Whispers (20 page)

“
What about Digger?” Brendan asked.

“
He was never seen again. No one knows what happened to him.”

“
How did your grandmother know where to find you?” Analise asked.

Gracie rolled the tension from her neck and swallowed around the lump in her throat. She hadn’t thought about this, hadn’t hurt about this in nearly twenty years. But the old sting of it burned at her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“
Don’t you?”

They all turned to find Chloe standing right behind Gracie.

“
It’s not polite to eavesdrop,” Gracie said.

“
What do you mean?” Analise asked.

Chloe gave a look that almost spoke of apology. Almost.

She said to Analise, “When you were out there last night, did you sense that things were not... right? That in that place, everything is very wrong?”

Analise nodded. “It felt like I had things crawling on me. But there weren’t. I kept brushing my arms, though. And then Brendan got really mad at me.”

Brendan looked at her, his face placid, but his eyes were hard. “I wasn’t mad, Analise.”

“
Yes you were.”

Chloe interrupted before Brendan could answer back.

“
Your family is connected to this town, connected by history and by blood.” She looked to Gracie. “It called you back.”

“
No, Eddie Rodriguez called me back.”

“
Ask Brendan how he found this town,” Chloe said, her voice gentle and patient.

All eyes turned to Brendan. He smiled. “Wasn’t hard.”

“
He saw it when he was driving to Phoenix last week,” Analise said.

“
And how many times have you made the drive?” Chloe asked.

Brendan shrugged. His eyes looked like ice, fractured from the cold. “Dozen, maybe more.”

“
Yet I’m willing to guess that you’d never seen a sign for Diablo Springs before.”

He shifted, a frown pulling at his brows. For a moment it seemed the mask slipped and the Brendan Gracie knew peered out. The thought caught her by surprise. Why would she think that? The boy in front of her
was
the Brendan she knew. And yet...

“
Nothing that happens here is by chance,” Chloe said. “Diablo Springs wanted you to find it. Wanted you to bring them here.”

“
That’s crazy,” Brendan said. Gracie agreed.

“
Are you sure it’s not you that’s making things happen?” Reilly, who’d been very quiet up to that point, asked Chloe.

“
You mean earlier?” she said.

“
What happened earlier?” Gracie asked.

Reilly shook his head. “Nothing.”

“
We don’t know,” Zach said, appearing at the other side of the table.

Apparently, there was no such thing as a private conversation at the Buckboard. Zach pulled up a chair and squeezed in between Gracie and Reilly. Reilly gave him an annoyed look, but Zach’s interest seemed focused on Gracie alone.

“
We saw the Dead Lights. And maybe ghosts in the house.”

“
I didn’t see any ghosts, in the house or anywhere else,” Reilly said, giving him a hard look.

Zach made a sound of disbelief. “Sure you didn’t. You probably didn’t hear the doors slamming either.” Zach turned back to Gracie. “I saw a man, standing at the bar.”

“
What bar?” Reilly asked.

“
What man?” Gracie asked, wishing her tone held the same note of skepticism as Reilly’s. But the memory of the man she’d seen in her room last night was too fresh for her to discount what Zach was saying.

“
I don’t know who he was. I saw him and then he was gone.”

“
What did he look like?” Chloe asked, reaching behind her for a chair. Bill anticipated her need and pushed one forward.

Zach frowned. “He wasn’t much taller than me, not much bigger. But he looked hard. You know. Someone who works outdoors, with his hands.”

The copper hue of Chloe’s skin took on a yellowish cast.

“
You’re saying you saw a ghost long enough to describe him?” Brendan said. He gave a snort of laughter. “That’s bullshit.”

Reilly nodded, but Gracie read something in the way he avoided her eyes that made her question his reaction.

Analise glared at Brendan. “I believe Zach. The whole house is creepy. You can’t remember what happened to us last night, but—”

“
But what? You do?”

“
I remember being scared.”

