Seeing Red (18 page)

After a moment, she heard him fall into step behind her. By the time she was halfway to the parking lot, he’d caught up.

She couldn’t believe she’d conceded so easily. Not like her at all. She decided to take another tack. “What about the rest of your life—your
personal
life?”

She hadn’t seriously considered that he might be married with a houseful of kids. Although the thought tied her stomach in an unpleasant knot, it would make her feel a little better about the kiss on the forehead this morning.

“Personal life,” he echoed. “I don’t have one.”

The knot loosened a bit. But she wondered, was he dedicated to his job? Or emotionally unavailable?

“Married?”

“No.”

“Any kids?”

He looked at her like that was the most ridiculous question she could have asked. “No.”

“Man, you can be a real pain in the ass. I get it, work’s off limits, but I’d like to be able to have a conversation. Do I have to pry everything out of you with a nut pick?”

“Why so curious?” he asked, making a show of looking down his nose at her.

She decided to be truthful. Looking directly into his eyes, she said, “Because we’re friends.”

A slow smile came to his lips. It looked both seductive and dangerous, a pirate’s smile. “Yes, we are.”

A man with a smile like that hadn’t lived a life of celibacy. It made Ellis want to jump his bones right here and now.

Her voice squeaked slightly when she asked, “
Ever
married?”

“No.”

She realized she was smiling. She looked away and asked, “Why not?”

“That’s far too complicated a question.”

“Girlfriend?”

He raised an eyebrow. His knowing grin set off fireworks in her belly and made her embarrassed she’d asked. “Not at the moment.”

“Anyone ever tell you what a sparkling conversationalist you are?” She hoped her glib response disguised her disappointment that their easy way with each other had been buried under the debris of fifteen years of living.

“Sorry. I don’t spend a lot of time
sharing
these days.”

“Don’t make sharing sound like a dirty word. We used to share a lot.”

“Yeah.” That one syllable held more longing than four letters should have to carry.

After a moment, the nostalgic silence got to her. “Okay, you’re off the hook. Turnabout’s fair play. You can ask me stuff I won’t want to answer.”

They’d reached her Mustang. He opened the driver’s door for her, and that pirate’s smile appeared again. “I don’t need to.”

“Oh.” She wished she could suck back that single word. It sounded hurt and defeated, pathetic. All of which were accurate and true.

She tossed her backpack into the backseat, and then tried to duck into the car.

His next words stopped her. “You graduated sixth in your high school class. You commuted to Charleston College for five years and got a degree in elementary ed. You’ve been teaching at the grade school here ever since. The kids all love you. You occasionally help your dad during the summers with his historical restoration business. You’ve dated Rory Bales—a junior high science teacher—for the past three years. You usually go to Martha’s Vineyard for three weeks during the summer.” He took a deep breath. “You want me to go on?”

She realized her mouth was hanging open and closed it. “How? Why?”

“Because you’re important to me.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “because you’re one of the few truly good things that has ever been in my life.”

She looked up at him. For a long time, neither one of them moved. Ellis didn’t think she could. His touch felt so right, so natural. And it kindled little fires all over her body.

Afraid he’d see the yearning in her eyes, she rested her forehead on his chest, breathing in the scent of him.

He put a finger beneath her chin and raised her face to his. He kissed her lightly on the lips. Then he let her go and stepped away.

“Why didn’t you say good-bye?” she asked.

He looked at the ground. “Because I couldn’t find the right words.”

“Why didn’t you ever contact me?”

“Because nothing good could ever come of it.” He started around the front of the car to the passenger side. “We need to get the boat back to the plantation.”

“Wait.” The word was drowned out by the blaring siren of a passing ambulance.

Lucky thing, she realized. Kept her from making a complete fool out of herself.

She got into the driver’s seat and started the car, feeling like a balloon that had been overinflated and then, just before it burst, all the air let out of it in a rush.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

J
ust as Ellis and Nate were pulling into her driveway, her cell phone rang.

“Oh, crap.” She braked and lifted herself in her seat to dig her phone from her back pocket. Just as she taught her students, whenever possible, she kept her phone on her body and not buried in some purse or backpack where it would do little good in an emergency. “I forgot I was supposed to call Dad back.”

When she’d spoken to him after her uncle’s surprise visit this morning, she’d explained everything to him—Nate’s return, the man under the tree. He’d once again campaigned for her to leave town. Once she’d explained that if Alexander was stalking her, he’d most likely just follow, her dad had said he’d take time off work to stay with her.

Her dad did architectural historical restoration and worked pretty much alone. He’d just started a project at the local movie theater that had significant penalties for not meeting deadlines. He couldn’t afford to take time off. So she’d assured him, rightly or not, that Nate would be with her at all times until they figured out what was going on with Alexander.

Luckily, her dad had never seen Nate in the same shadowy light that Uncle Greg had. Still, she was to call and report in regularly. One of those times was supposed to be as soon as she’d finished teaching her class.

She flipped open her phone. “Sorry, Dad, I forgot. Not to worry, I’m fine.”

“Ellis.” Her mother’s voice sounded shaky.

Ellis’s heart dropped like a rock in a river. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m at Beachcrest Hospital. Your dad’s had an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”
Oh, God, the ambulance.

“The scaffolding he was working on collapsed.”

“How is he?” Ellis threw the car in reverse and backed out of the drive.

Her mother sniffed. “They’re going to operate on his right leg, but they want the orthopedic specialist from Charleston to do it. He’s got some cuts; they’re doing more X-rays . . . .”

