Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book (6 page)

“Just a little closer!
Ash, seriously, they aren’t kids.” Morgan cupped her hands around her eyes and
peered out the window. “Who
is
that?”

I drove up a little farther.
I felt kind of guilty invading these people's privacy like this, but now I was
curious about what Morgan thought she saw.

I pulled forward until
we were about thirty yards from the car.

She was right. The
couple definitely weren’t
kids. I could see the man’s back
more clearly now. He was older. He was rhythmically thrusting away, then for a
moment he threw his head back and I could see that his hair was gray. And so
was the woman's.

“Oh my God,” Morgan
squealed quietly. “They’re not stopping! It’s like they don’t even see us. Can
you tell who it is?” Morgan asked through a fit of suppressed giggling.

The man threw his head
back once
again,
the woman’s legs clutched tightly
around his ass, and arched his back. They whole hay bale shuddered.

“Oh God,” I said,
disgusted.

“Can you tell who it
is?”

I had no idea. It was
too far away to tell.

The man rolled over
onto his side, then his back, managing to keep his balance atop the hay bale. I
couldn’t believe it, but the woman threw her fleshy leg up and straddled him.
She was plump, and her big ass shone white in the headlights.

“Oh my
God
!” Morgan squealed. “They’re going
again!”

The woman continued
swaying on top of him, completely oblivious to our presence, or, somehow, not
caring that we were there.

What was going on?
Something was off. I didn’t know any middle-aged people who would ever act like
this, especially not after a body was found at the high school and half the
town was under lockdown. And it wasn’t even a full moon.

“What’s
happening
around here?” I said out loud.

I was suddenly aware
of the night's darkness surrounding the car. I also remembered the weirdly
charged rush of erotic energy I felt when Morgan reached between my legs.

Something wasn’t
right. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but I was scared. I needed to drop
Morgan off, collect myself, and get things straightened out. In fact, what I
really wanted to do was talk to Ian as soon as possible. Whatever was
happening, he would know what to do better than anyone.

I put my car in
reverse, turned around, and started back down the highway.

“Ashley!” Morgan
pleaded. “I wanted to see who that was! I couldn’t even see the car.”

I kept driving.

“Well, whatever.”
Morgan settled back into her seat. She was too hungover to put up much of a
fight.

For a moment she
looked at me as I drove, and I could tell she was as perplexed as I was at
everything that had been happening.

She shook her head
slowly. “What is
going on
?”

* * *

Morgan
lived in a tiny rental house on the Hershel ranch, the property that had
abutted my family’s ranch for generations.

When we were younger, sometimes
Morgan and I used to sneak into the little clapboard house to drink and smoke. Mr.
Hershel looked like one of those classic, old, grizzled cowboys, but he was
really softhearted. He used to tear up whenever he had to slaughter cattle. He
knew we used his house, and I’m sure he smelled the scent of cigarette smoke we
left behind, but he never said anything to my parents about it. He even had the
place fixed up a little before he started renting it to Morgan, and he charged
her practically nothing.

When I pulled up to
drop Morgan off, I eyed the little house’s dark porch apprehensively.

“Are you
gonna
be okay?” I asked her. “You can stay with me and
Shawn, if you want. Maybe until everything settles down?”

Morgan slapped my
knee. “You’re a sweetheart,” she said, “but I just want to get into my own bed
and sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Ash. Of course.”

She opened the door
and stepped out.

“Well,” I said, “call
the house number if you need anything. I lost my phone.”

“Oh, shit,”
Morgan
said. “Really?” Then she laughed. “What a night. I’ll
be fine. Call me tomorrow.”

She closed the car
door. I kept my headlights shining on her porch until she was inside and had
the lights turned on.

The house I rent with
Shawn isn’t far past my parents’ ranch. I was there in a couple of minutes.

None of the lights
were on. My house was as dark as Morgan’s.

Shawn’s pickup must
have been inside the garage, because the driveway was empty. I hurried to the house.

