"It’s all right," he said, still in that gentle tone. "I got rid of it. Come inside, baby." Putting his arm around her, he urged her up from the swing and into the house. He directed
her toward the kitchen; she stiffened and tried to pull back, but he was having none of it. "It’s okay," he reassured her, and forced her into a chair. "You look a little shocky. What do you have to drink around here?"
"There’s tea and orange juice in the refrigerator," she said, her voice faint.
"I meant the alcoholic variety. Do you have any wine?"
She shook her head. "I don’t drink alcohol."
Despite the fury in his eyes, he gave her a little grin.
"Puritan," he said mildly. "Okay, orange juice it is." He
took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with orange juice,
then thrust it into her hand. "Drink it. All of it, while I make
a call."
She sipped obediently, more because it gave her something to concentrate on than because she wanted it. Gray opened the phone book, ran his finger down the first page, then punched in the number. "Sheriff McFane, please."
Faith lifted her head, suddenly more alert. Gray stared down at her, his expression daring her to protest. "Mike, this is Gray. Could you come out to Faith Hardy’s house? Yeah, it’s the old Cleburne place. She just got a real ugly surprise in her mail. A dead cat… Yeah, there’s one of
those, too." He hung up, and Faith cleared her throat. "One of what,
too?"
"A threatening letter. Didn’t you see it?"
She shook her head. "No. All I saw was the cat." A shudder rippled through her body, making the glass tremble
in her hand. He began opening and closing doors. "What are you
looking for?" she asked.
"The coffee. After the sugar to counteract shock, you need a shot of caffeine."
"I keep it in the refrigerator. Top shelf."
He got out the canister, and she directed him to the filters. He made coffee rather competently, for a rich man who probably never did it at home, she thought, and felt a ghost of amusement flicker inside.
Once the coffee was in the process of making, he drew up
another chair and sat facing her, so close that their legs touched, his on the outside of hers, warmly clasping. He didn’t ask her what had happened, knowing she would soon be going through that with the sheriff, and she was grateful for his tact. He just sat there, lending her his heat and the comfort of his nearness, those dark eyes sharp on her face as if he were debating pouring the orange juice down her, if she didn’t drink it as fast as he thought she should.
To forestall just such an action, she took a healthy swallow of juice, and actually felt a slight lessening of tension in his muscles. "Don’t you dare," she muttered. "I’m trying my best not to throw up again."
The grimness of his expression was lightened briefly by amusement. "How did you know what I was thinking?"
"The way you were staring at the glass, and then at me." She took another swallow. "I thought Deese was the sheriff."
"He retired." Gray had the fleeting thought that her memory of Sheriff Deese wouldn’t be a pleasant one, and wondered if that was why she had looked at him with such alarm when he’d asked for the sheriff. "You’ll like Michael McFane. How’s that for a good Irish name? He’s young for the job, still interested in keeping up with new techniques." Mike had also been at the shack that night, Gray remembered, but Faith wouldn’t know that, probably wouldn’t recognize him. In her shock, the deputies would have been faceless uniformed figures. Only he and the sheriff, standing off to the side, would have been locked in her memory.
The
puzzling
contradiction formed in his mind. She had been.obviously reluctant to meet Sheriff Deese, but she had never revealed any such uneasiness in her dealings with himself. She’d been bold, provoking, maddening,
frustrating,
but she’d never shown the least hesitation about being in his company.
Nor was hesitation something that had troubled him. Why else, when he’d gotten her call, he thought to remove a pesky cat from the premises, had he promptly canceled a business meeting and driven here as fast as possible, with Monica’s enraged protests still ringing in his ears? Faith had
called him for help, and no matter how minor he thought the problem, he would help her if he could. As it turned out, the problem hadn’t been minor at all, and all his protective instincts had been outraged. He intended to find out who had done such a disgusting thing, and someone would catch hell. His fists ached with the need to pound them into the culprit’s face.
"Why didn’t you think I’d done it?" he asked softly, his attention locked on her face to catch every flicker of expression. "I’ve been trying to get you to leave town, so logically I should have been the person you’d suspect first." She was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking, the movement making the sleek bell of her hair swing about her face. "You wouldn’t do something like that," she said with absolute conviction. "Any more than you would have left me the first note."
He paused, distracted from the pleasure of her trust in him. "Note?" Sternness laced that one word.
"Yesterday. When I went out, there was a note in the front seat of the car." "Did you report it?"
She shook her head again. "It wasn’t a specific threat." "What did it say?"
The look she gave him now was slightly uneasy, and he wondered why. "To quote: Shut up if you know what’s good for you."
The coffee was ready. He got up and poured a cup for both of them. "How do you drink yours?" he asked absently, his thoughts still on the note and the package, which this time had been accompanied by a more specific threat. The wings of cold, black fury beat upward within him, barely controlled. "Black."
He gave her the cup, and sat down again in his original position, close enough to touch. She was more adept than anyone else at reading his face, and something in his expression must have alarmed her, because she launched into one of those deflecting maneuvers of hers, "I used to drink coffee with loads of sugar, but Mr. Gresham is
diabetic. He said that it was easier to give up everything sweet than to fool with artificial sweeteners, so there wasn’t anything in the house to use. They would have bought it for me if I’d asked, but I didn’t want to impose – "
If she’d meant to distract him, he thought irritably, she’d succeeded. Even recognizing the maneuver didn’t blunt its effectiveness, because she used such interesting bait. "Who’s Mr. Gresham?" he asked, breaking into the flow of words. He felt the burn of jealousy, wondering if she was telling him about some guy she’d lived with before moving back to Prescott.
