Unforgivable (Romantic Suspense) Page 14

  She glanced into the kitchen. “No, Ben, I will not. Goodnight.”

  She dropped the phone on the couch as though it were a hot potato and released a deep breath. She’d stood up for herself. She’d seen a glimmer of that feisty little girl who had impressed Silas so much. The phone started ringing again, and she answered it with a wan, “I’m sorry I spoke to you like that.”

  She stood in the doorway and looked out at the darkness. If Silas was out there, he was well hidden. He’d obviously seen Gary pull up and didn’t want to be seen there with her. Thank God for that. Gary would delight in telling Ben about her visitor.

  She finished her conversation, adding yet another apology at the end. The glimmer had faded. She curled up on the couch and touched the cross. Silas’s explanation of his research sounded plausible. But he was right; he was dangerous. Because she’d stood on the porch with him knowing he was holding secrets and pain close to him. Because she’d wanted to kiss him. He’d not only awakened the feisty girl inside her, but he was also awakening a woman she didn’t even know.

  She glanced out the window, hoping he would return. What did he mean that someone meant to hurt her? Someone she knew? She shivered. Was Ben the only man she could trust?

  CHAPTER 10

  Silas watched Harold pull down Katie’s driveway. He’d give the guy five minutes, then he’d follow. Luckily, within three minutes the old truck emerged. She was sitting as far away from him as possible.

  He’d rather be the one taking her to work, but that would cause more trouble. This way, he could make sure she was all right without interfering. Besides, being alone with her was not a good thing. Last night had proved that, if he’d needed the proof.

  The police tail was on him, too. Gary was enjoying the game of chase, and probably soaking up the fact that it looked as though Silas was following Katie. Everyone had their obsession. He was apparently Gary’s. Once she was safely at the hospital, Silas played a little game of his own and lost Gary. He knew some of these back roads better than anyone. Roads that hadn’t existed in years. Then he circled back to town and headed to Gary’s apartment.

  Silas had ideas on who The Ghost was. Some of them he didn’t like, but he couldn’t exclude anyone…even himself. Gary’s persistence parlayed him into the role of suspect. And while Gary was no doubt checking on his past, Silas was going to do some checking of his own.

  One of those things he wasn’t proud of in his past was now going to come in handy. He pulled out the lock pick kit and after a moment, the apartment Gary lived in was open to his perusal. The place was bachelor messy with beat up furniture and faded carpet. A mechanic’s magazine covered three Playboys on the coffee table. The satellite dish was tuned to one of those adult channels.

  There wasn’t anything criminal about a guy amusing himself. Silas needed a lot more than that. He found an old gun under Gary’s mattress. Hiking boots in the closet with leaves and mud in the treads. Could have been hunting or hiking. No other shoes but his own. The Ghost was too smart to leave something like that around. That’s why he left them on the side of the road, pointing to no one.

  What did bother him was finding a picture of Katie in the dresser drawer. She’d been standing in a group of people, maybe with the Emersons on a family outing. She’d been about twelve or thirteen. Her picture had been trimmed away from the rest of the people, singling her out.

  Silas had relocked the door just in case, but was still surprised to hear a key being inserted into it. There wasn’t much room to hide in a one-bedroom apartment. He dove under the bed. It was most likely Gary’s shoes he saw walking purposefully into the bedroom. He heard noises, and then heard him take a leak.

  That’s when Silas noticed the picture he’d dropped on the floor in front of the dresser. He hoped Gary wouldn’t notice it, too. His boots went right by it…at first. Before Silas could even draw a breath in relief, Gary backed up and stood by the picture. Then picked it up.

  “What the hell…”

  Silas couldn’t believe he’d been found out so fast when he felt the mattress lift. The fact that it dropped back down wasn’t so comforting, either. Gary had taken his gun and thrown open the closet door. Silas started surveying his hiding place. The bed sat up high, with wooden frames down the sides. He pulled himself up against the bottom of the bed by holding onto the boards of the frame. His fingers poked through the flimsy fabric. He braced his feet in the far corners and sucked in his breath. If Gary found him, he’d probably get away with shooting him under some pretext or another. Who would care if he shot a suspected serial killer?

