Bergie deliberately advanced toward Peckenbush, clearly intending to take the gun from him. Because Bergie had been dancing to his tune for so many years, Peckenbush must have been surprised at his sudden show of defiance. He froze, giving Bergie the time he needed to grab his arm and redirect the nuzzle of the gun.
Peckenbush screamed, a terrible howl of protest and outrage. Bergie was the larger man but Peckenbush was younger and more thickly muscled. They fought for control of the gun, and Cara could make out the gray shape pointing first at the floor, then at the ceiling and finally at Bergie.
"No!" she yelled, getting out of her chair and rushing forward at the same time Bergie jerked hard on Peckenbush’s arm. The gun went off, an awful retort that shook Cara’s insides and took a huge piece of plaster out of the wall. Then it fell from the mechanic’s fingers and skittered across the tile floor of the kitchen.
Bergie crumbled, a great giant felled. Shock stilled Cara’s limbs. She froze at the spot, Bergie on the floor in front of her, Peckenbush still on his feet and the gun a yard away.
"Cara, the gun!"
The urgent, high-pitched voice that cut through her shock belonged to a little boy. She turned. Skippy Rhett, his dark eyes huge in his young face, stood pointing at the gun on the floor. The florescent kitchen lights highlighted his freckles.
"Move, Cara!" he cried. "You’ve got to get the gun!"
Wonder filled her. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to gather him in her arms and comfort him. But she couldn’t ignore what he asked of her this time, not when he wore the same pleading look as when he stood alongside the road the first time he’d tried to save her.
Adrenaline pumped into her veins, unfreezing her limbs, fueling her outrage. The gun was mere feet from where Skippy stood beside the old gas stove where the chili still simmered. She lunged for it. Peckenbush did, too. Cara was quicker. She scooped it up and with a steady hand pointed the barrel dead center at Peckenbush's chest.
"If you so much as move, I swear I’ll shoot you." She barely recognized the cool, calm voice as her own. It didn’t contain an ounce of fear, but a gritty determination she hadn’t known she possessed.
Her eyes flicked once to the place where Skippy Rhett had stood, warning her of the danger. She intended to thank him. She couldn’t, because nobody was there.
The moans coming from the fallen man on the floor were all too real. She expected to see a pool of blood, fanning out from under his body. The area around him, however, was immaculate.
She had little doubt, however, that Bergie was dying.
Something was wrong.
As Gray pulled into the driveway of the house he shared with his father, a chill of premonition swept over him. His cop’s instinct that something was wrong kicked in with a vengeance.
Miles’s car was gone, even though he’d enlisted the retired cop to stand guard. Cara’s apartment was too dark for a night owl who seldom went to sleep before midnight. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock. The lights inside his own house blazed, but that seemed more ominous than reassuring.
A sudden, loud pop filled the air. A gunshot. Gray sprinted toward the house, his heart racing with fear.
He took in the scene in the kitchen in stunned disbelief. Cara pointed a gun at Sam Peckenbush’s chest, and his father lay on the floor gasping for breath. His father. Oh, God. His father’s usually ruddy face had turned ashen and his eyes were pain-filled, like those of a buck felled by a hunter.
Gray dropped to his knees and quickly loosened the slip knot in the bolo tie. He ripped open his father’s shirt so that the buttons popped, preparing to stem the flow of blood with his bare hands. Except there was no blood.
"Cara, call 911!" he yelled.
She was already at the phone, careful to keep the gun trained on Sam while she dialed.
"Where did it hit you, Dad?” Gray asked. “Tell me. Hurry. Hurry."
"My son," Bergie gasped, his glazed eyes focused on Gray.
Panic and pain twisted inside Gray, making his hands shake as he examined his father. He was dimly aware of Cara’s voice in the background, pleading with a 911 operator for help.
"Not the gun,” Bergie said. “My heart."
He was having a heart attack. Gray’s brain scrambled back through his first-aid training, trying to remember what to do when somebody’s heart failed.
"Sorry," Bergie said through his gasps. "So sorry. Didn’t mean for it to happen. Didn’t mean for you to know."
"Don’t talk, Dad." Tears streamed unchecked down Gray's face. His father was dying, and he didn't know if he could prevent it. “Help’s coming. In the meantime, I’m going to do CPR. Just hang on.”
"Can’t," Bergie said through the same laboring breaths. "Don’t even want to. Love you, but want to be with Maggie. Always wanted to."
He gripped Gray’s hands as another pain shot through him. His eyes locked with his son’s. "Try to forgive me," he said, his words nearly inaudible. Then he closed his eyes.
When the paramedics arrived, Gray was frantically administering CPR even though he knew it was too late and had been for a very long time.
His father’s heart, in effect, had stopped functioning when his mother died.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Dawn broke over Secret Sound as Cara weaved through the uneven rows of tombstones, searching for the grave she had spotted from the road when she’d approached Secret Sound nearly two weeks before.
