CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE (13 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

Cade was a man of action, and never
was it more apparent to me than right then. He leapt to his feet, almost
knocking his chair over. “They’ll be here for me,” he said, keeping his voice
low as he took his gun out of his jacket and set it on the table. “Once they’ve
hauled me off, keep your head down. I doubt they’re watching the house, but you
never know. Remember, they probably haven’t bothered to run your prints. Once
they got a match for mine, they’d have been overjoyed.”

“What about you?”

Cade shrugged. “They won’t be able to
hold on to me for long and they haven’t had time to get a search warrant for
the house. I’ll be back. You stay safe until I do, okay?”

I think I nodded before he turned and
strode to the front door. The house was darker now, and he was wrapped in
shadows as he left the room.

It went as you’d expect it to. The
cop demanded to know if anyone else was in the house. When Cade said no, he got
arrested. Nobody read him his rights and there wasn’t much else said. I held my
breath until Cade stepped out onto the front porch and slammed the door shut
behind him, and then I didn’t move for what felt like hours…

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I knew if I lit the
candles that the light would be easily visible from the outside. If any of the
police
had
been left behind to watch
for me, it wouldn't take them long to figure out I was inside.

Still, I doubted they would even
bother with me. They certainly seemed to have a history with Cade, and from the
sound of the officer’s voice when he’d been handcuffing and stuffing Cade in
the squad car, they had exactly what they were looking for.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be
careful, though. Better safe than sorry, especially when I was on my own for
the first time here.

Eventually, I crept into the living
room amidst all of the voodoo paraphernalia. Only a few days ago the space had
felt cluttered, but now there was something comforting in the odd shapes and
the smell of spices that surrounded me. I was no convert by any means, but I
couldn't help but admit I was becoming more and more at ease in the space.

I felt like Grandma had known I’d be coming.
I had a hunch too that her death wouldn’t have come as a complete surprise.
Would a lady like her have left a backup plan for her Granddaughter?

Certainly. But what was it, and where
would I find it?

Evening was still on the way, which
meant that there was enough light to do a decent search. I started at the
couch. Part of me thought she would've done the same thing Jonathan had, taken
something important in the cushions of the couch for me to find. It would be
just like her to make me learn a few lessons along the way, wouldn’t it?

Inspired, I looked in the couches,
just like I had with Jonathon.

But I couldn't find anything. If it
was there I wasn't seeing it, and if I wanted to search more thoroughly than
I'd have to light the candles. I wasn't going to risk. Not yet at least.

Already sweating from the hunt, I sat
back on my heels to consider my options. Short of tearing the place apart, I
didn't have very many.

But if Grandma
did
have something to tell me, I doubted that she would've done it
in such a way as to make me both tear my hair out in frustration and trash her
beloved house at the same time. I'd been going on the assumption for so long
that she hadn't really known me, but maybe that was just the adult version of a
teenage tantrum that I was still carrying around with me.

After all, if she could peek into my
bank account when she been alive, couldn't she also have paid a private
investigator to keep tabs on me over the years? Maybe she knew a lot more about
me than I was willing to admit.

I closed my eyes and tried to settle
my thoughts, doing my best to rein my emotions in. It wasn't easy to get them
under control, but I sought a quiet space in the center of my mind until it
grew and surrounded me.

I focused on it. Everything else fell
away. The heat. Cade. Jessica's murder and the police and my Grandmother's
death.

Everything faded except for that last
thing. Try as I might, something Cade had said reverberated in my brain like an
echo chamber. Something about how she died...

No. Not how she died.
Where
she died. The official report said
that she'd been out on the back steps when she'd slipped and fallen, hitting
her head. Then she crawled back into the house. Cade was convinced that someone
had done her in, but he backed up the location of the assault.

So why had she been back there at
all? What had she been up to?

I got up and wiped the sweat from my
forehead with both of my palms before heading into the kitchen. The backyard
was private, which meant there was no way to see into it from the street,
especially not shrouded as it was by ivy and creepers. I could use a flashlight
back here and search to my heart's content and no one at the front of the house
would be any wiser.

Cade had showed me where Grandma
stored the flashlights, and I grabbed one now and headed out the back door. I
didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but I was determined as all hell to
find it.

It didn't matter to me how long it
took. With the man of my dreams, quite literally, in jail this may be the only
chance I had of putting together a few of the puzzle pieces for myself.

The heat was worse out here, though I
suppose that shouldn't surprise me. The mosquitoes were bad too. I slapped at
my arms and kept the flashlight's beam on the ground. The steps were dangerous,
as I’d noticed before, and I didn't want to have to deal with the irony of
slipping and falling to my death in the same spot she had.

