Deeper Than Need (30 page)

Her heart ached in her chest, threatened to break, and she didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry from the beauty of it.

All over a kiss … a simple kiss.

One that ended far too soon.

Noah pulled back and reached up, stroking a finger down her cheek. His gaze locked on hers.

“Noah.” She dropped her head down and rested it on his shoulder. “I have to tell you something.”

“If you try to back out of the date now, you’re going to see a grown man cry. I’m warning you.” His hand rested low on her hip, kneading her flesh, and it was just another little thing that seemed to be pushing her closer and closer to the edge.

A breathless chuckle escaped her and she shook her head. “No … no. I’m not backing out of the date. After all, I have to find out just what your sordid secrets are.” Slowly, she lifted her head and looked up at him. “I have to say this, though. I really wonder where in the world a preacher learned to kiss like that.”

The grin that lit his face held so much promise and heat, Trinity felt her heart stutter in her chest.

*   *   *

“So they finally found you.”

He stood off in the shadows, staring at the outline of the house. He kept his distance, not wanting to get too close.

From here, all he could see was the roof, but it didn’t matter.

He knew every inch of that house.

Every room.

Every floorboard.

Every bloodstain, even though the blood had been conscientiously caught on numerous sheets of plastic or cloth. Nothing left behind. Of course, they couldn’t leave behind any sign of the atrocities.

All his screams muffled behind cruel hands or vicious gags … or worse.

Lids drooped low, he resisted the urge to go closer, find a way to destroy the place until it was nothing but rock and rubble and ruin.

There was a soft murmur of voices, a boy’s sob. He glanced toward them and then moved deeper into the shadows, walking through them until he was closer to the old Frampton place. It perched on top of the hill, the outline of the trees behind it.

His gut twisted as he thought about the walks he’d taken through those trees. Including that last one. It had led to all of this.

He’d walked through those woods, thinking
finally
 …

They’d told him one day he’d go into that house and emerge a man.

He’d gone into that house the last time a scared, nervous wreck of a boy and he’d emerged with a jagged bit of glass, clutched like a knife, in his hand and blood dripping from his fingers. All he could think about was leaving Madison and the Frampton place far behind.

The Frampton place.
No … that’s not what it is anymore. It’s got a new owner.

Part of him wondered if that was enough to undo the stain. The evil that seemed to soak through the very core of the place.

Could a taint that ran so deep be removed by tearing down some walls? Slapping some fresh paint here and there? Would it be as easy as that to get that place a new start, keep the evil from repeating itself?

He didn’t know.

Part of him had known something would happen. Things could be hidden, but they’d never stay that way forever.

What was going to happen now?

Memories of screams, memories of a shamed and sick delight, slithered through the back of his mind. He would like to block it all out. If it was possible, he’d cut it all out.

But that would require excising his entire brain.

Or maybe the cancer that had caused this sickness.

Turning away from the house, he moved through the shadowy night and started to walk. It was close to ten, but there were still a lot of people around. As some saw him, they smiled. Or waved.

A child cut in front of him and he watched the boy, hair pale and soft, his face lit with a bright smile. The boy saw him and cut around him before darting on down the street toward Ali Holmes’ house.

That’s where they were staying. For now. But not much longer.

Soon they’d be back in that awful old place, trying to live in a house where nothing but evil had survived for a very long time.

The cancer had to be cut out.

But how did one cut out something that old, that deep?

Did he start with himself?

Or go back even further?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The weight of the boards was a familiar one. One thing that Noah had missed since he’d expanded his dad’s handyman and light construction business into the general-contracting arena was the fact that he just didn’t get to work with his hands enough.

Today, he was going to do nothing but that. The weight of the boards, the smell of the wood, the feel of his tools in his hands, was welcome, even if he wished he was working almost any place but here.

Overhead, the sun beat down on his shoulders as he hauled another load of lumber from the truck. The heat was pretty familiar, too, although
that
wasn’t particularly welcome.

