The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  She felt like screaming; her heart was being crushed by it. Bonnie nuzzled her, alarmed by Kate's mood. Kate wanted to just put her head down on the steering wheel and cry. So, instead of driving away, she ignored Bonnie's yelps and pulled around back—into the darker, more deserted parking lot behind the strip mall.

  The lights were very dim back here.

  A few cars were scattered at the back entrances to the stores and businesses. An anchor fence ran around the lot's perimeter, separating the pavement from the yards of several houses on the next street.

  The houses looked small and tidy, brightly lit. Silhouetted in light from their windows, Kate spotted a station wagon parked by the chain-link fence. She saw the shadow of a man—standing by the Dumpster, perhaps throwing something away. Music played softly on the radio, then crackled into a wailing sax solo.

  The tears pressed against Kate's throat, the roof of her mouth. The not knowing about Willa—building up all this trip, during all Kate's investigations in Silver Bay and Newport and now Fairhaven—crashed through her like a wave.

  Kate cried so loud, Bonnie jumped into the backseat. She cried for Willa on her lap watching whales, Willa painting pictures at her easel, Willa and Matt hanging sand dollars on the Christmas tree, Matt still searching for Queen Pearl, Matt the Hermit, Willa in bed with Andrew, Willa gone all this time . . .

  Kate cried, and then she howled. The radio music was still playing, but the sax had given way to a piano and bass.

  Kate's tears were violent; her heart thumped like a bass. Her crying felt like company, made her feel she wasn't alone. And suddenly, she wasn't; terrified, she heard scratching at her window. Kate gasped, but Bonnie let out a bark of recognition.

  Brainer stood at the car door, front paws scrabbling at the window glass. Just behind him, striding toward her from across the dark parking lot, was John O'Rourke.

  Kate was too upset, too bewildered to know what he was doing there. Maybe his motives were suspicious, bad, evil, but Kate didn't think so. At least her heart—or the part of her brain that was in control of her wildly soaring emotions—told her the opposite.

  So, throwing her car door open, letting Brainer bound in to see Bonnie as Kate stumbled out, she blindly threw herself into John's arms and let herself sob against his chest.

  chapter 12

  What was he doing, standing in a Fairhaven parking lot with wisps of fog and blasts of North Atlantic air and this woman in his arms and his heart banging as if he'd run a marathon? John wondered.

  Her hair smelled like lemons. Her breath came in warm, impassioned gasps, blowing straight through the shoulder of his wool sweater. Her chest heaved with emotion as sobs shook her body. John, accustomed to holding Maggie while she cried herself out, just stood very still, disregarding his own intense feelings, until Kate began to calm down.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Whaddaelllrrruudoonggrrr?” she asked, her voice muffled by tears and his sweater.

  “Once more, this time so I can hear you,” he suggested.

  Pulling back from his chest, she looked up with big, worried eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?” she repeated.

  “Funny you should ask,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I was about to ask you the same thing. How 'bout you invite me out of the cold and into your car?” he asked, partly stalling for time before answering and partly to hide how surprised and—shocking itself—happy he was to see her in this godforsaken parking lot so far from both their homes.

  When they climbed in, John gave her the same once-over he'd give a client suspected of the most heinous crime imaginable. Could he trust what she was about to tell him? Was she going to tell the whole truth or a half-truth? Or lies? Was she going to sugarcoat some nasty, unsavory fact about her sister's case?

  He swallowed, looking away. Trust had been in very short supply lately. She was so pretty and vulnerable. Holding her in his arms, he'd wanted to keep her right there for a long time, protecting her from whatever she feared most. He had come here to help her, and here she was. Now, slowly glancing across the seat, he saw her wiping her eyes. He thought of Theresa, of Willa. His heart tugged, and he knew that his deepest wish was that Kate Harris was exactly who she seemed to be.

  “What are you staring at?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

  “Just . . . nothing,” John said, embarrassed, caught in the act of trying to trust her.

  “Tell me—what are you doing here?”

