Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
The depot was open a half day on Sunday. Thank goodness for Helen and Benny, who were perfectly capable of running the business on their own.
Colt was there to let his employees in and he stuck around until opening time. When he was confident everything was in order, he left. He couldn’t get out fast enough.
How was he going to continue to run the depot with Nicole’s ghost joining the parade? She already fit right in. Gerald ogled her, especially when she took off her blouse and tossed it at Colt. Maude seemed determined to be a good influence on the misguided young woman, telling her gently that throwing her clothes at a man wasn’t proper behavior. Nicole dogged Colt’s steps, she got right up in his face and insisted that he find the man who’d done this to her.
She even got the attention of others, the ghosts who normally stayed in the background, silent and unobtrusive but always there . They said nothing, but watched with interest. Their interest made them more colorful, more real. At times they looked almost, but not quite, alive. Colt really hoped that change wasn’t a permanent one.
Nicole was furious about what had happened to her, and he couldn’t blame her. Her death was an injustice, shocking and unfair. There was a deep wrongness in her murder. Her life had been taken from her too soon, too violently.
When he left the depot intent on a stop at the good bakery, Nicole followed. Fortunately she didn’t dog him for very long before she snapped back, almost as if she had a rope around her waist and when she reached the limit of her boundary someone yanked her back. He didn’t know much, he didn’t know nearly enough, but he’d been right about the place being a magnet, of sorts.
Jack hadn’t been drawn to the depot. If he had, Colt would’ve known about his death years ago. No, Jack seemed to be attached to his mother. He was so desperate to let Nina know he was dead that he clung to her, trying desperately for the past five years to tell her that he hadn’t left home and not looked back, that he hadn’t forgotten his family.
Colt picked up three ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch, as well as a box of cinnamon rolls. Breakfast time had come and gone, but the sweet rolls were there, and they were too tempting. Naturally Tammy, the maker of the great cinnamon rolls, wanted to talk about Nicole’s murder. Who’d done it? Were they all in danger? Should she hire security? Tammy didn’t know how Nicole had died, and since Colt shouldn’t know himself he couldn’t say anything. Mac would be on the Sheriff’s shit list if he found out that the city police chief had said too much to a friend, especially if word spread. In a small town, rumors — fact or fiction — spread quickly. Don’t turn your back on anyone…
He also couldn’t assure Tammy that she wasn’t in danger, not without telling more about what he knew. The killer had been after that picture. It wasn’t a random attack. A serial killer wasn’t roaming the streets of Seawolf Beach looking for victims. No, Nicole’s murder had been an attack with a purpose. He just didn’t understand yet what that purpose was.
As he walked toward the Pine Street house, Colt mentally ran a couple of scenarios. He could tell Mac he saw ghosts, had seen Nicole’s spirit, and she’d told him what little she knew. Which wasn’t much.
He could tell Anna that Jack had been murdered. He could tell her when, but not how or who or why. Which made him wonder again, why ? It was possibly, probably — okay, almost certainly — the same man who’d set fire to her childhood home and stabbed Nicole in the back.
The killer had been looking for something in that duck picture and hadn’t found it, so his answer was to destroy the Miller house and everything in it. Maybe Jack would know what the man had been looking for. What kind of evidence might’ve been left behind? If he could just get his old friend to focus…
Colt walked into the house, two teal bakery boxes in hand, expecting to find Anna, Nina, and Jack waiting for him. Instead there was just Anna, who sat on the new couch with her head back and her eyes closed. He didn’t think she was sleeping, though. Something about the way she breathed…
She opened her eyes and looked at him.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said in a low, unconsciously seductive voice.
I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time . He couldn’t say that. “Hungry? I brought lunch.” The house was quiet. “Is your mom getting a nap?”
“No. Mom is visiting with her friend Mary Ann. She was getting antsy. I think she really wanted someone to talk to besides me, probably a friend she can vent to about her disobedient daughter who at the ripe age of thirty-six still slips out of the house in the middle of the night.”
“I’m so glad you weren’t there.”
She sighed. “I should’ve been. I might’ve seen something, or woken up in time to get the fire department there quicker, save the house or at least some of Mom’s things.”
The idea of Anna in a burning house… There was nothing sufficient he could say to express his horror.
“I called my cousin, Emily,” she said. “The original plan was for me to take Mom to Aunt Sally’s after we got the house on the market. Emily was going to meet us there to help Mom and Sally get settled in together but the fire changes everything. I’ll stay here a while to take care of a few details, and Mom will go on to Florida. Emily’s going to pick her up in a couple of days. I told her we could make other arrangements, that I could drop Mom off at Aunt Sally’s and come back here, but Em said she could use a few days out of the house with no kids.”
Out of all that all he really got was… Anna was going to stay.
“For all I know Mom might decide to stay with Mary Ann until Emily arrives.”
Nina didn’t think much of him, not where her daughter was concerned. Would she avoid him to show her displeasure, or would she stick close to make sure there was no hanky panky? Mrs. Miller might want to keep a close eye on him.
It didn’t matter. He’d handle whatever came his way. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Anna, wasn’t ready to watch her drive away. Eventually that would happen, but not today. Not tomorrow.