The door was locked.

We almost never locked
our front door. I knocked.

I waited. I knocked
again, louder, and this time I called Shawn’s name.

Nothing. My husband
wasn’t home.

Shawn was
always
at home if he wasn’t working.

I tried not to panic.
I’d been so apprehensive about confronting him that I’d just assumed he’d be
there.

I got back into my car
and drove straight to Ian and Danielle’s house, which was only a couple of
miles past ours.

But there were no
lights on at their place, either. Their door was locked, too. When I knocked I
was met only with a deep, disquieting silence.

I regretted not making
Morgan come home with me. I’d never felt more alone. The sky was perfectly
clear and moonless, and all of the stars shone down on me icily as I walked
back to my little car.

My parents’ house was
my last bet. I tried not to think about the possibility of finding their place
abandoned and silent, too.

I drove back up the
highway, still not passing a single car.

I turned and drove
under the big
Travis Ranch
sign
spanning the dirt road. I’d always thought the sign was tacky and worn out, but
now I found it comforting in the dark of night.

The old farmhouse I
grew up in sits just over a low rise. As I followed the road up the hillside,
the house’s upstairs windows became visible first. None of them were lit. I
braced myself.

But when I reached the
top of the rise, I saw vehicles crowding my parents’ driveway. The front porch
light was on. Shawn’s truck was there, and so was Ian’s SUV.

I’d never been so happy
to be home. I sped down the driveway and pulled up behind my dad’s hay truck.

Then I remembered
Haley and what had happened last night.

What if everyone had
gathered here at my mom and dad’s because it really had been Haley who’d been
attacked at the fair? What if she’d been hurt, or worse? And what if, while all
this had gone on, I’d been out partying, sleeping around with God knows who and
out of reach all day?

I knew I was probably
overreacting, but I ran up the steps and threw open the front door, bursting
through the entryway.

The first thing I saw
was Haley, lying at the bottom of the staircase.

Her head was resting
against the lowest step. She was in her pajamas.

In each of her hands
was a small bronze horse. These were the prizes at the
horse-racing
pinball game at the fair. Every time you won, you traded up for a bigger horse.
Danielle and my parents must have taken her to the carnival last night, then
brought her home as planned, safe and sound. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Aunt Ashley!”

My niece sprang to her
feet and ran toward me, a toy horse in each hand.

“She’s here!” Haley
shouted. “Aunt Ashley’s here!”

I knelt down and right
away, before even hugging me, Haley sat on my knee.

“Look,” she said,
carefully displaying the pair of bronze horses as if they were small birds
perched in her hands. “I got one, and grandpa got one,” she whispered. “But he
gave his to me.”

My dad rushed into the
entryway.

I’d never seen him
look this way. He had an expression of utter relief when he saw me. I’d had no
idea what I’d been putting them all through.

He was in the same clothing
he always wore—a striped farmer’s shirt and faded jeans—with no boots
on, and his eyes were misty as he strode toward me and put his arms around me.
I could smell the hay dust on him, just like I always could whenever he used to
hug me.

“Oh, thank God,” he
said. “You’re here. You’re here.”

Now my mom appeared,
and right behind her came Danielle and Ian. Even my nephew Tyler slouched over
for my big return.

Everyone had been waiting
for me. I hadn’t even considered that anyone besides Shawn would know I’d been
gone.

My dad let go of me,
and now my mom stepped forward, her arms folded. I could tell she was waging an
inner battle between relief and being totally pissed at me. It looked like the being-totally-pissed-at-me
side was winning.

“I sure hope you have
a good explanation for all this,” she said. My mom was small but tough,
especially during moments when she had to be emotionally strong. She gave me a
quick hug,
then
held on to both of my shoulders. “Do
you know how worried Shawn’s been?” she whispered, glancing upstairs. “I’ve
never seen him so sick with worry.”

Just then my husband
appeared at the top of the stairs.