  “You first. Last I heard, you were hightailing it home.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Maggie. She thanks you for the scarf and glasses, by the way. She made an excellent Earhart. The note you left said you were leaving—to say good-bye to me, Teddy, and the mutt.”

  “Hear that, Brainer?” Kate asked, glancing into the backseat. “That's the sort of esteem your owner holds you in . . . and I'm supposed to answer for my movements?” Now, turning back to John, she blinked steadily, her eyes clear in the parking lot light. “I never said I was hightailing it home. I said I had a journey to make.”

  “I just assumed you'd headed back to Washington.”

  “Clearly,” Kate said, “a wrong assumption.”

  “My mistake. So—why are you here?”

  She didn't reply; he saw her pulse beating in her throat, the pearly white skin flickering as if she'd just run up a hill.

  “Why did you scream? I thought someone was hurting you.”

  “Someone is,” she whispered. “The man who took my sister.”

  John's stomach clenched. He closed his eyes for a minute. So far, his trip to Fairhaven hadn't proved anything. Maybe it was all just a story. Merrill had been playing him along, giving him a detail that wasn't true.

  A house, a first-floor window, with a young girl undressing.

  Well, it was bedtime now, right? John had never practiced voyeurism before, even in service to a client's case, but all it had yielded through those house windows tonight were glimpses of old women saying their rosaries, a man brushing his teeth, and a family watching TV.

  “Why are you here, Kate?” he asked.

  “Same reason you are, I suspect.”

  “I don't think so . . .” he said, unwilling to give up anything Merrill had told him.

  “Oh, I do,” she said softly, sadly.

  John looked out the car window. His gaze went straight to the house across the parking lot. It was the back of the house—the front faced the street a block away.

  There was the fence Merrill had admitted climbing; the first-floor windows had all been dark, but suddenly one was illuminated, the view inside blocked by white curtains. Very consciously, as if Kate Harris might follow his eyes and read his mind, he panned across the lot to other houses.

  “You know I'm right, don't you?” she asked. “I mentioned Fairhaven to you, and you checked it out. . . . Merrill was here, right?”

  “Can't talk about my client.”

  “He was here—right in this very parking lot. Or you wouldn't be! Was it the same night as my sister? You have to tell me,” Kate said.

  John's eyes flicked back to the window. It was the right house—it had to be. His heart began to pound. Someone had just walked into the downstairs room, turned on the light.

  A person was moving around. Close to the window, away from the window . . . impossible to identify age or gender.

  Then another lamp turned on—brighter, toward the back of the room.

  A young girl's shadow passed by the light. John's blood began to race. He could see the shape of hips and breasts—a flash through the curtain's opening of skin, of a nightgown being pulled over her head.

  How old was she? Fourteen?

  Six months ago . . . she would have been thirteen, fourteen at most. Certainly she would have attracted him out of his car, across the glass-littered pavement, across the jagged-topped fence. Her nearness would have triggered that chemical in his brain—that bizarre mixture of
hormones and nerves—that made it all happen, set him on his way.

  “John? Be fair to me! I'm Willa's sister. If you know something . . .” Kate asked now, her voice imploring.

  Without responding, John got out of the car. He heard the dogs bark behind him, but he just walked faster. Broken glass crunched under his feet. Kids probably parked back here to drink and hang out and have sex in cars—no streetlights, no prying parental eyes.

  The girl was in her room. Couldn't someone tell her, warn her father, that perverts could just sit back here and get an eyeful? John thought of some stranger staring at Maggie while she got dressed, made a vow to buy blinds and heavy draperies for her bedroom window. There was so much to protect them against, the people he loved. He had an insider's view of the worst that could happen, and right now it was tearing him up inside.

  Running footsteps sounded behind him, but he kept on walking.

  “Who is she?” Kate's voice asked, breathless, catching up to him.

  “No one,” John said, the hole in his stomach as deep and empty as an abandoned well.

  “Why are you watching her?”

