“I can’t believe she had anything to do with this,” Becca said. “Animals love her. She loves them. She wouldn’t—”
“I have no idea what she’d do.” He never had. “Except she didn’t escape until after I found this mess. But she came here this time, and she never did before. Why?”
“Why not? It’s home. Or at least the last home she had.” Becca cast a glance toward the front door. “Let’s go back to town.” When Owen hesitated, she took his hand and tugged. “I told George we wouldn’t stay.”
Owen didn’t want to hang around. Even though the sacrifices were gone, their memory remained. So he whistled to Reggie and they followed Becca onto the porch. He was surprised to see the sun was straight up noon. With all that had happened so far today, it should be tumbling down by now.
“I’ll drop you at your parents’.”
“Again?”
“Deb said you couldn’t stay at your place.” Any more than he could stay here. “Both yours and mine are crime scenes.”
“For completely different reasons.”
“I doubt that.”
Reggie cast puppy-dog eyes in Owen’s direction.
“Geth voraus,” Owen said. Go ahead.
The dog trotted into the underbrush—to do his business, chase squirrels, or maybe, right now, his business was chasing squirrels.
“You think Satanism has something to do with the pillow over my face?”
“I think a budding serial killer and an attempted murder are too similar to ignore. Especially in a town that previously had only my mother for entertainment.”
“Nothing connects these two crimes,” she insisted.
“Nothing,” he agreed, and started down the steps. “Except you.”
*
Owen’s words surprised me so much I stood dumbfounded on the porch as he headed for the pickup. Then I became distracted by the obvious glitch in his gait. How had he hid that from me for so long? That he’d hidden it from me at all made me nearly as sad as his having it in the first place.
Once, we’d shared everything. Those days were as gone as he’d been.
I watched Owen move, observing him like a doctor, not a lover. He wasn’t my lover, hadn’t been for a very long time. So why did I remember every dip of muscle, every swirl of his hair, the very taste of his skin?
I didn’t. Not really.
His muscles were huge where once they’d been … quite adequate. His hair was buzzed—not enough there to swirl—with flecks of gray that had not been there before. His skin was wind worn, sun touched—older, like him, like me. Would it taste differently?
I should lick him and find out.
He turned; I yanked my eyes from their perusal of points south and up to his face. Had he noticed? I hoped not.
What was wrong with me? Nothing a good roll in the hay wouldn’t cure.
I cleared my throat. “How long is your leave?”
His gaze flicked to the trees where the dog had disappeared. “It’s open-ended.”
Right. Because the military was so easygoing. I decided not to press the issue. Owen had never been the kind of person who yielded to pressure, and I doubted ten years in the Marines had changed that. However, despite his words to the contrary, he wasn’t going back to active duty limping like that.
“I should let Reggie run a bit before we go back to town, okay?” Owen set his hand on the truck as he moved to the rear, then put down the tailgate and hitched his butt onto it.
“Sure.” I sat close enough to touch, but not touching, then swung my legs above the ground like I used to way back when.
He’d had a pickup then too—a POS that he’d tinkered with constantly just to keep it running. He’d worked at the café nearly every night after school when it wasn’t football season. I’d seen him handing money to my dad more than once. My dad hadn’t taken it, but he’d never stopped offering.
“I don’t have any appointments until later,” I continued.
And no one had called all day with an emergency—real or imagined—which was so strange I took out my phone.
No service. No wonder. When we got back to the town limits, the thing would no doubt start buzzing like a beehive with missed calls and messages. Oddly, the idea that I’d missed calls didn’t bother me the way that it should. For just a minute or two, I wanted to sit in the warm autumn air with the only man I’d ever loved.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
He stared straight ahead. “How bad is what?”
“This.” I laid my hand on his thigh.
The whole world stilled. I swore neither one of us breathed. But he didn’t move away. He didn’t take my hand and push it off. So I left it right where it was.
Beneath my palm his jeans felt on fire, even though the trees shaded the sun and the bulk of the rays shone on the house and not here. I flexed my fingers, my short nails scritching on the fabric. Static snapped, and he tensed.