Ominous

by Lisa Jackson

  There were others on Patrick’s list, but the three that had hightailed it out of town for a while were the ones he’d focused on. Kat wondered if one of them had been Ruth’s rapist. The problem was, even if Kat thought she could ID the man, there would be no proof of a rape, nor any conclusive evidence, such as DNA collected in a rape kit.

  Kat looked at her father, seeing his florid face. With lack of evidence, no bodies, and no found kidnapping victims, no arrests had been made—and that, coupled with his lifestyle, had nearly killed Patrick Starr.

  After the heart attack, he’d given up the cigarettes and booze, but he’d never let go of the case.

  Now Patrick rubbed the back of his neck and said, “You and Shiloh were thick as thieves for a while in high school.”

  “Eons ago. I’m surprised she came back.”

  “Well, there’s her kid sister, you know. Morgan’s around eleven or twelve, I think, and now she’s lost both parents. I expect Shiloh had to return to settle things.” He waved a hand. “Not just her sister, but all the red tape that comes when a person leaves this earth. Funeral arrangements. Wills. Whatever.” He reached for the half-drunk cup of coffee situated between a few scattered piles on his desk. “You want a cup?”

  She was slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder when she glanced out the window to spy a familiar pickup fly into the lot. Her heart jolted as she watched Blair Kincaid park next to her car, hop out of the cab, adjust his aviator sunglasses, and stride into Betty Ann’s. Tall and rangy, with thick hair and a body hard from work around the ranch, Blair was too handsome for his own good. He now ran the family’s ranch, and Kat had run into him far more than she wanted. She’d never really liked him, she reminded herself.

  “Kat?” her father said.

  She turned back to him. “Sorry. I need to be at the office, like ten minutes ago.”

  One eyebrow rose over the rim of his glasses. He could always spot her when she told a lie. Well, almost always. He’d never guessed what had happened the night of the attack. “Tomorrow, then? A rain check?”

  “Sounds good.” In an effort to divert his attention, she asked, “Maybe you could sneak over and grab a couple of those red velvet cupcakes at Betty Ann’s before I get here. They’re supposed to be spectacular.”

  “You heard that from me.”

  From the corner of her eye, she spied Blair return to his truck carrying a cup of coffee and white sack. He climbed into his truck and roared out of the parking space as quickly as he’d flown in.

  “You okay?” her father asked.

  “Yeah, fine. Just thinking about my calendar. Okay, tomorrow. Cupcakes for breakfast. I’ll be here at seven-thirty.”

  He slid her a smile, and his eyes twinkled a bit. For a second, there was a glimpse of the strapping man he’d once been, the no-holds-barred detective with a quick wit and dogged take-no-prisoners attitude—the man he was before the heart attack and his early retirement from the force. Once he recovered, he’d thought he’d spend his hours fishing and golfing, but boredom had set in early, so he’d started this private detective agency.

  “They also have a killer German chocolate,” he said, walking her to the door.

  “Whatever you want. For today, we’ll indulge.”

  “You got it, kiddo.”

  As Kat left, she walked by the plate-glass window with his name inscribed in gold leaf, and she caught a glimpse of her father returning to his desk. In her heart of hearts, she knew that he’d started this one-man agency not just to fill his time chasing down perpetrators of insurance fraud or proving that a husband had cheated on his wife or vice versa. No. He still was chasing his white whale: a case involving three missing girls.

  Chapter 7

  “I’m not sure when I’ll be back,” Shiloh said, cradling her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder as she dried her hands on a towel in the kitchen of her mother’s house, then tossed the damp rag onto the counter.

  Carlos Hernandez was on the other end of the wireless connection. “I don’t know how long I can cover for you,” he said, and she imagined fine lines drawing his dark eyebrows together. “The wife, she’s not all that crazy about me not seeing the kids.”

  “Look, I’ll have a definitive answer in a few days.” Would she? She wasn’t certain. Not of anything right now. Faye’s funeral was scheduled for later today, and after that? Who knew? The thought of actually laying her mother to rest in a plot next to Larimer Tate’s was depressing.

