It's Never too Late

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Relieved, he backed quietly out of the room, revisiting his sound track theory for explanation of whatever he’d thought he’d heard, until the sound came again.

  Louder still. Human? Or animal? Maybe coming from the living room?

  “Ahhhh. Ahhhh!”

  Animalistic. Growing in intensity. An expression of severe pain. Looking out the front window he peered into the darkness. Had a cat been run over by a car? Or been attacked by an owl?

  From what he’d heard at the plant during his first shift of work the day before, wildlife in Shelter Valley was nothing like the nonhuman inhabitants he’d grown up with in West Virginia. Cats and dogs weren’t safe roaming the streets in the desert. The food chain was far too active. Lizards ate crickets. Rattlesnakes ate lizards. Roadrunners ate rattlesnakes. Coyotes ate roadrunners. And rabbits and dogs and cats, too.

  They also had a distinct howl. That happened mostly at night. A desert mating call he’d been told. Was that what he was hearing?

  “Help!”

  One word. Completely legible. Mark flew out the front door.

  * * *

  THE SCREAMING WOULDN’T STOP. Her throat was on fire. Burning. Hurting so badly she couldn’t suck in air. And still she screamed. But sound wasn’t coming out loudly enough.

  Others were screaming, too. As long as they all kept screaming they would be okay. They’d be together. They just all had to keep screaming. She was crying, too. Tears clogged her throat. Choked her. But she couldn’t stop screaming. She had to let them know she was still there.

  So they could find her.

  She wasn’t sure where she was. She just had to let them know.

  One of the other screams stopped. Or maybe she just couldn’t hear it because she was making too much noise. But she wasn’t making enough. They had to know she was here. Still screaming.

  But she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t keep breathing. And screaming. She had to.

  Another scream stopped.

  Was she the only one?

  But there was hollering. Really loud. Male hollering. Was that good? Or bad? Should she be quiet now?

  Let her throat just hurt until she couldn’t feel it anymore? That’s all “here” had become. Her burning throat. And hollering.

  And...

  Addy bolted upright. The T-shirt and running shorts she’d put on when she got out of the shower clung to her. Sweat dripped down her neck and the sides of her face.

  Head pounding, she jumped to her feet.

  Someone was hollering. It wouldn’t stop. Spinning around, she whimpered. A frightened sound. Weak. One she recognized. And didn’t.

  The pounding didn’t stop. The urgency in the male voice echoing her dream. She moved toward the sound.

  Stood on cold tile. Her house had wood floors. Hotels had carpet. And...

  “Adele! Adele, open the door! Let me know you’re okay. I’m calling the police.”

  Adele. Realization slammed home with brutal force and she fell against the front door of her rented duplex.

  “Don’t! Don’t call the police. I’m okay,” she said, praying that she sounded normal. And she absolutely did not want Greg Richards called to her home. Everyone in town would know. The sheriff’s calls went out on radio. And enough people in Shelter Valley listened in—to offer aid in case of emergency—to ensure that those that didn’t would know by morning if a woman new to town had an emergency.

  She had to stay under the radar if she was going to make this work.

  “Open the door. Let me see that you’re all right.”

  She peered through the peephole. Mark stood there, cell phone to his ear.

  And the inanity of her first thought—that he didn’t have a smartphone—brought her more completely back to reality.

  She pulled open the door.

  “What happened?”

  She had to get rid of him.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look like hell.” He stood firmly in the doorway, staring at her, and then past her.

  “I wasn’t expecting company. I just got out of the shower.”

  “I don’t mean your... Your looks are fine,” he said, glancing her up and down quickly and then focusing on her eyes as though he was avoiding the rest of her. “You’re flushed. Your bangs are sticking to your forehead. And...you’re shaking.”

  Men weren’t usually so observant. Leave it up to her to move next door to one who was. “Are you here alone?”

  He motioned for her to nod or shake her head in lieu of a spoken answer.

  She nodded. And then added, “Yeah, I’m here alone.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I come in and check, will you? Either that or I call someone else to do so.”

  He wasn’t giving up. And while a small little something deep inside of her was comforted, Addy didn’t want anyone in her house. She didn’t want anyone near her at all.

  She especially didn’t want the sheriff of Shelter Valley at her door.

  “I’m fine,” she said aloud. To Mark. And to the rest of Shelter Valley, too. But she stood back and held open her door.

  Better Mark than anyone else.

  He made quick work of checking out her living quarters—helped, she suspected, by the fact that his unit was identical to hers.

  She waited in the living room. Stood by the couch with her arms crossed against her chest and held on until she was alone again.

  “There’s no TV on.”

