And then following Alyssa Garner back into her house.
Chapter Nine
Despite being exhausted, Alyssa spent the next hour on the phone with her sister. It gave Caleb time to explore the downstairs without her by his side.
Apart from the aesthetics of floors that didn’t match, walls that were covered in wallpaper from the ’70s, and random bits of tile, the house was very much lived in. Books, magazines and knickknacks could be found everywhere he looked, while pictures were framed and hung with care. Caleb stopped at a few of these and tried to figure out who each person was in them, or at least, who everyone was to the woman.
The sister, Gabby, if he heard her correctly, was the easiest to spot. She made several appearances throughout the first floor. Her hair was lighter, but she had the same blue eyes. In every picture of them together, she had her arms around Alyssa. Their smiles matched too. It was contagious. It made him miss his own sister. He needed to call her soon.
Another person who was easy to connect to Alyssa was an older woman with brown hair and dark eyes but who shared the same expression as the sisters. Their mother, he guessed. She, however, wasn’t in many pictures. At least not with the girls when they were older. His smile fell as he guessed she’d passed away.
Other pictures included Alyssa with people who must have been friends. Always in groups and never one-on-one. It wasn’t until he was examining the frames in the living room for the third time that he realized what he was really looking for.
A boyfriend.
The day had been a rush, crazy and unexpected. In the time he’d spent with her, she’d only mentioned her sister. He’d assumed that meant there was no man in the picture. But, then again, maybe she was being private about it. Or had her own reasons not to bring him up.
Caleb’s eyes stopped to rest on a collage above the fireplace. In one of the pictures, a smiling Alyssa looked out at him while two men around their age stood on either side, arms wrapped around her waist. They didn’t look like her brothers.
Jealousy sprang up faster than Caleb could track it.
“I see you’ve found my attempt of making photo collages.”
Caleb turned, surprised he hadn’t heard the woman come down the stairs. He was finding that when it came to Alyssa, he wasn’t always on his game. Which could be dangerous. For both of them.
“I was trying to figure out who everyone was,” he admitted. He tapped the picture with the men and tried his hardest to look uninterested. “Brothers?”
He already knew they weren’t but felt another pulse of jealousy when she shook her head.
“Those are the sons of Jeffries and Sons,” she answered. “That’s where I work. It’s a small remodeling company that’s local. I’m sure you would have already met them if they’d been in town. The whole family does a big cruise every year. I was invited but the trial cut into it. So they shut down the shop and now I’m getting paid vacation. But they, the sons, are like brothers if that counts.” That satisfied Caleb more than it should have. “They even do that ‘don’t you hurt my sister’ speech when I start dating someone. The last guy got it the worst. They sat him down and threatened bodily harm after—” Something doused her humor on the spot. Her eyebrows knitted together. Her lips thinned. It alarmed Caleb.
“After?” he prodded. Anger was already starting to burn in his chest. If any man had laid a hand on her he’d—
“After he stopped visiting me in the hospital.”
“He stopped visiting you in the hospital?” he repeated. “You mean after the robbery?”
Alyssa nodded. With the motion the rest of her body seemed to fall.
“I mean, I can’t blame him,” she tried. “We hadn’t been dating long and then suddenly I was hospital-bound and in need of hours and hours of physical therapy. It was too much for someone who already had a busy schedule.” She shrugged, attempting to play off the hurt at being left when she had been most vulnerable.
Caleb didn’t like that, and maybe she saw it in his expression.
Hers softened.
“It’s okay,” she said. Kind despite the obvious hurt. Her pink lips formed the smallest of smiles. “Not everyone stays when you want them to.”
Caleb almost did several things in that moment.
He almost reached out to touch her, to comfort her, to let her know he was here right now. He almost turned that touch into a kiss, giving in to his curiosity about those pink, pink lips and how they felt. He almost told her that he would never have left her.
But then he realized that was exactly what he was going to do.
When he found his redemption in Riker County, he would use it to take him home.
Away from the sweltering heat and unforgiving humidity, away from the built-in familiarity between every resident, away from a department that didn’t know what he was capable of, and away from the beautiful stranger standing less than a foot away from him.
So, instead, he kept quiet.
“I guess it’s time for me to try to sleep,” Alyssa said after the moment had passed. She didn’t smile as she turned away. It wasn’t until she was at the stairs that she called back to him, “Good night, Deputy.”
Like an idiot he stood right where he was.
“Good night, Miss Garner.”
* * *
ALYSSA SLEPT LIKE the dead.
One moment her head was touching the pillow, and the next she was waking up to someone knocking on the door. Light streamed through a gap in the curtains as she tossed the covers off her and sat up.
“Yes?” she asked, fumbling for her glasses. In the process she got caught on the cord to her cell phone charger. It fell off the night table and became a blur on the floor.
“You okay in there?” Caleb asked through the door.
