I remembered the reverent face of Bea Ransey leaving Keller’s office. All those years, someone had kept her no-good son from being sent up. Keller did the same for Steve. All these boys from troubled homes—and now Joshua. Another boy from another desperate family. “You save them all, do you?”
“I haven’t saved anyone lately.” I could only see his outline against the little light flooding in from the ruined roof, could barely see how he hung his head. The register of his voice had turned toward darkness—a switch thrown in the dark. I could feel him in the air; I really could feel something like . . . vibrations. Coming from him. Somehow, in the dark, I could understand something that I hadn’t before. He was laid bare. I could read his voice as easily as I could read the love written into Aidan’s name on his mother’s grocery list. “I’ve been working ten days, days and nights, on Aidan’s case, but I’m no closer than I was the first day,” he said, his voice gone thin and hoarse. “Nobody is getting saved on my watch.”
I could nearly hear his heart beating through the words he chose. I had never met anyone who said exactly who they were. But he’d gone silent, waiting for what I’d say.
“Keep talking,” I said.
A beat passed. The stilted loft air thickened; I couldn’t breathe, because I could read this, too. In the next second, he reached across the void for me and I was enclosed, the bare skin of my arms electrified against his. He put a hand against the back of my neck and pressed his mouth against mine. I met him, freeing my arms to reach for his hair, his rough cheeks and jaw, to drag my palms down the front of his shirt to feel his chest. I didn’t have enough hands for the skin I needed. I wanted to grab fistfuls. I leaned into the flat of his hands, pressing my body into his.
He put a hand on either side of my face and pulled away. He could see me, though his face was still shadowed. He dipped toward me again, and drew his tongue lightly over a corner of my mouth.
“What are you doing?” I said, starting to smile as his mouth grazed my ear.
“Licking you,” he murmured. “With my bare hands.”
I laughed. He smiled against my lips and slid his hands under my shirt and against my hungry skin.
Chapter Twenty
A woman’s voice woke me from a doze. I lurched for my shirt.
Where—?
I took a moment, not quite believing the dark, the dank smell.
“’s the radio.”
The afternoon rebuilt itself in a rush of memory. Oh, no.
Keller lay on the old wool blanket next to me. “The radio. It’s wherever my pants are.” He rose up on an elbow and blinked into the corner of the loft and up at me.
“Back there.”
“Right.” We both peered down the length of the loft. “You’re going to make me do that walk naked?”
“Your radio.”
“You’ve got that shirt.” The smile he gave me—if he could just keep doing that. If he could just keep me from thinking too much.
“Go on, I want to watch you fetch your boots,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, rising to a hunchbacked position under the eaves. “I’ve got my socks on, and so my dignity.”
“If you say so.”
He leaned low to kiss me. He had just begun to convince me when the radio squawked again. He groaned and pulled away. “Right back. Don’t forget what you were thinking there.”
I watched his ghost figure cross the dull light. The socks were ridiculous, but the rest of him required serious contemplation. He rifled through the clothing on the floor and came up with the radio from his belt. He stood with his naked ass to me and called into the dark with authority, “Yep.”
“Sheriff Keller!” It was easier to hear Sherry’s voice now that she had been liberated from the folds of his pants. “Oh, I’m so glad—look, Erickson’s people called, and they’ve got something going down, I don’t know what. He wants you to meet them here, pronto, he says.”
I sat up.
“Any ideas? Does it sound like they found him?”
Sherry said, “I don’t know. I just—maybe. It’s big, whatever it is. He’s bringing his own media, he said.”
The muscles across his back tensed. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure I was listening, and then up at the opening in the roof. “His own media. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Did you go take a look for Banning?”
“He call?”
“Yep.”
“Let him know it’ll be taken care of?”
“Sure, but, Sheriff? Pronto?”
“Pronto.” He threw the radio to the floorboards and said, “As soon as I’m wearing pants.”
“Aidan?” I said.
“Something to do with him. The attorney general is on his way.” He stood looking at the pile of clothes at his feet.
“There’s no way to know, is there? Good or bad?”
He sighed and pulled out his boxers. I watched him dress, keen for his movements, for the details of his body before they were buttoned away. “Only by getting back to the station and hearing it along with the reporters, I guess,” he said, zipping his uniform pants. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?” He reached down for some of my things at his feet and walked them over.
I crumpled the clothes against my chest.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, but I knew. As soon as I got dressed, and we climbed down from our bed in the sky, as soon as we slid out of the broken door and scrambled down the hill toward our trucks, it would be over. Whatever it was, this magic. In the half-light of the loft, I had shed more than clothes. Outside the barn, I would never be able to live with this. I stood and, finding each piece in turn, retreated within my wardrobe. “What time is it?”
“After five,” he said.
“I’m late.”
“I guess the attorney general is trying to make the six o’clock report, so there’s not another day on Aidan Watch. Do you think—”
“What?”
“Nah. Nothing.”
“Seriously?” I fumbled with the knot in the lace of my shoe, rushing now. Joshua would be home any minute. I hadn’t left a note. Most of all, I didn’t want another scene. I didn’t want another fight. I would do anything to avoid it. I would even cancel the date with Joe, and not because I had the scent of another man’s cologne on my neck. I didn’t want any of this. All I wanted was to sit Joshua down and talk. Really talk. I was tired of talking around things, of withholding. Sparing him the truth wasn’t working anymore. Maybe telling him the truth would change things.
“OK,” he said. “Do you think—knowing what you know about Leila from her handwriting—do you think she could have done anything to hurt Aidan?”
“No.” I stood up, dusting the back of my jeans.
“Not a chance? Not a single chance that she would do something—”
“No. Not even to keep him from his father.” We faced each other at the top of the ladder, the sheriff’s head ducked under the close ceiling. I thought for a moment. Could I say that? How much had I hurt Joshua to keep him from Ray? But the sheriff meant something else. “Not even to save him,” I said.
He nodded. “What do you think I’m about to go see?”