Unspoken Fear

by Hunter Morgan

  "Another month and a half is all." He rubbed her arm. "That's really not unheard of. And I understand Dr. Powers has an excellent reputation for helping people like Mattie."

  "You're right. I'm just concerned with whether or not it's safe to have him in the house." She lifted one hand and let it fall to his knee. "I hope Dr. Powers can give us some better insight into what he's capable of doing." She paused, thinking. "And even if we wanted to bring him into the house, where would we put him? Your parents' room is too big; you know how he prefers small spaces. Not to mention it's full of their things."

  "I thought about that." Noah swirled the coffee in his cup. "And I have an idea."

  She could guess what his idea was going to be by his tone of voice, and she couldn't resist a smile because she'd been thinking the same thing. She just hadn't been ready to voice it. "Yes, I'm listening..."

  "I could move upstairs with you," he whispered into her ear, nipping at her earlobe. "And Mattie could have my room."

  "I suppose that could work." She looked into his eyes, amazed that he could still make her feel this giddy inside. "We'd hear him if he came up the stairs, wouldn't we?" She pressed her lips together, trying to consider what was best for Mattie, and not think about having Noah all to herself in her bed each night.

  "We could hear him. And honestly, Rachel, we have no proof there's any reason to be worried about having him in the house in the first place. He hasn't done a thing wrong."

  "Except move the car and tractor. Possibly go somewhere in them. I swear the car was moved again two nights ago."

  "Well, if Mattie is taking the car, we'd be able to keep track of him better if he was in the house. There's no way Chester would let him leave the house at night without barking and waking us both up. You heard how he carried on with me the other night when I went out to the car to get the checkbook after you'd gone to bed."

  She chuckled. "And I thought watchdogs were supposed to keep people out of the house, not in the house."

  Noah smiled slyly. She was thinking about sleeping together, too. "This plan could work."

  "I don't know," she hedged. "There's no way Mallory is not going to notice your sleeping in my room. I'd have to talk to her, and honestly, I don't know what I would say." She made herself meet his gaze. "I'm not sure what I'm ready to say because I'm not sure I'm ready to..."

  "Not sure you're ready to give me another chance?"

  She held the warm coffee cup between both her hands, watching the rain fall on the bright green grass. "It just hasn't been that long, Noah. I mean, I know you've been good about going to AA. I know you haven't been drinking, but—"

  "Rachel, I stopped drinking the night I was arrested. Remember, I've had five years to dry out."

  "I know." She felt tears burn the backs of her eyelids. "I just... I just can't live through anything like that again, Noah. I can't subject Mallory to it, and with everything else that's going on right now..." Against her will, her voice raised in pitch. "What with Mattie and... and this crazy killer and these nightmares that won't go away. This awful feeling of impending doom..."

  "It's all right." He set down his cup and put his arm around her, drawing her closer. "Rachel, it's all right. I didn't mean to push you. We don't have to rush things. Mattie can just move into the bedroom with me."

  "There's too much junk in there," she moaned. "I can't believe I was so mean as to have put you in there to begin with. I should have cleaned your parents' room out."

  "It's been fine. I think I would have been overwhelmed in Mom and Dad's room, too. Remember, I slept in a jail cell for five years," he teased.

  She managed half a smile.

  "Come on, Rachel." He rubbed her upper arm. "We'll clean out the spare room today. Look, it's a perfect day for it." He gestured to the falling rain. "Weather channel says it's going to do this all day. We can make it a family project."

  She took a deep breath, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. "I don't mean to sound so indecisive. I don't mean to lead you on and then turn you away." She made herself look into his dark eyes. "I do love you. Guess I never stopped, as much as I might have wanted to."

  "That's all I need." He continued to look into her eyes. "It's all I want, Rachel. Your love. Mallory's. I'll take you any way you're still willing to have me."

  His words were so sweet that she felt tears well in her eyes again. "Let's think about it. In the meantime, we could clean up that mess, move some of the stuff, like that sewing machine I'm never going to use, up to the nursery." She thought for a minute. "You could go through all those boxes still up there. You haven't touched them in weeks."

