Never Alone (43 Light Street) Read online

  He’d made it sound that way. Again, it wasn’t strictly the truth. He’d lived with her, but not in the sense that he’d implied. He gave a tight nod. Then suddenly aware that conversation at nearby tables had stopped, he looked up and saw that the people around him were tuned in to his exchange with the two women.

  “You’ll have to excuse me. I guess I wasn’t feeling as well as I thought,” he said, scraping back his chair and heading for the door.

  SERIAL KILLER ARRESTED.

  The newspaper sat in the middle of Damien’s desk like a newly acquired hunting trophy. He’d read the top story fifty times, savoring all the little details, all the information and misinformation.

  “So the police think that Wayne Jenkins did all those nasty things?” Damien laughed. “Well, he might have done some of them. The small stuff. But he wasn’t the one who was clever enough to kill eight people and get away scot free.”

  And he wasn’t the one who was even now plotting his next caper. This time the victim was going to be Beth Wagner, that little bitch.

  A jolt of anger shot through him. Unable to sit still, he leaped up and paced to the end of the room, then came back to the article.

  He’d thought she was so sweet and nice all those years ago. An outsider like he was. Then he’d seen her at that reunion meeting, seen her on TV with the cop Rollins.

  “So, Miss Cop’s Helper,” he said aloud, “I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget. See, I’ve got a window of opportunity here because the stupid police are focused on the wrong guy. Trying to wring a confession out of him.”

  He laughed. “Maybe they will! Jenkins is such a wimp maybe he’d own up to crimes he didn’t commit and give me even more breathing space. So I’ve got to plan this real good. Plan it carefully. I don’t want to blow it. Not now.”

  He’d already started keeping tabs on Beth. She’d been alone on her farm for the week—except for that big ugly dog of hers or when that guy who worked for her was out in the fields. He hadn’t taken care of the dog yet because he didn’t want to alert her to any danger. But he’d deal with the damn animal. After that, scooping her up wasn’t going to be any problem now that her buddy the cop had moved out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Beth heard Granger bark sharply. Reaching down, she patted the dog’s back.

  “What is it, boy?” she asked.

  She had been sitting at her loom, staring into space instead of at the tapestry that she was supposed to be weaving. She’d called the bank this morning and told them the wall hanging was going to be late.

  Mr. Harrison had assured her that was all right. He understood that she’d been busy with that undercover assignment.

  The words and the tone of his voice had made her cringe. She’d read the article in the paper and tried to tell herself it didn’t matter that everybody knew she and Cal had just been playing house. Now she was pretty sure that the whole of Howard County was talking about it.

  She shouldn’t care what they thought. But Harrison’s voice had brought back all the old pain she’d struggled with over the years. Now she couldn’t even take refuge in her weaving the way she’d done so often, because since Cal Rollins had come into her life, she’d been too emotionally fragile to do more than two licks of work.

  The dog growled again, then stood and walked toward the darkened window. He’d been skittish ever since she’d come home from the hospital. But she sensed it wasn’t just her absence that had unsettled him. Her dog missed having Cal around, just the way she missed him.

  Damn Cal. Damn him.

  He’d made her care about him, then he’d as good as ripped her heart from her chest.

  She stood up abruptly and followed the dog to the window. Since fleeing the ICU, she hadn’t felt one psychic twinge. It was as if she were a radio with burned-out circuit boards and nothing was capable of coming through.

  Only it wasn’t radio waves that had been cut off. It was her psychic sense. It had been with her since that night of Dad’s accident. She’d hated it, tried to deny it, fought against it. She hadn’t realized that it was an essential part of her, even when it seemed to be quiet inside her. Now that it had vanished, she felt totally vulnerable and alone.

  Granger barked and trotted down the hall. She followed him, then stopped to get a gun from her father’s locked cabinet.

  Twilight hadn’t quite faded into darkness, but she turned on the outside lights anyway. Then, feeling clammy and uncertain, she stepped onto the porch.

  Should she call the cops? And tell them what? That she and her dog were nervous? She remembered Officer Brodie, who had come here the first night and tramped around the farm. Remembered the pained expression on his face.

  Then there had been Cal, coming out to check up on Brodie’s story. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut out all the vivid memories of Cal from that first encounter to the last.

  When she opened her eyes again, she caught a flicker of movement down by the barn. Movement where there should be none.

  She whirled, raised the gun, her finger squeezing on the trigger. But her dog was in the way, racing toward the open doorway and barking loudly.

  “Granger, no. Come back!”

  Then the man in the shadows stepped into the light, and she gasped.

  She could barely utter his name as she stood there and stared at him in dumb-eyed shock. “Cal.”

  The last time she’d seen him had been almost a week ago when he’d been lying in a hospital bed, his skin pale as chalk, his body weak and his eyes fierce as he told her that he didn’t want her.

  Now…now he seemed to be recovered physically. Yet he was still staring at her as if she were the last person on earth he wanted to encounter.

  “What are you trying to do?” he growled. “Kill me? Put that gun down.”