Big oaks and the wide droop of weeping
willows had long ago made their home in the backyard. The house was covered
with wide fingers of crawling plants. By the time I had taken a few steps away
from the house it was as if I was already surrounded by the swamp that resided
only a block or two away.

Could she have hidden something in
the bayou? I hoped not. I didn't know the wilds of Louisiana's wetlands at all,
and I didn’t want to discover its dangers right as the sun was setting.

If I did have to wander around in the
swamp, there was no way I was going to be able to do it without Cade.

Instead of getting lost in the swamp,
I spent the better part of an hour poking through the undergrowth in the
backyard. I looked in the branches of the trees and scoured the blackberry
bushes that grew wild along the back of the property.

I found scratches. I found sweat. I
found frustration and dismay, but if Grandma had left me anything else to find
I was too dense to be up to the task.

Disheartened, I sat on my butt in the
middle of the backyard and wiped at my eyes. It wasn't fair. I hadn't had a
good life in Detroit, but I was doing my best to make it into something I can
be proud of. Grandma didn't have to do this to me.

She didn't have to dangle this man
before me, especially not when she knew how many strings would be attached to
whatever relationship we wanted to have.

I lay on my back and stared up
through the weeping willow branches at the stars above. There were beautiful
places in Michigan, but Detroit couldn't show you a view like this one from
your own backyard. There were millions, no
billions
of lights in the sky. Some of them swirled and circled and even landed in the
grass around me; fireflies desperately seeking another of their kind.

Just like me.

Now the tears came, and I was too
exhausted to stop them. They'd taken Cade. I didn't know when or even
if
he'd return, and all I could think
about was the vision of each other we’d obviously shared. His absence made me want
him even more, and thoughts of his rough, handsome face made me sit up and look
at the shed he called home.

From here I could only see the back
of it. Straight, wooden slats made up the building in which he lived. Ivy
climbed it to, but I got the feeling that the plant was new to the place.
Indeed, his house looked like it had only been there for a couple of years.
Maybe she'd built it for him. It was a nice place. Cozy. Well-constructed, a
different style from the main house of course but Grandma hadn't spared any
expense when she had it made.

The home she left me was at least a
hundred years older, but as I shifted on the ground to look at it I could see
that it too had been looked after well. It would've been easy for a thing like
that to have fallen into disrepair. The humidity of Louisiana and the swamp
that seemed only a stone’s throw away on nights like this surely made wood warped
and paint peel continually.

I had a feeling that I’d have my work
cut out for me if I was going to keep the place in the condition she left it.

Something caught at me then. It was
like an itch in the back of my mind, and when I tried to push my thoughts in
another direction they snagged on it. I'd almost hit upon something, but I
didn't know what.

Not quite.

I'd had this feeling before. When
you're painting, I found that only true inspiration comes from the times when
you are willing to give yourself away to the moment. Sometimes it can be
frightening, to paint entire scenes and have no recollection of holding the
brush or choosing the colors.

But it was exhilarating, too. I'd
come to accept that the cost of being a true artist, if ever I was willing to
call myself that, was accepting that sometimes you were only a thing that
universe used to make the world see something new.

This time, I was aware of it
happening. That catch in my subconscious, painful as a hangnail, meant
something. I was sure of it. All I had to do was give it as long as it wanted
to reveal itself…

At least, that's what I thought. But
as the night closed in around me and the swarm of mosquitoes heard the dinner
bell and came to feast on my blood, I felt the beginnings of doubt start to
slide tendrils around me, same as the creepers on the walls.

What was I missing?

I knew I was close. I was sure of it,
but I felt like my brain was circling a drain, getting nearer and nearer to the
thing I was seeking but never quite reaching it.

For the first time in my life, I
couldn't catch the inspiration I was looking for. The muse wasn't gone, but she
wasn't going to whisper into my ear, either. Not tonight.

Not for me.

Exhaustion and anger growing, I
shoved it all away and went back up the path to the house. I was so frustrated
that I wanted to throw the flashlight into the darkness, but instead I played
the beam along the path ahead of me. The rotten back stairs were just ahead,
and if I didn't have my head screwed on straight I was liable to go the way of
my Grandmother.

The first step creaked under my
weight. It may not have been a welcome sound to most people, but I found that
it made me smile. It was the noise I heard every time Cade came into the house.
Still, if I really was going to stay, the back stairs would be the first thing
I repaired.

Good thing nothing else around here
needed fixing, since I didn't have the funds for it to happen, anyway.

