Deeper Than Need: A Secrets & Shadows Novel

by Shiloh Walker

  Like the dead body that had been found … in her house.

  The horror of it slammed into her, then, full force, and she turned away from Noah. Tears burned her eyes and a knot the size of Manhattan settled in her throat. Her hands started to shake and the breakdown that had been just waiting was about to crash down on her. She needed to get inside, get Micah settled down. Get a drink. Find a dark room and hide herself away—

  “I’m really tired,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “I think I’m going to go—”

  “Hey.”

  Noah’s hands came over her shoulders and she tried to jerk away, but those strong, beautiful hands were pretty insistent. “Trinity, come on,” he murmured.

  The compassion in his voice all but broke her.

  A sob rose in her throat and she shoved her fist against her lips to muffle it. Micah could come outside at any moment. She couldn’t cry. Not yet.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I can’t. Not here, not now—”

  “If not here, not now … then when? Hiding from it doesn’t make it better,” he murmured. He hooked an arm around her neck, drawing her close.

  Unable to fight it, she sank against him. The solid, warm wall of his chest pressed against her cheek and she tried to swallow the sobs, the screams, as they clawed up her throat. She’d just let him hold her a minute. That would help, right?

  He rested his hand on her nape.

  “I’m almost positive when I go home,” he said, his voice low and soft, “that I’m going to freak out. I don’t know if us guys are supposed to do that. But I don’t care. That’s what I want to do.”

  A hiccup escaped her.

  “I keep seeing it and part of my mind is telling me that it wasn’t real—some sort of weird trick. But the rest of me—”

  The sobs ripped out of her, and in the next moment Noah had her curled up in his lap.

  “That’s it,” he murmured, his lips pressed against her temple. “That’s what you need to do. Get it out now.”

  It had been manipulative and he knew it, the way he’d nudged her into crying. Maybe he should feel bad. But Noah suspected she was so used to hiding her emotions from everything and everybody—including herself—if she didn’t get it out now, she’d just keep hiding from it. The horror of what they’d both seen wasn’t the sort of thing that needed to be hid from.

  Hiding never helped. He knew that from experience.

  He had the worst feeling that she would have gone up to her room, pulled the blankets over her head and refused to let herself cry, even up there, for fear of scaring Micah.

  As her body trembled, he brushed her hair back from her face. Every sob was like a hook in his heart, tearing and clawing through the flesh and ripping deep gouges into him. Yet he almost welcomed the pain.

  She’d gotten to him, almost from the first, so it wasn’t a surprise that her pain left him gutted. He just wanted to take that horror away, make it all disappear.

  Since he couldn’t, he just held her in his arms and kept the swing rocking.

  Long moments passed before those deep, wrenching sobs passed.

  The night had gone quiet around them before she spoke.

  “You did that on purpose.” Her voice was raw and hoarse.

  He blew out a breath and then looked down to meet her gaze. She wasn’t looking at him, though. Just staring off into the night. “I did. Should I apologize?”

  “I haven’t decided. I planned on crawling into the bed and just trying to block it out.”

  He stroked a hand up the slim, graceful line of her back. “That never helps.”

  “No. But I can’t let Micah see me fall apart.” Another heavy sigh came from her.

  “I’m not Micah.”

  “No.”

  They lapsed into silence for a few more minutes, her head on his chest. She showed no desire to move and he had no desire to move her.

  Softly she asked, “You ever had the feeling you’re living under a bad star? Like you’re cursed or something?”

  He looked at her, saw the strain on her pale, tired face. Tears still lingered and he brushed them away. “I’ve had that feeling a few times. Most people probably have.”

  Her gaze swung up to his.

  “Everybody goes through hard times.” He grimaced and added, “Although I can’t think of anybody who has had anything quite like that … that I know of, at least.”

  “I wish I hadn’t had the honor of being the first.”

  Using his hand to cup her chin, he studied her face. He’d seen more than his fair share of women after they’d finished a bout of crying. Some were pretty, even after they cried. Some were a mess—faces red, noses swollen—and that didn’t bother him.

  Trinity wasn’t a pretty crier, but she still looked beautiful to him. He was starting to think she’d never look anything but beautiful to him. So beautiful, just looking at her was like a punch in the stomach. He ran the backs of his knuckles down her cheek and tried not to notice the way her breath caught. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. “This will pass. Hopefully, once it does, you’ll be done with the rough patches for a good long while.”

  She grimaced. “This isn’t even all of the bad shit Micah and I’ve had to deal with,” she muttered. “Rough patches? I feel like I’m tearing my way through to Briar Rose’s castle or something.” Then she winced. “Sorry … obscure reference.”

  “Not so obscure. I know that one. Castle surrounded by thorns and all, right?”

  “You into fairy tales, Noah?”

  He shrugged. “I read stories to kids sometimes.” He twined a lock of her hair around his finger, couldn’t help but notice how thick, how soft, her hair was. “I think maybe what you need to focus on is what happens once you find yourself through those thorns. The bad can’t outweigh the good. You can’t see it right now, because this is all just plain horrible, but you’ll get there.”

