Unforgivable (28 page)

“No.”      

Tate was getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of this little interrogation. But what he was doing was making her fear
him
, not Silas. “Interesting that you accused Gary of hurting that cat of yours when he was innocent. And now you’re siding with evil. Don’t you find that ironic?”

“No,” she said again, afraid to say more.

“Then there’s something else you should know. I’m only telling you this for your own good. I’m just trying to figure out why you trust Silas with your life. Don’t you realize that every time you’re alone with him, you risk never coming back?”

“I can’t say why I trust him. But I do.”

“Another woman trusted Silas, and she’s probably dead, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her name was Celine Carrigan. She disappeared from the Atlanta area in 1988. Guess who reported her missing?”

“Silas.” The word came out a raspy whisper.

“Smart girl. Not only that, they lived together.”

She swallowed hard. “They were friends. He told me about her.” Well, sort of.

“Did he mention she disappeared?”

“No,” she had to admit. “Did they…find her shoe?”

“No. But they don’t always find shoes. Sometimes he hides them well.”

She digested the information. “Celine,” she said at last. “Isn’t that the name of his company?”

“Bingo. You’re smarter than you look. Who can figure out a woman’s mind? I’ve been trying for years with no luck. They fall in love with men who are incarcerated for violent crimes. They’re drawn to the dark side.”

“We all have a dark side; and a light side.”

That made him smile. “Yes, we do.”

The uneasy feeling that had started with Harold and then Tate’s arrival now sent the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. “How do you know Silas is looking in my window? The only person I’ve seen peeking in is Gary.”

His chuckle was even more unnerving than his smile. “Accusing Gary again? You never learn, girl who cried wolf. The only accusation you’ll make that people will believe is when you point to Silas. And if you keep hanging around with him, you may not be around to point any fingers.” He tipped his hat. “Good day, Katie.”

She leaned against the column as he walked to his vehicle. She hoped she didn’t look as drained as she felt when he gave her another glance before getting in. She straightened her shoulders and held his gaze until he got in and drove away. 

Only then did she walk on shaky legs toward the woods. The sun was already warming the leaves and filling the air with the scent of pine when she headed toward Silas’s. She kept stopping suddenly to see if footsteps followed. Other than the birds hopping from branch to branch and the groundhog she’d spotted earlier, she seemed to be alone. Her thoughts were far more terrifying than anything physical.

She kept telling herself that Silas wasn’t a murderer. She’d gotten guff for that belief, but down deep she believed it. And yet, everything seemed to point to him. Even Silas had warned her about himself. 

The whining sound sent chills scurrying down her spine. She remembered the sound from that first night when Silas had reappeared in her life. A saw.

It was Tate’s voice in her head saying,
Cuts up women with an axe. Could be a saw, you know. I
’
ll bet that
’
s what he
’
s doing right now.

She thought about sneaking up on Silas to see what he was doing. That was impossible, because he always knew what she was feeling if it was a strong emotion. She tamped down the fear and continued forward. When she neared the house, she pulled the gun from her backpack. 

The whining noise muffled as it cut through something. She shuddered. He was inside this time, not out where she could see him. She tamped down her feelings and breathed in relief when the saw started again. He hadn’t felt her. Yet.

With the gun pressed against her leg, she crept up the stairs. The Boss was sprawled across the threshold. He lifted his head with some amount of effort. She kept out of view where she could see Silas standing at a homemade table of sorts. As she tried to see what he was doing, he turned around.

She couldn’t help but catch her breath at the sight of him. It brought back everything they’d shared last night. He wore the blue headband again. Not a speck of blood, not one body part anywhere. The only body was the gorgeous one with the low-slung white jeans and plaid shirt open to reveal a damp chest.

He cut the saw and set it down. His dark blue eyes lit with warmth and something she wasn’t sure she wanted to define as he took in her outfit. “Katie.” His expression changed when he saw the gun pressed against her leg. Instead of asking, he merely leaned back against the table and waited for her to explain.

“How’d you get the cut on your arm?” she asked.

