by Teresa Hill
Allie called Greg in Macon and told him what she'd found out from Stephen.
"Whittaker?" Greg said.
"Yes. His family lived next door to us. They still do, in fact."
"What does he do?"
"He owns a construction and real estate management company. His family's lived here forever. His father's a judge."
"Any relation to Richard Whittaker IV?"
"He has a brother named Rich who's in his late thirties. Why?"
"Richard Whittaker IV is the current governor of Kentucky, Allie. If this is the family I'm thinking of, one of his uncles is a U.S. Senator."
"Oh," she said. Stephen owned a sleek, fast Thoroughbred and his brother, whom she barely remembered, was the governor.
Greg laughed. "They lived right next door to you?"
"Yes."
"You grew up around money. Do you want me to check this guy out? Do you think he had something to do with your sister's disappearance?"
Allie thought about it. Did she trust Stephen Whittaker? Did she want someone digging through his past with her sister?
"I can do it," Greg said. "If that's what you want...."
"No," she decided. "You're already in Macon. If you don't find out anything there, you could come here then."
And start asking questions about Stephen? Allie didn't know. She'd worry about that later, she decided, if they hit a dead-end in Georgia.
"Okay," Greg agreed. "Let's talk about what I found. I talked to the trooper this morning. He remembered the accident. He said when kids die, he always remembers. It's pretty much what the paper said—a bad thunderstorm. The creek wasn't normally that deep, but it was flooded that day and the current was strong. Your sister was driving what turned out to be a stolen car without a license. He assumed she was driving too fast on a slick, winding road—not unusual for kids. They're inexperienced drivers. They don't make allowances for things like slippery roads. They don't know how easily things can go wrong. It happens, Allie."
"Megan was a good swimmer," she remembered. "It seems like she would have been able to get out."
"You don't know what kind of shape she was in when the car hit the water. She may have been dazed, confused. She may have panicked. She may have had trouble getting the door open or the window. The water would have been cold. She would have had all that fighting against her."
"Oh. Okay." She sighed heavily. "So that's it?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm here. I thought I might as well keep at it. They had a lot of accidents and downed trees that day. It took awhile before the trooper got there, but he remembers that one of the first people on the scene that night was a doctor who lived here in town. I talked to him a few minutes ago."
"And?"
"I didn't get anything concrete, and honestly, I don't know where to go with it from here. But I'd swear the man had something to hide."
"A doctor? Why?"
"I don't know. I asked a couple of people around town about him, and they all say the man's practically a saint. Does a lot of volunteer work at a clinic here in town, does a lot with his church. I didn't find anybody who had anything bad to say about him. Yet."
"So why would he lie to you about Megan's accident?"
"It's a good question, isn't it?" Greg said. "The trooper said there were three other people on the scene that night, two young men and a girl. He didn't remember their names. Not surprising—it's been fifteen years. He's not sure if he can find any paperwork on it or not, but he's going to check. If the doctor knew the other three, he didn't tell me their names."
"Three people?" she said. "Surely we can find at least one of them. One who can tell us something."
"I'll do my best, Allie. In the meantime, be careful. I don't like the way this feels."
"What do you think happened?" she asked.
"I don't know. I'm a suspicious man. That's just how I think. That's how people pay me to think. You be careful, and I'll call you tomorrow."
Allie put down the phone and shivered, thinking it was just her luck—to find another person who knew something about what happened to her sister who didn't want to talk about it.
She thought about Greg's warning, about Stephen's.
Feeling listless and out of sorts, she let herself gaze longingly at Stephen's house. She remembered how angry she'd been at him earlier, how betrayed she'd felt. Even so, she still wondered what he was doing. If he'd never told her about him and Megan today, it would have been so easy to slip through the backyards and onto his back porch. He'd smile and open the door and invite her in, keep her company, maybe take her in his arms. The night noises would lose their power to frighten her. Everything would. But she couldn't go there. She couldn't. And she could handle this on her own. She'd handled everything her whole life on her own.
Instead Allie wandered outside into her backyard. It was nice out here, she realized. It was incredibly quiet, and if she wasn't so uneasy about simply being here, it might even be peaceful.
Then she heard a rustling sound from a clump of bushes at the right side of the yard and froze. Gathering her courage, she went to the edge of the bushes and started pulling them apart, to find nothing but one, scrawny-looking, scared kitten, its back arched menacingly, its tail sticking up in the air.
Allie laughed. At herself and the outraged look of the kitten. It didn't look very old.
"Poor baby," she crooned.
She hurried inside, dug through the cabinets, and found a dusty can of tuna. The kitten had come to the middle of the yard by the time she returned. Allie set the bowl in the grass. The kitten ate hungrily, then eyed her with a tad less suspicion.
"Still hungry?" Allie was happy to be able to feed another hungry mouth. Or maybe she'd just do anything for some company right now. "You have to come inside if you want more."
She took the empty bowl inside, the kitten on her heels. She made makeshift arrangements for the cat that night, promising to do better tomorrow.