For one wild second she blushed, wondering why he was outside her door, when the night before came back.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she assured him, still fumbling around for her glasses. Usually she left them on the nightstand next to her phone, but for the life of her, she couldn’t lay hands on them. “What time is it?” she asked, getting out of bed and searching the floor by the sides of the little table. When that search was fruitless, she got onto her knees and looked beneath the stand.
“Eight thirty,” he called back.
“Eight thirty,” she exclaimed, sitting up. “I’m not missing the trial, am I?”
“It was officially postponed until one this afternoon.”
Alyssa let out a sigh of relief. She reached under the bed and felt around. No glasses.
How did she keep doing this?
“Hold on a second,” she said. She grabbed her robe off the ottoman at the foot of her bed and put it over her short nightgown before opening the door. Caleb’s blurry form became focused into a well-rested man dressed down in a T-shirt and jeans. “You’re never going to believe this,” she started, already embarrassed. “But I’ve—”
“You lost your glasses again?” he interrupted. He was grinning.
She nodded.
“I had them on when I got into bed so I could read a work email, but they aren’t on my nightstand.” Caleb’s grin grew wider. “Why are you smiling like that?”
Alyssa froze as the man took a step closer. He reached up to her hair.
“Probably because they are on top of your head.”
He took them off her hair. She felt heat in her cheeks.
“I can count on one hand how many times I’ve put them on top of my head,” she said, taking them from the man and slipping them on. “And of course you get to witness one of those times. I promise I’m much more of a capable human than I let on.”
Caleb laughed. It was a booming, pleasant sound. She wished she could hear more of it.
“I believe you,
” he assured her. “But I also believe you’re just really good at losing your glasses.”
“I can’t disagree with you there.” Once her glasses were on and she was refocused, she got down to business. “No one called me last night or this morning—unless I slept through it, of course—about the trial. I assumed it was pushed back to the afternoon.”
“The results from CSU came in about the fake bomb. Whoever made it was careful, precise, but it had nothing in it that could have physically harmed you. Who put it there is still being investigated, but since the act couldn’t be linked directly back to the trial, the judge thought it was pointless to delay the proceedings.”
“The entire town just wants the Storm Chasers behind us,” she agreed.
“Which is what’s going to happen,” he said. “But until then, Captain Jones needs me back at the station. I volunteered to help with the investigation since Deputy Mills took my place at the courthouse. So I was wondering, is there anyone you could call over or visit until I’m done?”
Alyssa was caught off guard by that.
“Is it necessary to keep watching me?” she asked. It sounded more blunt than she meant it to. The man didn’t seem perturbed by it.
“I think we’d all feel better about leaving you alone once we figure out who put that bomb in your car,” he answered. “Fake or not, it took a lot of effort.”
“Not to mention it was creepy.”
“That too. So, until the trial, is there somewhere else you can stay? I would offer up a deputy, but the department is spread a little thin at the moment because of another investigation.” His expression hardened a fraction. “And I don’t know anyone I can trust in the police department.”
He didn’t trust them? To do what? Look after her?
Why did he care so much? Was this just part of the job?
Calm down, Alyssa, she thought. He’s just being polite.
“I’m sure Robbie and Eleanor wouldn’t mind if I stayed with them for the morning. I could ride with them to the trial too.”
Caleb nodded. He looked relieved.
“Do I have time to grab a quick shower first?” Alyssa was suddenly hyperaware of how crazy she must look.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll wait outside.”
“Do you have time to eat with me?” she asked on impulse. That heat—a heat she was starting to associate to the man and no one else—pushed up her neck and into her cheeks at lightning speed. “I mean, we have a lot of leftovers from last night and I think I even have some cereal and, of course, some coffee.”
Caleb raised his hand and shook it.
“Not today,” he said, voice hard. “I’ll be out in the car.”
There it was again. One second the deputy showed her compassion and humor, and the next, walls were up and he detached.
What happened to him to make him that way? she wondered.
Or was it just her that turned him off?
* * *
“HE EITHER HAD an affair with a married woman, killed a man in cold blood or stole drugs from the police department’s evidence lockers.” Alyssa looked up from her email filled with work orders. Eleanor sat across from her at the table, sipping her coffee. She shrugged and continued. “Those are the three most popular reasons for why Deputy Foster was transferred to the sheriff’s department.”
Alyssa felt her eyebrow rise.
“Most popular reasons according to the gossip mill?” she guessed.
Eleanor nodded.
“You have to love small towns and their gossip mills.” Alyssa was all sarcasm. Said man had put her into a weird mood. Unlike the day before, they had driven in silence to the Rickmans’. It was like that night hadn’t happened at all. Any familiarity between them was gone. Still, she had enough humor in her to roll her eyes at what the gossipers of Carpenter had to say about the man.
“I’m just repeating what I heard,” Eleanor said.
“You know, a wise woman once told me that gossip might pass the time, but putting any stock in most of it is a waste.” Alyssa gave the woman a pointed look.
“Sounds like a smart woman, if you ask me.” A sly smile picked up her lips.
