Darker Than Desire (34 page)

Closing her eyes, she lifted them to the ceiling, imagined she was standing behind her home, with the endless expanse of sky spread overhead, the trees off in the distance and the sound of birds and the voices of her family the only thing to disturb the peace.
Soon
.

Soon they could both go back to that peace they'd known only there. When they were together.
Before
he'd started spending so much time here, where all that evil had broken him, nearly destroyed him. She'd escaped such evil before, had all but hidden inside herself and died. He'd been like that, half-dead inside, going through the motions of life, but inside, his soul was withered and grey.

He'd come back to life because they found each other. If he left, he'd lose that. Sarah loved him too much for that to happen.

“Give me strength.”

*   *   *

“Sarah hasn't been home much.” Thom glanced down the hill, his gaze lingering on the quiet farm. “As you can tell. We're doing what we can, but we have so much to do with our place and nobody seems to know where she has been.”

Thom grimaced as he looked back at the little cabin, studying the clean counters, the dishes. “Until now.” His shrewd gaze settled on David. “What is going on?”

David didn't tell him. How could he tell the younger man that his cousin might be a killer?

Not might.
Is
.
One who had probably been warped as a child, if Thom had been even remotely on-target on the man who'd raised Sarah when she was younger. David couldn't call the unknown man Sarah's father. Abraham had been Sarah's father, in all ways that counted. But the man who'd donated the sperm had likely done too much damage.

Had bred a killer.

You're not broken
, Sybil's voice echoed from the back of his mind. Clenching a hand into a fist, he gave one last, lingering glance around the cabin and then he turned away.

Maybe she'd been right. Maybe he wasn't as broken as he'd thought. Sarah was broken. And he'd been blind, because he'd never seen it.

Tension knotted at the base of his neck as he headed out. Bill waited for him and he swung up, eyeing the other horse. Not everybody rode, but Abraham had loved horses and had taught Sarah and his many nieces and nephews to ride early on. When David came here, he'd been taught as well.

Thom's dappled grey stood there patiently and the younger man swung up into the saddle before looking over at David. “You haven't answered me.”

“No. I haven't.” Clicking to Bill, David nudged him around, and they started down the hill. But instead of heading toward the house, he headed for the barn. The empty barn—Abraham's car should be there. One of the bigger differences between this smaller community and the larger one that Abraham and the others left behind was the acceptance of technology.

Only half of the families had been farmers. The rest had been carpenters, and it was easier to move back and forth if they had transportation. It had been voted to allow automobiles for that purpose, although once David had started helping the group out he'd done most of the driving, a fact that seemed to rest easier with everybody. He wasn't part of the church—it wasn't an issue if he drove.

He'd also been the one to teach Sarah to drive. Few people knew that, and one of the men who had known was gone.

David hauled the doors open, looking inside the empty barn. “The car is gone. The truck.”

“They are hers now,” Thom said, although a dark frown creased his face.

“Have you seen her driving the old truck?” David asked instead of responding to the comment. He turned to meet Thom's eyes as he asked and watched as Thom's eyes slid away.

“Thomas, don't play dumb. You know she drives and it's not like I'm going to go tattle on her.” He took one step forward, hands clenching into fists. In the rational part of his mind, he knew why Thomas didn't want to say anything—he was protecting his cousin. The rules they had on technology were strict and the use of automobiles was limited to work only. Sarah didn't work. David personally didn't give a damn, but Thom did.
Too fucking bad.
“Have you seen her using the old truck or not?”

Finally, the younger man looked at him and nodded. “She's been using it, quite a bit. It's parked. In the barn in the pasture near my home.” Thomas had built a home for him and his new wife a year ago, on a patch of land he'd bought from Abraham.

“The old one.”

Thomas didn't bother to clarify. There was an old barn out there where some of the children liked to play, even when they weren't supposed to. Derelict, it needed to be torn down, something they'd meant to do this summer, but then Abraham had taken ill.

“Is there a road that leads to it?” David demanded. It had been years since he had been out there and he hadn't driven. He'd gone through the woods, cut across fields—something he didn't have any time for now.

“Yes.” Thomas inclined his head, wariness entering his gaze. “Ca—David, what is going on?”

David jerked his chin toward his own truck and pulled out his keys. “You need to take me there.”

“I'm working. I have a—”

“Thom, people are in danger,” David said, taking one slow step toward the quiet, soft-spoken young man.

His gentle brown eyes narrowed, Thom studied David. Thom wasn't afraid, but that wariness, the uncertainty, on his face lingered. He didn't believe David. David didn't care. He didn't need Thom's belief—he needed fucking directions.

After a few more seconds, Thom gave a slow nod. “You will follow me. If there is something urgent, you'll need to return to town quickly, not waste time bringing me back here.”

Without saying anything else, David turned and headed away, the keys to his own truck clutched tight in his fist. He didn't want to think about what he was going to do if they found Sarah. She was the only daughter of a man who had been like a father to him.

But the icy finger of dread running down his spine wasn't one he could ignore.

*   *   *

Sunlight shone like silvery splinters through clouds, falling down in a narrow column on the old barn. Maybe some people would find it picturesque, but as he rounded the final bend in the dirt road and stopped next to Thomas the only thing David felt was cold, and more cold.

“Her car isn't here,” Thomas pointed out needlessly.

“Yeah. I see that,” David muttered, striding past the other man, his focus on the barn.

Through the gaps in the weathered old doors, he could see flashes of black paint.

The truck.

The doors creaked as he pulled them open and one look inside told him that they really, really needed to get on with those plans for tearing this place down. But that was a worry for another day.

His heart thudded in his ears as he rounded the truck, and then it stopped altogether as he came to the front. The damage to the metal was minimal.