Most of the markers were old, designating the final resting spots of people who had been long forgotten. One was well-tended and flanked by blooming red flowers. The hibiscus peeked from the ground in fiery splendor, highlighted by the rays of the rising sun. Cara knew instantly who had planted them. Karen Rhett, it seemed, not only had a favorite flower but a marshmallow center under her tough-girl exterior.
The name on the tombstone, Reginald "Skippy" Rhett III, didn’t come as a surprise. The saying did. She ran her fingers over the upraised letters: "For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest."
It was obviously a commentary on the way the little boy had died, put there by parents who didn’t believe justice would take so long to be served.
Cara’s eyes teared. She didn’t let the tears fall. The time for crying was over, because the mystery of what happened to the little boy had been solved.
"No secrets anymore, Skippy," she whispered, kneeling down beside the grave to pull a few weeds from the blanket of flowers. "Gray wouldn’t hear of keeping what happened quiet. He said that secrets had eaten away at the soul of the town, and it was time the truth took root."
She sighed, thinking over the events of the last few days. Gray had tried to keep Bergie’s funeral private. The people who had loved Bergie most had still showed up, eulogizing him as a man who’d made a grave mistake and spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it. Despite everything that had happened, Cara thought that was a fair assessment.
"I think we should forgive Bergie," she whispered, not feeling the least bit strange for talking to a boy who had been dead for so many years. "He did a terrible thing, but he never stopped paying for it. He saved my life, Skippy."
She wiped away the tears she had vowed not to shed.
"So did you.” Her voice broke as she relived the scene in Bergie’s kitchen when the little dark-eyed boy had called out to her for the last time. "I saw you. I know I did. That wasn’t a memory. That was you, reaching out from the grave to keep me safe, just like you tried to keep me safe all those years ago."
She closed her eyes tight. Another tear squeezed through. "I’ll never forget you, Skippy, but now it’s time for you to rest." Her voice broke. "Rest in peace, little friend."
She stood up, touching the marker once more in a final salute, before walking back through the rows of tombstones. The sun shone more fully now, bathing the shadows in light.
She looked up at the sky and caught a glimpse of a large bird flying off in the distance.
It was too far away to tell whether it was an eagle. It didn’t matter, because the image no longer had the power to frighten her. Sometime in the weeks since she’d arrived in Secret Sound, she had conquered her fear.
Her anxiety attacks and the nightmares of the attacking eagle were things of the past.
She wouldn't run from life any longer, no matter how difficult or painful the situation. Still, Cara’s steps grew heavier, because she dreaded her final task before leaving Secret Sound.
Her heart already ached at the thought of saying goodbye to the man she loved.
As Cara surveyed the garage apartment to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to pack anything, her eyes fell on the packet of old photographs from her family’s long-ago Florida trip. She’d meant to look at them the day before when they’d arrived in the mail. She’d been on her way to Bergie’s funeral and had forgotten.
She picked the packet up from the worn coffee table, removed the photos and examined the first one. Her lips curved upward. It was a photograph of her mother splashing in the surf. She wore the black-skirted bathing suit that Cara had told Gray about. As she flipped to the next one, the doorbell rang.
Cara tossed the photographs back on the table and crossed the room, knowing who it would be even before she pulled open the door.
The shadows under Gray’s eyes were less prevalent today. Sadness still tugged at the corners of his mouth. He was dressed the same way he’d been when she first saw him, in his cop’s uniform with the badge over his heart.
"Come on in." Although they’d been together for much of the time since Bergie’s death, they’d seldom been alone. Gray had been surrounded by friends, Tyler and Karen prevalent among them, who had closed around him like a warm blanket.
She’d even overheard Curtis Rhett tell Gray, moments before the two men embraced, that there was no need for him to lose a father-in-law so soon after losing a father.
Gray stepped inside, and she recalled that his height and breadth had initially intimidated her. Now she wanted to run toward him instead of away, but she kept a civilized distance between them.
"I thought you’d want to know I got a call from the D.A. about Sam Peckenbush," he said. "My men found a ledger when they searched Sam’s house detailing the payments my father made to him over the years. The D.A. is going to add blackmailing to the attempted murder charge."
Cara nodded, thinking that Peckenbush was getting what he deserved. Her sympathy had been all used up on Bergie. "How’s Danny taking it?"
"Better than I expected. He’s going to Alabama to live with his mother, which is what he wanted all along. His mother’s been sober for going on a year. She wants him with her so I’m hoping it works out for the best."
"How are you taking it?"
"A day at a time."
She touched his arm. "Your father saved my life, Gray. There should be some consolation in that."
"There is. He was a good man who did a monstrous thing. In time, I’ll be able to reconcile that." Gray gazed down at his feet, shuffled them, and looked back at her. "I can barely forgive myself for being so off base. I nearly ruined my relationship with Curtis, and I never did apologize to you for being wrong about Sam."
She reached up and covered his lips with two of her fingers. "You don’t have to apologize. You grew up here. You’ve known these people your entire life. You couldn’t be expected to look at things objectively." Very reluctantly, she removed her fingers from his mouth and instantly wanted to touch him again.