  She’d been so astonished that she’d simply frozen in place. “Lord, where’s my brain?” she muttered as she stiffly moved her arm, then set the weapon down with a thunk on the table beside the porch chair. Turning back to him, she caught her breath, still hardly able to believe he was here at the farm. Not after what he’d said when his eyes had opened.

  Well, maybe he was here on official business, or to pick up the clothing that was still in the room he’d occupied upstairs. She hadn’t touched his stuff, and she hadn’t been inside the room where he’d slept. She’d simply closed the door, thinking that she’d pack up his things sometime and drop them off at the police department.

  “Cal, how are you?” she asked. “Are you back on duty?”

  He made a harsh sound. “I’m still on sick leave. I’m here on my own time.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, but they won’t certify me to go back to work.”

  She was still trying to take him in as she stood there, struggling to speak around the lump in her throat. “If you were planning to come here, why didn’t you call me and let me know? Or knock on the door? What are you doing in my barn?”

  “Checking things out. I’ve been out in the fields, too” he said, striding toward her, ignoring her other questions. “There are tire tracks out in a couple of your pastures.”

  “From Tim. He brings vehicles here sometimes.”

  “A compact car?”

  “No. Trucks.”

  “So there’s been a strange vehicle here. And someone who drinks designer water has been in the barn. I know you don’t drink the stuff. Does Tim?”

  “No,” she breathed, struggling to take in the implications.

  “If you come down here, I’ll show you where the straw’s been trampled. Right by a place where there’s a spy hole in the wall. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard your dog barking any time lately.”

  She watched him reading the guilty expression on her face. She’d been so out of it that she’d only shushed her dog. “Granger did hear something.” She took several slow steps forward. “I thought…I thought he was reacting to a rabbit or a fox or something like that.”


  “If you can’t take care of yourself, somebody’s got to.”

  Had she heard him right? “What did you say?”

  Again he ignored the question. Turning, he swept his arm toward the barn. On unwilling feet, she came forward, let him usher her inside, let him show her the place where someone had been standing and spying on the house.

  Beside her, Granger yapped, as if to reprove her for not listening to his warning.

  She felt numb as she followed Cal back across the yard. She’d felt cut off from her ingrained psychic sense since coming home. Apparently her brain hadn’t been working any too well, either. Apparently it still wasn’t. She’d forgotten about the gun on the table, but Cal stopped to pick it up before walking into the house.

  He was the one who put the weapon away and locked the cabinet door, then turned to pace from one end of the room to the other.

  When he stopped and ran his hand through his hair, she felt tension gathering in her chest as she waited to hear what he had to say.

  “Somebody’s been watching you. You’re not safe here alone.”

  “I can’t leave.”

  “I think you can.”

  “The sheep…my work.”

  “Your guy Tim will take care of the sheep the way he did when you spent the night in the hospital. And we’ll move your loom someplace else.”

  She was still trying to take it in. “Where?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  “I can’t leave.”

  Ignoring her, he plowed ahead. “I won’t allow you to be in danger because you helped me out with a case. So this time we’re going to do things differently.”

  “Like how?”

  “You read in the papers that Patterson thinks the case is solved. Well, I think he’s wrong. But I can’t prove it. And I can’t prove that the killer has been out here watching you, although I can send that water bottle in for analysis.”

  “Why would someone be stupid enough to leave it?” she broke in.

  “I don’t know. To make you nervous?”

  “If I were nervous, wouldn’t I call the police?”

  “Would you? Even after your recent experiences with Howard County’s finest?”

  She swallowed and ducked her head. “Maybe not.”

  “You’re proving my point. I’m not going to take a chance on anything happening to you now. You’re going to marry me so I can protect you—without setting tongues wagging any more than they already are. If you want to divorce me after this is all over, you can do it.”

  She felt her mouth drop open. “I’m going to what?” she managed to say.

  “You’re going to marry me.”

  The announcement sent a shock wave through her. When she could make her eyes focus again, she stared at the tense lines of his face, trying to take in what he had said, trying to think about what might be motivating him. He had just told her he was going to marry her because she was in danger. Given her a direct order, actually. He had also said he was worried about her, and worried about her reputation. But was that the sum total of his feelings?

  Apparently the Cal Rollins standing in front of her couldn’t admit to anything beyond those facts. But the Cal Rollins she’d met in a dreamworld had been quite different.

  In the dream he’d let down his guard with her. Made love to her as if he cared. And that man who’d made love to her so passionately was buried in the subconscious of the Cal Rollins confronting her with his wild proposition.

  So did that mean that deep down he did want her for his wife, for real and true? But he was incapable of admitting it to either one of them, especially to himself.

  He was pacing again as he spoke. “See, I never thought I was going to need a marriage license, so I didn’t have a clue where to get one. It took four calls to find the office where you apply for the damn thing. I tried Howard County information, and nobody answered the phone. I tried licenses, but that’s not right either. They referred me to clerk of the court, who referred me to land records. Would you believe marriage licenses are handled by the same office that does land records?”

  She listened to what he was saying and to the tone of his voice. He had never thought he was going to apply for a marriage license but he wanted to do it with her. And he had gone to a considerable amount of trouble to find out how.