  Nearly a week had passed since she’d first returned, and she still felt uneasy, as if she didn’t belong. She’d kept herself busy by cleaning the house and yard and working with the horses, something that had actually interested Morgan. Shiloh had caught her sister watching her from the window and then the porch, but when she’d asked the girl to join her, Morgan had scurried back into the solitude and safety of the house. Not good. Not good at all. Now Shiloh cast a glance out the window to the garage, where Beau was just coming down the exterior stairs. She and he were getting along, though, she knew, their affability was all a show for Morgan.

  Crossing the fingers of her free hand, she said, “I’ll figure out what I’m doing in the next couple of days, I promise.”

  “Okay …” Carlos still sounded unconvinced, but he finally acquiesced, and she hung up wondering what in the world she was going to do.

  Could she really make Prairie Creek her permanent residence? A place she’d sworn she’d never set foot in again? But that was before Larimer Tate had kicked off, and now Faye had died, and the responsibility of her half sister had been laid at her feet.

  Against her nature, Shiloh had played it cool, avoiding confrontation as she’d slowly tried to get to know Morgan and figure out what she was going to do. She would never be able to sleep in Faye’s room, though, no matter how much she tried to rationalize that it didn’t matter—her mother was gone, so what if she’d spent her last days there? Or, years before, made love in that bed with Larimer Tate? No amount of talking to herself worked.

  Instead, Shiloh had taken to sleeping on the back porch on an old lounge chair. From her position, she was able to watch the stars appear and the moon rise before drifting off to the sound of a soothing breeze rustling the leaves of the aspens and cottonwoods rimming the property. Once in a while, she’d hear the howl of a coyote or the flap of an owl’s wings or be awakened by a chorus of frogs, but these were comfortable, familiar sounds of the night.

  More often than not, she’d catch a glimpse of Beau Tate, backlit by a single lamp as he leaned against the window before shutting off the lights of the attic over the garage, and those images were unsettling.

  She’d thought him to be like his father, cut from the same cruel cloth, but she was slowly learning she’d been wrong. Or so it seemed on the surface. She wouldn’t go so far as to say he was pleasant—quite the opposite—but he’d been rock steady and was incredibly kind and tolerant of Morgan. So far he’d kept his promise, and though he was often gone during the day, at work on the Kincaid ranch or tending to his own place, he and Rambo returned in the old battered pickup each evening. Once he’d come back with a pizza, another time with sandwiches from a local deli, each at the request of Morgan. The girl flat-out adored her older half brother, while with Shiloh she’d continued to be petulant and distrustful, never missing a chance to sling some guilt her older sister’s way.

  “Mom was always worried about you, you know,” she told her at breakfast on the first morning, after Shiloh had suffered a fitful night’s sleep. Nightmares had peppered Shiloh’s slumber, vicious dreams of Larimer Tate and Ruthie’s rape and her mother falling off a cliff and into a bottomless chasm as Shiloh desperately reached for her. She’d awoken with a headache.

  Morgan’s remarks had cut deep, but Shiloh had sworn to herself she wouldn’t react, so she kept quiet.

  Not so Morgan, who picked at the pancakes Shiloh had made her and added, “It killed her that you never called.”

  “I did c
all.”

  “When was the last time?” Morgan demanded, swirling a piece of pancake in a lake of maple syrup on her plate. She’d been perched upon a stool at the small table pushed against a window to the backyard.

  How long had it been? Shiloh hadn’t remembered. As if realizing she couldn’t answer, Morgan had just stared at her.

  Shiloh had reached for a nearly empty bottle of ibuprofen that had been left on the windowsill and plopped two in her mouth, swallowing them dry. That had ended the conversation.

  There had been other attempts at communication between Shiloh and her half sister in the days that had passed since, but none had turned out any better.