  “I'm not the only one,” John said. The words just came out; he couldn't help how she would take them. Gazing left and right, trying to figure out where her house sat, he knew that he would find her street address and get a message to her father—telling him to protect his daughter better.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Merrill watched her, didn't he?” Kate asked, her voice raised and strained. “That's why you're here—it has to have to do with him. . . .”

  “Kate, leave it alone.” John hadn't planned for her to be here. He had to investigate, had to satisfy his own need to know, to decide how best to proceed. The last thing he needed was the sister of another potential victim observing him uncovering more evidence of his client's guilt.

  “John—he's already on death row,” Kate said, yanking his arm. “How much worse can it get for him?”

  “That's not the issue!”

  “You want to know how it is for me and my brother?” she asked, still pulling his arm. “It's like this: My brother won't see me, won't talk to me—he thinks it's my fault. He thinks if one sister is gone, the other one just might disappear, too. Why get close to someone if this can happen? Why love them your whole life if one day they can just fall off the face of the earth? It's so much better to just stay alone . . . to stop caring.”

  John stood still, the biting wind numbing his cheeks and chin. He thought of Theresa. He remembered how he had started suspecting the affair. How he had resisted the truth—tried to fool himself into believing he was wrong. When he couldn't—when he'd heard her whispering into the phone, when he'd checked her cell phone bills and found all those calls to Barkley, when he'd found the notes—how he had shut down.

  How he had stopped caring. What could she do to him then? Nothing—nothing she did mattered, if John no longer cared. He had his kids, he had his work: Let Theresa try to live with herself for destroying their marriage. That was her responsibility, not his. He didn't want a divorce: He wanted to work things out. She'd come around—she had to. But till she did, John was shut down.

  Then the reality of Theresa's death surrounded him with frigid clarity. Time to work things out? What a joke. Death had ruined all that. No one had to ask anyone for a divorce; John would never have to deal with that reality. And so he'd shut down a little more. Stop caring? Maybe he knew a little of how Kate's brother felt.

  “I'm sorry,” he said quietly.

  “Not just for me, but for my brother,” she pleaded.

  “Don't stop caring,” he said suddenly, turning to face her again. “Like your brother.”

  “I already have,” she whispered.

  “No,” he said. “I saw that package you left for Maggie. It made her day . . . made her year.”

  “It did?”

  “Yes,” John said. “It's what she wishes her mother could do for her.”

  “Theresa.”

  “Yes,” John said, cringing as she said the name. Did she know? Had people in Silver Bay told her what had happened?

  “I'm sorry Maggie and Teddy lost their mother. And you lost your wife.”

  “I lost her before she died,” he whispered. He couldn't believe how the words came out, almost by themselves. He leaned closer to her. Suddenly he wanted to tell her—wanted her to know everything. Kate would understand him. She'd completely get it, know what it had been like, trying to love a person who didn't want his love . . . The feelings pressed in on his heart, and God—all he wanted was to let them out.

  “You did?”

  “She left me . . . she was still living at home, but she was gone. Her heart was gone . . .”

  “I'm so sorry,” Kate whispered. Her voice tore and trailed off. She looked away, as if John's eyes were a mirror, and she couldn't stand to see herself in them.

  John raised his gaze, suddenly remembering the girl in her room. In just a few years, Maggie would be that age.

  “He watched her, didn't he?” Kate asked, now looking over. Was she imagining Willa as a young teenager? Strangers standing in a back lot, watching her undress?

  “Let me handle it, okay?” he asked. His tone was soft. He had started to bare his soul to her; he wanted her to know she could trust him, that he would follow every clue and do his best to handle her sister's disappearance. “I'll tell you when I can.”

  “I have to know!” she said, her voice rising, ragged.

  “You will—I promise,” John said, reaching for her wrist.

  Kate's eyes were wild, mad. She stared at the girl. “We can't just let her do that,” Kate said. “She has to know that people can look in.”

  “I know,” John said.

