Whispers (11 page)

“
You’re up early,” she said after a moment of silent swinging. With each move back and forth, his leg brushed against hers. The contact made her feel jittery.

“
Too hot to sleep. Your room stay cold?” ·

“
Yes. I almost froze to death.”

“
Sounds great. Maybe I’ll sneak in there tonight.”

He’d said it lightly, but the layer of tension that seemed to exist between them twisted and tightened the words into something more. He moved and his arm touched hers, sending an electric current through her. She stood and took an agitated step away.

“
I saw your house when I drove in last night,” she said, hoping to distract them both from the sudden intimacy of the rain, the porch, the seclusion. The attraction she couldn’t seem to deny no matter how much she wanted to.

Reilly’s jaw tightened and a flush crept up his neck. “Kind of fitting, what’s happened to it.”

Gracie didn’t comment on that. She didn’t think he’d appreciate her agreement, “I knew you’d moved on. I mean, I saw you in the paper when the....” She trailed off, feeling her own face start to burn. She’d seen him in the paper when he’d been accused of assaulting his girlfriend. Guess it ran in the family.

“
The case was dismissed,” he said wearily, as if he’d had to offer the explanation so many times he no longer cared if anyone believed him. “She was just after the publicity.”

Gracie shrugged. “Anyway, I thought... well, I knew
you
were gone, but I expected Matt to still live here. I mean, if he were still alive. I never thought he’d leave ….”

She trailed off, feeling insensitive and idiotic—and angry for feeling either. Reilly stared at her for a moment like he could read her mind.

“
Matt pretty much burned all of his bridges,” he said at last. “After the band broke up, he came back for awhile. Arnie Schmidt hired him as a mechanic, but then he got caught stealing. After that no one wanted anything to do with him. Arnie didn’t press charges, but he didn’t keep it a secret either.”

“
And why did you come back, Reilly?”

The blunt question caught him off-guard and Gracie had a moment of childish triumph. She didn’t want to have a friendly conversation with Reilly Alexander. She didn’t want to feel attracted to him or aware of his nearness and the clean scent of his skin. She wished she could call up some of the cold rage she’d felt last night. But somehow his closeness had dispelled her anger, leaving her feeling confused, vulnerable, and defensive.

“
This is my hometown too,” he said.

She let out a breath of disbelief. “And you just decided to come back for a visit, is that it? In the middle of the night? With complete strangers?”

Reilly stood and paced a few steps away. The red stain was back on his face. “Why I’m here is my own business.”

“
Not when you’re staying in my grandmother’s house. Not when your little visit just happens to coincide with mine, and with my grandma’s death. With what happened to my daughter.”

“
I had no way of knowing—”

“
Really? Because last night your little friend Zach said Chloe knew my grandma was dead.”

Reilly didn’t have an answer for that.

“
So which is it?” Gracie demanded.

“
She said that Carolina’s spirit had called her, had called both of us.”

“
And you believed that?”

“
No. I thought—I
think
Chloe is a crazy lady.”

“
So why did you bring her here?”

He ran a hand over his head and a strange look flashed across his face, as if he’d expected to find hair where the shaved stubble was. He used to have beautiful hair, Gracie remembered. But somehow the shaved look suited him, too. Fit the lean, hard man he’d become.

“
I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said at last. “I swear I didn’t think she was telling the truth about your grandma. I came because I had to come. There’s no other way to explain it.”

In spite of herself, she wanted to believe him. The look in his eyes begged her to believe him.

“
So Chloe tells you that you’re being called back to this place and you instantly feel compelled to go? But her telling you and you coming are unrelated? Is that what you’re saying? Because if you ask me, that sounds every bit as crazy as what Chloe is spouting.”

Reilly shook his head. “Christ,” he mumbled. “I can’t explain it to you, Gracie.”

“
Why?”

“
Because it’s personal.”

“
Personal?
And this invasion of
my
privacy isn’t? You act like this is all some coincidence. Some big misunderstanding. Well, I don’t like coincidences, Reilly, and I’m not buying that we’re all here at the same time by accident. Chloe wants something. You want something. I want to know what that something is.”

Reilly turned away from her, but not before she saw the haunted look in his eyes. When he spoke, his words were deep with emotion. “All I want is to bury my brother. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

“
What?”

“
It’s the truth. I have his ashes upstairs in my room.”

“
But you said ... last night you said he’d died months ago.”

“
He did.”

“
Why didn’t you bury him then?”

He hunched his shoulders. “I couldn’t. There wasn’t even a service. No one cared that he was dead and... I couldn’t do it alone. So I didn’t do it all.”

Gracie stared at him, trying to process this new piece of information. She didn’t doubt that he was telling her the truth. She could see it in his face. But she still came back to the simple question of why now? Why after all this time would he pick last night, the same night her grandmother died, her daughter was injured, and Gracie ended her seventeen year boycott of the town? And how did it all connect to Chloe LaMonte?

“
I’ve been procrastinating, hell
avoiding,
coming back here, Gracie. Because even now, I don’t know what... how...” He cleared his throat. “Chloe throwing out the hook and reeling me in, it was just an excuse. A sleight of hand, you know? Watch Chloe and the Clowns on the way and maybe it won’t hit me what I have to do while I’m here.”

Gracie shook her head, unconvinced. He sounded sincere, but she knew better than anyone that Reilly Alexander was a liar.

He took a small step forward, his hands bracketing the words he struggled to find. “Gracie, insane as it sounds, maybe Chloe was right about one thing though.”

“
And what is that?”