“I like to think she is,” Alyssa said, unable to keep her frown stationary. “When she isn’t listening to gossip, that is.”
Eleanor shrugged again. They quieted. It was always a companionable silence. It made Alyssa miss her mother. It had been almost ten years since she passed, and still there were moments when it felt like no time had gone by at all. Alyssa would have to resolve some of the ache of memory by giving Gabby another call after the trial was done.
“You know, there is one piece of gossip I heard that maybe wasn’t as much gossip as I would have liked,” Eleanor said after a few minutes had stretched quietly between them. She set down her coffee cup. Alyssa already didn’t like what she was going to say. The woman was frowning. “No matter what the reason for the deputy coming to town is, everyone seems to be on the same page about his future plan.”
Alyssa’s stomach did a weird flip.
“And that is?” she asked.
“When he’s done here he’ll go—”
Eleanor didn’t get to finish her thought.
The world exploded around them.
Chapter Ten
The entire house shook. Eleanor’s coffee ran off the table, cup overturned. With wide, terrified eyes, both women looked at each other, paralyzed. Somewhere in the distance a woman started to scream.
That shook Alyssa out of her haze. She got up and ran for the front door. It was flung open before she could touch the handle.
Robbie’s face was stone.
He didn’t meet Alyssa’s stare and instead searched over her head. A small look of relief crossed his face as he found his wife. Then he was back to stone.
“Stay here, Eleanor,” he said. “Please.”
She started to call after him, but Robbie turned around and ran back into the yard. Alyssa followed, nerves twisting up tight. It didn’t take long to figure out what the noise had been.
“Oh my God!”
Robbie and Eleanor lived in a bigger neighborhood than Alyssa did. It was more of a community too. The houses were closer, the neighbors were friends—some even family—and there wasn’t a time during the day when it was empty of everyone.
The Rickmans’ street curved into a half circle where cute brick houses, colorful mailboxes and green, green lawns sat on either side. Those lawns were now dotting with the men and women who were still home on the weekday.
All of them were in various stages of anguish, fear and shock.
And every single one of them was staring at the house near the end of the street.
Or what was left of it.
“Mary, call the police and fire department,” Robbie yelled out to the neighbor across the street. Being older than him and his wife didn’t stop the woman from whipping back into her house in an instant. Then Robbie was in the street and running.
Toward the house that was currently in flames.
The one that had exploded.
With her nerves tightening to the point of forming one cohesive clump of fear, Alyssa found her leg muscles pushing her to follow him.
The sounds of her heels hitting the street were quickly drowned out by the chaos around them. Neighbors were shouting to one another while a few joined in on the sprint toward the house. Some stayed in the yards, hands over their mouths and tears in their eyes.
“St-stay here,” Robbie yelled out after they made it to the front yard. Alyssa was breathing hard, but Robbie was breathing harder. Both had spent a good chunk of the last year rehabilitating from their gunshot wounds. Robbie’s journey had been more difficult.
“No, you stay here,” Alyssa retorted, adrenaline givin
g her a strong second wind. She stood tall.
The house was two stories. Or had been. The explosion seemed to have happened on the second floor, and now the yards were covered in brick, wood, glass and debris of what she guessed had been a bedroom or two. Alyssa just hoped whoever owned the house hadn’t been in one of those rooms. But a car parked in the driveway didn’t give her much hope.
“He’s—he’s home,” Robbie bit out from behind her.
Alyssa didn’t wait for permission or for one of the other neighbors running toward the house to brave the house to see if anyone had survived. The fire department was on the other side of town. It would be at least ten minutes before they showed up.
You’ve been brave before, she thought, bolstering her courage up. What’s one more time?
The front door’s glass had been shattered like the rest of the windows.
“Is anyone in here?” she yelled into the entryway. The roar and crackle of fire made it impossible to pinpoint if anyone was calling back. She stepped through the middle of the broken door. Her heels cracked already broken glass beneath her feet. She slid on a chunk of it as she ran straight into the kitchen.
“Hello?” she yelled, as loud as she could. Smoke was starting to fill up the open-concept floor plan. She wouldn’t be able to yell much longer. “Is anyone in here?”
No one responded.
Alyssa put her arm across her nose and mouth and moved deeper into the house. She didn’t stop at the stairs. No one was getting up those. Or down.
She hurried to the backside of the house. The smoke moved in faster, became more aggressive. She summoned up her middle school knowledge of when the firefighters had demonstrated what to do if the house was on fire. Obviously, she would have already failed the lesson, since she’d run into the house instead of away from it for safety. But as she couldn’t leave without checking the rest of the rooms on the first floor, she ducked low.
A small hallway led to two closed doors. Alyssa tapped the doorknob on the first and, when she found it wasn’t hot, opened it. The laundry room was empty. A small window over the washer opened up to the backyard. On the other side of the fence was another house. A man and woman stood in it, gaping at the destruction.
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