  “I don’t watch a lot of TV.”

  “No radio, either.”

  Did he have a problem sitting quietly with his own thoughts? Or think it odd that someone else chose to do so?

  Not that she entertained personal thoughts all that much. Most of her quiet time was spent pondering other people’s problems. And more particularly, figuring out solutions to their problems.

  Or holding internal debates with opposing counsel in an attempt to prepare herself for anything with which she might be presented.

  “I heard you.”

  “Excuse me?” Did he want her to believe he was a mind reader?

  “You were in pain. Crying out. I heard you.”

  The nightmare.

  The screams. They’d been real?

  She hadn’t had an episode like that in years. Not since she was a kid.

  “I fell asleep on the couch,” she said. “I must have been dreaming.”

  “That was more than a dream. Care to talk about it?”

  Dare she hope he’d believe that she didn’t remember? Did she really want to step so far into her alternate persona that lying became habit?

  One of the reasons Addy spent so much time alone was because if she was in a situation where she couldn’t hold her tongue, she’d tell the truth even when it hurt. Her, or someone else. She didn’t like causing pain. But she disliked lying even more.

  It made her a horrible lawyer. And a great one, too. She hadn’t lost a case. But she had turned down a number of them.

  Mark touched her hair, ran his fingers down it to her shoulder and then stood back. “You’re still shaking.”

  Staring at him, she nodded. He was so gentle. So...there.

  “You should sit.”

  What was it about this man that sparked her interest and felt safe at the same time? And what was wrong with her that she was open to either?

  She sat.

  So did he. And she didn’t tell him to leave.

  “Maybe it would he
lp if you talked about it.”

  She shook her head. It wouldn’t. “I closed the window,” she said as the thought occurred to her.

  She’d been on the phone with Will and needed to make certain she had complete privacy. Classes started the next day. It would be the last time she spoke directly with him until she turned in her report.

  For all intents and purposes she was alone in Shelter Valley. She’d hung up the phone and remained sitting on the couch after the call. Preparing herself. Warding off the memories...

  She’d fallen asleep.

  “You want me to open the window?” Mark asked from outside her private hell. “Are you hot?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I’d like the window open. But I can get it.” She stood. So did he. And she sat back down.

  So unusual for her.

  “The kitchen window, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Of course, it opens to the backyard.”

  It opened to the fountain.

  She waited. Listening. And felt a lessening of the constriction in her chest when she heard the familiar tinkling. Water was right there. As always. She was in her own life. Her adult life. She was perfectly fine.

  She didn’t have to listen for anyone. Didn’t need anyone to save her. Didn’t need anyone, period.

  Mark sat down.

  Nonnie had told her he’d pulled a man from an explosion.

  She shuddered.

  “Tell me about it.”

  She looked him over—six feet of muscled, gorgeous male, acting as if he had all the time in the world. For her.

  A man who cared for his grandmother when a more logical choice would have been to put her in an assisted-living facility.

  “I don’t know your last name.”

  “It’s Heber.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty.”

  “I’m thirty-one.”

  He shrugged and watched her as though waiting for more.

  “Do have them often?”

  “What?”

  “The nightmares.”

  “No,” she assured him quickly, in case he was worried that hearing her “crying out” as he’d put it, would be a regular occurrence. “Not since I was a kid.”

  “A young kid or a teenage kid?”

  The question was innocuous. His presence oddly calming. “Teenage.”

  “Something happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  She didn’t offer more. He didn’t ask.

  He’d pulled a man out of an explosion. He knew about the heat...

  “I was in a fire.”

  His expression intensified, as if she’d hit a nerve. As if he knew...

  “I was five,” she said, because it was the easiest part to tell.

  “Were you burned?” He glanced from her face to her bare legs and arms.

  “Some.” The final skin grafts she’d received when she was in high school had taken care of the worst of the scarring, smoothed all the edges. What was left, no one saw—not even her. “The worst damage was internal. Smoke inhalation.”

  And psychological, if she wanted to believe the things the counselors had told her. Gran had insisted she talk to them, but she’d never felt the need.

  Still didn’t.

  She was like her mother. Strong. Determined. Positive.

  Gran had hated Ann Keller—because she wasn’t of the faith she’d raised her son to be, and her son had left the church to marry Ann.

  Gran had refused to attend the wedding and disowned them both. They’d died before she had the chance to make things right.

  It was Gran’s biggest regret. And the reason she’d spent every second of the remainder of her days dedicated to Addy’s life and happiness.

  “Was anyone else hurt?”

  The constriction was back in her chest. And her throat. She stared at Mark wide-eyed, as though, if she tried hard enough—filled her vision with enough of him—she could block out the memories choking her.

