Reining In Trouble (Winding Road Redemption Book 1)

by Tyler Anne Snell

  The beach went on forever. Nina was late for something. She just knew it. But what? Where was she supposed to go? It was somewhere close, right? And she was late. So very late.

  The urgency pushed her legs faster across the sand and made her heart race. She gripped the keys in her hand. They made the palms of her hands bleed.

  She was still late.

  Wind whipped her hair around and finally cleared the ash off her clothes. All of the sand around her was swept away with it. Then she was standing on the road.

  She knew where she was but that urgency in her still raged on. Being there wasn’t enough.

  She was still late.

  “Hey.” A man waved to her from the dirt shoulder a few feet away. He was sitting on a patio chair. There was a mug in his hand and a newspaper on his lap. He tipped his cowboy hat to her. “Got it?” he asked.

  Nina couldn’t see his face but felt such a warmth in her heart that she nodded.

  “Got it.”

  He nodded and opened his paper, sipping on his drink.

  Nina wanted to join him, pull up a chair and live in that moment with him forever, but a voice inside of her was yelling a warning.

  She was still late.

  And something bad had happened.

  Metal scraping against metal pierced the air like a gunshot. Halfway down the road Nina noticed a car flipped on its side. Smoke rose from it at an alarming pace. Then Nina saw the man and the boy in front of it in the middle of the road. The boy was staring at her.

  Nina dropped her book bag and ran toward the car. Her bare feet tore as they raced across the asphalt. She screamed but nothing came out. She cried but it didn’t help.

  The boy was running now, too, but not toward the car.

  Nina was still trying to scream by the time he was upon her.

  “You can’t,” he yelled, throwing his arms around her.

  Nina tried to get past him but he was too tall, too strong.

  She heard the whomp as something within the car ignited. Flames twisted together with the smoke. They were so close she could feel the heat.

  Nina screamed in anguish as the car disappeared. All that was left was smoke and flames.

  And the man.

  He stood in the middle of the road, smiling.

  Nina’s body didn’t have room for rage yet. She could barely hold on to the pieces of her heart that had just shattered.

  She had been too late.

  “You can’t,” the boy repeated.

  Ashes from the beach started to fall around them. The last thing Nina saw were three faceless children. One had blood running down his arm.

  Then the smoke came and all she could do was try and scream.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nina’s heart was nearly beating out of her chest. She sat up in bed, struggling to breathe.

  No. She’d been too late to save her.

  Adrenaline coursed through Nina’s veins. She ran a hand across her face. It was wet. The darkness around her only added to the terrified confusion.

  Then she heard the insects. A soft melody that wound its way through the woods and fields. The ranch. She was in her apartment at the Retreat.

  Nina fell back on the bed, trying to catch her breath, relieved she wasn’t back on that road. At that car. Held by arms she couldn’t escape, just as her mother hadn’t been able to escape.

  Nina placed a hand over her sweat-soaked shirt and felt the weight of heart-wrenching memories through it.

  She hadn’t had one of those dreams in years.

  Then again, with the discovery of the pictures of her, and the mystery person trying to drag her out of the barn, she hadn’t been this scared in years, either. Try as she might not to, she must have associated that new fear with the old terror.

  She let out a long, trembling breath and searched for her phone. It was beneath the pillow next to her. She had no missed calls or texts. Of course, she’d only gone to bed at ten. Now it was just before midnight. The only person she could imagine wanting to get hold of her with new information was downstairs in the lobby.

  A distance that made her uncomfortable now.

  Caleb.

  He’d been the man in the cowboy hat in her dream; even without seeing his face she knew it by how he had affected her. How he made her feel warm. Safe. That’s what Caleb made her feel like in the waking world.

  Nina blushed despite being alone.

  She’d even managed to bring him as a child into her own personal nightmare. The three children had been the triplets, she was sure.

  How had one man consumed her thoughts like this in less than two weeks?

  Nina threw the covers off and went to the bathroom. She showered off the sweat and exhaustion as much as she could. There was no way she was going back to sleep. Not when that particular nightmare could be waiting in the depths of her unconscious mind.

  Being tired was the much preferred option.

  Nina slipped into a camisole and jeans and made her way down the stairs. The Retreat side of the house was open between them, as per Caleb’s insistence. If she called for him from her apartment, the sound would carry into the main room where he stayed. Even though the only difference was that one door was left open, it made her feel a little bit better.

  A ring of light was just inside of that same door, showing that Caleb was still up. For a moment he didn’t see her standing in the doorway. She used that moment to take another long look at the man.

  He was tired.

  He was frustrated.

  That showed in how he sat on the couch with shoulders hunched, hovering over a box on the coffee table. It was also reflected in the set of his eyes and brow. A line crinkled above both. His jaw and the dark stubble across it only added to the image of a man who was ready to put their troubles to bed. Even his lips were thinned.

  “Knock, knock,” Nina said, softly.

  Maybe the detective had known she was there. He didn’t look at all surprised to see her. Though he did smile.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked, gaze running down her outfit.

