Reckless Hours: a Romantic Suspense novel (Heroes of Providence Book 3) (9 page)

Pushing the camper door open, he stepped outside just as Tammie got out of the car and shut the door. She looked around, and then her gaze fell on him.

“What happened?” he asked, stepping out onto the gravel driveway of the campsite.

She looked at him, seeming puzzled. “Nothing. What makes you think something has happened?”

He glanced at the sky. “I don’t have my watch on, but I can guess it’s pretty early. There had to be something that drove you from the house to come and seek me out. Especially since just yesterday you tried to run me down with your car.”

She gave a sheepish grin and touched her lips with her fingers. “I did do that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.”

Tammie nodded. “Well, stranger things have happened.”

“Such as?”

Her brows furrowed. “Boy, you just get right down to things, don’t you? Not even a mention of coffee—which, by the way, I haven’t had and am dying for right now. In case you forgot, I’m still on Oregon time.”

With a shrug, he said, “No coffee, I’m afraid. I didn’t have a chance to pick up anything for the kitchen yesterday.”

She gave a mock pout and snapped her fingers in disappointment.

He added, “We can get some at the campground store, or just run down to the diner for breakfast. Take your pick.”

Tammie lifted her eyes to him and held her gaze. “There was a man in the backyard last night.”

“A man? What man? You mean, outside the mansion?”

“Yes.”

He laughed humorlessly. “And you say
I
cut to the chase. We went from coffee to a man in the backyard?”

She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I haven’t had coffee yet. My mind is a little fuzzy.”

“What was he doing?”

“I don’t really know. It looked like he was digging.”

“In the dirt?”

With a roll of her eyes, she said, “Where else?”

“Did anyone else hear or see him? Any of the other people in the house?”

“It was the middle of the night. They should have heard him. He was
making
enough noise for me to hear him from the second floor. But Serena had had a nightmare, and Aurore and Susan were so busy with her, they probably didn’t notice.”

His brow creased. “Did the man try to come into the house?”

“Not the house. But he did go into a shed out back.”

Dylan nodded. He’d never gone out back. He’d never even made it past the front door before yesterday. But with all the trees surrounding the property, and the desolate country roads that led up to the mansion, it would be easy for someone to get in and out of the yard unseen.

Tammie was leaning against her car, her arms folded across her chest and her head bent slightly.

He cleared his throat. “Did you say anything to anyone?”

Another roll of those beautiful eyes. “Do you think I would have gotten a straight answer if I had?”

“Point taken. But still, if someone is searching the grounds in the middle of the night, whoever it is might get bold enough to try to get into the house next time.”

Looking alarmed, Tammie stood straight and unfolded her arms.

He answered the unspoken question written on her face. “That mansion is like a fortress, but people have been known to break into buildings with even the tightest security systems.”

“I wonder if that had happened before,” she said, her eyes shifting to one side, as if she were thinking of something.

He waited, and when her eyes met his again, she said, “Aurore told me to lock my bedroom door last night.”

“Was anyone else in the house besides the four of you?”

She shook her head.

“Strange.”

“I thought so, too. The only people I could think to worry about last night were Susan and Aurore. That is, until I saw that man in the garden.”

Dylan looked more closely at Tammie then, saw the droop of her posture, the dark lines under her blue eyes, which were puffy, as if she hadn’t had much sleep.

Well, at least he hadn’t been the only one.

“There’s time enough to ask them about it later,” he said. “Why don’t you take a load off while I pick up some things from the campground store? We can throw together some breakfast here. Carol, the waitress at the diner, is a sweet girl, but she has big ears. She can retell a conversation verbatim to the other waitresses the moment her customers walk out the door. I’ve seen her do it.”

Tammie laughed. “You have?”

He nodded. “You wouldn’t believe the things you learn when you know how to listen when no one is noticing.”

“Such as?”

“Serena Davco has lived her whole life in that mansion. Right here in this town. Yet hardly anyone ever sees her. I know how to read people. Every time I asked about her, people knew her name, but couldn’t say much about her. For someone who is the daughter of a prominent member of the community, people don’t know her at all. I find that strange.”

“Maybe it’s best to stay a little hidden for a while. Given the fact that Serena is practically my double, I’d rather the whole world not come to the conclusion that I’m her.”

“If they haven’t already,” Dylan added.

# # #

• Chapter Five
  

Tammie sat at the picnic table at the campsite while Dylan walked to the campground store. She was still on West Coast time, and the hour she’d gotten out of bed this morning was totally illegal, as far as her body’s clock was concerned. But it hadn’t made much sense to stay in a bed that wasn’t even hers, when she couldn’t sleep.

The house had been quiet when she left. Serena had still been in bed. If Aurore was around, she hadn’t seen her. As Tammie came down the stairs, she’d seen Susan carrying a load of freshly laundered towels, but she didn’t think Susan had seen her.

Not that it mattered. She wasn’t hiding from anyone. But she had given a moment’s thought to whether or not they’d let her back in the door when she returned. It wasn’t as if she had a key.

Tammie was half in a daze, her fist propped under her chin and her elbow resting on the table, when she heard whistling. She turned to see Dylan walking up the dirt trail, carrying two paper bags brimming with groceries. Tammie lifted herself from the position she’d been sitting in and met him halfway down the trail to retrieve one of the bags.

“Thanks,” he said with a smile.

“Are you always this chipper in the morning?”