He glanced at the gauze bandage wrapped around his right arm. “I don’t know.” He pushed away from the table and walked slowly around to her right. Like a wolf stalking his prey.

She turned to face him. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Katie, what’s this about?” He nodded toward the gun. “You know you’re not going to shoot me, so put it away.”

She lifted the gun at him. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said in a resigned voice. He walked up so close, she felt the brush of his shirt against her. He took her wrists in his hands and held them between them. “I know you better than you know yourself, I bet. I know you’re afraid of me, but you hate being afraid of me. I know you’re lonely and confused and feeling a little more than guilty about our kiss last night.” He released her hands and tipped up her chin. His voice went lower. “I know you want more of that kiss. I know it’s the first time you’ve felt this way.” He touched a strand of her hair that curled under her chin. “I know you’re looking for some part of yourself that’s been missing for a long time and you don’t know how to find it. You’re looking for that little girl you used to be, the one who felt life and passion and freedom.”

“Silas…” The gun dropped to the floor.

“Shhh.” He touched her mouth with his finger. “There’s more. Someone has you scared of me and you need answers to assure yourself that you haven’t kissed a serial killer. Am I right?”

She could only nod. God, how had he done that, gone right to her soul and pulled out every doubt and desire?

“I didn’t want to put you in this position. I never wanted to, and that’s why I never spoke to you whenever I came to town.” His finger had remained against her lower lip. “I knew…this would be between us.” He closed his eyes. “And Katie, if there was ever a bad time to want you, it’s now. And you don’t even want to think about wanting me, not now…not ever.”

She swallowed hard on those words, seeing that no matter what he said, he did want her. She would never forget the sight of desire in a man’s eyes. “I hate that you know what I’m feeling. Ben’s always talking about sharing feelings, but I’ve recently realized that I’m the only one sharing feelings in our marriage. Just when I’m starting to hold back my feelings, and keep them to myself, you come along.”

“I’m sorry, Katie, but you’ve been inside me for so long, I couldn’t even try to shut you out.”

Those words slithered through her and tightened her stomach. She had to push onward. “Who’s Celine?”

He took a step back, but recovered his surprise quickly. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before they found out about her.”

“If you’d told me everything up front—”

“You weren’t ready to hear everything then. What would you have done if I’d dumped all this on you at our first meeting?”

“Run scared,” she had to admit. She’d been different then. Silas had changed her. Instead of being comfortably unhappy, she was uncomfortably happy. And completely messed up. “So who’s Celine? Is she the friend you lived with in Atlanta?” 

“Yes.”

“You named your company after her.  She must have been important to you.” She couldn’t quite admit that she wanted to be the only important person to Silas. If she’d lived inside him, if he’d felt her across hundred of miles and years of separation, shouldn’t she be the only important woman in his life? She pushed aside those selfish thoughts.

“She
was
important to me. She changed my life in some ways. We hooked up in Atlanta and along with a couple of other people rented a run-down place to live. Eventually the others moved out and Celine and I handled the rent on our own. We looked out for each other.”

There were other questions Katie wanted to ask, but she settled with, “Did she know…about your empathy?”

“Anyone I know for a period of time finds out one way or the other. It bugged her, too.” He studied her face. She tried to look down, but he tilted her chin up. “Did I love her? In a way. We gave each other what we needed. I protected her, and she gave me affection. We were together for about five years. She’d been in a real bad situation for most of her life and had run away five years earlier when she was fourteen. She came down with me when I tried to see you.”

“She knew about me?” Katie asked in a croaky voice.

He nodded. “She said I was in love with you. I told her she was wrong, because I was twenty and you were only fourteen. I was too afraid of being like my father.”

“The child pornography you found.”

“But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t feel lustful toward you.”

And had he toward Celine? She couldn’t let herself picture them making love or let herself feel jealousy.

He glanced away. “She disappeared in 1988. Just like that,
poof,
she was gone. I went to work as a bartender at a bar around the corner one night. She worked there too, as a waitress. She’d worked the afternoon shift and we saw each other briefly before she went back to our apartment. She never made it home.”

