Night Mist

by Helen R. Myers

  Stop it, she ordered herself. She punched the flat of her fist against the closet door, disgusted that her tear ducts chose now, of all times, to want to flow.

  Inside the closet, something responded to her mild blow. It reminded her of the sound she’d heard earlier. Curious, she opened the door and saw a video tape box at her feet.

  She couldn’t believe it. Where had he been hiding it? She looked up and around, finally noticing a shelf-like ledge she hadn’t noticed before above the door. Yes, she thought, stepping inside the closet, the box must have been up there when he bumped against the wall.

  For all the care and hesitation she exhibited while picking it up, the box might as well have been a poisonous snake. Nor did she care for the way it felt in her hands. Why should she, when it was the bane of Joe’s life? The only thing to do was to get it back up on the shelf before he returned.

  Then again, why should she? She had nothing to hide from him, certainly not the fact that she’d seen it—especially since he must have heard it fall down, too.

  She set the tape on the bureau, just as she heard his step behind her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Rachel turned to find Joe pausing in the doorway. He looked from her to the tape and back again, the expression on his face masked by a familiar blankness she had begun to recognize. He always relied on it when he was gauging a situation that looked incriminating.

  “It fell from the shelf in the closet. You must have heard it yourself,” she added when her initial comment didn’t seem to have any effect. “I didn’t want you to think I was trying to deny being aware of it, so I left it there for you to put away.”

  From the side window came Adorabella’s childlike soprano, fussing about how the weather was keeping her patio tomatoes from ripening. At the front window a squirrel and a blue jay were arguing over territorial rights to a certain branch. They were sounds of normalcy that should have been reassuring, but only emphasized the silence inside the room.

  Finally he sighed. “Guess I wasn’t as clever at hiding it as I thought.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” she replied, eager to reassure him. “Don’t forget, I didn’t see it when I was snooping around for your ID.”

  His answering look told her he would rather forget that episode, and he crossed over to the bureau for the video. A part of Rachel wished she could view it, but she knew what Joe’s answer would be if she asked. It was just as well, though; there wasn’t a VCR in the house that she knew of. And if they were able to find one, no doubt it would be impossible to keep Jewel or Adorabella from trying to catch a peek. She decided having Joe’s trust was more important.

  “Would you like me to go to my room until you find a new place to put it?”

  Indigo turned to sapphire as amusement lit his eyes. “I guess not.”

  “Better be careful. I might take that to mean you’re beginning to have faith in me.”

  He let his gaze wander downward, taking in the way she’d tied her blouse. Passion—so much a part of him it pulsated below the studied calm—flared briefly before he championed control again. “Let’s say it’s simply that I don’t see a reason for either of us to leave the premises for a while, in which case it can stay in here.”

  He opened the top drawer of the bureau and set it inside. But his comment started Rachel wondering again.

  “Don’t you have to make a call or something to let your boss know you definitely won’t be in?” she asked.

  “Trying to get rid of me, after all?”

  “No! It’s only that yesterday you sounded somewhat…vague about how things stood between you two.”

  “Yeah, well you can relax about that, too. He was by earlier while you were taking your shower.”

  His droll tone left her feeling dubious rather than reassured. “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”

  “Maybe because he fired me.”

  “That’s awful!” This added pressure he didn’t need. “What are you going to do?”

  “Hope that Garth makes his announcement when the media’s been reporting he will. It’s only a few more days.”

  A few more days. Rachel knew she’d heard that sometime during conversations with patients or Sammy, but then the news had no impact on her life and so she hadn’t paid much attention. She wished she had; in fact, she wished she knew a whole lot more about Gideon Garth and his connections. For once, her aversion to everything political was showing her that she’d as good as bit off her nose to spite her face.

  “What about you?” Joe asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  “You mean my job?” She shrugged and slid her hands into her back pockets; she didn’t think he needed to see her fidget, which was what she felt like doing. A few more days… “I guess I’d better try going back to the clinic on Monday and grovel until Sammy lets me have my shift back. That is,” she added pointedly, “if you’re no longer considering me a hostage by then.”

  Joe reached out, hooked a finger into one of the front belt loops and tugged her toward him until they were close enough to kiss. “I’m beginning to wonder who’s the hostage to whom?”

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t know, either.”

  “It’s not.”

  She touched his cheek. “I only want to see you safe, Joe.”

  “You think I have a death wish?”

  “Of course not.” But he did have the spirit of a rebel, and that, combined with his intelligence and vitality, made her fear he’d channeled his energies toward something that could harm him while he tried to help others. In other words, he had the stuff of which heroes were made; that was always terrifying for those who had to sit on the sidelines and watch. And she’d never been a good spectator in the best of times. “I can’t help wishing you could think of another way to handle this.”

  “Believe me, I’ve considered them all. There isn’t.”

  “You could change your mind and give them the tape.”

  He released her as though she’d turned into something to be shunned, and walked to the front window. “How can you even suggest that?” he muttered, his back to her.