“
My coming, you’re being here ... There’s history between us. You know that.”

“
Is that what you’re calling it? History?”

Her words had enough bite to leave marks. Reilly stiffened and his hands dropped to his sides. She’d wanted to hurt him, but now that she had she wished she could take the words back. And that made her angry with herself. What was wrong with her? Didn’t she remember what this man had done to her? She forced herself to take a step forward, forced herself to say the words that felt like stone in her gut.

“
What did you expect, Reilly? Did you think you could just waltz in after all these years, bring me coffee, hold my hand? Look under my bed for monsters and I’d just pretend the past never happened? That I’d want to be friends? That I’d think it was
history
we shared?”

A nerve jumped in his clenched jaw. “No. I told you, I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Her breath was coming in jerky gulps and she realized she was dangerously close to tears. “I don’t trust your friend Chloe. And I certainly don’t trust you. I never will.”

His shoulders hunched, as if in defeat. Again she felt the warring emotions inside her. Offer comfort, hurt him more.

“
Would it make a difference if I said I was sorry?” he murmured. He gave her a guarded look that only increased her tension.

“
Not a bit. You had your chance to be a stand-up guy with me, Reilly. You blew it.”

“
I am sorry, Gracie. If I believed in God, I’d be on my knees begging for forgiveness. But God never really had a lot to do with my life. Matt’s either. I don’t think the Almighty would be any more forgiving than you are.”

“
Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

“
No.”

He moved closer, invading her space. Making her feel naked in the tank top and short skirt she’d felt confident in earlier.

He lowered his voice, but his anger still simmered on the surface. “I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t expect you to like me. But I am sorry. I swear to you, I am sorry for what I did.”

They stared at each other in the weighted silence. Gracie’s eyes burned, but she refused to let him see that she hurt. There were no words that could make up for what had happened that night all those years ago. She’d been raped by his brother. And afterward, when the sheriff went to arrest Matt, Reilly had lied and given him an alibi, knowing what he’d done.

A lot of time and a lot of water had passed beneath the bridge the two of them had once crossed. Her wounds had healed, but the scars would remain forever. She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a woman. A woman who knew better than to think a man like Reilly Alexander was anything more than what was on the outside. She’d never trust him. He sounded sincere now, but he’d sounded just as sincere all those years ago when he’d lied to the sheriff too.

“
It was a long time ago, and I really don’t care if you’re sorry or not,” she said, lifting her chin and staring him in the eye. “I moved on, haven’t thought about you in years. But just don’t think you can play me, Reilly. It’s not happening. We aren’t friends. Never have been, never will be. Got it?”

“
Loud and clear.”

“
Good.”

She gave a low whistle to the dogs who dashed from the yard to her side. Juliet paused beside Reilly and gave him a questioning look. Reilly reached down to scratch her ear. She let him, but before Gracie could think her a traitor, she gave her fur a violent shake, spraying Reilly with mud and dirty rainwater from head to toe. With a cold smile, Gracie marched through the door, and nearly plowed into Bill, who hovered in the shadowy entrance nearly invisible in his black-on-black attire.

She jumped and clapped a hand over the scream that nearly burst from her lips. Bill looked like she’d scared him just as much. He seemed paler than last night, but his eyes glowed like small, round coals pitted in the translucent pallor of his face. He glanced anxiously up the stairs then back at Gracie. Had the high priestess of weird sent him to spy on her?

“
Don’t trust the boy,” he said softly.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Reilly move toward the door. She gave him her back.

“
Don’t trust the boy,” Bill whispered again, more urgently this time.

“
What are you talking about?”

“
Bill,” a familiar voice called from upstairs.

Bill straightened, like a puppet on a string. But there was nothing puppet-like about the look he gave her. It was at once demanding and beseeching. The black wells overflowed with the urgency of his thoughts, drawing Gracie deep into them. And then he seemed to fade into the background and disappear.

Chapter Eleven

DR. GRAEBEL’S house doubled as Diablo Springs’ only medical facility. It was located not far from the Diablo—nothing in the tiny town was that far. But the short drive was not pleasant in a car with three wet dogs. Gracie had wanted to leave the dogs back at the Diablo, but they’d whined and barked and worked themselves into a frenzy before she’d managed to shut the door and make it down the hall. She didn’t want Grandma Beck’s bedroom to be in shreds when she returned so she’d relented.

The storm had at once quieted and increased so that the rain seemed to waterfall from the sky instead of simply pour, and the descent acted as a muffler to all other sounds. The thunder and lightning had retired for the time being, although the sky looked every bit as black and ominous as it had in the wee hours of the morning. It was just after eight when they pulled up to the clinic—only hours since Gracie had burst through the front door of the Diablo. It felt like days.

Analise had been quiet since waking up and she sat stiffly in her seat. The short drive down Rough Street to the clinic should have taken less than five minutes, but with the streets nearly flooded, Gracie dared not go too fast. As it was, they could have walked it quicker than they drove it.

“
Is this ever going to stop?” Analise asked.

“
It doesn’t look like it, does it? I can’t remember it ever raining for so long here. I hope it lets up long enough for us to bury Grandma Beck.”

Saying the words brought a wash of uncomfortable and unresolved emotion. As if the death of her grandmother wasn’t as important as getting her into the ground. But that’s how she felt. She didn’t want to be like Reilly, carrying around his brother’s ashes because he couldn’t bring closure to Matt’s death. Now that she had Analise safely with her, she just wanted to collect Brendan, put her grandmother to rest, and get the hell away from Diablo Springs. And everyone in it, she added silently. Especially Reilly Alexander.