He looked as if he’d
been crying, and he was as pale as he’d been in the locker room the night
before. His expression reminded me of the one he wore during the days after his
accident, and during the endless months he'd spent in the hospital with pins
holding his spinal column together.

He didn’t say
anything. For a moment he just stared down at me, folding his arms around his
now-pudgy frame, and I just stared back up at him, not knowing what to say, and
everyone else just watched silently. I realized I’d been holding out hope that
somehow, for some reason, it would turn out that it had been Shawn who I’d been
with in the motel last night. I’d hoped that we’d both gotten so drunk that
maybe on a whim we’d just run off to the Starlight to make up for all the intimacy
we’d been missing.

But now even that
remote possibility was gone.
If Shawn had been worrying about
me all day, that meant he didn't know I was at the motel.
I cheated on
him. I still had no idea who I’d slept with last night, but now I was sure that
it wasn’t my husband.

I didn’t know what
else to do other than to just start talking. I couldn’t stand everyone staring
at us. There was no way I could tell my family the truth, so I started making
things up that I hoped were half-way believable.

“I got stuck inside
the fairgrounds,” I explained. “I’m so sorry. I realized I left my phone at the
bar when they started evacuating everyone.” My whole family kept staring at me,
listening, so I kept talking. “I ran back to look for my phone, but the police
wouldn’t even let me back into the Buckshot. By the time I made it all the way
back to my car, they were already closing up the gates at the fairground. They
wouldn’t let me out. I had to sleep in my car. But this evening I finally
talked Jason Gibbs into letting me leave.” I glanced up at Shawn, who was now sitting
down at the top of the staircase. “I have no idea what’s going on around here.”
I almost started to cry, but I regained my control. I swallowed and took a deep
breath. “I haven’t even really talked to anyone all day. I don’t understand.
What’s been happening?”

After my speech, my
mom was clearly feeling a little more generous. She gave me her signature
sideways hug and started rubbing my shoulder. Ian cleared his throat.

“Tyler,” Ian said.
“Take your sister upstairs, please.”

“Why?” Haley asked.

Ian didn’t say
anything. He just raised his eyebrows sternly and Haley immediately dashed upstairs.
Tyler followed. Ian took me by the shoulder.

“Let’s go outside,” he
said.

I let him lead me out
the door. We sat on the porch swing.

“Honestly, we don’t
know much more than you do about what's going on, Ash. There’s a lot we don’t
know. But what we do know… It’s not good—I can tell you that much. It’s
not just the fairgrounds and the high school. There are roadblocks on all the
highways coming in and out of town. I haven’t been able to get any answers.” He
turned around and looked into the house. He was obviously worried about his
kids overhearing. “There’s not a damn thing on the news,” he whispered. “None
of the stations have picked anything up yet.”

“They won’t let any of
us leave town? At all?” I knew things were going badly, but I never dreamed it
could be as big as this. “How is that even legal?”

“It’s not,” Ian said,
“but they’re doing it.”

“Why, though?” I asked.
“I don’t understand. Just to find this guy who attacked a little girl? I mean,
obviously they have to catch him, but none of this makes sense.”

Ian leaned back in the
chair and took a deep breath. I could feel the weight of his body in the sway
of the porch swing. He glanced inside the house again and lowered his voice
even further.

“It’s not just that,
Ash. They’ve got that little girl at the hospital—the one who was
attacked. When I went there last night, there were armed guards all around her
room, and they wouldn’t let anyone inside. Not even her parents. These guys—the
guards—were from
way
out of
town. Maybe out of state. Not cops—military. Some kind of special ops or
something.” Ian lowered his voice even further. “And they got him. They got the
guy. They killed him. They already
killed
the guy who attacked the girl.”

Ian stared at me for a
second, looking unsure of what to say next. Maybe he was unsure if he’d told me
too much already. I could tell he hadn’t shared any of this with Danielle,
though, honestly, I wasn’t sure why he was telling me. After I’d helped him in
the locker room, he must have thought I could handle it.