Maggie Shayne - Kiss Me, Kill Me

“Thanks, Rose. Call me if you need anything. If I’m out of cell phone range, just leave a voice mail. I’ll call you back as soon as I get a signal again.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine. Good luck, dear.”

“Good night, Rose.”

Carrie Overton left at last, and Rose parted the curtain and watched her as she walked down the exterior stairs. A moment later she heard the garage door opening below her, and seconds after that Carrie’s minivan backed out, then rolled smoothly down the paved driveway and out of sight.

Sighing, Rose dug in her quilted bag and pulled out a copy of the most recent edition of the Shadow Falls high school yearbook, opened it to the sophomores’ page and gazed at the faces she had circled after her perusal of the birth records from the summer of sixteen years ago—the year the good Dr. Overton had arrived here, interestingly enough.

Running her fingers over the three young people whose faces were encircled in red ink, she whispered, “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll find you soon. I promise.” And then, digging further, she pulled out a red pen and drew an X across the already-circled face of Kyle Becker.

By the time Carrie had turned on the propane for the garage apartment’s kitchen range, thrown the switch to engage the electricity, shown Rose around and explained how everything worked, testing everything as she went just to make sure it did, then headed out to the firehouse, three hours had passed. The searchers would have begun at four and would search until dusk. And it was nearly dusk now. With such a long head start, though, her odds of catching up to them in the woods before they were well on their way back to the road were slim.

The best she could do would be to wait at the firehouse for them to return. It was hard on Sam, going through this nightly ritual. And being Sam, he joined in the searches during the day, too, when he didn’t have soccer practice or a game. The first two days, he’d even skipped practice to search for Kyle, but Carrie had finally insisted he try to keep to a routine, to achieve some kind of normalcy in the midst of all the chaos and worry and fear.

She wished with everything in her that she could take his pain away, make this all better for him. He was suffering, and she hated seeing her son suffer. God, she would give just about anything to see Kyle walking up to her front door, a towel over his shoulder, asking to use the pool out back.

Her stomach knotted. She told it to stop. Kyle was fine. He was going to show up any time now.

She pulled into the firehouse’s sprawling, black-topped, vehicle-filled lot, spotting Gabriel Cain’s VW Bus and automatically steering into the serendipitously empty spot right beside it. By then the sun was setting. Another twenty minutes, she thought, and the buses would be lining up, opening their doors so the streams of volunteers could come pouring out.

But maybe this time there would be good news. Maybe this time…

She knew better, though. If they’d found Kyle, she would have received a phone call by now. Sighing, she got out of her car and walked over to the Volkswagen, peering curiously through its windows.

A guitar case lay on the floor between the front seats. An air freshener in the shape of an eighth note dangled from the mirror. The GPS system was a new one, high-end, and was mounted to the dash. She tried the door and wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. Then she slid it open and stuck her head inside. She was curious, just dying to climb in and do a little snooping. That would be completely inappropriate, she told herself. Totally out of line. And besides, she had no business being so curious about the man. He was just another tourist, not to mention a drifter and a starving artist and a dozen other things that made him all wrong for her.

And yet she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him, being curious about him. Why? What was it about Gabriel Cain that so fascinated her?

There was a rolled-up sleeping bag in the back, she noted. Or at least it looked like a sleeping bag. And a green canvas duffel, like the kind they gave to military personnel. The duffel was stuffed full, but she wasn’t about to look inside.

There were stacks of magazines and books, and she couldn’t resist flipping through those, wondering what a man like him might read.

Nature magazines, travel magazines, magazines about hiking and kayaking. But there were also things like Newsweek, Time, Mother Jones and the Onion.

She wasn’t surprised he was a lefty. Or a nature nut. She wished some of the publications gave insight into his character that she hadn’t already guessed. Okay, she turned to the books. There were several in a netted basket he’d rigged up on one side of the van. Without climbing in, she couldn’t see all the titles, but she saw a few. One caught her eye. Turning to Gold: The Life and Times of a Country Music Legend.

She recognized the title. It was about her favorite singer, Sammy Gold. The aging star had recently made a huge comeback, after recording his own version of a famous heavy metal ballad. Gold’s take on the song had outsold the original, and earned him the respect and dollars of a whole new generation of fans.

She, of course, had loved him long before that.

Carrie backed out of the VW and slid the door closed, feeling a little guilty for snooping, but not overly so. She hadn’t done more than peek. But her timing turned out to be impeccable, because she heard the distinctive sounds of bus engines in the distance even as she stepped an innocent-looking distance away from the VW and tried to act as if she hadn’t been snooping. The buses, three of them, pulled up along the side of the road in front of the firehouse, air brakes hissing. Their doors folded open, and the volunteers began streaming out, heading to their cars. It was clear there’d been no sign of Kyle today. The searchers had the usual hanging heads and disappointed faces that were somehow relieved at the same time. At least they hadn’t found a body.

She spotted Gabe the minute he stepped off the bus, and his eyes were on her almost as fast. The smile that appeared on his face the minute he saw her told her he was absurdly glad to see her, and then he turned to speak to someone behind him, pointing in her direction as he did.

The person behind him turned out to be her son, followed closely by Sadie, and the two met her eyes and waved. She frowned. What were they doing, hanging out with the stranger?

Even more oddly, Sadie turned to speak to the man right behind her, another total stranger. And he, too, glanced her way and lifted a hand in greeting.

Wait, wasn’t that the suit-wearing tourist she’d spotted at the soccer match? It was. Good Lord, had Sam and Sadie appointed themselves the unofficial Shadow Falls welcoming committee?

Before she had time to think more on that, all four came toward her, arriving in mid conversation as Sam was telling Gabe about how the falls here were nearly always in the shadow of the surrounding mountains, giving them—and the town—their names.

“Hey, Mom. You know Gabe. And this is Ambrose.”

“Ambrose Arthur Peck,” the man put in. “Of Manlin, Taylor & Strauss.”

“Oh. Of course, sure, I’ve heard of your firm.” Albeit, only because the financial advisors’ TV commercials ran on her favorite twenty-four-hour news station every hour, on the hour. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She extended a hand, her brain telling her that Ambrose was the one she ought to have her eyes on, not Gabe. But his handshake was wimpy, his skin damp, and his eyes never bored into hers in the way that Gabe’s did. Instead they met, then dodged, then met and dodged again. Jerky eyes, in constant staccato motion.

“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Overton. I’ve heard wonderful things about you.”