Whispers at Midnight (13 page)

Apparently feeling that the threat was over, Matt tucked his gun away behind his back again. The moving shadow that was Antonio was now about halfway down the slope. Without warning, another shadow detached itself from the darkness to join him. Carly’s eyes went wide. But there was no confrontation, no fight. Instead, a flashlight was switched on. The beam scanned the area in front of the men, then moved along the fence.

“There’s Toler now,” Matt said.

The other deputy. Right. Watching the flashlight’s progress, Carly wondered if perhaps it had been one or both of the deputies she’d sensed watching her. It was possible—but Antonio had said he’d been in the cornfield, which was behind the house, just before he’d popped up to scare the wits out of her. Could it have been the second deputy? Maybe. But her instincts made her doubt it.

“Matt—this prowler—you don’t think he could be after
me,
do you?” The question emerged spontaneously. As soon as the words left her mouth, Carly realized that they exactly expressed how she had felt both in the dining room and out here.

Matt had been looking toward where the flashlight bobbed among the trees. Now he shifted his gaze to her.

“You in particular, you mean? As in, the guy’s potentially a rapist or murderer or something who for some reason has picked you out as a victim?”

Spelled out like that, even in the very reasonable tone he used, it sounded more than a little far-fetched.

“Something like that, yeah.”

He looked at her thoughtfully, seeming to turn the possibility over in his mind. If nothing else, she was grateful to him for that.

“Who knew that you were going to be staying at your grandmother’s house tonight?”

“Nobody. Well, hardly anybody. Sandra; a few friends.”

“Anybody local?”

“No.”

“You got anybody in mind as a suspect? Anybody ticked off enough at you to want to do you harm? Say, your ex-husband?”

Carly thought of John. But no, that didn’t fit.
She
was ticked off at
him.
Left to enjoy all their assets plus his sexy new wife, he was happy as a clam.

“No. John doesn’t have any reason to want to hurt me. There’s nobody like that.”

Matt was silent for a moment, then said, “Well, then, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that whoever broke into your grandmother’s house tonight was somebody who knew it was empty and was hoping to score something he could convert to easy cash. In other words, you interrupted a burglary. I’m not saying the perp wouldn’t have harmed you given the opportunity, but under the circumstances I don’t think it’s likely that you were the target, specifically.”

“Since when does Benton have burglars?” Carly asked, folding her arms over her chest in an effort to ward off a sudden, inexplicable attack of the shivers.

“We get them every now and again. Usually they’re looking for things they can sell to buy drugs.”

So Benton
had
changed. Still, she’d much rather be dealing with a drug-buying burglar than the alternative. Carly decided that Matt’s
words made sense. She might well have been in danger—the sense she’d had of that was too strong to discount—but only from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said.

He nodded. “We’ll dust for fingerprints, check out the word on the street, talk to Miss Virgie and Loren and see if they know anything that can help us out. Something specific the guy might have been looking for. There’s definitely a criminal element in the area these days, but it’s small. Identifying your burglar shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Wow.” Carly took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Welcome home.”

“Yeah.” His voice was inscrutable. It was impossible to read his expression in the dark, but the one thing she was sure of was that he was definitely
not
smiling.

“Just for the record,” he added as their gazes met, “there’s something I want to point out to you here. Considering that only a few minutes earlier a man had grabbed you inside your house and scared you into a flaming case of the screaming meemies before I, as you know, chased him
out
side, for you to go haring off
out
side in the dark on your own like that was downright stupid. In fact, it was just about as stupid as it gets.”

That he had a point was beside the point, Carly told herself, bristling.

“Are you by any chance calling me stupid?” It was a heck of a lot more satisfying to be mad at Matt than grateful to him. The mad went back a long way, and wasn’t about to be forgotten just because tonight he’d happened to be in a position to come to her rescue. “That’s rich, coming from someone who broke up with Elise Knox
three separate times
because he caught her cheating on him
three separate times.
As in, duh, you might have wanted to think about her track record before you made up with her and started dating her again.” Carly snorted derisively. “Now that’s what
I
call stupid.”

Instead of getting mad in turn, Matt smiled reminiscently. “Maybe, but you have to admit Elise was really hot. I saw her
the other day—she lives over in Milledgeville now—and she’s
still
hot. When you’re in high school, hot makes up for a lot of deficiencies.”

Carly’s anger was rock solid again.

“I need to find Hugo,” she said shortly, turning away. She could no longer hear the demon dog, and she had no idea which way the chase had turned after she’d lost track of it, but anything was better than standing here listening to Matt drool over Elise Knox. “Are you coming with me or not?”

“Not.” He caught her wrist, clamping onto it like a vise and pulling her after him as he started walking toward the front of the house. “And you’re not going looking for the damned cat either. Not tonight, you’re not.”

“I can’t just leave him.” Still, much as she loved Hugo and feared for him, Carly didn’t really want to go careening off on her own again. She’d learned her lesson but good.

“Sure you can. He’s a cat. He’s probably up a tree by now. What do you plan on doing, trekking around to every tree for miles around calling ‘Here, kitty, kitty’?”

Once again, he had a point. She hated it when that happened. He had always possessed the cool head dispensing nuggets of wisdom to her more impulsive self.

“He’s afraid of dogs,” she said with dignity, trying to make him understand what he clearly considered to be her overabundance of concern for her pet.

“Of course he’s afraid of dogs. He’s a
cat.
”

“He’s never really been outside before.”

“He’s never been
outside?
That enormous furball with claws has never been outside? You’re kidding me. What kind of cat is that?”