She heard the pain in those last words. “What happened to her?”

“I never found out. I hounded the police to find her. They did a cursory investigation, but figured she’d just taken off. So I kept looking. I started investigating, taking notes and interviewing people who were on her route home.” His voice went so low, she could hardly hear him. “She’d vanished without a trace. I know someone took her, but I have no idea who or how.” He cleared his throat. “I kept a journal as I went along. I wrote an article for the newspaper, hoping they’d run it and get some leads. They liked my writing style and thoroughness. That’s how I got into what I write. And that’s why I named my company after her.” She could see the pain across his features. “Did you think I’d killed her? Is that why I got an uneasy feeling from you just a bit ago?”

She sorted through what she’d been thinking and feeling. “I didn’t think you’d done it. I just wanted to know the story. Wanted to know who Celine was.” She paused when she saw how her trust had warmed his expression. “You still miss her?”

The warmth left as fast as it had come. “There’s no use missing someone who’s gone.”

She reached out and grabbed his arm. It startled him, since he’d been looking in the other direction. As she opened her mouth to say something, she felt him. Not his feelings, exactly, but an odd sensation that invaded her senses. There was a vague sense of pain and a larger sense of him, of Silas inside her the way she’d been inside him.

 “I feel you, Silas. I feel you,” she said, enunciating the words. He pulled his arm away, but she was still stunned by it. “Let me share your pain. You’ve been sharing mine all these years. It’s only fair.” She started to reach for his hand again, but he gripped her wrist.

“Nothing’s fair in life, Katie.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re supposed to be the protector. That’s your role, with me and with Celine. It’s okay for you to shoulder all that yourself, but God forbid if anyone tries to protect you once in a while. Or comfort you. It’s that giving/accepting thing again, isn’t it?”

He sat on the top step of the porch. “Giving’s easy. You just give. That’s it, real simple.”

 “And what’s so difficult about accepting?”

“Taking, and all it implies, makes things complicated. I don’t know how to deal with that part of it.” He picked up the gun from the floor. “You want to know how I got this cut. Demanded to know, as I recall.” He handed the gun to her.

His swift change of subject had her almost dizzy, but she nodded and put the gun in her backpack. “They found Dana’s finger at a farmer’s pig pen. The killer is cutting them up and…feeding them to the pigs.”

“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes and looked as horrified as she probably had when she’d heard the news. A minute later, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “And you think that’s where I got this cut?”

She let out a long sigh. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I guess I don’t have to tell you how confused I am. You’re right, I don’t want to believe it’s you, but things keep pointing at you. Tell me what’s going on. Why did you come back here, why are you trying to protect me? Why are you so sure it’s someone I know?”

“Who told you about Celine? Gary?”

“No, Tate.” She fidgeted with her cross. “Would you think I’m crazy if I said I was afraid of him?”

“The Sheriff? No, I wouldn’t think you were crazy. Why are you afraid of him?”

She relayed their conversation. “It was creepy. Maybe I can’t trust my judgment anymore….”

“Considering you’re here with the one person who seems most likely to be a killer,” he finished her unspoken words. “Trust your instincts. I’ll see if I can dig up anything on Tate.” 

She was grateful that he hadn’t dismissed her paranoia out of hand the way everyone else did. There was more she needed to know, and she couldn’t let her gratitude soften her. “Why do you think the killer is someone I know? Tell me, Silas. I’m ready to hear it.”

He seemed to assess her, and she stood tall and strong to show him how ready she was. He let out a sigh and sat down on the top step, nodding for her to join him. “Because of my empathy feelings, I’ve avoided people for a long time. Unless it has something to do with the book I’m working on, I don’t want to know the feelings of the people around me. Even simple things like flying on planes can be emotionally wracking, picking up broken hearts and financial worries and lust. When I touch someone, it’s even worse. I don’t just pick up their feelings, I feel them. They course through my blood the same way they course through their blood.”