  “It’s more of where I’m not going.” She walked along the wooden floor, feeling the coolness against her feet. The same feet that had once been bloodied by running across an uneven and pocked road. Caleb raised an eyebrow in question. Nina took the armchair next to the couch. “To be honest, I had a nightmare. An old recurring one I thought was gone.” She shook her head but tried to keep her body loose. Not that she thought much got past the detective. “I’m not going back to sleep anytime soon. What’s going on here? Any new information?”

  He tilted the box so she could see inside. It was the pictures from the barn.

  “They were processed but no prints whatsoever. Whoever handled them was probably wearing gloves.” Nina had already tried to remember if the hand she was holding had been gloved but couldn’t be sure. She had been afraid of the dark and worried. She definitely hadn’t been expecting the hand holding hers not to belong to Caleb. “Declan just brought them by. I don’t expect him to sleep tonight, either.”

  “Can I help you look through them? I think feeling useful would help with my mood.”

  Caleb slid the box to her. She took a handful of the pictures, moved away from the coffee table and sat on the floor. There she started to arrange the pictures in a line on the hardwood. Caleb followed her example so they were seated on the floor next to each other.

  “Maybe if we put them in order of time they were taken? At least, from what I remember?” she offered, eyeing the closest one.

  “That could help us narrow down who could have taken them.”

  For the next fifteen minutes or so Nina arranged the pictures in chronological order. At least, as much as possible. There were a few that were just close-ups of her face. Others she simply couldn’t remember. Not e
nough to be helpful, anyway.

  When they had done the best they could, they’d moved the chair and the coffee table to make more room. The sheer number of pictures made a shiver run down Nina’s spine.

  “Eighty-four,” Caleb said, voice clipped. “That’s how many there are.”

  “Eighty-four,” she repeated. “And here I thought I was doing a good job of staying out of the public eye.” She bent over the row closest to them and sighed.

  “All of these were taken from hidden vantage points, the best I can tell.” He pointed to a few different pictures and cited examples. “The field of tall grass near my house. The trees close to the Retreat and the horse barn. Even a few spots in town have an angle that makes me think the photographer was in between shops. It really makes me wish more kept security cameras outside but, well, we don’t have enough crime here for the shop owners to pony up that kind of money. Even though it’s been suggested, especially around tourist season.”

  “They could have been standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of me, pretending to take a selfie and I wouldn’t have known the difference. I still only know a handful of people in Overlook and they all live or work on the ranch.” A chilling thought went through Nina. Caleb seemed to pick up on it.

  “No one from the ranch is behind this or the fires,” he said, confidence clear in his voice. “Trust me. If anything, no one here would be stupid enough to pull this kind of crap with the sheriff and a detective on scene. If anyone on the ranch was going to turn into a criminal, I have full confidence they’d be more subtle.”

  Nina didn’t push the subject. Partly because she believed he was right. What she knew of the people she’d met in the last month didn’t quite fit the profile. Then again, people were nothing if not surprising.

  “At least whoever the photographer is they managed to get my good side,” she noted. “I’m smiling in almost every one.”

  Caleb’s back straightened so quickly Nina’s focus shifted.

  “There’s no almost to it.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The detective was scanning the pictures, eyes moving side to side until he focused on the ones near their feet.

  “You’re smiling in every one of these.”

  It was Nina’s turn to re-scan them.

  Caleb was right.

  “Eighty-four smiles,” he kept on. “That’s hard to get naturally on camera that often unless you’re waiting for it.”

  “So, not only are they stalking me but they’re stalking my smiles?”

  Nina couldn’t handle how ridiculous that sounded. They were slipping closer and closer to some kind of Edgar Allen Poe story come to life. One where Nina ended up being trapped inside of a wall at the end. She tamped down another shiver threatening to move across her skin.

  “They don’t just want to capture you, they want to capture you at your happiest,” he added.

  It didn’t help the creepy factor from rising even higher.

  Nina made a sound that fell between a grunt of frustration and a cry of defeat. She fell back onto the couch and buried her head in her hands. The nightmare’s fresh wound pulsed new life into the realization of just how little control she had of the situation.

  “Do you know why I came here? To Overlook?” Her voice was muffled from her hands across her mouth. She didn’t move them.

  The cushion beneath her dipped to the side as Caleb’s weight pressed against it.

  “No, I don’t.”

  The memory of her mother’s death tricked her into smelling salt water. The last time she’d sat on the beach and looked out into the ocean without a care in the world.

  She should tell Caleb, she thought. Tell him about that day, about her mother’s death, about Rylan Bowling. That’s what she’d been about to do before the power was cut in the barn. He’d opened up to her. Why couldn’t she do it, too?

  Because you haven’t moved on, she thought sourly. You just ran away from it and you’re ashamed to admit it.

  “Nina?” Caleb’s voice had softened. She imagined the blue of his eyes would match the ocean from her dream. Before it turned into a nightmare.