  Katie had brought a sandwich with her to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s visit to the diner. She had another task in mind for lunch anyway: a visit to the library. It was a long trek in the hot summer sun once she cleared the shady comfort of the cemetery. The long, black pants didn’t help, nor did the colorful vest she’d worn over her white shirt. She wondered what people would think if she’d worn the yellow hip huggers and flower shirt. Harold was outside working on the old wagon. She avoided meeting his gaze.

  Silas wanted to kiss her. He wanted her.

  Those thoughts had kept her up most of the night. It was the first time she’d seen that kind of desire in a man’s eyes. The kind of desire that made a woman feel sexy and warm all over. She passed the shopping strip that housed the diner. Before she could stop herself, she scanned the busy parking lot for Silas’s vehicle. It wasn’t there. People walked together toward the diner, chatting and laughing. The sign was still in the window pleading for help at the fair. She was an outcast in her own town. She touched the gold cross as she held up her head and walked on by.

  By the time she reached the library, she was covered in a layer of perspiration. She pulled her hair back with her hand as she walked inside the cool interior, then remembered the birthmark and released her hair. It obviously bothered Ben. Mostly she’d gotten used to it.

  The librarian gave her a prim nod before going back to whatever it was she was doing. Katie took out books from time to time, mysteries mostly, though she didn’t know anyone who worked there. Like most of Flatland’s residents, they seemed to regard Katie as an outsider not worthy of getting to know.

  She sat down at the new computer system and tried pulling up Silas’s name. She even spelled it several different ways, but nothing came up. Then she went to the true crime section. It was a sizable section, even in their tiny library. The titles reminded her of Silas’s words the night before about murder, deception, and the ultimate betrayal. She saw books by Lisa Pulitzer and Ann Rule, by an assortment of others, but nothing by Silas Koole. She even asked the librarian to go on-line and see if Amazon.com had anything. Nothing.

  Disappointment was two-pronged. She’d wanted to know more about Silas through his writing. If he was lying about writing those books, there was probably a darker reason for his having those notes.

  But what reason could he have for knowing intimate details of her life?

  When Katie was ready for Bertrice’s stories and laughter to break up the afternoon silence, she glanced at the calendar and realized the girl had detention after school that day. Most of the hospital’s appointments were scheduled around Ben’s absences, leaving only routine things for her to deal with. Otherwise, it was dead slow.

  She passed some time checking their food and medical inventory. She was filling out an order form at the reception desk when the door burst open and Gary stepped inside. She felt an uncomfortable twist in her stomach.

  “A dog ran out in front of my vehicle,” he said in a rush. His hair was tousled and his skin damp with sweat. “Help me bring him in.” Then he walked back outside again.

  She followed, not sure whether to trust him or not. The prospect of an injured dog, however, overrode her fears and propelled her on. He’d opened the tailgate of his truck, and she saw the golden retriever lying on a board in the back. Blood stained the plywood, though Katie was relieved to note there wasn’t a lot of it. Gary was
already maneuvering the board so she could take one end.

  “I tried to swerve around him, but I couldn’t,” he said as they carried the dog inside. “I got the board from a construction site.”

  “Let me take a look at him and see what he needs.”

  She always had to push past her fury at animal owners for not keeping their pets secure. The puppy last week was evidence of that danger. She often saw packs of dogs roaming the streets. Once she’d even seen a potbellied pig roaming with its dog friends.

  She looked at Gary and hated the thought that slammed into her mind. Had he purposely hit the dog as an excuse to come here? Then her instincts kicked in and she instructed him to help carry the dog to the exam room.

  The dog wore a blue collar, but no tag or license. “Do you know whose dog this is?”

