They wouldn’t be back in the morning, either. He’d bought himself a day with the story of Abigail’s contagious virus—a stomach virus, he’d explained to the families, lots of vomiting, the doctor would want her to rest and hydrate, give her body a chance to recover, certainly they were too professional to expose the clients to such a virulent ailment.
She’d need every moment of that recovery time when he was finished with her, Marsh thought furiously, spinning the Honda’s steering wheel and guiding the sedan swiftly around the corner. It was only a few blocks to the convenience store. He could have walked there in the time it would take to drive and park again, but he had a sinking feeling he’d be chasing Abigail all over town half the night.
At the convenience store, he parked by the front door and waited, engine idling quietly, watching a few customers come and go. He didn’t see Abigail inside, and the clerk at the register was a woman, not the idiot he’d spoken to earlier. Even better; he preferred to talk to women, anyway. When the last customer drove away, Marsh went inside.
He scanned the aisles quickly on his way to the refrigerator wall at the back, where he selected a soda and took it up to the register. Abigail wasn’t crouching behind a display or sitting in one of the booths in the café area near the coffee stand and fountain drinks.
“Hey,” said the clerk, smiling.
“Hey, yourself,” Marsh replied with a big grin. She was a cute little number, a bit long in the tooth, but she took care of herself. No dark roots in the blond hair, though it was teased too high for his personal preference. Not too much makeup, except where her mascara clumped. Her top fit her body nicely without looking trashy. “Hope it’s been a good one for you. You must be about to head home to your hubby and a good dinner.”
She laughed and turned his soda around to show the barcode to the reader. “Not me, no. Hubby’s long gone to hell or Arizona, I don’t care which, not that I could tell the difference. Got a while left on shift, too.”
Marsh fished slowly in his wallet, buying time while he thought about how to get the information he wanted from her. “A shame, great-looking gal like you.”
“Well, hey, thanks.” Her cheeks went pink, just a little, and Marsh smiled even wider.
“But speaking of great-looking gals, I was wondering if my own gal’s been here. She’s late getting home. I figured I’d swing by her work and give her a ride home, but they said she left a while ago. Sometimes she stops off here on her way home. Seen her? I hate to sound like a worrywart, but you know how it is.”
The clerk shot her hip to the right and gave him another smile. “Least someone cares about her, right? What’s she look like?”
“She’s got long brown hair. She likes to wear it in a ponytail. Probably in jeans and a blue shirt, if she just got off work. Big gray eyes. Bet she looks tired, too.”
The woman thought for a moment, took the five he held out and pursed her lips. “I don’t think I’ve seen her.”
“Maybe it was before your shift, then. Is the other guy still here? Maybe I could talk to him, too.” Get a real good look at the jerk who’d had his hands all over Abigail. Unbuttoning her shirt. Letting down her hair. Touching things that didn’t belong to him.
He hadn’t said it just right, or maybe he didn’t have his face blank enough. Either way, Marsh knew the moment he’d lost the connection. She straightened up and gave him a long, cool stare before counting out his change. She put it on the counter between them instead of putting it into his hand. She closed the cash drawer, and then took a step back. “He’s not here,” she said slowly. “Tell you what, why don’t you leave your phone number, and I’ll mention you stopped in. He can call you, maybe.”
Marsh pasted a smile on his face again. “That’s okay. She’s probably just taking the scenic route. She likes the park. I’ll try her there. Thanks for your help.”
Thanks for nothing.
“Sure you don’t want to leave your number?” She pushed a pad of paper and a pen toward him.
So you can give it to the cops? Think I’m stupid?
Marsh shook his head and took his change and his soda. “Thanks, anyway. I’m sure she’s just stopped at a friend’s or something like that. I’m sure I’m worrying for nothing.” He tried another smile, but it felt false on his face. He lifted the soda bottle in a cheery toast and kept his stride even, pace calm. Not a worried man, no. No reason to be worried.
The Honda started right up, as always. But Marsh looked at the glass front of the convenience store, where the clerk stood looking out at him, a pen and a pad of paper in hand.