“
You’re always scared.”

Analise closed her mouth, looking hurt and angry.

“
We saw the Dead Lights first,” Zach said. “Then all the doors just slammed. No reason. Just bam, bam, bam.” He repeated the word loud enough to make her jump. “When we came in to see what was going on, I saw the man at the bar—just for a second, but I know what I saw.”

“
Is that true?” she asked Reilly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“
You wanted me to tell you that the air-conditioning came on and blew the doors shut? Zach’s been watching too much TV.”

Zach smacked the table with his open palm. “You’re a liar.”

“
Watch who you’re calling a liar, Zach,” Reilly said in low voice.

Before Zach could argue, someone else approached their table. It was Bud Bowman, the town’s only lawyer, standing beside them in a dated three-piece suit and worn dress shoes. Bud had been more than the family attorney, and when she was growing up, Gracie had always suspected that he’d loved Grandma Beck. She remembered that Bud had always personally brought papers to the Diablo and often stayed to dinner. And he always had cinnamons in his pocket. He smiled at Gracie.

“
How are you?” he asked.

Gracie shrugged. “Hanging in there.”

“
I know this is a hard time. Carolina will be sorely missed. After the storm clears, I’ll bring her papers by so you can settle her estate.”

“
I’d appreciate that.”

“
You going to inherit it all?” Brendan asked.

“
I don’t know,” Gracie said, not wanting to think about that. She had enough emotional baggage from this town without adding the Diablo and all its secrets to it.

“
You let me know when it’s a good time to settle matters,” Bud said gently.

There would never be a good time to handle it, but she couldn’t say that to him. Bud started past their table and then stopped beside Zach, frowning.

“
What happened to Hollywood?” he asked in a surprised voice.

“
The studio gave me the week off,” Zach said, grinning.

“
Ah,” Bud answered. He smiled at Gracie again and then donned a black raincoat and stepped out into the storm.

Zach put his elbows on the table with an ear-to-ear grin. “People think I look like Matthew McConaughey,” he said. “I told the waitress I was.”

“
You do, kinda,” Analise told him.

“
My ass,” Brendan said.

Their food arrived and they sat back so the big, burly man with a dirty apron and a three-day beard could set their cheeseburgers on the table. Gracie wondered what had happened to Corrine.

“
Jim?” Reilly said with surprise. “How the hell are you?”

“
Ass deep in orders and my fucking waitress has disappeared.”

They looked around just as the door opened and Corrine walked in from outside, dripping rainwater. She stood just at the entrance, swaying, looking strangely out of place. As if she’d just woken from a dream.

“
Corrine,” Jim hollered at her. “Get your ass over here and serve this food. I’m backed up in the kitchen without doing your job too.”

He lumbered back through the swinging doors, a man with orders to fill, without ever looking at her. If he had, he would have seen the greenish black bruise around Corrine’s eye. Her tank top was torn and smeared with something reddish. The rain had diluted it and run through it, making it look tie-dyed.

Chloe stood and without a word, Bill escorted her back to the table by the dance floor. She’d looked frightened, but Gracie couldn’t say of what. Instead she watched as Corrine moved slowly to their table.

“
Corrine, what happened?” Gracie exclaimed.

“
What the hell does it look like?”

Gracie drew back, stung. Corrine swung her angry eyes to Reilly. “Why’d you bring all those freaks here? Huh? Why?”

Reilly didn’t have an answer.

“
Jesus,” Corrine said. She pulled up one of the chairs and covered her face with trembling hands. No one spoke for a moment.

“
Corrine?” Gracie tried again, reaching out to touch her arm.

She lowered her hands and looked at Gracie. As long as she lived, Gracie would never forget the pain she saw in her eyes.

“
You know what she said?” Corrine demanded. “That bitch? Do you know what she said?”

Somehow Gracie knew who she was talking about. “Chloe?” Gracie asked.