  “I don’t know what is going to be good enough to be worth finding somebody dead, hidden below the floor of my house,” she muttered, looking away from him and staring out into the night.

  She didn’t see the way his face spasmed, the pain that flashed in his eyes.

  “Right now, I don’t see it, either. But there’s going to be something.”

  Looking back at him, she asked softly, “How do you know that?”

  “Because I refuse to accept that you and I both had to see that, had to find that, for nothing. If nothing else, finding it will mean somebody gets closure,” he said finally. “It will take a while, I imagine, but sooner or later, they’ll figure out who it is. If that person had family, friends…? Nobody should be left to wonder.”

  There was a hollow emptiness in his words, and somehow it filled her with an ache, one that settled deep in her heart. Easing away from him, she rubbed the heel of her hand over her heart and moved to stand at the railing of the porch, staring down the street. “For all we know, it’s just some vagrant. Maybe they’ll never find out who it is. Maybe he or she had no family.”

  “Maybe it’s a girl who left behind friends, family … we don’t know.”

  Trinity looked back at him, but he sat lost in the shadows of the porch and she could barely make out the glitter of his eyes.

  “I guess helping somebody find a lost loved one would be one good thing,” she said. Then she shook her head. “But I’m still having a hard time seeing past the horror. Still having a hard time seeing anything past the fact that I somehow have to explain to my boy that we can’t go back home yet because we had a dead person under the floor of our house and the police are making sure there’s nothing that can help them find who it is.”

  Tired, aching from head to toe, she forced herself to smile at Noah. Still unable to see him, she said, “I think I’m going to go inside. It’s been … well. It’s been a day.”

  Opening the door, she went to slip inside and then she stopped. Without looking back at him, she closed her eyes, pressed her forehe
ad to the door.

  He’d been there. Every time she’d turned around, Noah had been there. Every time she’d needed a shoulder, he’d been there. Even when she hadn’t realized she was that close to falling apart, he’d been there. Maybe now she wouldn’t have to bury her face in the pillow to keep from choking back the screams so she wouldn’t wake up Micah.

  “Thank you,” she said, ignoring the erratic cadence of her voice as she forced herself to get the words out. “I know you had to hang around for a while, since you were down there, too. But you didn’t have to stay all day.”

  The chains on the swing creaked and she heard him rising. Twisting the doorknob, she opened the door and watched as light spilled out onto the porch. She turned and faced him then as he moved closer. “I couldn’t just leave,” he said, a look on his face that told her he meant every single word.

  “Some guys could have done just that.” She stepped over the threshold. Leaning against him had felt entirely too right. It was that odd little click thing, all over again.

  He opened his mouth to say something and she lifted a hand. “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I know plenty of guys who would have done just that, stayed just long enough to take care of whatever had to be done with the cops and then they’d disappear. It’s probably just human nature. You didn’t have to hang, but you did. So thank you.”

  “If you think that’s human nature, then you know some really lousy humans.” He gave her a tired, sad smile and shook his head. “We can be selfish creatures, I know. But that selfish?”

  Trinity suspected selfish didn’t even touch on some of the traits she’d come to expect in people. Shifting her gaze to stare off into the night, she licked her lips. “Look, I just … well. I wanted to say thank you. I did. Now I’m going to get some sleep.”

  She ducked inside before she could say anything else. Before she could do anything else. All she really wanted to do was go back outside and lean back against him; maybe even wrap her arms around him and then push up on her toes and see what he’d say if she pressed her lips to his.

  What he’d do.

  Because she was desperate enough to push for whatever he’d let her take, find comfort in whatever he’d give her.

  And so close to breaking, she didn’t know what it would do to her if he eased her back with just a few kind words and another one of those gentle, understanding smiles.

  * * *

  Small towns talked.

  Sometimes it was like the town itself took on its own life and the words just buzzed through the air, danced on the wind and whispered into the ears of every soul in town.

  When they had a day like they’d had yesterday?

  People talked even more.

  That house had been the center of attention before.

  More than once, really.

  Back in the fifties, a woman had been murdered there. Beaten to death by her drunk of a husband after he came home and found her in bed with another man.

  The drunkard’s name had been Terrell Frampton, his wife a sweet, distracted little thing by the name of Nancy.

  Nan’s older brother had been a well-to-do lawyer, one Maxwell Shepherd, and that night was the closest he’d ever come to violence, when he got word that his bastard brother-in-law had beaten Nan to death.

  Terrell had found Nan in bed with Boyd Scroggins. Boyd had taken off running, leaving Nan behind. If Boyd hadn’t fallen down the embankment into the river, he likely would have ended up a victim of Terrell’s rage as well.

  As it was, the river got Boyd and spat him out a few days later and Terrell beat Nan so thoroughly, she died before anybody even bothered to send for help. If Maxwell Shepherd had been home, Max would have killed the son of a bitch.

  A few days later, there was a second victim. Terrell killed himself in his jail cell and never did go before a judge. Sometimes Judge Max thought that was the biggest injustice known to man.

  Max Shepherd never got to see any justice for his sister’s death.