  “I’m not sure. There are a couple of farms out where I hit him. He probably belongs to one of them.”

  She removed the collar and started examining him—no, her—for injuries. The dog tried to get up, but Gary gently held her down. She resisted the urge to meet his gaze in a silent thank you. She didn’t want him that close to her, but she needed his help.

  “All I can see are road burns and a few lacerations. This one’s pretty deep.” She was talking to herself, logging each area into memory. “You’re one lucky girl.” She shaved the hair away from the injuries and cleaned them. The dog tried to get up again, but Gary held her in place. She stroked the dog’s face, which luckily had escaped injury. “It’s okay, sweetie. I know it stings, but it’s going to be okay.” The dog licked her hand.

  “It can’t understand you, you know,” Gary said.

  She started to explain it wasn’t the words themselves that were important, but the tone they were spoken in. He wouldn’t understand kindness or the pain she felt for these animals. She went back to work, using a disposable plastic pistol that looked like a toy ray gun to staple the deep wound closed. All the while, she spoke softly to the dog that resigned herself to the ministrations with a sigh. Once Katie had her bandaged, she gave the dog an Amoxicillin tablet and an injection of Torb for the pain.

  She didn’t want to notice that Gary was stroking the dog’s fur as he’d watched her work. She didn’t want to see how gentle he was with the dog.

  “You’re good at what you do,” he said as she washed up and removed the smock she’d put on earlier.

  Compliments came so rarely, but she couldn’t let this one soften her. “You sound surprised.”

  “I thought you were just Ben’s helper.”

  Those words ate into her confidence like acid. “She’s stable for now. Maybe you could put out a bulletin for her owner. Thanks for bringing her in.”

  She hoped that would suffice as a dismissal. He was in uniform, which meant he was on duty. Didn’t he have someplace else to be?

  Gary walked up to the table, his hand resting only inches from hers. “It’s a man’s duty to protect a helpless animal.”

  Her face flushed hot with anger that had been seething for eighteen years. “Don’t even talk to me about kindness to animals. Not after what you did.”

  He surprised her by grabbing her hands. “What I did to your cat was wrong. But there was a reason I did it, a reason that involves you.”

  She jerked her hands away. “You’re blaming me?”

  “No, of course not. When the time is right, I’ll tell you.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “Tell me now.”

  He surveyed her stance and the stiff expression on her face. “The time isn’t right.”

  “Any apology or explanation you might have is eighteen years too late anyway. I want you to go.”

  Even he seemed surprised by the vehemence in her voice. “I’m trying to make amends here. You and me, we need to come to an understanding. I did a bad thing. I had a rage management problem. There was something inside me, something I didn’t know about then. I understand what it is now. I took it out on your cat. All I’m asking is for you to forgive me.” He moved closer. “Forgive me, Katie. That’s the first step.”

  And then what? Kill her? More than anything, she was aware of her situation. Alone. He had a gun. He was a lot bigger. And no one would believe her, not even Ben, if he assaulted her.

  Silas’s words came back to haunt her once again. He’s been watching you, Katie. And it’s someone you know. Fear clutched her heart, squeezing the strength right out of her.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, taking hold of her arm.

  She jerked it back so hard that she toppled a tray. Bloody tweezers and other instruments scattered across the linoleum floor. He still had a hold on her arm, even after all that.

  “Stop being afraid of me,” he ground out. Intensity burned in his brown eyes. “I can’t stand your fear and anger anymore. I want it to stop. It’s just you and me, Katie. Don’t you understand?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes felt as large as tennis balls. He just looked at her, as though deciding what to do with her.

  “What else do you want from me?” he asked.

  “What I want from you…” The words is to leave became, “is to go out there and tell all those people who didn’t believe me that I wasn’t lying.”

  His fingers were digging into her arm even as he shook his head. “I would, if I wasn’t a deputy. What would they think of me if I told them what I’d done, and that I’d lied about it?”