  He scowled, but it only seemed half-hearted. "How did I know that sooner or later you were going to make me do that?"

  "Well, you need to do it. If you want to put what happened behind you, you need to go through that stuff. There's nothing there to be afraid of, Noah," she told him. "You've seen pictures of the boys around the house here. I know it hurts, but they're a part of us."

  "It's not the boys' pictures." He drew his arm from her shoulder and picked up his coffee cup again, staring into it.

  "What is it then?"

  "If I unpack the boxes..." He halted and started again. "If I unpack those boxes, it's like I'm going to stay."

  "I don't understand. You told me the first day you got home that you weren't moving."

  "I mean here," he said softly, gently tapping his chest, over his heart. "It means I'm going to live. I'm going to move on. I'm going to make it."

  It had never occurred to Rachel that Noah had ever feared he might relapse. Certainly the first days he had been home from prison he had seemed withdrawn, lacked much confidence in himself, but that had faded so quickly. He had been working so hard, trying so hard.

  "Oh, Noah," she breathed, holding his gaze. "Of course you're going to make it. I think... I think we're going to make it."

  He took a deep breath. Exhaled. "OK," he told her, rising from the step and offering his hand to her to help her up. "So today we clean out my room, we go through those boxes of mine upstairs, and we think about what our next move is going to be. I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't sleep together right now; maybe we should wait until we're both ready to recommit to marriage again."

  She walked across the porch, looking back over her shoulder. It was the second time this week he had mentioned them remarrying. "You're just talking about sleeping, right?" she teased. "We just shouldn't sleep together?"

  Noah tipped back his head and laughed.

  "Hey, what's so funny?" Mallory thrust open the screen door to let them in.

  "None of your business, Miss Nosy." Rachel touched her daughter's upturned nose with the tip of her finger. "Now go find Mattie and bring him here. We've got work to do."

  * * *

  Rachel had been putting off, dreading, cleaning the spare room downstairs for years and yet, somehow, Noah made it fun. He assigned tasks to each person, allowing Mattie to carry boxes and Mallory to fill bags with trash or items to go to the church thrift store. Rachel found new homes for the items they decided to keep while keeping up a steady conversation with Noah. They didn't talk about anything important—the weather, how the grape crops were faring, what kind of wine they would make this fall. It was the kind of stuff a husband and wife—partners—talked about, and it felt good.

  When the time came, after lunch, when Mallory and Mattie had crashed on the living room floor to watch a Disney movie, Rachel climbed the stairs in front of Noah. She led him to the tiny room at the top of the stairs that had once been their nursery, but after the death of their sons had become a storage closet.

  They had to turn on the overhead light and borrow a lamp from Rachel's bedroom because it was so dark in the small room on the overcast day. They sat on the floor side by side and began to pull through the boxes. Once they started Noah seemed to relax a little.

  Several boxes held clothes; some he decided to keep, but much of it was outdated enough that she convince
d him to donate it to the thrift shop. They went through books, mostly religious, most he decided to get rid of. The box of keepsakes was the hardest for Noah... and for Rachel. She had packed away the two framed photos of their little boys that he'd kept in his office at the church and the wedding photo of them and his parents, as well as a photo taken on the beach before they were married. There were more ball caps, a tin lunchbox from his childhood several yearbooks.

  They were laughing about a photo taken their senior year in high school when the phone rang. Rachel picked up the cordless phone and scooted back on the floor so that she was leaning against the wall. After a day of pulling, sliding, and carrying stuff all over the house, her back was beginning to ache.

  "Hello."

  "Good afternoon, this is Dr. Carson's office calling," said the nurse in a very cool, efficient voice. "May I speak with Mr. Gibson?"

  "Sure, just a minute, please." Rachel covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "Dr. Carson's office calling." She handed the phone to him.

  "Hello, this is Noah Gibson." He got up off the floor and walked a few steps across the small room. "Yes, thank you, I'll hold." He waited. "Dr. Carson..."

