Chance of a Lifetime (39 page)

“Because it was all my fault. I was late getting to my car. I was late picking you up. Afterward, I thought you’d hate me for not being there, and if you knew I found you and held you, then you’d hate that I’d seen you like that. Either way, I figured I’d be the last person you wanted to show up for a visit.”

“No,” she corrected, tears flowing for the first time in a long time. “You told me to wait in the front. I’m the one who went to the lot. I’m the one who didn’t listen.”

He stood and pulled her against him, wrapping her in his warmth as he always did. “At the time, I thought I’d wait a while and then we’d talk, but you never came back to school.”

She cried, holding on to him, letting all the anger and grief go as he kissed the top of her hair and whispered, “Don’t cry, honey. Don’t cry. I wish it had been me who got hurt. I would have taken the beating gladly if I’d known you were safe. I love you. I always have.”

Without a word, he lifted her and put her in bed, then
climbed in beside her and pulled her close. At first his touch was comforting, then caring.

“Do you think you could learn to love me, Emily?”

“No,” she answered, and rose to her elbow so she could see his face. “I already do.”

Rain tapped on the windows as they began to make love. They were in no hurry, they had a lifetime and both knew it.

He’d been wrong about not thinking he was gentle. His big hands moved over her with tender strokes even when he was sound asleep. Sometimes he’d pass over the scars on his journey of exploring every curve and she’d remember that she’d once been afraid to show them to anyone. She couldn’t erase them or change what had happened to her, but as she felt his love surround her she no longer thought of herself as being scared. Slowly, as the night aged, she realized that the scars didn’t matter to him. He would love her no less.

They’d have a life together.

The two lovers who wrote out their feelings in the margins of The Secrets of Comeback Bay series drifted through her mind. Like her and Tannon, they’d lived in the same town, each dreaming of the other. Only they’d never been brave enough to say how they felt out loud.

M
ONDAY

R
ICK WALKED INTO HIS OFFICE FEELING LIKE HE’D PLAYED
an all-night football game in the mud. Trace hadn’t been home when he’d gotten back from the Matheson family dinner last night. He’d waited around reading until twelve, then gone up to her room.

The relief that her things were still there offered him little joy. He didn’t know where she was. If she was safe. If he was safe without her. He tried her cell and heard it ring upstairs. Wherever she’d gone, she hadn’t taken it.

When the rain started, he knew she had to be somewhere out in it. She was close, he decided, but not safe, and the thought drove him insane.

By three a.m. he was wide awake, questioning how he’d acted. Maybe he’d come on too strong and she’d simply relocated. The few things she’d left would be easy to replace. No, he reasoned, she would have told Martha Q or Mrs. Biggs. He’d already woken them both up once to ask
questions and didn’t want to think about what they’d say if he did it again.

By seven, he’d given up all hope of sleep and dressed for work. Several of his new clients would be dropping by the office today and he thought he’d go over and make sure the place looked presentable. Or at least as presentable as an old office with used furniture, a worn rug and chipped paint could look.

Hank offered to pick him up since it was still raining. He didn’t ask about Trace when he helped Rick carry files up to the office.

“Will you be all right here alone?” Hank asked as if Rick were a first-grader.

“Yeah. I’ve got work to do and I’ll lock the office door.”

Hank nodded. “Alex said she’d be by to check on you. Just call 911 if you suspect anything. We’ll both be on our way when we see the ID. You won’t have to say a thing.”

Rick laughed. “George will be just below soon. I think he hears everything that goes on in my office, plus half the town is probably watching over me.”

“Where’s the marshal?”

Rick shrugged. “I’m sure she’s around. After all, it would look bad on her record if I died during her watch.”

Hank raised an eyebrow as if he knew there was more in what Rick wasn’t saying, but he didn’t have time to ask. He set the box down and left.

Rick opened the curtains to a rainy day world and sat down behind his desk. After the shooting Saturday night, everyone was very serious about the threats on his life. No more jokes. Sometimes he even got the creepy feeling folks were looking at him as if they were staring at the pre-dead walking. They’d stretch their neck for one more look like it might be their last.

Glancing at his watch, he frowned. His first client, a couple wanting to write a will, wouldn’t be in for another hour. If it had been a normal day and there weren’t some nut somewhere out there wanting to kill him, Rick might have walked over to the diner for coffee.

Oh yeah, the diner wasn’t open now, thanks to him. Rick never thought he’d miss the place. Maybe he just missed the coffee.

He couldn’t even go down to the used bookstore. Hatcher never opened until about nine.

So here he was, tired, worried about Trace, even though she’d be mad if she knew anyone worried about her, and stuck in his office without any coffee. Could the day get any worse?

He heard the back door in the hallway open.

Apparently, the day was about to get worse. Someone would have had to climb over two missing steps to enter from that direction and that didn’t seem like a positive. Trace might have thought of coming in that direction, but she’d have no reason to. Besides, he could hear footsteps and Trace was like a cat, she never made a sound.

Rick pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed 911. Hank probably hadn’t had time to get back to the fire station, but the sheriff’s office would pick up. If this was a false alarm, maybe Hank would bring him coffee. If the threat was real, this might be the only time he’d be able to call.

As he heard footsteps move to his door, he slipped the phone in his top drawer and stood, crossing the room so that his back was against the windows.

The knob turned. The lock held. Rick froze, waiting.

He heard the rattle of keys then the lock turned.

With the rain, Rick knew he’d have the advantage if someone stepped in. They’d be in the bright light, he’d be in the shadows.

To his surprise, Sam Perkins shuffled through the door. For a moment Rick felt relieved to see the library janitor. He did odd jobs around town. It made sense that he’d have keys to some of the buildings he worked on.