“You’d better not be writing down my license plate number, bitch,” he muttered under his breath, fighting the urge to screech the Honda out of the parking lot and into the street with the accelerator pressed to the floor. His heart gave a thud at the idea of the cops showing up at his house, asking about a woman who hadn’t come home from work. A check on Abigail’s welfare. For the first time the chance of Abigail reporting him to the cops seemed possible. Always before now he’d had her within arm’s reach, where he could talk her around, explain to her how things worked, how crazy she made him. Crazy with love and desperate to keep her. He’d given up his life in Jacksonville to move to this pissant town, all because Abigail was here.
God, he loved her. Now she was his, the way she should have been from the start, before Gary somehow got between them. Marsh had seen her first, but it was Gary who’d managed to hook her, and Marsh had never figured out how that had happened. Somewhere between one bottle of beer at a neighborhood barbecue and the next, Abigail was laughing at Gary’s stupid jokes and sitting next to him on the edge of her cousin’s swimming pool. Marsh could still see her long tanned legs dangling in the water, the skirt of her sundress above her knees to keep it from getting wet. Then she and Gary started dating, going for long walks and dinners, having heart-to-heart talks that didn’t include Marsh.
Marsh would find her; he had to. He hadn’t worked this hard only to have her run away.
Thinking about the barbecue reminded him of the most logical place to look: Judy and Drew’s house. They were easily a mile away, but Abigail had had all afternoon to walk there. If she was anywhere, she would be at her best friend’s house.
Marsh slowed to a stop at the next corner, got his bearings and headed north, thinking all the while about the first time Abigail had taken him to Judy and Drew’s for a barbecue, not all that long after they’d put Gary in the ground. He replayed the evening in his mind.
“Turn left?” Marsh had asked.
“Yes. Judy and Drew live in that blue house—right here.”
“Where is it you know Judy from, again?” Marsh guided the Honda to the curb. It was quiet and sweet in the cabin of the car, with Abigail in the passenger seat. Sweet, so sweet. He liked when their elbows brushed, liked the way her light perfume fragranced each breath he took.
“She used to help me and Gary out sometimes, when we first opened the day care.”
“Oh, yeah. What’s Drew do?”
“He’s a mechanic. Got his own shop.”
Marsh and Abigail had been out to dinner a few times in the past couple of months, but this was the first time any of her friends would meet him since Gary’s funeral. They stood by the car a moment. Abigail must have noticed him biting his lower lip, because she spoke softly as she came around the back of the car.
“What’s up, Marsh?”
“I was just wondering if we turned off the iron. Maybe we should go back and check.” He really wasn’t in a party mood; he would rather be back at Gary’s—Abigail’s—house, having a quiet dinner in the kitchen, and maybe some television after. They’d sit on the sofa, only a foot or so apart. Where he could touch her, if he wanted.
“It shuts itself off after a few minutes. Gary was so forgetful, it was easier to buy one that remembered for him.”
He nodded, reaching into the backseat for the fruit salad they’d brought for the potluck. Abigail touched his arm. “They liked Gary. They’ll like you.”
“I’m not Gary.”
Abigail was clearly touched by his insecurity. Her smile was gentle and understanding. “Just stick close to me, then.”
The party was on Drew and Judy’s big patio in the backyard. Marsh was friendly to others, but attentive to Abigail, bringing her drinks and surprising her with a filled plate from the buffet table as she sat talking with one of Judy’s neighbors. He stood behind her and reached for an occasional nibble.
“You know, they’ll let you have your own plate, Marsh.”
“Yours tastes better.” Marsh laughed. The neighbor smiled at their banter. They were a couple, weren’t they? It was apparent to others already.
Yes,
he thought now.
That’s where Abigail will be. Having coffee, getting sympathy from that bitch Judy, telling lies about me to explain why she isn’t home tending to her business.
He parked and got out of the car. It was time for Abigail to come home, where she belonged. His fists clenched at his sides and he shook them out, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, loosening up, before he strode up the walkway to the little blue house. He couldn’t arrive at the door angry. Drew was probably there.
Halfway to the door, Marsh turned around, went back to the car and drove around the corner before turning in a neighbor’s driveway and driving slowly back, to park two houses down. He turned off the engine and the lights, and simply watched. Drew might be there, and he’d certainly understand Marsh’s desire to have Abigail back at home where she belonged, but maybe Marsh would have a chance to see for himself just how traitorous Abigail had become.
Because what if...just maybe...Drew was the man Abigail had run off with?