  Now, the screen door to the back porch creaked open, and Beau stepped into the kitchen. Shiloh’s muscles tensed a little, just as they always did when he was around. It was as if the air between them changed, a sudden electricity building, whenever he came near her.

  “Hey,” he said, peering down the hall. “Where’s Morgan?”

  “On her phone. In her room. Wasn’t interested in breakfast.”

  “Maybe I’ll take her out for lunch,” he said. “Wanna come? We could all go to the funeral together.”

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly, her stomach in knots. “This isn’t going to be a walk in the park for Morgan.”

  “For anyone,” he agreed, and his gaze touched hers for a moment, a bit of sadness and empathy in his eyes. For the first time, he seemed to acknowledge, if silently, that she too was hurting.

  A lump formed in her throat, but she fought it back. No need to get maudlin now. Today was going to be tough enough as it was.

  *

  Morgan had barely touched her burger and ate only a handful of fries, and Shiloh also had no appetite and hadn’t been able to finish her salad. Beau, however, mowed through a French dip at the Lazy L Café. Afterward, they drove to the funeral home and sat through the short service in the front row of the stuffy central room. Morgan was pale but dry-eyed, while Shiloh was the one fighting tears. The windows were open, a warm breeze attempting to make up for the fact that the air-conditioning was on the fritz. The preacher, who’d never met Faye, stumbled through the biographical part of the service, which was based on her obituary and a few questions Shiloh had answered. Prayers were said, and a singer had tried her best but had trouble keeping with the pianist as she’d warbled her way through “Amazing Grace.”

  Later, at the grave site, Morgan dropped a single white rose onto the lowered coffin, and at that point Shiloh stared at the trees across the way, tears running freely. It wasn’t so much a personal pain she felt, but empathy for the grief evidenced in her stoic little sister’s eyes. Dear God, what was she going to do? No way would she abandon this child, but obviously Morgan didn’t want anything to do with her.

  Beau grabbed her hand and gave it a quick squeeze for half a second before he turned to Morgan. His tender gesture brought on a fresh spate of tears, which Shiloh desperately fought back. Head bowed, she stood as the preacher mumbled his way through another prayer, and bees buzzed through the cemetery, where dandelions and small daisies poked their heads through the fading grass growing between the headstones. The graveyard was positioned on a small rise and flanked by a copse of trees, the graves in rows marked by tombstones, the view toward the valley where, three miles away, the town of Prairie Creek was sprawled.

  Shiloh thought of her mother, of the fact she’d never see her again and that there were so many things she hadn’t said. It was too late for recriminations. She would just have to live with the fact that she’d never resolved some issues.

  She closed her eyes for a second, and in that moment she felt as if she were being watched, that someone was observing her. She glanced up, but saw no one staring, no one even glancing at her from the corner of their eye.

  Why, then, did the hairs on the back of her nape lift? Why did she feel a darker presence?

  Then her gaze dropped to the ground, and she understood.

  Faye’s fresh grave was cut into the dry earth near that of her late husband, Larimer Tate. As best as she could, Shiloh kept her eyes averted from the final resting place of Beau’s father, where a single flat marker was etched with his name and the date of his entering and leaving the planet.

  Rest in peace, you bastard, she thought; then, before she actually spit on his grave, she returned her attention to the last part of her mother’s burial service. Tate was dead. But being near his grave was what was causing her to feel nervous, that she was being watched by some sinister presence, just as she had when he was alive. She slid a glance in Beau’s direction and saw that he too avoided a glance at his old man’s final resting place.

  She’d been wrong about Beau, it seemed. Dead wrong. He was nothing like his father. Since she’d been in town, she’d witnessed firsthand that he was hardworking and seemed to sincerely care about his half sister, their half sister.

  No, Shiloh couldn’t fault him about his relationship with Morgan. It appeared solid. Genuine. Something she couldn’t say about hers.

  On the way to her SUV, she caught sight of Kat, one of a handful of mourners who had shown up at the burial site.

  Not now, she thought as Kat approached, but managed to pin what she hoped was a welcoming smile on her face.