“
Bitch,” Corrine spat. “For no reason, she just comes up to me and says, ‘Go back and find it. You won’t know until you do.’ ”

Corrine sniffed, lifted the hem of her tank top, and stared at her shirt, shaking her head. Gracie watched her, knowing without being told what the red stuff was.

“
I thought she had a screw loose,” Corrine went on, “so I just ignored her. But she kept on and when I finally asked her what the hell she was talking about she tells me my ring. My wedding ring. ‘Go home,’ she says, ‘go home and you’ll find it.’ I told her if I was going to find it, I’d find it later as well as now. But she went all crazy on me. Said it couldn’t wait. Said it would be gone if I waited.”

“
That’s where you’ve been? You went home?”

Corrine glared at her. “Yes. She got me in a knot about it. All I could think was that someone was going to rob my house while I was at work. Like she’d had some kind of vision or something. So I snuck out and raced back to my house.”

“
And now you know where it was?” Gracie said, feeling like she was being led into a trap.

“
That wasn’t what she meant I’d find. I walked in on my husband boning the babysitter in our bed. He’d told me he had to work a double shift at the hardware store. He wasn’t supposed to be home.”

“
God, Corrine. I’m sorry.”

“
Not as sorry as he is.”

Corrine looked over her shoulder as a gust of thick, wet air came in. Gracie looked too. Eddie Rodriguez stood in the entry, scanning the occupants. He paused when he saw their table. He took off his hat and came over.

“
Took you long enough,” Corrine said.

He nodded, watching her warily. One hand was at his hip, poised just above his gun. His beige uniform was drenched dark brown from the rain.

“
You going to shoot me?”

“
Not unless you make me.”

Corrine gave a bitter laugh at that. “Is he dead?”

“
Not yet. He’s at the clinic waiting on an ambulance to take him to Tucson.”

“
Tell me Doc Graebel didn’t sew it back on? Shit.”

Eddie winced, shaking his head. “You ran it through the garbage disposal, Corrine.”

She smiled the coldest smile Gracie had ever seen. “Oh yeah.”

Moving with careful calm, Eddie pulled out his cuffs. “I need to take you in.”

“
I know,” she said. She took off her apron and set it on the table and then she held out her hands. “I always wanted to be handcuffed by you, hoss.”

Eddie turned her and locked the bracelets on each wrist. “There were easier ways to go about it. All you had to do was ask.”

“
Where’s the fun in that?”

With everyone in the bar watching, Eddie led Corrine out the door. Gracie sat in silence for a moment, not sure she could believe what she’d just heard.

“
Did I get that right?” Reilly asked.

Gracie nodded, glancing from him, to the openmouthed expressions on the faces of her daughter and Zach. Only Brendan seemed undisturbed by what had happened. He wore a peculiar smile that made her skin prick and her nerves buzz. Suddenly, she wasn’t so hungry anymore.

“
What did he mean about the garbage disposal?” Analise asked.

No way was Gracie going to explain the Lorrena Bobbit connection. The less said about what had just happened, the better.

“
We’ve got to get out of here,” she said.

Chapter Eighteen

May 1896

THE ride back to camp with Sawyer would be imprinted in my memory forever. My emotions had been drawn and quartered, until I didn’t know what feeling went with what part of me. I sat behind Sawyer on his powerful horse, lulled by the rolling motion of its gait, my face was pressed into his back. He smelled of horse and sun and river-washed cotton. Familiar smells that mingled pleasantly with his own scent. Against all reason, I was comforted.

My tears had doused my blood lust, and I began to think that I’d acted out of judgment rather than rationale. I hadn’t seen Sawyer with the Smith brothers and he would have been hard to miss on his enormous horse. And why would he be riding alone now if he was with them? More to the point, why wouldn’t he have simply killed me when I’d attacked? He’d have witnesses to verify he’d acted in self-defense should it ever come under the scrutiny of the law. But he hadn’t taken my life. Instead he’d helped me.