He took a deep breath and gave her a smile that melted something inside her heart. Her eyes dipped from the warmth in his. She hadn’t left Secret Sound yet. She already knew how much she was going to miss him.
"I decided it was time I got back to work," he announced.
"I think that’s a good idea."
"We haven’t had much time together lately. How about meeting me for lunch or going to dinner with me after work?" He sounded oddly nervous, like a schoolboy asking a girl for a first date. He let out a little breath. "Hell, I was thinking I’d like it if you did both."
Cara had to wrench the words from her throat. "I can’t."
"You can’t?"
She bit her lip, and her eyes tracked to the suitcases beside the open door of the bedroom. His gaze followed them.
"I was about to come over to your place and say goodbye before I packed up the car,” she said. “My vacation time’s up, and I’m due back to work on Monday. Aunt Clarice is beside herself about me making the drive alone after all that’s happened. She doesn’t understand yet that I’m stronger because of it."
"You’re leaving," Gray said, filtering everything she said down to the cruel truth.
It felt as though somebody had inserted a knife into his gut and twisted, and he finally understood something his father had tried to explain countless times over the past years.
A man couldn’t decide to fall in love depending on whether or not love fit his lifestyle. When love struck, it was all the more precious because it didn’t come with a guarantee. Two people never knew how long they’d have together.
Gray recalled something else his father had said. Even if the time with the woman you love is measured in minutes, it’s time well worth having.
"You’re leaving," he repeated.
"Yes," she said, nodding, "I’m leaving."
He shook his head, grasped her hand, fanned his fingers and cupped her cheek. "I don’t want you to leave."
"Gray," she began, "you’re not thinking clearly. You—"
"Curtis said he offered you a job," he interrupted. "He said you have the makings of a terrific reporter."
"I take it Curtis didn’t tell you I declined his offer?"
"Why? Being a reporter is what you’ve always wanted to do, Cara." He squeezed her hand. His eyes ran over her face, desperately searching for a sign that she wanted to stay when a terrible thought struck him. "Is it Richard? Are you going back to him?"
"Or course not," Cara said. "I told him a few days ago I could never marry him."
His relief was short-lived, because something else prevented her from staying. "Then is it Secret Sound? Are there too many bad memories for you to live here?"
"It’s not that." She wrenched her hand from his and walked into the living room. "It’s just that I have to go."
"Why?" he implored, following her. "Why do you have to go?"
She met his gaze and incredibly her eyes were shrouded in pain. "I’ll tell you why," she said, and her voice broke. "I refuse to live out my life in a town hopelessly in love with a man who has vowed never to love me back."
Instead of retreating, as she’d thought he would, he advanced. The smile that spread across his face transcended all the sadness. She backed up, aware that she wouldn’t be able to resist him even if all he offered was the casual affair that she’d scorned just days ago.
She had to stop backing up when her legs bumped up against the back of the sofa. He caught her easily, encircling her waist with his arms.
"I’ve broken my vow," he said against her mouth, nipping her lower lip, "because I love you right back."
"You do?" she asked breathlessly, hardly able to digest his words.
"I do," he confirmed, gathering her close. "Not so long ago, you told me I was pushy. If you leave, you’ll find out exactly how pushy I can be. I’ll drive right on up to Sumter and bring you back."
His voice turned raspy. "But I’d much rather you don’t leave at all. Say you’ll stay here with me, Cara. I couldn’t stand it if you left."
Emotion choked her so hard she couldn't do more than nod. Gray’s mouth claimed hers, joining their lips, joining their hearts, joining their lives.
Much later, when they finally broke for air, Gray rested his forehead weakly against hers. He must have caught sight of the photos from Cara’s long-ago family vacation out of the corner of his eye, because he picked one up.
"Hey," he asked, "where’d you get a picture of me?"
He held u
p a photo of two small children, their hands locked and their faces wreathed in smiles. The lights of the midway sparkled behind them. The little girl in the picture was Cara. The boy, Cara could see now, was a very young version of Gray.
She laughed, a delightful, joyous laugh, because she’d uncovered the last of the town’s secrets.
"That little girl is me," she said, smiling up at him. Now she understood why Gray had seemed so familiar and why she’d always loved carnivals. "My parents must have taken me to the town’s annual carnival while we were visiting."
"And I must have been there at the same time," Gray finished, "more than willing to ride the rides with a pretty little girl."
She laughed again, reaching up for another kiss from the man who, in a way, she’d loved since she was four years old.
Other eBooks by Darlene Gardner
The Misconception (A Romantic Comedy)
Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy)
Bait and Switch (A Romantic Comedy)
About the Author
While working as a newspaper sportswriter, Darlene Gardner realized she'd rather make up quotes than rely on an athlete to say something interesting. So she quit her job and concentrated on a fiction career that has turned out pretty well. She's the author of more than thirty contemporary novels from single-title romantic comedies to emotionally charged family dramas.
Sound of Secrets Page 26