  “I’m sorry about your mom,” Kat said.

  “I guess we both know how it feels. I’m sorry you lost yours too.” Shiloh hadn’t been around when Marilyn Starr had passed away.

  “It was tough, but you move forward,” she admitted. A pause, then, “Any chance you can find time to get together?” The seriousness in her eyes said that the conversation wouldn’t be girl talk or just catching up.

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow? Today’s … well, you know.”

  “How about at the Prairie Dog? Five-thirty, after work?”

  “Sure,” she said. She didn’t ask about Kat’s job. Shiloh had already heard that Katrina Starr had followed in her father’s footsteps and now was a cop with the Prairie Creek Sheriff’s Department.

  In Kat’s case, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

  *

  The next afternoon, Beau arrived at the house earlier than usual. He’d run into town to check on an order of lumber for a new barn under construction at the Kincaid ranch and had decided to make a detour to check on Morgan. Since the funeral, the kid had seemed even more withdrawn and quiet, as if the ritual of burying her mother had made her situation more final, as if deep-down she’d been harboring some hope that the doctors had made a mistake.

  Or maybe he was reading too much into the situation.

  He pulled up and cut the truck’s engine. Things would have to change. Currently, the three of them—Shiloh, Morgan, and he—were living in limbo, existing together in a surreal state, one that couldn’t continue.

  When Shiloh’d first landed in Prairie Creek, she’d told him he shouldn’t stay here, that he had a home and should go there. Now that the funeral was over, her words rang even truer. He’d been camping out over the garage for Morgan, or so he’d told himself, but Shiloh being here had played into things, messed with his head.

  He’d stood at his window and watched her sleep, not twenty yards away. As the bullfrogs croaked and crickets chirped he’d witnessed the rise and fall of her breasts and the way her hair, caught in the moonlight, fell over her cheek. He’d felt like a voyeur and had snapped the dusty blinds shut in disgust … then had splayed out on his back on the old cot and fantasized about her.

  Telling himself that he was losing it, that he’d been too long without a woman, that Shiloh Silva was not the right woman to let into his brain or his dreams hadn’t helped. Every morning since she’d arrived, he’d woken up with an aching hard-on that wouldn’t quit. He knew the source: erotic dreams where the both of them were stripped naked, their skin covered in perspiration, their bodies clinging together. While in slumber, he’d run his tongue over the shell of her ear, heard her moa
n with desire, and felt her guide his fingers inside her as he nipped at her breasts. Each night, if only in his mind, she’d rocked his world. Only a shower as cold as an arctic storm had been able to cool his blood and ensure that his cock would relax.

  Something had to break.

  With Rambo trotting behind, he walked through the front door, left open, the screen in place. It squeaked as he opened it, and he called for Morgan as he walked through the house. “Hey! Morgs?” he yelled down the hallway, though he sensed no one was inside. A quick scan of the bedrooms confirmed his suspicions.

  The shepherd was already heading to the back door, which, like the front, was only secured by a screen. Rambo didn’t wait but nudged the screen door open and took off across the dry patch of lawn and through the nonexistent gate, and loped down the worn dirt path to the pasture nearest the barn. In the enclosure, Shiloh was brushing a sorrel mare, while Morgan, balanced on the top rail of the fence, looked on.

  As the dog gave out an excited bark, Morgan looked up, shielded her eyes, and spying Beau, hopped to the ground. His heart did a stupid little flip when he saw the hint of a smile on her freckled face.

  “Hey, Morgs,” he said as he reached her and she flung herself into his arms. “Learning something?”

  “What?”

  “From Shiloh?”

  The girl glanced over her shoulder. “Nah. I’m just bored.”

  “What can we do about that?”

  “Ayla called and asked me to come over, maybe stay the night.”

  “And?”

  “She said ‘no.’” Morgan hitched a defiant chin in Shiloh’s direction. “She said she didn’t know Ayla or her parents, and so unless you said it was okay, I couldn’t go there, but Ayla could come here.”