  Yes, she’d cheated on her husband. But he’d been a mean, abusive bastard and back in those days it wasn’t quite as easy to get a divorce for such a thing. Even these days it wasn’t as easy as some thought. Sweet little Nan had been looking for a man to love her … and she’d always looked in the wrong places.

  She hadn’t deserved to die for it.

  The house had passed to Max. Neither Terrell nor Nan had any other family, so it became Max’s burden to bear. And what a burden it was. Sometimes he could rent the house out for a few years at a time and a few times he’d come close to selling it, but close didn’t count, did it?

  Then, back in 1994, there was another tragedy.

  Four people disappeared.

  A dog tag–styled necklace.

  Fingerprints on the window, the door.

  Blood inside and a pool of blood outside.

  That was all anybody found.

  There was no mystery to what had happened with Nan. Not at all. A gory, bloody scandal, but no mystery.

  The second one, though … yes. There was nothing but questions when it came to the Sutter family and the missing Rossi girl.

  Lana had been a good kid and he’d liked her quite a bit, more than most people realized. He still missed seeing her around town, still thought of her as October crept ever closer.

  More than once, Judge Max had been forced to call the cops because there were people out there nosing around that house. He’d see lights, hear noises or just know the nosy bastards were poking around again. Sometimes the cops would find signs of trespassing; sometimes they wouldn’t.

  He was damn tired of it, that was for sure.

  Back in 2006, some fool, so-called journalist writer wannabe had put together a book about some of the crimes that had happened here. Called the book A Cursed Town. He’d written about all the awful things that had happened here: the tragic murder of a young girl in the early nineties, the murder of Max’s sister, the disappearance of Nichole Bell and, of course, the disappearance of the Sutter family and Lana Rossi.

  Now this.

  The new owner. Maybe Max should have just knocked the whole building down and been done with it.

  “Look at all these weeds.”

  Hearing the unhappy tone in his Mary’s voice, he looked at the garden tucked off the side of the porch and watched as she poked at the little patch of flowers.

  “I’ll help you with the weeds, Miss Mary.”

  She gave him a dark look and then went back to fretting over the flowers, her gnarled, twisting fingers ineffectually trying to pull the blossoms out. She was trying to pull out the begonias they had just planted. He moved across the grass to help her and eased his tired old body down next to her.

  She stopped fretting with the flowers after he covered her hands with his.

  Something that looked like recognition peered back at him through her eyes.

  Hope fluttered in his heart. “How are you today, Miss Mary?”

  She smiled and the smile did the same thing to him now that it had always done. It melted him even as it made him feel like the biggest man on earth. His Mary. The good Lord had seen fit to give Max this amazing woman … why hadn’t He seen fit to keep her mind intact? Max wondered. It was one of the biggest injustices in a world full of them.

  “I’m just fine,” she said. Then she sighed and looked up the hill to the hulking grey house that overlooked the river. The Frampton house. “Are you ever going to talk to Nan, Maxwell? I saw her up there last night, with that idiot Troxell boy. Saw her with Boyd a few weeks past, too. Sooner or later, Terrell is going to find out about all the boys she’s running around with and only the good Lord knows what he’ll do to her.”

  Grief tore at Max.

  Mary remembered him.

  But she wasn’t able to remember anything recent.

  He’d take what he could get, though. Leaning over, he kissed the fragile skin of her cheek. “I’ll talk to her. You know I’ve done it before, but who knows
… maybe this time, it will do some good.”

  If only he could.

  Mary smiled and patted his hand. “That’s the best any of us can do. Just what we can.” She went back to pulling at the flowers, and when she finally managed to uproot a begonia a look of triumph crossed her face. Judging by the expression in her eyes, she’d retreated into a world only she knew.

  Maybe even she didn’t understand. That was the very worst, when she was alone, with not even her memories.

  They’d been married for going on sixty years. He would love her until the day he died and probably even after. It didn’t matter if the Alzheimer’s was taking her away from him, because it wasn’t taking him from her. He’d love her always and that was just that.

  They’d had a few good days, though … and then yesterday. The ambulance, the police cars, barreling past their house on the way to the Frampton place. All the noise and chaos had agitated her, and by the time the day ended both of them had been exhausted and Miss Mary had practically cried herself to sleep.

  He wasn’t too far behind. Tears didn’t come easily to him, but if he could have allowed himself the tears yesterday just might have broken him.

  To top it all off, the nonsense hadn’t ended yesterday. All blasted day there had been a steady stream of cars driving down the little street where their house was located. It wasn’t too often that people would be so obvious about it. He knew there were plenty who’d go poking around the Frampton house located just down the way from him. People used to do it all the time and he’d call the police or go out there and greet them with a shotgun, whichever seemed to suit the nature of the trespasser. After the house had sold, it stopped being an issue.

  But people hadn’t driven up and down the street all damn day. Not for twenty years.

  As another car came down the street, he stood up from his chair, coffee in one hand, and moved to the railing. Eyeballing it, he plucked the phone from the railing and watched as somebody used his driveway as a turnaround. That somebody—a kid of maybe twenty—caught sight of Max as he lifted his phone to his ear, and the boy gunned the gas, making the tires squeal.