Nina was gone, which meant Jack was gone. For now. He and Anna were as alone as they were going to get, for a while. “You’re still here,” he said. Duh, that was obvious. She hadn’t left with Nina, wasn’t out looking for a hotel room. She was here .
“I am. I’ll stay, if you’ll have me.” Anna stood and stretched, then walked to him and took the bakery boxes, which she placed on the coffee table. “I guess it always happens. Someone dies unexpectedly and suddenly you’re hit in the face with the fact that life is short and tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. Every day is precious and not to be wasted.”
Clichés, but not wrong.
“I told Mom I was going to stay with you for a while, if you’ll have me. No matter what she decides to do, how long she stays here, if she wants to stay with Mary Ann or someone else… I don’t care. I want to be with you. That wasn’t a shock to her, since I wasn’t at home when the fire started. I got a grilling after you left for the depot.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She placed her arms around his neck. “Yes, I had a crush on you when I was a kid, but that’s not what this is. I like you. I want you. I think the feeling is mutual, at least I hope it is. It’s been a very long time since I allowed myself to live in the moment.”
She kissed him, much as she had yesterday on his front porch, but this was different. He didn’t hesitate to participate, to get lost in the kiss as he’d been lost in her last night.
He could take her to bed right now, without another word. Talking was overrated, and he didn’t know what to say, how to move forward. But there was more here than just the physical. He felt it, in a way he hadn’t since Lizzie had died.
He ended the kiss and stepped back.
Anna frowned at him. “Why do you do that? When I gin up my bravery and kiss you, you back away. Am I not allowed to make the first move?”
“I love that you make the first move, now and then. But…”
“But what?” she nudged when he faltered.
“There are things you need to know about me.”
“Secretly married?” she asked. “Engaged to the woman who makes those cinnamon rolls? Dying?” Her face fell. “You’re not…”
Colt took Anna’s face in his hands. “No to all that.”
She might run when he told her. Hell, he didn’t know how to tell her in a way that didn’t make him sound like a nutcase. Best to just get it done.
“I see ghosts.”
Not what she’d expected him to say…
“I died a little, after the accident,” Colt said.
“How do you die a little ?” She didn’t mean to sound hysterical, but there it was.
“I was dead for a few minutes, they say. A paramedic brought me back. Ever since, I see ghosts.”
Anna closed her eyes. Impossible. The man she was falling for hard and fast was, as her mother had insisted all along, squirrelly. “There’s no such thing as…”
“You asked me a few days ago if I believed in ghosts, but you never said why,” he said. “What happened?”
Anna made herself remember the floating picture, the broken plate… “It’s just not…” Possible? Likely? Natural? “Are you saying my Dad…”
“Jack,” he said too quickly, as if he had to force the name from his mouth. “I haven’t seen your dad, maybe he moved on like he was meant to, but Jack has been making the house shake. You’ve experienced it, haven’t you?”
“Jack’s not dead.”
Colt wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry. He’s been gone five years. He never left Seawolf Beach.”
One minute she’d been focused on nothing but the physical, on Colt, on pleasure. He might as well have knocked her to the ground. “But his text, the PI who tracked his phone…”
Colt shook his head. “I can’t explain everything, I don’t know what happened. But believe me, Jack is gone. I didn’t want to tell you any of this, but I couldn’t…”
“You didn’t mind last night!” she snapped, but she didn’t step away.
“I did mind, but maybe not as much as I should’ve. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted you so bad and I reasoned it was temporary; a one night stand.”
The fling she’d been looking for.
“And today?”
“Today I think this might be more, and I can’t keep lying to you.”
This was too much to wrap her head around. She wanted to say he was lying, or crazy, or both, but then she remembered the way that photo had floated through the air. The shaking. The spinning plates. “Is Jack here now?”
“No. He’s… His spirit is attached to your Mom. He was here when I left. I’ve seen him at your house a few times.”
That first day, when she’d watched him stand on the sidewalk and curse, he’d seen Jack.
Another unpleasant reality smacked her. “You’ve known for days that Jack’s dead, and you didn’t tell me?”
“How the hell was that supposed to work?” Frustration shuddered in his voice. “Hi, nice to see you again, by the way your brother’s dead. He says he was murdered,” he added in a lowered voice. “He doesn’t remember how, or who, but he’s convinced his death wasn’t natural.”
She stepped further away from Colt, as if she could separate herself from his words. This was too much to take in. Nicole. The fire. Ghosts. Jack… “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. Like he cared, like he was as lost as she felt at this moment. “I need to be alone. I can’t even think with you looking at me.”
“I’ll go back to the depot,” he said in a maddeningly calm voice. “You can stay here as long as you want.”
“No.” She didn’t want to be in Colt’s space, in his house, in the bed where they’d made love last night before her childhood home had burned to the ground. “I need to get out of here.”
It was easy enough. All she had were the clothes on her back and her small purse. And her car, thank goodness. She had wheels, she could get out of town whenever it suited her.
Colt tried to stop her with a word — stay — but she barely heard him. She really shouldn’t drive, but she needed to go to the Walmart down the highway and pick up a change of clothes and a few essentials. Her mom needed things, too. Maybe mundane chores would stop her from going as squirrelly as her mother said Colt had become.
Ghosts.
Murder.
This could be more…