In the family room, curled up on the sofa with the kitten, the radio playing softly in the background, the afghan wrapped around her, she felt almost comfortable and not quite so alone as she finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 8
Allie slept fairly well that night with the kitten curled up beside her. She got up early, drove into town, and rushed through the grocery store, stocking up on supplies. She had a cat to feed, and, she hoped, a teenage boy. Pulling into her driveway fifteen minutes later, she found Casey sitting on the front step, the kitten batting at his untied shoelaces.
He smiled shyly. •
She beamed at him, happy for his company. "Hi. Ready to go to work?"
"Sure." He shrugged.
"I see you met my kitten," Allie said.
"It's yours?"
"We kind of claimed each other. If she's willing to stay, I'm going to keep her."
"Cool," he said.
"Help me carry in the groceries?" she said, putting a box of lunch meat, milk, soft drinks, and chips into his arms. "I got some empty boxes, too. I think I'm too sore to work in the yard today, so we can get started inside."
They hauled everything in. Allie claimed she was starving and fixed scrambled eggs and bacon, enough for four people, she thought, until she watched Casey eat with unabashed gusto. He caught her staring at him, flushed, and pushed his plate away.
"Sorry," he said.
"Why?"
He shrugged, looking bewildered and very young. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No. I'm just not used to feeding a teenage boy. I'm amazed at how much one can eat."
"I'm sorry," he said, looking guilty. "I—"
"It's okay, Casey. Eat as much as you like. I don't mind. In fact, I like having the company. I don't usually bother to cook if it's just me."
"You don't have to feed me," he said defensively.
"I told you, I like the company, and I figure if I feed you, I get to work it off you later."
He was sitting beside her at the breakfast bar, his
face in three-quarter profile as he stared at her, all defiance and youthful pride. Once again, something about him seemed so familiar. He had sandy-colored hair, beautiful brown eyes, elaborately thick, full lashes—the kind a girl would kill for. An image teased at her brain, like a flash from a camera—blindingly evident one minute, gone the next.
What was it about him? He didn't seem like a runaway. Not like a kid who'd been on the streets for any length of time. Allie knew what they looked like. There was a hardness in their eyes, and they seldom offered their trust to anyone who wasn't another teenager on the run, too.
"Where did you say you lived?"
"A couple blocks over." He cocked his head to the left, the opposite of the direction he'd indicated the day before. "Why?"
"No reason."
She thought of what he'd told her about where he lived and his mother. Patricia Adams. Allie wondered if there was such a woman. Her gut instinct said he was all alone, and for that reason, she felt a kinship with him. This time fifteen years ago, her own sister had been on the run somewhere, cold maybe, hungry, alone. She wondered if anyone had fed Megan. If anyone had taken care of her.
"So," he said. "Where do you want to start?"
"I thought we'd sort through the attic," she said, thinking of the advantage of his muscles again and his tireless energy. He could haul boxes down the two flights of stairs much easier than she could. And she wouldn't have to be up there alone. She could work from the top and the bottom of the house toward the middle.
"Attic?" He looked wary.
"You don't want to?"
"No. I just... It looks like it's going to be a nice day and all."
"Tomorrow," Allie said. "When I'm not so sore. I can't rake leaves and haul limbs today."
It was stuffy, dusty, and full to the brim. Allie's mother never threw anything away, it seemed. Neither had her father. Allie and Casey opened three windows, one of which Allie found unlatched, something that left her even more uneasy. The light wasn't that good, but she saw footprints. Still she and Casey had been walking around for a while by the time she thought to check.
She shoved that thought aside and decided to pitch her idea for the shelter to Casey, thinking he might open up to her about his own situation if she could turn the talk to runaways. She waited until he was sitting on the floor sorting through a box that so far had yielded nothing but old clothes, when she didn't think he was going anywhere fast, to say, "I was wondering if you could give me some advice?"
He shrugged, hardly looking up from his task. "Sure."
"I was thinking of what I could do with this house. It's too big for just me, and I was thinking about turning it into a shelter."
"Shelter?" He gave her a blank look.
"For teenagers. Runaways."
Still nothing. Allie tried again.
"It seems fitting," she said. "My sister ran away. I was thinking that maybe if she'd had someplace to go, someplace where she was safe, she might still be alive today."
"She's really dead?" he said, the first spark of interest she'd seen.
Allie nodded.
"I heard that. Around town..."
And the tale hadn't moved him in the least?
"You don't worry about that, Casey?"
"Huh?"
"That she died. She ran away from home and died."
Casey didn't say a thing, just looked at her as if he couldn't imagine what she was getting at. Could he be that oblivious to the danger he faced?
"Would you come to a place like this?" she tried. "If you could get a hot meal and a shower and a bed to sleep in?"
He laughed then. "Allie, I have a place to go."
"You do?"
"I'm not a runaway," he claimed, then shrugged easily. "Not really."
How could one "not really" be a runaway, she wondered? "You're just... what? Sight-seeing?"