  Rachel rose on her knees, eager to hear what the doctor had to say. According to Noah, his blackouts were becoming less frequent. She hadn't witnessed another, and he said he'd only had two, that he knew of, in the last ten days. Still, she was worried because even one or two wasn't normal. She couldn't bear to think what she would do if he had a brain tumor or something horrible like that, but she couldn't totally dismiss the possibility either, until they knew for certain.

  "Um-hmm. Um-hmm."

  "What's he say?" Rachel whispered.

  "I see." Noah walked out the door into the hall.

  Rachel stared at the empty doorway for a second, unsure if she should follow him. She was a little hurt that he felt the need to walk out of the room, away from her, but she knew that was silly. A lot of people paced when they talked on the phone. She paced.

  "Um-hmm. OK, what does that mean?" she heard him say. He was getting farther away; he had to be nearly to her bedroom door.

  She had to fight the urge to get up and follow him, or at least crawl to the doorway to see if she could hear any better. She could still hear Noah say the occasional word, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. Mostly he was just listening.

  She heard him turn at the end of the hallway and start back toward her.

  "No, I don't think that will be necessary."

  She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling chilled. The dampness from the rain seemed to be seeping through the exterior wall. Through the small, rain-splattered window.

  Noah was quiet for a moment. "Entirely," he said, surprisingly forceful. "Listen, I appreciate you calling, Dr. Carson. I won't take up any more of your time."

  Another pause.

  "Certainly. I'll let you know."

  Rachel heard the phone click. He didn't even say goodbye. She realized that her heart was beating faster. She forced herself to stay right where she was until he came around the corner.

  "What did Dr. Carson have to say about the test results?"

  "He said everything looked fine. CAT scan. MRI." He set the phone on a cardboard box and leaned over to pick up one they'd marked with a black magic marker. Books. Give away.

  "There's nothing? It was completely normal?"

  "Yup. Healthy forty-year-old brain." He carried the box out of the room.

  Rachel followed. "So what did he say about the blackouts? Why are you having them?"

  "He doesn't know." Noah started down the steps.

  "He doesn't know? That's it?" She fought the panic in her chest. "I don't understand. Aren't there more tests?"

  "I suppose there are, Rachel, but I'm not taking them. It's already better." At the bottom of the stairs, he turned into the kitchen. "Could you get the back door? I'm going to put this stuff in the back of the car. We can take it to the church on Monday."

  She held open the door for him. "So that's it?"

  "That's it. If they get worse, I'll call him again. He'll send me to someone else."

  "Like a neurologist? And you don't think you should see one now?"

  "No, Rachel, I don't." He turned back toward her, box in his arms, rain falling, wetting his shirt, his hair. "I'm telling you, it's going to be all right." He stared hard at her. "Just let it go..."

  She started to say something, then pressed her lips together, cool rain hitting her face. Maybe he was right. Maybe she did need to let it go. She turned to go back into the house, mumbling something about getting another box. As she climbed the porch steps, she wondered what the real reason was that she didn't press him any further.

  Was it because she thought he was right, he was fine, or because she didn't want to consider any other possibilities?

  Chapter 28

  The phone rang and Delilah danced her way from the stove toward the opposite counter, a wooden spoon in her hand. It was Motown night and she was listening to Aretha Franklin, her idol. If Delilah could have been granted one wish, it would have been to have had a voice like Aretha's.

  "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me," she sang into the spoon, picking up the handset. "'llo."

  "Delilah."

  She smiled, licking the tomato sauce from the spoon as she parked her fanny against the counter. "Hey, I wasn't expecting to hear from you until later," she said, referring to Snowden's almost nightly late-night visits. He never stayed long, they talked almost exclusively about the murder cases, but there was no doubt in either of their minds that things were heating up between them. They just hadn't decided yet what to do about it.

  "Delilah, we found it," Snowden said, his voice thick with emotion.

  "Found it?" She walked back to the stove to stir her homemade spaghetti sauce. "Found what?"