He didn’t much care for working on Saturday and this wasn’t a job he’d be invoicing anybody for … although knowing Trinity, he realized she’d want to know why. She seemed to be a little too thorough when it came to the office assistant department. But she wasn’t paying for this job.

Truck parked near the back door of her place, he made another trip outside and reached for his bottle of water. He had a small cooler full of them and he’d already gone through one bottle. It wasn’t even ten yet. He planned on spending the entire day out here if he had to … well, until about six or so, because he had a date.

A date.

The thought was enough to fill him with both nerves and excitement, and if he had any sense he’d
stop
thinking, because it wasn’t helping matters any. It didn’t matter.

He was going on a date with Trinity Ewing.

He’d actually figured it out. It was the only one that had mattered since high school. Once he’d sobered up, he’d made a halfhearted attempt to date, but it had been just that—halfhearted—and after the first four or five attempts had failed he’d just let it go.

Before that, it had been Lana.

“I think you’d like her,” he said softly, glancing toward the house as though Lana could hear him.

Whether it was her body they’d found or not, he’d finally found that bit of peace he’d been chasing after and it no longer
hurt
just to think about her.

Lana was gone. Sometime over the past few weeks, he’d done more than just acknowledge it. He’d
accepted
it.

She would have hated what he’d done with himself. She’d hate the shadowy echo that had been his life. If he ever saw her again, on this side of life or the other, he wanted to be able to look at her and see that smile.

She’d been the love of his boyhood, and whether or not they would have had a chance as adults he’d never know. It was time to stop wondering. Time to stop regretting and wishing and punishing himself.

Time to start living again.

He had one amazing chance at life already waiting in front of him; he wasn’t going to let it slip by him. Tipping his bottle of water toward the house, he murmured, “It’s time to say good-bye, baby.”

The wind brushed against him with a sigh. It was a fanciful thought that made him think maybe that it came from her … somebody long gone, reaching out to murmur to him, one last time.

“Need a hand?”

At that voice, Noah lowered his bottle of water and watched as Caine Yoder came striding around the truck.

“Well, you’re a face I haven’t seen in a while. Where you been?” Noah stared at the man, eying him narrowly.

“Busy.”

Getting anything out of Caine was like trying to get water from a stone, something Noah was used to. But generally, the man was there whenever Noah gave him a call. Except over the past few weeks. Shoot, Caine was
supposed
to be helping out at the café, but he’d sent his second-in-charge down instead. Thom did a good enough job, but he didn’t move as fast as Caine did.

Brooding, Noah eyed Caine’s face. The man was about as easy to read as a brick wall. “Too busy to return a call about helping a friend?”

“I got you help,” Caine said shortly. “You have the men I usually work with out here helping, don’t you? Thom and his boys are moving things along at the café, aren’t they?”

Noah snorted. “I needed
extra
help and you know it. The boys do good work, but they won’t work past their set hours and sometimes I need the extra help. You’ve always been the one to pitch in when I needed it.”

“You going to gripe?” Caine’s brows ratcheted up over his eyes, sharp and blue. “Or are we going to get this finished?”

Noah raked his fingers across his chin, absently aware of the light growth of stubble there. Caine stood there, just waiting, not saying anything, not blinking an eye. He wouldn’t say anything, Noah knew. Of course, that meant he also probably wouldn’t
ask
anything, either.

That was a blessing. “We’re going to get it finished,” he said, tossing the water down and nodding toward the truck. “Between the two of us, maybe we can finally get it done.”

*   *   *

It took less than no time to get the supplies in, and once that was done Caine disappeared to get his gear. Noah settled in the narrow pantry, mentally blocking out everything that had happened, everything he’d seen, and focused on the job. Just the strips of lumber, the subfloor he’d already installed. Nothing mattered but the job.

Minutes had passed before he realized Caine wasn’t in there and looked up, saw the man’s shadow outside the door.