  It coaxed her away from her hands.

  She was right. His eyes had transformed yet again. Blue waves, lapping over her, making her sink deeper into the sand.

  “One day I woke up and realized that if I started over, went somewhere new, I’d have a chance to live a quiet life. And, God, how good that idea sounded. After how loud my old one was. Just the thought of being able to live under the radar. I can’t tell you how badly I needed just the thought of the possibility.”

  She motioned to the pictures on the floor and realized how heartbreaking it was to see them.

  “Now I’m back on repeat, just stuck in a different song.” She put her head back in her hands, afraid that looking into the detective’s eyes any longer would pull out more truth than she wanted to share. “I know how selfish that sounds, especially after what you lost, but I can’t help it,” she admitted, voice once again muffled. Like she was some kind of child. “It just—it’s too much for me. I can’t handle it.”

  The cushion beneath her shifted. Warmth brushed against her hand before Caleb gently pulled it. For a moment she didn’t let him move her. But she was starting to see that resisting Caleb wasn’t her strong suit. She relented.

  “I don’t pretend to understand what happened to you, to know what you went through, but I can tell you something I do know.” He placed their hands on the couch in the space between them and then brought his other to her chin. Slowly he angled her face up so she couldn’t go back to hiding. “It’s easier to be alone. There’s no real pain there, none that can stick because you can go on ignoring it all day and all night without anyone to call you out on it. After my dad died I pushed everyone away, telling them that I was fine and everything was okay. I had moved on, made sense of what I had once thought was a senseless death, and was just dandy.”

  A whisper of a smile crossed his lips. There was nothing but sadness there. “But in all of that time, what I really wanted—what I really needed—was someone to ignore me. Because having the burden of pain and no one to share it with isn’t doing anyone any good. It’s not honoring memories or the fast track to finding closure. It’s just a wound that never heals.” His smile disappeared. He leaned forward, driving his point home by getting so close she could smell the lingering scent of cologne along his neck.

  “And I don’t want that for you, Nina.” His voice had become deeper. Almost raspy. Something inside of Nina woke to the change. Her breath caught, hanging on to every syllable he uttered next. “You don’t have to hide here. Not from me. Got it? You can tell me anything. You can share the pain. I’m here for it. I’m here for you.”

  Nina closed the space between them, pressing her lips to his in an instant. The kiss was soft and quick. She didn’t linger, even if her body wanted nothing but to stay. The flush of desire was burning across her skin, her heartbeat was galloping, her chest was heaving in staggering breaths.

  She wanted Caleb.

  Did he want her?

  “I’m sorry.” She sounded breathy but couldn’t help it. His words and touch had broken the dam between her desire to be alone and the desire to feel him.

  For a moment Nina worried she’d crossed a line. Caleb’s face was impassive, his eyes hooded, but then he moved his hand to cradle the side of her face.

  And then his lips were covering hers with a hunger that spread through every inch of her body.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Good heavens, if kissing Nina wasn’t exactly what Caleb wanted to continue doing. He could have sworn he tasted a sweetness on her lips. Though he didn’t know its origin. Or maybe that was just Nina. Either way, Caleb was drawn in hook, line and sinker.

  At least, he was until the less carnal part of his mind spoke
up.

  For the first time since he’d known the woman she was openly vulnerable. What kind of man was he to take advantage of that?

  Did he want to kiss Nina Drake?

  Absolutely.

  Did he want to do it solely because she was afraid for her life?

  Not particularly.

  Gently Caleb pulled away. Nina’s eyes were hooded, her long lashes dark against her cheeks as she tried to blink away the haze they’d both fallen into. Then it was those dark brown beauties that were searching his expression for an answer to why he’d been one heck of a fool to end what they both had started.

  “I–I’m sorry.” She stumbled through the words, trying to create some distance between them by scooting back to the arm of the couch.

  Caleb sighed. He dragged his hand down his face and hoped he looked like the respectable lawman he was and not a teenager whose excited body wasn’t syncing up with his mind.

  “No, don’t go doing that,” he said. “Believe me, there’s nothing more I’d rather be doing than exactly what we were just doing, but I don’t want you getting the wrong idea about why it is I’m doing it.”

  Nina’s eyebrow rose in question. He couldn’t help but note her lips were a bit swollen.

  “I want you to know I kissed you because I’m attracted to you and not because of what’s happening to you,” he decided to say. That didn’t seem to help with the confusion so he continued. “See, my ex used to accuse me of finding my job more exciting than I found her. That I got too wrapped up in cases. While I don’t think that’s what I did, at least not to the extent she suggested, I want to make sure you know that I didn’t kiss you back because of the excitement of what’s been going on. I kissed you back because I wanted to. Truly.”

  He felt himself soften, giving her a grin he hoped conveyed the trio of feelings he was stomping through—hope, guilt and a little shame, considering his body was still ready to go and ravage hers despite his well-intentioned grandstanding. “Believe you me, I want to pick this back up again but maybe we should hold off until everything has calmed down.”