“A purebred,” Carly said, getting miffed at him all over again. “A blue-point Himalayan, to be precise. His mother was a show cat, a grand champion. The only reason I was able to buy Hugo was because my husband handled Hugo’s mother’s owner’s divorce. Cats like that stay indoors.”

“Pussy,” Matt said scornfully.

“Hugo is not a pussy.” Instinctively rushing to the defense of her
really very masculine if somewhat sheltered cat, Carly said it before she thought.

Matt slanted a grin back over his shoulder at her. “Sure he is.”

Carly’s lips compressed. Glaring at his broad back was useless—no way could he see—but she did it anyway.

“If it will make you feel better, I’ll put my deputies on cat alert. While they’re searching the vicinity for the man who broke into your grandmother’s house and grabbed you, they can also keep an eye out for your pussy.” There was a faintly devilish note to that last word that did nothing to soothe Carly’s annoyance.

“If you don’t quit calling him that—” Carly broke off in mid-threat, suddenly becoming aware that they had left the house behind and were moving down the slope toward the road. “Where are we going?”

“To your U-Haul. I’m guessing your friend is there, hopefully locked inside. When you started screaming, she said ‘I’ll wait in the truck,’ and took off like a bat out of hell. I was too busy chasing after you to watch where she went, but on the strength of our brief acquaintance I’d say she’s a woman of her word.”

“If she went to the U-Haul, she couldn’t get in. The doors are locked and I’ve got the keys.”

As they dodged around the dripping foliage, Matt looked back at her. “Hey, Curls, you know what? You always could cause more trouble than anyone I ever knew.”

Carly gasped with indignation. Before she could decide what to object to first, the nickname or the characterization, he pulled her with him out from behind an enormous magnolia and there was the U-Haul not a dozen feet away. Sandra was perched on the running board, cluthing the flashlight in one hand. The flashlight beam was darting hither and yon like a drunken firefly as she shined it all around. When Carly and Matt stepped out into the open, she squealed, jumped to her feet, and aimed the flashlight at them. Then she recognized them and let out a huge, relieved sigh as they approached.

“Next time I go anywhere with you,” Sandra said, fixing Carly with gimlet eyes, “you can bet your sweet granny I’ll be the one doing the driving.”

“Fine with me. I never particularly wanted to drive in the first place. You’re the one who gets nervous on the interstate.
And
on narrow country roads.
And
in traffic.
And
after dark. Which just about covers the whole spectrum of possible driving conditions, I’d say.” Carly fished in the pocket of her jeans and came up with the keys. To her surprise, Matt took them out of her hand.

“This time I’m driving.” He unlocked the door and held it wide. “Get in.”

Sandra scrambled in with alacrity. Once inside, she turned off the flashlight and scooted to the far side of the bench seat. Carly stayed where she was.

“Look,” she said to Matt. “Thanks for making like a sheriff and coming to my rescue. I really appreciate it. But I think Sandra and I can take it from here.”

Matt grunted, clearly unimpressed. “I don’t think so. Get in.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Carly said, abandoning subtlety in favor of making her position clear. The days when Matt Converse could make a plan and she would fall slavishly in with whatever he wanted were long gone, and so he needed to understand.

“Oh, yes, you are. Your grandmother’s house is now a crime scene. We’re conducting an official investigation. You’re hindering it. I’m going to take you two to my house, where you can spend the night. You’ll be safe, and you’ll be out of my way. As far as I’m concerned, life with you around just doesn’t get any better than that.”

Carly put her fists on her hips.

“How to put this?” she said, sugar sweet. “I don’t want to go to your house. In fact, I refuse to go to your house. I’d rather sleep in the U-Haul than go to your house.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sandra called from inside the truck.

Both Carly and Matt ignored her.

Matt said, “Let me spell this out for you: you can spend the night at my house, or you can spend the night in jail. Your choice.”

“You’re bluffing.” At least, Carly was reasonably certain he was bluffing.

His jaw tightened. “Try me.”

“Go for it,” she said, raising her chin. “Put me in jail.”

“Like I said, speak for yourself.” Sandra was leaning across the seat now, looking at them through the open door. She sounded alarmed.

Matt glanced at Sandra. Then he looked back at Carly.

“Curls, don’t be a pain in the ass,” he said softly. So softly that she was reasonably sure that only she could hear.

It was the softness of his voice that did it. The only time he employed that deceptively gentle tone was when he was on the verge of losing his temper with a vengeance. She might not have seen him in years, but she’d known him long and she’d known him well: he was perfectly capable of picking her up and stuffing her into that truck if he had to. When he talked like that, he was also perfectly capable of locking her up in the nearest cell.

“Bully,” she said witheringly, and climbed into the cab.

10

P
RUDENTLY SILENT
in the face of victory, Matt got in behind Carly and closed the door. The cab was as hot and steamy as the inside of a sauna. Crowded up against Sandra, Carly felt sweat start to bead on her forehead. The only thing that made the stifling atmosphere even remotely bearable was the fact that Matt got to share it.

“By the way,” Carly said as Matt started the truck and reached for the climate control knob, “the air conditioner’s broken.” Carly felt as much malicious enjoyment as he’d seemed to feel when he’d told her the power to the house was out.

A grunt was his only reply.

“Tomorrow I’m going back to Chicago, just so you know,” Sandra said to Carly, effectively diverting her attention. “This place is creepier than one of those haunted houses the fire department puts on at Halloween. What made you start screaming again back there, anyway?”

“I stubbed my toe,” Carly said shortly.

“Oh, yeah,
right.
”