  Suddenly, Kate ran over to the fence. Like a trapped dog, she raced up and down the length till she found a break in the wire. John watched as she tore through a neighbor's yard. She slipped on a patch of concrete—her leather shoes sliding, soles scraping across the rough surface. Falling to the ground, catching herself with one hand, running through the yard.

  John had no choice but to follow her. He watched as she raced through the side yard—past an overturned boat—the one Merrill had mentioned, now moved to a new spot?—and a garden choked with dead tomato plants and grapevines. He followed her past an empty birdbath to the front steps, heard her bang on the door—knocking so loudly that a dog down the street began to bark.

  “What is it?” a man said, coming to the door.

  “Your daughter,” Kate said, out of breath.

  “What about her?”

  “People can see her undressing—through her bedroom window.”

  “What the fuck?”

  The man was tall, dark, overbearing. He raised his arm—as if to strike Kate, for her words, or for what she had seen. John bounded up the steps, stood between him and Kate.

  “Don't touch her,” John said loudly.

  “What the FUCK?” the man repeated, his muscular, tattooed arm still in the air.

  “She's warning you,” John said. “Trying to help your daughter.”

  “What the hell you know about my daughter?”

  John heard Kate's breath in his ear. The man's eyes were hooded, menacing—as if he'd just been threatened in the most primal way. Two women—his wife and his mother?—stood behind him, the older one dressed in black from head to toe. And the girl—lovely, fourteen, fear in her green eyes—peeked around the corner, the white strap of her nightgown showing on her bare shoulder.

  “Nothing,” John said, meeting the girl's eyes. Wanting to reassure yet warn and protect her. “We know nothing about her. Your windows face out on the back parking lot—that's all. Just take care.”

  “Belle, c'mere,” the father said, his eyes still wild. “You doing what they say? Putting on a show?”

  “No!” she yelped, running down the hall.

  “She lying?” the man asked his wife, and
the woman disappeared after their daughter.

  “Don't give her a hard time,” Kate said. “It's not her fault.”

  “Don't go minding my family's business,” the man warned. “Meddling bitch.”

  John tasted metal in his mouth. He felt blood pouring through his veins into his nervous system; he felt as if he had just stepped into a domestic with a guy who didn't like answering to women. He hoped Kate hadn't just made the girl's life hell. He hoped he wouldn't throw the first punch and land in jail before the guy.

  “Listen to me, sir,” John said clearly, in his best courtroom voice, his face two inches from the dark and surly homeowner's. “It can't feel good, having strangers come to your door, saying they saw your daughter through a crack in her curtains. Her closed curtains—you hear me? This IS NOT her fault.”

  The man flinched, as if John had him by the throat.

  “But I can't have you calling my friend ‘bitch.' Hear me? She's trying to help your daughter . . . help you. There are monsters in the world, you know? People who could see an angel and want . . . to hurt her.”

  “My daughter's an angel,” the man said, the fight releasing from him. “You got that right.”

  “See?” John said. “Then maybe we helped.”

  “That fucking parking lot,” the man said, shaking his head. “Kids park there every Saturday night. I been afraid of boys climbing the fence since she turned fourteen. Fourteen going on thirty.”

  You should have been worried at eight, John thought. Nine, eleven, twelve . . . there's no magic number.

  “Protect her,” Kate said, her throat husky, and John knew she was talking about Willa.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “I will.”

  He closed the door in their faces. Kate stood very still, looking into her cupped hands. Stepping forward, John leaned down for a better look. The heel of her right hand was scraped badly, bleeding and raw.

  “I cut it when I fell,” she said. “In the backyard.”

  “Looks like it hurts,” John said, holding her wrist loosely. If it was Maggie's hand, he would bend down to kiss it. He touched the skin, wanting to.

  Kate nodded, but she didn't speak. She started to pull her hand back, step away from John, start back to their cars. But she stopped short because John couldn't seem to let her go. He held her wrist, and he stroked the soft skin, and then he took real hold of her hurt hand.