Rick straightened. No one had called a handyman, and even if they had, why would he come up the broken back stairs? Another thought crossed his mind. Sam Perkins had been around for years. He was one of those invisible people
moving in the shadows. Of the office buildings. Of the library. Of the bed-and-breakfast. No one noticed him.

Rick glanced at the square envelope in his left hand. “Come to leave another note?”

Sam’s wet coat shifted as he now revealed his right hand.

Rick saw the gun in his grip. “Or this time have you decided to face me when you try to kill me?”

Sam smiled. “Nothing against you, Matheson. You just got in my way. If you’d been smart enough to leave town, I wouldn’t be here now.”

Rick made his body relax as he lowered his shoulders and opened his hands. He didn’t want to appear threatening. The man was better than twice his age, but the gun gave him quite the advantage. “Since it’s finally just me and you, Sam, would you mind telling me why it’s so important that I leave town?”

Sam hesitated as if thinking about answering.

Rick studied the man. His clothes were wet and wrinkled. The cuffs of his pants were muddy, and he obviously hadn’t shaved or bathed in a while. He had the look of a drifter who lived beneath a bridge. Rick had heard rumors that before Sam got the job at the library he’d been intermittently homeless. He had neither family nor friends in Harmony, at least not that Rick knew of.

“I’ll tell you if you want to know. I was standing just outside when I heard you tell Hank you’d have a while to work before anyone came in, so I guess we got time.”

“Fine, want to have a seat?” Rick would love to get a desk between him and Sam.

“No.” Sam widened his stance. “You take one twitch toward me, Matheson, and you’ll die not knowing why.”

Rick lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine. I won’t move. Just tell me what I ever did to you that makes you so angry.”

Sam’s laughter was hard, choppy. “I ain’t mad at you. You’re just in my way. I seen the way you wormed your way close to the woman I’ve loved for years. You two start by going to lunch, and then you move into her place to
watch over it while she’s gone, only when she comes back you don’t leave.”

Ideas popped like popcorn in Rick’s tired brain. “You think I’ve come between you and”—he couldn’t even imagine it being true, but he gave it a shot—“and Martha Q?”

“She even went off to get all prettied up for you. I’ve been around over the years when she married older men and younger men, bums who mistreated her and rich guys who cheated on her, but this time you’ve gone too far. I don’t have nothing against you, but this time I’m not standing by and watching her make another mistake.”

Rick wanted to laugh out loud, but he knew he’d be shot. How many times in the past year had he said he loved Martha Q? When she took him to lunch his first week? When she offered him a place to stay? When she told him how to treat Trace? The night he’d come to the library to take notes at the meeting, he’d even told the writers’ group that he was sitting in for her because he just loved her.

“Sam, I—”

“Don’t try to deny it,” he said, raising the gun. “She’s the only dream I have left and you’re not taking her from me. I loved her for a time when I was a kid. I loved her then, but we moved away, and when I made it back she’d already married. I spent a few years drunk, a while roughnecking all over the state, a few years in jail. Every time I made it back to her, she was married to some other jerk.”

Rick almost said that with a résumé like that he couldn’t understand why Martha Q overlooked him in the lineup of possible husbands. The janitor didn’t look like the laughing kind. He looked more like the murdering kind. Rick had to think.

“I don’t blame you for loving her, but you’re in my way, Matheson.” Sam nodded as if he’d finally made up his mind about what had to be done. “It’s time for you to disappear.”

Hank and someone from the sheriff’s department were probably on their way, but footsteps might startle Sam and he’d fire. If Trace picked this moment to appear, she wouldn’t
be expecting an ambush. She might only add to the body count.

He had to act, and act fast.

“Sam, you’re right. I do love Martha Q.” Not the brightest thing to say, but all he could come up with.

The old janitor relaxed an inch as if he’d been waiting for Rick to call him crazy or wrong.

“I’ve been wild about her, just like half the men in this town.” Rick had heard the stories about Martha Q’s younger days. He thought of adding that most of the half were dead by now, but he didn’t think that would help his case.

“I’ve tried every way I know how to get her to fall for me.” Rick tried to look miserable.

Sam frowned and aimed the gun.

Rick rushed on. “Only, I can’t get anywhere with that woman. It appears she’s thinking of someone else.” Rick knew he was gambling, but the stakes were counted in minutes he had left to live. “There’s someone in her past she cared for years ago and she can’t get him out of her mind. He’s the one she’s prettying up for. He’s the one she thinks will someday knock on her door.”

“I told her I wouldn’t come until I was rich or famous,” Sam said.

“That doesn’t matter to her, Sam. She’s waiting for you. You don’t have to step over me or even around me. I’m invisible to her. I’m no more than a homeless puppy she’s taken in.”

Sam nodded. “I’ve never known her to go out with a Matheson. She told me once she didn’t like men who were too tall. Said they were hard to kiss.” The gun lowered a few inches.

Rick was no longer in the line of fire. His brain went manic as he tried to put the pieces together. “She told me she had a secret reason for going to the writers’ meetings. She might not want to write, Sam. She must have wanted to see you. That’s why she came those nights. That’s why she got all dolled up. It was in hopes of seeing you.” Rick was
surprised his nose wasn’t growing, he was lying so completely. If Sam Perkins had been on a woman like Martha Q’s radar, he would have been hog-tied and branded by now.

“I did see her looking around,” Sam agreed. “And one night I think she smiled at me when she walked by. It might have been a twitch, though.”

“She’s waiting.” Rick took a step toward the janitor. “If you kill me, you’ll only make trouble for her. Think about it. She’ll have to go all the way to Bailee to find another lawyer.”

Sam agreed with a nod. “If you’re just a stray dog to her, I’d probably make her mad killing you. She’s got a kind heart.”