  “Because I think what you’re planning to do is tantamount to throwing your life away.” Rachel came up behind him, ran her fingers over his tense right trapezius muscle and, feeling it twitch, withdrew her touch. “This can’t be the only solution. There has to be another way to buy you time to mount a different, stronger case against Garth and the group he’s involved with. Please, give this a thought…I have a few contacts of my own in Washington. Not many, but good people. Once Garth announces his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, I can talk to them and they can prompt an inquiry.”

  “I’ve seen Washington’s idea of an inquiry,” he replied, his tone scathing.

  “They’re not all like that. Anyway, the point is that you’d be alive to carry on other work. The work you were meant to do.”

  “I was meant to take down slime like him and Maddox, not turn my back on their brutality in order to save my own skin.”

  “But there are so many Garths out there,” Rachel insisted. “I can’t believe—I won’t believe—he’s your only dragon.”

  Joe turned to face her, his expression steely. “Would you have let anyone ask you to forget what drove your brother to take his own life?”

  “No,” she admitted, momentarily lowering her gaze because she knew he’d made a major point. “But I’m not asking you to forget anything. I’m asking you not to get yourself killed.”

  This time she was the one who turned away. Knowing she needed something to do before she lost control completely, she went to the bed and began straightening the sheets. She felt when Joe turned to watch her, knew when he came to stand directly behind her. Straightening, she accepted his touch as he took hold of her shoulders.

  “We always come back to the bridge.”

  “How can we not?” she asked, feeling as though invisible hands were stealing the happiness they’d briefly shared, dragging it deep i
nto the mist to leave her barren and cold. She was grateful when Joe began massaging her shoulders and rubbing her arms.

  “What’s on your agenda for tonight? What time will you go back?”

  He hadn’t said, Are you going back?—as though to remind her that her choices were dependent on his consent. She tried to take some satisfaction from that, but it was fleeting and slight in the face of everything else. “I don’t know that trying anything would do much good. He was so weak last night. I’m not sure I’d be able to see him at all tonight, let alone communicate with him.”

  Joe’s hands stilled. “Do you realize you said ‘he’ this time, not ‘you’ or ‘me’?”

  “I know you didn’t like it when I did that. Oddly enough, you seem more alike now than when I first met you both.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” he muttered.

  “I meant it in the best way.”

  “You mean I’m not quite the bastard you thought I was?”

  Rachel leaned back against him and covered the arms wrapping around her with her own. “It helps to know it’s not easy for you to keep me at a distance.”

  “I’m not.” When she tried to spin around and face him, he tightened his arms, keeping her still. “Don’t go all bristly—you know what I mean. The lower my defenses get, the more potential there is to make the wrong decision if something unexpected comes up that puts you in danger.”

  She had no time to bask in even a second of joy at those words. A commotion outside had both her and Joe hurrying to the side window. As they reached it, a crow rose from the lower branches of the towering oak nearest them and returned their startled stares with an unblinking one of its own.

  On the ground, Jewel shook a broom at it and shouted, “Evil creature. Get away!” Then she broke into a tirade of gibberish Rachel could only guess was voodoo spell-casting. The bird, however, remained unimpressed and continued to gaze at her and Joe.

  “Isn’t he a strange one?” she murmured. “As much as they like scraps, the crows usually avoid getting too close to Jewel’s kitchen door.”

  “You think that’s something, you should have held off on that shower a few minutes,” Joe replied. “A bat hit this screen like an addict zeroing in on his junk.”

  Noticing the claw marks he pointed out to her, Rachel made a face. “That is odd. They usually retreat from daylight, don’t they?”

  “You call this daylight?” Joe muttered, just as Jewel picked up a stone and threw it into the tree.

  “No more tapping on my window, hear?” she warned. “Take your black heart out of here. Go!”

  Rachel had difficulty breaking away from the crow’s mesmerizing stare, but she managed. “Jewel? What happened?”

  “The devil’s been tapping on the kitchen window.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  The housekeeper’s expression reflected pure horror. “Means death’s coming to visit this house. Get away from there now. Don’t let him fix his eye on you.”

  But he already had.

  Rachel backed into Joe hard, almost sending them both toppling. At the same time, Jewel threw another rock at it, this time skimming the bird’s chest. The creature spread its wings and took flight, drawing a relieved, if spontaneous, breath from both Joe and Rachel.

  “Well, who needs television with all this entertainment?” she said with an embarrassed, nervous laugh. “I’d hate for Sammy to have seen this. He’d never let me near the clinic again.”

  After a slight hesitation, Joe replied, “Oliver would have shot it.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “What?”

  “He’s real superstitious. It comes from being raised by his grandmother, a real mean old broad who kept him in line by scaring the crap out of him. She had a pet chicken she supposedly used for casting spells on neighbors and people she didn’t like, and for his fourteenth birthday—because she wouldn’t let him go hang out with his friends for the day—he gave himself the present of borrowing a pal’s python and putting the chicken and the python in his grandmother’s bed.”