But the damage was there. David crouched down, staring at it hard. Then he looked at Thom. “I've got a flashlight in the glove box. Can you get it?”

Wordlessly Thom left and a moment later returned, handing over the Maglite. David went to his back on the dirt floor, working his way under the truck, trying not to touch it. It was clean. Too clean. She'd washed it. Otherwise, there would be dust on it. The road leading up here was dirt, and there was no way she could have kept the truck this clean.

Swearing, he slid out from under the truck and crouched in front of it, shining the light on the grill, all but crawling over it as he stared. This close, he could even faintly smell the scent of the soap she'd used.
Son of a—

Wait.

There.

Eyes narrowing, he leaned in until he literally couldn't get any closer. It wasn't on the outside of the truck, but there. In the grill, wedged in tight, was a tiny little scrap of cloth. Faded blue, like the shirt Clay Brumley had worn. And there was a rusty red smear near it. Now that David had seen it, it was easier to see a few others.

His stomach shuddered, heaved, as his mind pieced it all together. Sarah had sat behind the wheel of this truck—Abraham's truck—and run a man over. Not once, but several times, if the rumors in town were true. David had picked up all those little whispers, things people wouldn't say to him, but he heard them all the same.

He'd taught her to drive using this truck.

And she'd use it to kill.

Because of me.

Something started to scream in his veins, a feeling he barely recognized. It had been too long since anything had horrified him. After a man has experienced some of the worst things that can be done to another, not much
could
horrify him.

But now, as David stared at the faint splatters of blood, he realized it was all true. He no longer had suspicions about Sarah. He knew it was the truth.

She'd killed Brumley. She'd likely killed Max and Louisa and had tried to kill Taneisha.

If the cops didn't find Sarah, she'd kill again.

David's fingers hovered over the grill, but he stopped himself.

Evidence
, he thought. They'd need the evidence.

“Where is she, Thom?”

Thomas was staring at the fender, his brow puckered. Slowly, he looked up. “Looks like she hit something. A deer, maybe?”

“Not a deer,” David said, rising to his feet as he moved around the truck to the driver's side door. “Where is she?”

“I don't
know
.” Exasperation came through clearly in his voice. “I've seen her heading into town. I thought maybe she was going to talk to you, or maybe try to find a job … or maybe she was even thinking about leaving. She's not happy. But I don't know where she is.”

David processed that, taking it all in. “Has she attended church?”

“She was there when we held it at my home.” Thom rubbed his brow. “But … she didn't stay for the meal.”

The meal after church was important in this world. David had stopped going years ago. The pretense, the way people kept trying to make him feel part of a world where he could never belong—didn't
want
to belong—had grated on his nerves and only fanned the anger that lived inside him.

But Sarah wouldn't miss those meals.

His hand was steady as he pulled open the truck door and very slowly started to search. He didn't know exactly why, not until he reached under the bench seat and pulled out a small bundle of neatly folded clothes.

They were clothes that Sarah never would wear.

Not unless she was trying to hide.

Blue jeans. A blue T-shirt.

“What is—” Thomas stopped as he saw the clothes, a line appearing between his eyebrows.

David threw them down and slammed the door shut. Over his shoulder, he said, “Go home. Call Madison Police Department—you need to get a message to Detective Jensen Bell. It's urgent. You'll get there before my cell phone will work out here. Tell her there's a black truck out here with some damage to the front of it and what could be blood. Make sure she knows Sarah is
not
out here, though. At least not that we've seen.”

“What's going on?” Thom demanded, a thread of steel coming through the peaceful, easy manner.

David stopped and turned to look at him. “Somebody shot me the other day.” He jerked the collar of his shirt open, baring the bandaged wound. “Minutes later, the man who shot me was run down by a woman, driving a truck of this make and model. She had long blond hair and witnesses place her between thirty and fifty years of age. She was wearing a blue T-shirt. A woman fitting that description also attacked a woman I'd had words with a few days ago. Witnesses saw a black truck on the scene.”

“You can't mean to say…” The words trailed off and Thom just stared at him.

“I don't want to think it.” David met the gaze of the man across from him. Thomas had only been four years old when David had come here. The boy had been one of the first people David had spoken with, aside from Abraham and Sarah. No. He didn't
want
to think Sarah could hurt anybody.

But that flat, opaque look he'd seen in her eyes haunted him. As did bits and pieces of conversations that stretched back years. She had anger inside her. He'd recognized it before, but hadn't realized just how deep that anger ran.

It had been strongest when he told them he was leaving here.

Go back to the English? Why?

How can you leave me now?

Nothing but trouble will be there.

“Call the cops,” he said again, his voice soft now.

Then he turned and walked away. Thom would make that call, if for no other reason than because he wouldn't risk harm coming to another person. But he'd hurt over it. David regretted that.

Just another ember to the fire of the rage building inside him.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The endless chatter of the two boys in the backseat had Sybil longing for a tub of hot water, her earbuds and a book. She wanted to block out the world. Just for a little while.

Block it out, pretend the past few days—the past few
weeks
—hadn't happened.

And all of that was unlikely. Dealing with two boys didn't
double
the workload the way one would think. It tripled it. Maybe even quadrupled it. The mess was three times bigger, the homework seemed three times more complicated, and the two of them went through more food than she would have thought possible.

Taneisha was still in the hospital, under observation for another twenty-four hours before the doctors felt it would be safe for her to leave.

When she
did
leave, Sybil wanted Taneisha to come home with her for a while. She couldn't entirely buy this bit that somebody had attacked Taneisha because of some weird connection to David, but if that
was
what was going on then it was better if they all stayed together, right?