think he was shit. But he planned to stay until he got what he wanted—whatever that might be.

“
What happened to your music, your group?” she asked, lowering her voice as they reached the upstairs landing where everyone would be asleep.

He looked up, surprised that she’d known about it, surprised that she’d asked. “Basically, we sucked.”

“
You had one hit.”

“
One
being the operative word.”

He paused, wavering between letting the casual conversation continue or grabbing the bull by the balls and bringing up the one topic that he knew was on both their minds. He went for the balls.

“
Matt’s dead.”

The look on her face made him wish he’d thought it through better. But she had to know, and there was no nice way of saying it. Better to get it out in the open than dance around it for however long they were together.

“
He’s dead?” Her voice managed to sound injured and impregnable at once.

“
Shot himself out at the springs a few months ago.”

She didn’t say, “good,” but she thought it. He knew she thought it. And even though she had the right, it pissed him off. His brother had been an idiot. He’d been selfish and, God help him, he’d done things ... he’d done horrible things. But he wasn’t born that way; he hadn’t begun as a monster. There was no explaining that. It sounded like a bleeding-heart excuse even to him. It was the truth, though. The bad in Matt had been forged, not inherent.

“
He’d only been back in town for a few weeks. He spent most of the past ten years behind bars.” Robbery, assault, parole violations. Matt couldn’t live by the rules. He couldn’t even acknowledge their existence.

Her eyes widened, but he saw no sympathy in them. Again, he didn’t expect there to be. Reilly rubbed the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at her face. An awkward pause filled in the shadowed spaces between them. He figured the best thing he could do was leave it at that. But he couldn’t. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and glanced up at her from beneath his lashes, still wanting to say something—something that wasn’t so damned volatile. But there were no words that could make up for the bad blood between them.

He followed her to a door at the end of the hall where she stopped. The horse-dog waited at her feet, watching him with a cold and steady look.

“
Gracie.” He reached out as he said her name, but the dog advanced with lightning speed and a low growl. Reilly took a hasty step back.

“
Juliet,” Gracie reprimanded in a harsh whisper. “No. Friend. Friend.”

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Reilly’s middle in another of the meaningless hugs she’d given him earlier. The warmth of her body came through the light embrace and toyed with his overwrought senses. Her hair smelled of coconut, her skin of something sweet and seductive, a scent he knew he’d be thinking of long after she left. The tension in her body seemed to travel like a current to his and he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight against him. She pulled back, looking at him with a mixture of hurt, anger and mystified yearning that he understood all too well.

She let go and went into her room without a word. The horse-dog shot him another dirty look before following. Reilly remained where he was, staring at the painted door as it closed in his face.

“
Christ,” he muttered in the darkness. He should just cut his losses and get the hell out of Dodge now, before he dug himself any deeper. But he wouldn’t. That much he knew for certain.

***

GRANDMA Beck’s inner sanctum was one Gracie had rarely breached in the seventeen years of living here. Carolina Beck had been an intensely private woman, known by all, yet truly known by none, least of all her granddaughter. As Gracie closed and locked the door, she couldn’t help feeling like a trespasser. The room was freezing cold and after the sweltering heat of downstairs it brought gooseflesh to her arms and shivers through her body. She looked around for the vent, thinking this explained why the rest of the house hadn’t cooled. Obviously, all of the air dropped into this room and went no farther. Maybe if she closed the vent a little, it would force the cool air to the rest of the house. But the outlet had to be behind one of the heavy pieces of furniture, because she couldn’t find it anywhere else.

Frowning, she gave up her search. Trying to keep her mind blank, she stripped and remade the bed, pausing for a moment with the old sheets in her hands. They smelled of Avon’s Skin So Soft lotion, which her grandmother had used since the beginning of time. The scent pulled her back to when she was young and Grandma Beck had held her and loved her. Tears blurred her eyes as she dumped the sheets in the laundry basket.