He glanced at the sky. “No, not always. But I figure there’s a blue sky and a bright sun hanging over me. The birds were singing as my eyes opened, and kids were playing in the park across from the store. That makes it a good day. If you’ve seen as many foreign lands as I have, witnessed the carnage that can go on in the world, you learn to take each day as a blessing, despite the frustrations of life.”

Tammie smiled, almost ashamed that her mood had remained glum and she hadn’t taken notice of the day like Dylan had.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way, I’m afraid.” She bounced the bag in her arms. “What do you have in here, anyway—textbooks? It’s so heavy!”

“I just about grabbed everything I could get my hands on. I was ready to eat the whole store,” he said, shrugging. “I skipped dinner last night.”

“Ah. My mother always said to never go shopping on an empty stomach.” She stopped short at the memory. But Dylan didn’t seem to notice how the mention of her mother affected her.

He opened the camper door and stepped inside, holding the door for her to follow. “Scrambled eggs okay with you?” he asked.

“I’d kill for some scrambled eggs right now.”

“I wouldn’t say that too loud. Someone might take it the wrong way. Are you a good cook?”

She chuckled. “Passable. But no one has ever complained.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

The camper was an older model, with a bedroom in the far end and a tight living room and kitchen area. At least it afforded enough elbowroom that two people didn’t have to bump into each other every time they turned around.

Tammie opened the cabinet above the stove and found an assortment of plastic dishes and cups in a variety of colors. She pulled out the four-cup coffeemaker and set it on the counter.

“I hope you bought a lot of coffee. We’re going to need a refill on this.”

Dylan chuckled and lit the pilot light on the burner. As he began whipping eggs and pouring them into a buttered pan, Tammie filled the coffeemaker and looked for the largest mugs she could find.

Questions that had been rolling around in her head the night before started to become clearer again as the smell of coffee filled her senses.

“What happened to your brother?” she finally asked.

Dylan stirred the eggs, seeming to weigh his words as he thought. It made Tammie wonder all the more about what a former Marine turned Providence cop was doing in this small Massachusetts town. What could have happened to Cash to bring him out here?

“You don’t know my brother,” he finally said.

“So tell me about him.”

He shook his head. “You won’t understand what I’m trying to say.” His voice was low, betraying a worry that Tammie was sure he felt every day. If someone she loved went missing, she didn’t know how she’d handle it.

“What’s the problem?”

He stopped stirring the eggs, turned off the burner and grabbed the plates Tammie had put down next to the stove.

“It’s not that easy to explain the kind of man Cash is. Without that, I’ll end up sounding like I’m defending him. He doesn’t need defending. There are those who’d just as soon hang him as look at what I see in him.”

Startled, she turned directly to him. “Hang him?”

He stopped short, pausing with the pan over a half-filled plate of eggs, then resumed. “That’s just a figure of speech. But trust me, sometimes it feels like a lynching. You see, despite Cash never being in the military, he had a way about him that always reminded me of a code. Honor and respect are at his core.”

“Both are admirable traits.”

“Yes. Even though he’s always been good at taking care of himself, I’m afraid he let his judgment of others slip.”

She lowered her eyes and then raised them back to him. “You mean with Serena.”

“Among others. If you don’t know him like I know him, it’s easy to come to the same conclusion as everyone else.”

“I’m not like everyone else.”

“I’m beginning to believe that.” And then he looked at her directly and smiled.

Tammie fought hard to keep from showing her surprise. Bill always challenged her thinking. Told her she was being ridiculous where her suspicions were concerned. It was refreshing to hear someone say he believed her.

“So tell me about Cash.”

“He’s a good man, Tammie. I’m not saying he didn’t get into his share of mischief when he was a kid. We both riled up our parents pretty often with our pranks, and my mom attributes all her gray hairs to us.” He flashed a quick grin.

“That’s just kid stuff. I’ll bet most mothers of boys would say the same thing.”

“Exactly. But there are some people in the DEA that are trying to paint Cash in a bad way.”

“He was in the Drug Enforcement Administration?”

Dylan nodded. “What they’re saying just doesn’t add up to the man I know.”

She smiled. “It
does
sound like you’re defending him. You don’t have to do that.”

Dropping the empty pan into the sink, he picked up the plates of scrambled eggs. “Well, there are a whole lot of people judging him. Or they would be, if they could find him. I guess I’m being overprotective.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me back up. Sonny—that’s my kid sister, Sonia—had written to me when I was overseas that something funny was going on with Cash. She couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was and for a long time I just thought she was exaggerating. I mean, she was a kid. She’d just finished college and she…was a little emotional about everything. I thought it was just drama and growing up stuff making her paranoid.”

“I’m sure she appreciated your cliché assessment of her worries.”

His lips lifted to a half grin. “No, she didn’t.”

She took a paper plate and stacked the buttered toast she’d prepared while Dylan talked. She put it on the table, and poured the black coffee. She motioned to indicate the milk in her hand.

“A little bit, thanks,” he replied.

After stirring the coffees, she brought them to the table and sat down opposite him.

“Cash never said anything to you about what was going on?”

“Not a word. Not to Sonny, my parents, or me. That in itself was odd. But as I said, he was DEA. I just figured it was something he couldn’t talk about. Plus…”

“What?”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to read between the lines in letters. Sonny beat around the bush a little. She always wrote me, but the letters started coming more frequent. And then one day Sonny spelled it out so I wouldn’t get it wrong, sending me a letter that just said I needed to come home. Now.