  Poor little boy, Rachel thought, wondering about such anger-driven boldness. “That was risky, though. She could have fainted from the shock!”

  “Oliver said she did, right after she killed the snake and methodically cleaned up the place. But she retaliated, too. She swore he’d hexed her. And he said that afternoon a crow came to her window and started tapping. She told him it had come for her soul. Oliver was so scared at the idea of being blamed for that, he went and shot it.”

  “That’s unbelievable.”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe I’d forgotten it.”

  “Did his grandmother survive?” Rachel asked, not sure she wanted to know.

  “Heck, yes. She even quit bullying him so much. But he did have to give up JV football and get a part-time job to buy his friend a new snake. I never could convince the old lady that if it wasn’t Harvey I didn’t want it.”

  She would have laughed had she heard this at any other time. It was a funny story, perfectly capsulizing how strong individual willpower was in overcoming the most bizarre of circumstances. But instead Rachel sat down on the edge of the bed, torn between bewilderment and dread. “I think I may be losing my mind, Joe. I can’t decide whether to be afraid of what’s happening to us, or sorry for remembering I’ve never had a pet. Not in my entire life.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Joe knew he would spend the rest of the morning brooding over Rachel’s words. This was exactly the kind of thing he couldn’t afford to hear at this stage. His life was in shambles, there was a good possibility he wouldn’t get to celebrate his thirty-sixth birthday, and he’d realized he’d fallen for a woman who might also be falling in love with a ghost. But all he could think of was Rachel as a raw-hearted child who’d grown up learning how to hide her loneliness and pain, until some clumsy-tongued cop broadsided her with reminders of it. It brought him dangerously close to wanting to hear more, to talking about his own failures and fears, to making promises about how they would have the chance to do things he had no business making promises about.

  He managed to get past the first impulses of protection and tenderness by making an offhanded excuse that he’d forgotten to go downstairs and pick up the newspaper he had delivered to the house.

  By the time he returned upstairs, Rachel had recovered. He saw it when he realized she’d not only finished straightening the bed sheets, she’d retreated to her own room.

  “I have some correspondence to catch up on,” she told him.

  She held up a sole letter. The lamest of excuses. It did, however, tell him that not only did she live as frugally as a nun, but she kept her relationships down to a spare few, as well.

  He withdrew to his own room wondering who the letter was to—specifically, if the recipient was female or male, and was it a friendship or more?

  Then he saw the headline on the front page of the paper: Garth press conference Monday at White Mills. After that even his jealousy had to take a back seat.

  Monday…which meant it would all be over sooner than he’d expected. Adrenalin surged, and relief, along with a sense of finality. Three days. He’d hoped the event was going to take place minutes from here at the Garth homestead, but White Mills had the courthouse, and he could understand Garth’s wanting a suitable backdrop for all those cameras that would be focused on him.

  Afterward he forced himself to read the rest of the paper, even the ads, in an attempt to get his racing thoughts and emotions back under control. Not only didn’t he want to waste energy getting wired too early, but there was no use in adding to Rachel’s distress. Unfortunately, the parish’s journalistic effort was a modest offering, and it wasn’t long before Joe found himself pacing again.

  “Want some company?”

  Barefooted, Rachel proved a dangerous woman. He’d lost track of how long he’d been at his post by the front window, but Joe hadn’t heard her moving. Finding her in his doorway would h
ave been disturbing if his emotions weren’t more keyed in to admiring the picture she made standing there.

  “Sure.” The reply was automatic, but as he let his gaze sweep over her, he wondered at the wisdom of the invitation. She hadn’t changed out of her blouse, and that snug knot at her midriff did nothing to keep him from glimpsing her touchable skin or appealing shape. “Get your letter done?” he asked, shifting as his body roused.

  “No. I started it several times, but I couldn’t finish. Too many things hanging in the air.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He’d finished his first cigarette of the day not ten minutes ago and found he had to consciously resist having another for the same reason. “Is it to an old friend?”

  “Almost the oldest, considering you can count my relationships on two hands and still have fingers left. She’s my ex-roommate, an up-and-coming sound editor in Hollywood. I guess all those hours of watching horrible movies with her are paying off.”

  “It’s hard to think of you being close to someone in Hollywood.”

  “You mean the cellophane image?” Rachel’s first response was a crooked smile. “Quinn would surprise you. She’s the most down-to-earth person you’d want to meet. Has a brain like a turbo-drive computer and the sense of humor of a mortician. Her only two weaknesses are movies and her hair.”

  “I can understand the movies if she’s in the business, but what’s the deal about her hair?”

  “It’s incredible. The color, the texture…a mink would kill to have it. Whenever it grows down as far as her backside, she sells a hunk of it to some makeup artists. She says, last count, the stuff’s been in five movies.”

  Joe didn’t know whether to be amused or what. But before he could think of a proper reply, Rachel spotted the paper he’d put on the nightstand. He’d neglected to mix it with the rest.

  “You don’t want to look at that,” he warned, regretting that the few moments of lighter conversation was about to come to an end.