The slumberous green eyes blinked at him. "The Greshams were my foster parents."
A foster home.
God. A cold fist clenched his stomach. He had imagined her life as continuing in much the same vein as before. Realistically, a good foster home would have been far preferable to the way she’d been living, but it was never easy for kids to lose their families, no matter how rotten, and be deposited with strangers. Finding a good home was a crapshoot, at best. A lot of kids were abused in foster homes, and for a young girl who looked like Faith…
The crunch of gravel signaled Mike’s arrival. "Stay here," Gray growled, and went out the back door. He beckoned to Mike as the other man’s lanky form unfolded from the patrol car, and walked around to the back of the house where he had left the box.
Mike joined him, his freckled face tightening with disgust as he looked down at the carcass. "I see a lot of sick things in this job," he said conversationally, squatting by the box, "but some things still turn my stomach. Why in hell would someone do this to a helpless animal? Have you handled the box much?"
"Just to carry it out. I was careful to touch only the front left corner, and the back right. I don’t know how much Faith handled it before she opened it. I used a pen to open the flaps wider," he added. "There’s a message on one of them."
Mike used the same technique, taking a ballpoint from his pocket. He pursed his lips as he read the message, printed in block letters, with a felt-tip marker, on the cardboard:
GET OUT OF PRESCOTT OR YOU’LL BE JUST LIKE
THE CAT
"I’ll carry it in, see if we can get any fingerprints. The plastic would be our best bet, since it hasn’t been disturbed." He glanced toward the house. "Is she okay?"
"She was pretty shaky when I got here, but she’s settled
down now."
"Okay." Still using the pen, Mike closed the flaps and stared down at the box for a few seconds, then grunted.
Gray looked down, too, and saw what he had missed the first time. "Shit. There’s no postage mark. It was on top of her other mail, so I thought it had been mailed, too."
"Nope. Someone hand-delivered it. Let’s go see if she heard anything, or saw a car."
They entered the kitchen, and Gray saw that Faith was still sitting where he had left her, sipping her coffee. She glanced up, outwardly calm now, but he suspected her control was hanging by no more than a few thin threads.
She immediately got to her feet, looking at Mike. "Ma’am." He touched his fingers to his hat. "I’m Michael McFane, the sheriff here. Do you feel like answering a few
questions?" "Of course," she said. "Would you like some coffee?"
"Please."
"Sugar or cream?"
"Sugar."
That social nicety taken care of, Faith returned to her chair. Gray stood beside her, propped against the enormous table. Mike took up his position by the sink, his feet crossed at the ankles.
"Where did you find the box?" Mike asked.
"In the mailbox."
"There’s no postage mark on it. It wasn’t mailed, so I’m assuming someone put it in the box after your mail was delivered. No one’s supposed to use the box except the postal service, so the carrier probably would have taken it out. Did you hear the mail run, or see another car pass by?"
She shook her head. "I wasn’t here. I’d been grocery shopping. I came home, put up the groceries, then went out to get the mail."
"Is anyone mad at you? Someone who might give you a dead cat to get even?"
Another shake of the head.
"She found a note in her car yesterday," Gray interjected.
"What kind of note? What did it say?"
"To shut up if I knew what was good for me," Faith replied.
"Did you keep it?"
She sighed, gave Gray a wary glance, and went to get the note. She came back holding the sheet of paper by one corner. "Put it on the counter," Mike said. "I don’t want to handle it."
She obeyed, and Gray moved beside Mike to read it. It was printed in the same block letters than adorned the cardboard box.
Don’t ask any more questions about Guy Rouillard shut up if you know what’s good for you.
Gray flashed her an irritated glance, understanding now that wary look she’d given him.
"All right," he growled. "What have you been up to now?"
"You know as much about it as I do," she replied, with a smoothness that he was beginning to think hid as much as it revealed.
"Well, now." Mike scratched his jaw. "What does your daddy have to do with this, Gray?"
"Little Miss Nosy has been asking questions about him all over town." He scowled at her.
"Why would that aggravate someone so much that they’d send her a note like this, and leave a dead cat in the mailbox?"
"It aggravated the hell out of me," Gray said frankly. "I don’t want Monica or Mother upset by having all the old gossip stirred up again. I don’t know who it would piss off this much."
The sheriff was silent, blue eyes hooded as he thought. "On the surface," he finally drawled, "you’re the most likely suspect, Gray." Faith started an immediate protest, but he waved her to silence. "Guess you knew that, too, what with the note and all," he said to her. "So that makes me wonder why you called him, rather than the sheriff’s department."
"I knew he didn’t leave the note, or the box."
"It’s no secret that you weren’t happy when she moved back," Michael said, looking at Gray.
"No, I wasn’t. I’m still not." Gray’s hard mouth curved into a humorless smile. "But threatening notes and dead cats aren’t my style. I fight my battles out in the open."
"Hell, I know that. I just wondered why Mrs. Hardy called you for help."
Gray snorted. "Figure it out."
"Reckon I already have."
"Then stop being an asshole."
The sheriff didn’t take umbrage, just grinned. An instant later, he was all business again. "I need for both of you to come down to the courthouse so we can get your fingerprints, and check the box and note for any sets that don’t match. You’ll need to give us a statement, too, Mrs. Hardy."
"All right. I’ll get my keys." Faith stood, and Gray caught her arm.
"I’ll drive you."
"There’s no need in your coming all the way back here – "
"I said I’ll drive you." Implacably he looked down at her, forcing his will on her. She looked irritated, but made no further protest, and the sheriff grinned again.