"Something like that," he claimed, seeming amused.
She was seriously annoyed, honestly worried about him and trying to help him. If anything happened to him, she'd never forgive herself. She'd just have to find another way to reach him. Maybe she would take a few psychology courses. It had to be so much more interesting than accounting and so much more useful to her once she got the shelter up and running.
She gave up for the moment on getting Casey to talk to her. They'd filled six boxes with trash, four with items to donate to Goodwill, when the phone rang. Allie ran downstairs to answer it.
"Hi," Stephen said. "I wanted to see you last night, but it was late before I finished work and I didn't see any lights on your house."
"I went to bed early," she said, then sighed.
She was ridiculously happy just to hear his voice, and yet not a day ago, she'd been so angry with him, so hurt. But she still wasn't sure if she trusted him, either, and she didn't know how to reconcile that with the warmth flooding through her at the moment.
Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? There was no way to reconcile the two. It made no sense at all to like him so much, yet not trust him.
"I like you, Stephen," she blurted out, thinking she might as well lay it out there on the table for them to deal with. "I want to run to you with every little piece of information I find, every time anything at all upsets me—"
"You don't think I'd object to any of that, do you?"
"No. It's not that..." She struggled to explain. "It's just too easy. You know that, don't you?"
"What's too easy?"
"Being with you," she admitted. That was the problem. She was trying to be cautious and careful, and it was simply too easy, felt too good, to be with him.
That obviously pleased him because he laughed, the warm, rich sound already imprinted in her memory. She loved hearing him laugh.
"You're supposed to let me help you, Allie, remember?"
"Because of a promise you made Megan years ago?"
"There's more to it than that, and you know it."
Allie turned around and looked out the window, toward his house, wondering if he was standing there watching her, wondering just how dangerous this man could be to her.
"I told myself this is too complicated, that I should back off," he said in that deep, slow, sexy voice of his. "It doesn't seem to matter. And you feel the same way. You just told me so."
She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut, ran a hand through her hair. If this was an act, the man was good. So good.
Please, she thought, let this be real.
"Allie..." He said it like he ached. For her.
Of course, she could be wrong about that. He could feel sorry for her. He could feel guilty and be thinking he had a lot to make up to her sister. Or he could feel a genuine desire to try to make things better for her, because he truly cared about her. She had no way of knowing.
"I'm coming over there," he said.
"Don't, Stephen. Please," she begged, all her instincts telling her she was going to get hurt again, and she really didn't need that. "I'm confused enough as it is."
"Is that all it is? Because you sound... I don't know. Is anything wrong?"
"No more than usual," she said, managing a bit of laughter to soften the words. "And that reminds me... Is your brother the governor?"
"Yes."
"You didn't tell me that."
"Does it matter?"
"Stephen, he's your brother."
"I took you to meet my horse. That should tell you where Rich ranks with me."
Allie laughed. "You like your horse more than your brother?"
"I enjoy my horse much more than my brother, although if you ever repeated that to any member of the local media, my father would kill me."
"Oh?"
"Rich is running for reelection."
"Oh." That explained it, she supposed.
"Do you really care that my brother's the governor?"
"No, I was just surprised."
"One of my uncles is a U.S. Senator, if that matters. Anything else you want to know?"
"Not at the mome
nt."
"Good. Now I have something I want to tell you. You don't have to go through this alone, Allie. You know that, right?"
Her heart gave a little lurch. It said, What's so great about going slowly anyway? The idea that she wasn't in this all by herself. That there was someone else who cared. She couldn't have done this without him. She'd probably have fled that first night when the electricity went out and darkness settled in around her. As she saw it, it had never been a good thing to need anyone too much. It set up expectations in her mind that so far no one had been able to meet.
They'd all disappointed her in some way. Stephen might well disappoint her more than anyone if the way she responded to him already was any indication.
God, what was she going to do now?
"Can I come over now?" he asked.
She laughed, because he was persistent, but he managed to do it in a way that didn't leave her feeling like he was walking all over her, like her mother had.
"Don't you have a job to do?" she said instead. "Things to buy and sell today?"
"I've been here since seven and spent all morning buying something."
"Oh. Well, buy something else. I'm busy."
"Doing what?"
"Cleaning out the attic. You wouldn't believe how much stuff is up there."
"I'll help you with it this evening," he offered.
"I found help," she said. "Someone with a nice, strong back."
His voice was a bit rougher, a tad impatient. "Anybody I know?"
"I don't know. His name is Casey Adams."
"I don't think I know anyone named Adams."
"What about Patricia Adams? On Dogwood Lane?"
"That would be his... wife?"
"No." She laughed and told him what she knew about Casey, what she suspected.
"Wait a minute. You're in the house with this kid, and you don't have any idea who he is?" he asked, sounding exasperated. "And you don't believe anything he's told you about himself?"
"He's a kid, Stephen. A hungry, scared kid."
"And he's probably six inches taller than you and outweighs you by at least fifty pounds. Come on, Allie. You know better than this, don't you?"