But the second Noah stopped working, Caine appeared in the doorway. As always, his lean face was unreadable. His face was like stone, his eyes like bits of glass, flat and emotionless. They’d worked together for more than a decade, and Noah knew next to nothing about the man. Noah was used to people like Thom or Hank or Lee, who talked nonstop, sometimes
too
much. But Caine gave up nothing.

It was sometimes unsettling, but Noah wasn’t going to complain, because he really didn’t want to talk about what had happened here.

Tugging his gloves up higher, he turned around and gestured to the floor. “You can see what’s been done. The entire floor wasn’t bad. Just that one area. It was an old cellar. I was…”

He made the mistake of looking back at Caine.

Caine was staring at the floor like he was mesmerized. The skin across his cheeks was flushed, flags of high color, and his huge hands curled into fists at his sides. “They know anything about her?”

Startled, Noah shook his head. “Who?”

“The body.” Caine’s gaze swung upward to meet Noah’s for a minute before dropping back down to the now closed off entry to that little pit of hell. He dragged a hand down his face and cleared his voice. “The body they found. Nobody is even sure if it’s a man or woman yet, right?”

Something about the guy’s eyes was weird, Noah decided. Too intense. Too watchful and freaky, too focused on every little thing that happened here, for a guy who didn’t even live in town. “Ah, no.” Noah rocked back on his heels, gripping his hammer and keeping his tone casual as he shrugged. He went on to say something about what Jeb had said and just barely remembered he wasn’t supposed to—not common knowledge yet. “I don’t think they knew whether the person was male or female—too decayed. Didn’t look like either to me when I saw it, if I had to be honest. Body didn’t even look real.”

Caine nodded slowly. Then, with a heavy sigh, he settled down the floor, opposite from Noah. “And the body was all they found down there?”

“Yeah.” Noah kept his eyes on the man’s bowed head as Caine ran a hand down the smooth surface of the subfloor. “I’m ready to get this done. They can’t come home until this is finished. The floor was a hazard.”

“This whole place is a hazard,” Caine said, his voice soft. Distant.

*   *   *

They got the floors finished, in both the cellar and the other areas out in the living room.

That was one thing that Noah was very, very happy about, because the floor was one job that Noah absolutely
did
need help on and almost everybody he’d called to try to get out there had been booked up for the next few weeks.

It was done and now he didn’t have to worry about having Caine out here again.

Which Noah was pretty pleased with, because something was eating at the guy and whatever it was, it had him acting very, very off. With most people Noah would ask if there was anything he could do, but there wasn’t any point with Caine.

Caine simply did not talk about himself.

At all.

That he’d even asked about the cellar, shown any interest at all, was out of character.

As Noah stowed his gear, he nodded at Caine. “That should do it for what I need. Your crew can help finish up the rest. They’re doing a good job.”

“I’ll be out with them after this. I’m done with the rest of the work I was doing,” he said shortly. He put his tools in the back of his rusted Ford truck, a model that was twenty years old, easy. As Caine slammed the trunk shut, little flakes of rust drifted off the top to float down to the ground. “I’ll be here Monday.”

Wonderful.

Noah waited for Caine to get into his truck, drive off. But instead, he headed back to the house and stood in the doorway of the kitchen. One hand curled over the doorjamb, knuckles white.

Caine looked like he wanted to take something and tear it apart, shatter it.

He looked like he wanted to destroy something.

“You should talk her into redoing this room,” Caine said, his voice thick and rusty. “The windows. You need a bigger window—let more light come in here. Maybe even take down that door to the pantry, open it up. Some sort of hell happened here. More light would chase away all the shadows.”

Then he turned and walked off.

Noah stood there staring after him, confused … and more than a little uneasy.

*   *   *

Hey, Preach.

Noah looked at the message on his phone as he unlocked the door to his house.

He didn’t recognize the number, and the nickname was no help. Any number of people in town called him that, and it was a name the kids on the forum had dubbed him with.