Marsh sat in the early twilight, strong fingers drumming on the steering wheel, watching Drew and Judy’s house. Thinking.
Planning.
* * *
“Abigail? Do you understand me?” Cade asked her a second time for agreement, looking into her cloudy gray eyes. Though she was meeting his gaze, she was far away in her thoughts, and they weren’t happy ones, judging from the faint vertical line between her silky brows, and the tightness of her lips. Strands of her hair had escaped her ponytail and were sticking to the sides of her face and her neck. Cade knew a sudden urge to lift them away and put them back where they belonged, or to loose her hair entirely, watch it catch the bright light.
At last she nodded. “I won’t try anything stupid. Promise.”
“Good.” He released her, moved behind her and used the short, thick blade of his pocketknife to cut the cable ties that served as impromptu handcuffs. The skin of her wrists was reddened where she had strained against the bonds, but unbroken, and not bruised. It was velvety soft where he touched it, slightly moist with sweat. He watched her shoulders slump in relief at the release of tension. She massaged her wrists and shoulders briefly before standing to examine the contents of the first aid kit.
“Sit down,” she told him, adding “please” when he raised an eyebrow at her. He sat with his back away from her, so she’d have to reach around him to get to the gun, jammed tight in the back of his waistband. He gestured to Mort to wait not far away. The dog retreated to a blob of dark shade under a nearby scrub oak, and turned to face them.
“He’s got the right idea.” Abigail nodded toward the dog, opening a package of gauze pads and wetting two. “It’s really hot out here. Shade would be nice. I’m going to wash the area of the cut. Speak up if what I’m doing hurts.”
Cade felt her slim fingers probing at the wound, assessing the shape and size of the goose egg. Then came the welcome cool of the wet cotton, soaking first, and then gently swabbing away blood from his hair and skin. He sat alert, though it was more for show than need. She seemed absorbed in her task, dabbing, remoistening the pads and setting them aside as they became red with his blood. She was close enough that he could smell her skin, acrid with leftover fear and adrenaline, perspiration, an undertone of soap. She moved his head from one position to the next like someone who was comfortable touching others. An image of Abigail mending the cuts and scrapes of a child snagged in the screen of his mind. The abruptness of the thought and his vague, negative reaction to it startled him.
I hope I’m not keeping her away from her kids. But then, if there are kids at home, maybe they’re the reason she left. Sometimes they get to be too much. I don’t think I ever want kids.
He knew she was widowed, but how many people were in her family? The urge to know the answer was too strong, so he began to lead her to an answer.
“You seem like a pro at this first aid thing.”
She replied promptly, though her tone was a little distracted. “Just part of a day’s work. I get first aid and CPR training every year.”
“Kids, huh? How many?”
“No, none.”
He was pleased and relieved by her answer. “Nurse?”
“Adult day care. Hold still.... I’m going to probe around the edges of this lump. I can’t tell you how sorry I am you got injured.”
Adult day care. He thought about that for a while. It didn’t jibe, the idea of Abigail as a skilled health care professional and the fact she was a car thief. People who took on that kind of responsibility didn’t just walk away from their lives without cause. Nothing about her jibed, not yet.
“Lots of accidents like this in adult day care?”
Her mouth quirked in a rueful smile that made his fingers itch to touch the curling corner and the dimple just beside it. Under the mask of strain she was an attractive woman, if too thin. “If you mean do I take corners too fast when transporting my clients, and give them all head injuries...no. But things get knocked over and break, and then someone tries to help pick up the pieces and gets cut. Or someone will have a seizure. Sometimes the stress is too much for one of them and they think hitting their head on the wall again and again will help. Even obsessively gnawing hangnails until they bleed. Things like that.”
Abigail put her palms on his cheeks and tilted his head far to one side. She didn’t hesitate to touch his scarred face.
You get points for having balls, Abigail. Most people shy away from that on first sight. Almost none would be willing to touch me.
Her hands were gentle but firm, unintentionally caressing, and an image flitted through his mind of her bending to kiss him. Cade was thankful she couldn’t read his inappropriate thoughts. The idea of dragging her ass—and it could be a great ass if she weren’t so thin; he’d noticed the upside-down heart shape of it already—to the sheriff in Wildwood appealed less and less.