  "The murder weapon. The machete Rachel Gibson bought."

  Delilah dropped the spoon into the pot of sauce and it splashed up, burning her finger. "Holy crap," she muttered, licking the hot sauce from her finger. "You're sure it's the machete she bought? Sure it was used to cut off Skeeter's hands?"

  "Well, it's the same model Burton's sells in their store. The only model, and it looks like blood on the blade."

  "Where is it?" She cut the flame off under the pot and headed out of the kitchen.

  "It's sitting on my desk in an evidence bag."

  "Where was it found? Who found it? The rain today—"

  "We got lucky," he interrupted. "Some kids found it under the Horsey Mill Pond Bridge. Killer must have driven over the bridge and thrown it over the side, thinking it would go into the water, but the pond's water level's been down for weeks."

  "So it stayed dry, preserving any evidence," she whispered, as if it were a miracle.

  "I hope so."

  "I'm coming." She flipped the light on in her bedroom and reached for a pair of shorts from her dirty clothes basket. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be there in ten minutes." She hung up, tossed the phone on her bed, and grabbed a bra out of the top drawer of her dresser.

  It was difficult for her to believe that Noah Gibson could be such a gruesome, cold-hearted killer but Delilah knew he was a more realistic suspect than Rachel. And Delilah was usually such a good judge of character. But wasn't that what people always said about serial killers? Wasn't that what all the neighbors had said about Wichita's BTK Strangler when they discovered how many people the devoted husband, father, and church leader had tortured and killed? These men weren't ordinary criminals; they were bright, often articulate, friendly. They had a way of convincing people they were who they wanted other people to believe they were.

  Delilah threw a T-shirt over her head, slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops, and grabbed her personal firearm off the top of the dresser. She dropped it into her purse as she went out the front door, into the dark. A girl just couldn't be too safe these days. If a man like Noah Gibson could be a murderer, anyone could.


  * * *

  "So how do you want to proceed, Sergeant?" Snowden sat back in his chair behind his desk, looking to her. His office door was open, but the building was quiet. Almost eerie quiet. The cops on duty, just three on a Sunday, were out on patrol. The only others in the building were the dispatcher behind the safety glass in the room out front and the woman who worked as the evening janitor.

  Delilah met Snowden's gaze. He wore a pair of blue jeans and an eggplant-colored polo shirt. It was one of the few times Delilah had ever seen him in anything but his uniform or running clothes, and it gave her a different perspective on him. In the civilian clothes, he didn't quite appear to be the cool hard-ass he liked people to think he was.

  "Sergeant?"

  She shifted her attention to the machete in a large plastic evidence bag on his desk in front of her, shifting gears. There was no denying those rusty stains were blood. "It goes to the lab, of course. We have the blood tested to see if it matches Newton's. We check fingerprints." She looked up, unable to smile, despite the fact that they might have the killer. "Won't be a problem matching Noah Gibson's fingerprints, if they're on it. We know he's on file."

  "You want to bring him in?"

  "Tonight?"

  "Certainly within our rights. He refused to turn over the machete when we asked to see it."

  Delilah hesitated. "Actually, it was Rachel Gibson who refused to show it to us without a warrant. She was the one being uncooperative."

  He frowned until a crease formed on his forehead. "You think she killed these people? You think she's strong enough to have held Skeeter down while she chopped off his hands?"

  "There was no evidence of a struggle at the scene."

  His frown moved downward to tug at his sensual, full lips. "You're serious? Delilah, I know this woman. She couldn't do something like this. Women aren't serial killers."

  "Tell Aileen Wuornos's victims' families that." She got up out of her chair to pace. "Two percent."

  "Two percent?"

  He was obviously annoyed with her. She didn't care. Her job was to look at the evidence objectively. She wasn't sure how objective he could be when it came to Rachel Gibson. Even if she was unobtainable and he knew it, he still had a soft spot for her. The funny thing was, Delilah wasn't even jealous. She was kind of glad to know he could have a soft spot for someone.