  “Who was hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where were you?”

  Here. In Shelter Valley. “Home.”

  “Your house caught on fire?”

  She nodded.

  “Were you in bed?”

  Another nod.

  “Being five, you wouldn’t have been left home alone.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  And then his entire being softened. It was as though he reached out, wrapped his arms around her and cushioned her from life’s blows.

  As if anyone could do that.

  “Were there any other survivors?”

  Addy shook her head.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT WAS LATE. He had to be out of bed at six the next morning so he could prepare breakfast and pretend he wasn’t paying attention to Nonnie’s morning routine as she got herself up and around. Afterward, he’d get ready to leave for class.

  But right now, Mark wasn’t about to leave Adele Kennedy. Even though her blank expression told him she didn’t want to talk about what happened on the night of the fire anymore.

  He had more questions for her, but they’d have to wait.

  “Do you have a DVD player?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any movies?”

  “I have Netflix.”

  He had an account for Nonnie, too. She watched it through the secondhand PlayStation he’d picked up from a guy at the plant the previous Christmas.

  “You ever watch Andy Griffith?”

  Her smile was mostly dead, but it was there. “Who doesn’t?”

  “The town I grew up in is a lot like Mayberry, even now. We have one sheriff and he’s got a couple of deputies and they pretty much keep everyone in line.”

  “I have a feeling this town is pretty much the same way.”

  “Maybe. How about you? Where’d you grow up?”

  “Colorado.”

  “What part?”

  “A suburb of Denver.”

  “That’s where your grandmother lived?” She’d told him, the first time they’d met, that she, like him, had lived with her grandmother.

  Now he knew why.

  She nodded.

  “You want to watch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show?”

  She blinked and looked at him as though he’d suggested they eat chocolate for breakfast. And then she smiled a real smile. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

  Opening the drawer next to her, she pulled out a couple of remote controls and within minutes they were engrossed in a world where good always won out over evil, kids were safe and you just knew that everything was going to be okay.

  * * *

  MARK HEBER WASN’T the only person who knew about the fire. He was just the only person in her adult life whom she’d told.

  It didn’t really mean anything. He understood fire. And he only knew that a house had gone up in flames. Not where the house had been.

  He had no knowledge of the circumstances....

  She wasn’t even sure Will Parsons knew the whole story. Sheriff Richards could find out the official version—if he had a mind to. Maybe he already had.

  But from what little Gran had told her, and the things she’d overheard, she knew the official version had been adjusted.

  Okay, fudged. Mostly for her sake.

  If a man committed murder and then suicide, insurance wouldn’t pay. If he simply died in a fire with the
rest of his family, it would.

  And if the man was a firefighter, one of their own, if he’d risked his life over and over for the good of the town, if he’d only made one mistake in his life, then the powers that be—which in this case meant the firefighter’s best friend, who also happened to be the fire marshal—could fudge a report.... Which meant, in turn, that the man could get away with murder.

  Her father’s best friend had stopped in to visit Gran several years later...to ease his conscience and make sure his lies had done good—not harm. He’d come to check on Addy.

  And she’d overheard more than she should have.

  She’d been twelve at the time.

  Gran had been right to cut her off from Shelter Valley so completely. She’d been back for a week and she was already falling apart.

  Or she would be if she allowed herself to dwell on the past. If she gave in to the self-pity that Gran had taught her to avoid. As a child she’d had every reason to feel sorry for herself.

  But if she’d done so, she would never have found the focus to finish law school. Never have been able to contribute to society as she did, making her life worth living.

  As it was, Addy left for classes Monday morning, determined to take life head-on and win. She had a job to do. A job she wanted to do. If someone was out to frame Will Parsons, Addy was going to do everything she could to help Greg Richards find the evidence he needed to arrest the creep.

  She wasn’t in Shelter Valley on vacation. She wouldn’t visit any of the places she’d been with her parents, wouldn’t drive by the school she’d attended with her brother, or see the park where they used to play. She’d attend her classes. Stick her nose in every nook and cranny on campus—she’d never spent time there as a child. Most of the research could be done from her duplex. And when she needed groceries or anything else, she’d shop in Phoenix—or at the new big-box store outside of town.

  She wouldn’t develop relationships with anyone. Not even the casual kind. She wasn’t here to stay. And had no intention of ever coming back.

  Couldn’t have anything calling her back.

  Her mind firmly set, Addy sat through an introductory botany class and a first-year biology class, watching students, analyzing teacher response, and then headed to the campus bookstore with a wad of cash to purchase textbooks she’d sell back just as soon as she could.