  Somehow that tipped the balance in his favor. Instead of giving him a sane and sensible answer, she went with her heart. To her astonishment she heard herself saying, “All right.”

  His face momentarily registered astonishment, as though he’d expected a knock-down-drag-out fight, or at least some logical resistance. But as soon as she agreed, he swung into action mode. “All right. We’re leaving tonight. You pack some clothing and I’ll get the stuff I left upstairs.”

  “Dog food. I need dog food.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  OUT IN THE DARKNESS, the man standing beyond the range of the lights balled his hands into fists and cursed. The interfering, busybody cop was back. Just like that, he’d come poking around the farm. Tramping over the fields. Going into the barn.

  He’d found that water bottle, probably. The bottle that Beth was supposed to stumble over and wonder who’d dropped it.

  Lucky it didn’t have any fingerprints or any telltale bodily fluids.

  His attention switched back to the man. The cop. He’d gone inside with Beth, then lights had come on upstairs. In one room, then two. Were they up there making love or something? If not, what the hell were they doing?

  The cop came down a few minutes later with a suitcase, and the watcher breathed out a little sigh of relief as the bastard walked to the car he’d parked several hundred feet down the access road. Not his unmarked cop car. His own car. He was leaving. And Beth would be alone again.

  Even when Rollins drove toward the farmyard, the watcher figured he was just going to turn around. Then he pulled up in front of the door, cut the engine and climbed out. Moments later he was back in the house.

  A string of curses issued from the watcher’s mouth as he saw the guy come out again. He had another suitcase, a big old-fashioned leather one. It must be Beth’s. She came after him, hugging an enormous bag of dog food. And the dog came next.

  He felt his heart sink.

  Then he reminded himself he had been patient before, always patient. Watching and waiting and doing little things that she would notice.

  But maybe he should be more aggressive this time. Maybe he should make his own opportunity, like follow them and find out where the bastard was taking her.

  “OKAY. YOU’VE GOT TO wait forty-eight hours to get married in Maryland. That’s state law. So we’ll get the license first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, you’re going to stay with a P.I. friend of mine, Jo O’Malley, Sam Lassiter’s partner.”

  Beth had heard that name before. She looked at Cal. “Jo O’Malley,” she said slowly. “Isn’t she…isn’t that…” She stopped. “Isn’t that the estate where—”

  “Yeah.” He cut her off before she could finish the question. The estate where he’d holed up in his coma dream. The estate where they’d made love. And he was taking her there.

  The knowledge made her feel light-headed as the car looped around the beltway.

  She saw Cal’s hands tighten on the wheel, saw him staring intently in the rearview mirror and realized he’d been doing it off and on for the past several miles.

  “What’s wrong? Is somebody following us?” she asked.

  “Maybe. But not for long.” He speeded up, wove in and out of traffic, then took an off-ramp, careening around the curve, then on to the beltway again, heading in the opposite direction. He took the next exit again, this time heading back the way they’d been going in the first place.

  When she saw him relax she knew he was satisfied that they weren’t being shadowed.

  They drove for several more exits, then got off at Owings Mills. When they turned off the main road, she tensed. Even though her reaction was
totally illogical, she was half expecting to encounter the jungle where she’d run from the monsters stalking her. There was nothing, however, but ordinary Maryland woods.

  The first thing she recognized was the brick wall. It was the same. But the gate was different. In the dream it had been like a solid door to keep the monsters out. This one was a more conventional metal fence.

  Cal leaned out of the car and pressed the intercom button.

  “Jo? We’re here.”

  The barrier swung open, and he drove up a winding driveway to the house she’d only seen in the distance. It was the same house that she remembered, only bigger than it had looked in the dream. As they pulled to a stop in the circular driveway, the front door opened and a slim redhaired woman came rushing out.

  Slowly Beth got out of the car, nervously smoothing her hand down the sides of her jeans.

  “Hello, I’m Jo O’Malley,” the woman said. “My husband Cam’s away on a business trip, so it will just be us. And the kids. I hope you don’t mind kids.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. I like them,” she said, glancing at Cal, who was busy getting her bag from the trunk. She had longed to have children of her own. But she hadn’t been around many youngsters since her own early years. “I hope you don’t mind dogs,” she added as Granger lifted his leg against a boxwood bush.

  Jo smiled. “The kids have been begging for a dog. This will give us a trial run.”

  Cal turned to Jo. “I appreciate your letting Beth stay with you.”

  “I’m glad to have some company. Come in and make yourselves comfortable.”

  Beth followed her hostess, still feeling disoriented as she glanced around the palatial residence, then at Cal.

  He carried her bag to a spacious second-floor room, then, while she was settling Granger down, spoke to Jo in the hall. She could hear them discussing security at the estate. Quickly she walked into the hall, but before she could join the conversation, Cal said, “I’ve got to go.”

  She blinked. “You’re leaving me here? Just like that?” With some woman I don’t even know. Here, of all places.

  “Yeah. I’ve got work to do.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then whirled away from them and trotted down the stairs, leaving her and Jo O’Malley staring after him.