  “What would they think if they knew how you were bullying me?”

  He didn’t seem to hear that. “If it helps any, my dad beat the crap out of me for throwing that kitten.”

  “He believed me?” she whispered in disbelief.

  “He wasn’t sure what to believe, so he walloped me anyway. He liked doing it.”

  His grip had lessoned some with those words, and she finally wrenched free. “Your father beat you?”

  His laugh was bitter. “Ironic that no one would have believed me, either, if I’d said anything. Not my father, not upstanding Sam Savino.” Gary’s laugh was bitter. “Rage management problems run in the family. But he has a nasty tendency to take what he wants no matter what the consequences. He told me I was worthless and then showed me just how worthless time and again.” His eyes narrowed. “So you see we had that in common, too.”

  She moved to the opposite side of the table, the dog between them. She wasn’t sure she believed him, either. He was good at lying. “We have nothing in common. Not then, not now.”

  He moved close again, taking note of her dipping down to the floor and picking up some of the fallen instruments—including one of the scalpels. She wasn’t holding it out as a threat, but her fingers locked around the handle.

  “Yes, we do. And when you forgive me—and you will forgive me someday—we’ll sit down and talk.”

  “Hey, what’s going on in here?”

  Katie nearly fainted in relief as Bertrice popped her head around the corner. She clearly didn’t know what to make of the situation, especially as she took in Katie’s rigid stance and the scalpel in her hand. Gary spit out an expletive, but gathered his composure.

  “Gary was just leaving,” she said on a breath as she joined Bertrice in the doorway. “Weren’t you?”

  He didn’t reply, just gave a last look at the dog and sauntered out. Katie still gripped the scalpel. As soon as she heard the front door close, she forced herself to set it on the counter.

  “You look as white as an egg,” Bertrice said. “You okay? What was he doing here?”

  Making light of the whole thing seemed the best way to handle it. And, she realized, wouldn’t put her in the position to be disbelieved. “He hit this dog…accidentally.” Maybe. “He and I don’t particularly get along. It goes back to when we were kids.”

  “Too bad.” Bertrice glanced toward the door. “He’s kind of a hottie.”

  “A hottie?”

  “Yeah, you know…good looking. Hot. Especially compared to all the dorks in school. And that uniform
…The girls talk about him a lot. I’d heard he lived here before.”

  Katie found herself staring at the door, too. “I wish he’d stayed away.” She looked at Bertrice. “Don’t go near him. He may be a…hottie, but he’s dangerous. Not to be trusted. Promise me you won’t have anything to do with him.”

  Bertrice nodded in agreement, though her raised eyebrows showed she thought Katie was being extreme. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m going to call it a day. Other than Gary, it’s been a slow afternoon, and it’s nearly four anyway.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right? You can come home with me tonight if you want.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’ll be fine. I just need some quiet time alone.” As much as she’d love the company, she was in no mood for polite conversation. She was still shaking. “Let’s close up.”

  Bertrice and Katie secured the retriever in one of the recovery pens and closed for the night. Katie would have to walk back to the hospital to check on her later, and that wasn’t something she was looking forward to.

  As soon as Katie opened her front door, the hairs on her neck went up. She wasn’t sure why. The house was quiet. A thin stream of watery light washed over the couch and the dollhouse. She stood there for a few minutes absorbing the silence. And that’s all it was, silent peacefulness. Still, she opened the hidden drawer in the phone table. The gun felt as though it weighed forty pounds. She advanced into the house. The kitchen looked normal. So did the bedroom. The office door was closed. That was mostly Ben’s domain. She stood outside the door and listened.

  She almost missed the faint shuffling sound. For the second time that afternoon, her heart jumped up into her throat. It was beginning to seem as though she lived in fear of something or another. Maybe it was just her imagination. A faint sound, this time the squeak of a drawer opening. Be strong, Katie. Be feisty. Holding the gun tight in her hand, she took a breath and pushed open the door.