“I’m on my way.” She turned to Nate as she closed her phone. She stopped the car and shifted into drive. “Get out. I have to get to the hospital.”

“Your dad?” he asked.

“Scaffolding he was on collapsed.”

“Then let’s go.”

“You said you had to get the boat back—”

“You’re wasting time,” he said. “Drive.”

Ellis saw her mother through the wide glass doors that led to the emergency waiting room. Her arms were folded across her middle, and she was pacing slowly back and forth in front of a section of empty chairs. She looked small and alone.

Ellis was moving so quickly, the automatic doors had not opened when she reached the threshold. Nate snagged her elbow, keeping her from slamming into them. She waited a half second and the doors slid open with a swish.

Her mother looked up. The gratitude on her face made Ellis’s heart turn inside out.

“How is he?” Ellis asked, wrapping her mom in a quick, fierce hug.

“He’s going to be okay. But he needs surgery on his leg . . . .” She picked at the tissue in her hand. “He’s in radiology again. They’re supposed to call me when he’s back down here.”

Her mother’s gaze shifted over Ellis’s shoulder, looking at Nate.

“Mom, you remember Nate.”

A thousand questions flashed in her mother’s eyes, but Ellis maneuvered her toward a chair. “How did this happen?”

Nate hung back near the entrance.

“I’m not sure,” her mother said. “Howie said they’d been using the scaffolding in that same place for two days. He had no idea what made it give way.”

“Was Howie up there too? Is he hurt?” Howie was a kid just out of high school who had been working with her dad for the past six months.

Ellis glanced at Nate. He was surveying every entrance to the waiting room like a . . . a bodyguard. Maybe that’s what he did. Maybe he guarded a celebrity or a political figure . . . .

Her mother’s voice drew her from her suppositions. “No, thank goodness. He was still unloading the truck.”

“Where is he?” Ellis looked around. The waiting area held only two other people, an elderly man and woman. The man had his finger wrapped in a bloody dishtowel.

“I asked him to stay at the site and pick up the tools and lock them in Bill’s truck. He needed something to do, other than pace around and worry me to death.”

Her mother was her practical self. How reassuring that was. Ellis supposed no matter how old she got, she’d always look to her mother for a steadying hand.

That feeling made her think of Nate. Had he ever had a person he could count on no matter what? Someone who would hold it together for him when everything fell apart? It certainly hadn’t been in Belle Island as he’d grown up. He’d stood alone when the sheriff and the entire town had thought he’d hurt Laura. His mother hadn’t even stopped him when he’d dropped out of school three months before graduation—right after Alexander’s trial.

At that time, Ellis had seen Nate as a man already. But he’d been no more than a boy—younger than Howie, even. And Ellis couldn’t imagine Howie living on his own, let alone taking off to places unknown by himself.

She wished she could go back. Go back and find the courage to defy her parents openly, to stand up in front of the whole town as Nate’s friend. Maybe then he wouldn’t have left.

How different would both their lives have been if he’d stayed? It was a question with no answer.

An hour passed while they awaited her father’s return from radiology. Nate kept a polite distance. Yet he was never out of Ellis’s peripheral vision. Her adrenalinefueled panic had receded. Still, something inside her vibrated with awareness when Nate’s gaze moved in her direction. It was as if his gaze, his attention, bore a physical property of its own—one only she seemed aware of.

Her mother had grown quiet, allowing Ellis’s mind to wander.

She realized this was the first time she’d been in this building since Laura had been moved to the rehab facility. The distinctive smell of the hospital blurred the lines between past and present, triggering feelings Ellis thought she’d beaten into submission long ago.

She sat thinking, running her finger over the faint ridge of scar under her chin.

Beachcrest Hospital, July, sixteen years ago

Two weeks after Laura was attacked

Ellis’s family had begun to treat
her
like she was in a coma. She’d become invisible, a nonperson. Just another fixture in the room.

Not that she minded. It gave her better opportunity to listen to things she wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Nobody wanted to tell her anything about the investigation or the details of what happened to Laura. Ellis picked up what she could and tried to piece it together so she could tell Nate later.

She was sitting in the chair in the corner of Laura’s hospital room, where she’d been reading for the past two hours. The phone on Laura’s bedside table rang.

Uncle Greg answered it.

“Hello, Detective.” This was followed by several short “Uh-huhs” and “I sees” and Uncle Greg’s face growing red.

Ellis sat as still as a rabbit caught in the open.

He hung up and stood there for a few seconds with his hands on his hips, staring at the phone like he’d like nothing better than to rip it from the wall and slam it onto the floor.

Aunt Jodi started to cry again, even before she knew what the call was about.

Finally, Uncle Greg said, “Looks like there’s not much hope of any DNA or blood evidence. The salt water—” He pressed his lips together and brought a hand to his eyes. Then he turned his back.

Ellis expected her aunt to go to him. But she didn’t. She stood planted right where she was, between Ellis’s mom and dad. She kept repeating, “What does that mean? What does it mean?”

Uncle Greg spun back around and shouted, “It means it’s gonna be that much harder to nail that little bastard’s hide to the wall.”

Ellis flinched. He was talking about Nate.

Her dad asked, “What about fingerprints?”

The police had taken Ellis’s fingerprints, as well as the rest of the family and Laura’s friends, in order to isolate ones that could belong to the person who cut the screen to her room.

They’d taken Nate’s. Somehow, Ellis didn’t think they were using his for elimination.