I froze in my tracks…

Nothing else around here needed
fixing. The back stairs were horribly in need of repair. Grandma had Cade
literally living in the backyard, and I was sure he was good with a saw and a
hammer. He'd have fixed the stairs in an instant if she'd have asked him...

I could only think of one reason that
the stairs weren’t up to the same level of construction as the rest of the
house. Grandma's legacy was right beneath my feet. It had to be!

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

My
front foot still on the bottom step, I got down on my knees and starting
tearing at the rotten wood that made up the stairs. The thought of rusty nails
and jagged splinters didn't slow me, and when I felt something slice one of my
fingers I just bit my lip and kept right on going. I was possessed, and nothing
was going to stop me.

Dirt flew, sticking to my sweaty skin
and getting into my eyes. I felt the grit grind between my teeth, and I spat it
out as best I could.

The ground was soft. Recently dug…

Finally, my bloody fingers banged
against something that shouldn't have been in the dirt. A metal box that looked
like it was designed and manufactured in the thirties. The Art Deco sweep of
the angular sides made it into a thing of beauty, and I yanked it from the
ground and hefted it to my chest. I was dirty and bitten and bleeding.

And happy.

I hurried inside and, for the first
time since I'd been here, I locked the back door behind me. Maybe I was
paranoid, but I couldn't help but feel as if there were always eyes on me, the
last few minutes. Whatever was in the box was important, and possibly
dangerous. She might have even died for it, and now that I had it in my hands I
wasn't about to let anyone else get their mitts on it.

I shut off the flashlight, worried
that the light would still be seen from the street.

The kitchen felt too exposed, so I
went into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. The windows in here were
thick blinds that could keep out the light and heat of the afternoon sun, and I
went to them now and pulled them as low as they would go. Once they were in
place I turned the flashlight back on and lit a few candles as well. I wanted
enough light in here to make sure I didn't miss anything important when I
inspected the contents of the box.

I grabbed a towel from the bathroom
and spread it out on the bed before plunking the box down on top of it. Grandma
had pretty nice haberdashery, and I didn't think it was right to get dirt on it
just because I was in a hurry.

I'd thought the box was made of metal
because it was cool to the touch, and incredibly smooth. Now that I inspected
it though, I could see that it was wooden. Polished, varnished, worn by use
over who knows how many years but made of wood nonetheless. There weren't any
latches or locks or catches, and all I had to do was lift the lid to open it.

Grandma's hiding place had been well
chosen. She'd known, or at least hoped, that whoever had the luck or the skill
or a devilish combination of both to find it would be the one it was meant for.
The one who could take the contents and do something important with them.

I didn't know if she was right, but I
swore as I set the lid aside that I'd do my best to make her proud.

There was a thick keyring made of
iron inside. Dozens of keys were attached to it, and beneath the ring itself
there was a thick sheaf of folded papers.

I wiped my hands off on the towel and
picked up the keys. They jangled merrily as I lifted them, and on closer
inspection I could see that no two of them were alike. Some of them looked like
they were fairly new and unused, and others bore the nicks and scratches of
decades of abuse.

I put them down on the towel and
turned my attention to the papers. These were eerily similar to the keys, in
that some of the paper was as fresh as the stuff that I could buy at any office
supply store whilst the rest was brittle with age. I unfolded them carefully,
uncertain as to what I would find.

It took me a couple of seconds to
work out what I was looking at. The only reason I had any clue at all was
because I'd seen one of them yesterday morning, at the lawyer's office…

Deeds. Deeds to houses that, in my
limited understanding of the area around me, appeared close. There must be a
couple of blocks worth of properties here. I couldn’t be certain of course, but
everything looked to be in order. The properties had been legally transferred
to my Grandmother, and the lawyer had made it clear that whatever property she
had in her name was now in mine.

I'd thought that just meant the house
I was sitting in now and the property Cade lived in out back, but clearly I'd
been very, very wrong. From the looks of this, there was every chance that I
was now the single biggest property owner within fifty miles of here.

I suppose that alone would have been
reason enough to kill her. Possibly. Of course whoever had done it would need
to be sure they had a way to get the properties transferred into their name, if
ownership was what they were seeking.

I got out my notebook and flipped
past the sketches I'd made for Jonathan to a blank page. Once I'd found one I
grabbed a pen and painstakingly wrote down the details of each address on the
deeds.
 

These names and these properties had
to mean something to someone. Only a minute or two after I was done the
flashlight sputtered as the batteries died. I got up and blew out the candles,
hid the deeds under the mattress and slept like the dead.