Silk and Stone (63 page)

“We’re going to keep this investigation close to our chests,” she told the reporter. “You check out every detail as quietly as you can. What you’ve got may be nothing more than half-baked rumors or outright lies. Either your
pen pal
has incredible access to the governor’s family, or he—she?—is a malicious crank with a vivid imagination. We’re not printing one
word
unless we have some solid evidence.”

The reporter smiled thinly. “The person who dropped this dynamite in the mail went to a lot of trouble to name specifics. I think it’s legitimate. But I’ll be careful. And when I’m done, we’ll have plenty to back it up.”

The lawyer cleared his throat awkwardly. “Why do you think this person singled you out? You’re not the only reporter who covers politics for this newspaper. No offense, but there are veteran reporters here who should have seemed like a better choice to an informant. Do you think this informant may be black?”

The reporter eyed him sardonically. “You mean I was chosen because
us black folks gots to stick together
?”

“Don’t be offended, I said. But to be frank, yes, I—”

“Maybe,” the publisher interjected, “the person picked Bob here because he—or she—likes the fact that Bob is homegrown. Born and raised in North Carolina.”

“A homeboy,” Bob added dryly. “I doubt it had anything to do with my awards for investigative journalism.”

“Leave my reporter alone,” the executive editor said, smiling. “I can think of about a dozen politicians who shiver at the sight of his by-line. Our mystery informant obviously knows Bob’s reputation.”

“Good enough for me,” the publisher said. “Run this stuff up the flagpole and see who salutes. Or who races for cover.”

On that note, the meeting ended. After the others filed out, the exec shut the door again and looked at the wiry young man who was staking his professional pride on a sheaf of notes sent by a stranger. “Bob, God help us all if this is a crock of shit.”

He looked pensive. “I’d like to think this character, whoever he-she is, was impressed by my ass-kicking journalistic credentials.” He tapped the frayed manila envelope on the table. “But I’ve got to tell you something—there could be a personal reason why I’m the one this is addressed to.”

“If you’ve got a hunch, now’s the time to share it.”

“It’s a long shot. Something damned few people would know, or take the time to learn.” He shook his head, puzzled.

“
What
?”

He frowned. “My parents were tenant farmers. I was born on a farm outside Pandora. Mrs. Lomax was still married to her first husband then. Judge Vanderveer. The Vanderveers ran that town.”

“Aw, jeez, Bob, that’s ancient history.”

“Not to me. The judge was our landlord.”

“Oh,
shit.
”

“I was just a kid when all the tenant families were evicted off Vanderveer land.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “There was no good reason for the eviction. My old man never got over it.”

“You think your mystery correspondent believes you have a grudge against the governor’s wife because she used to be a Vanderveer?”

“My old man said Judge Vanderveer wasn’t to blame.
My old man said the judge’s wife was behind it. She divided the land into estate tracts and sold it to her cronies.” He smiled bitterly. “So, yeah, you could say I have a grudge against Alexandra Vanderveer Lomax.”

“I’m going to pretend you never told me any of this.”

“Don’t worry—I’ll give you a story that’ll stand on its own merits.” He held up the notes and the envelope. “But let’s just say that somebody out there knew I was the perfect choice for the job.”

Chapter
            Twenty-Eight
 

J
ake walked out of the woods weighed down by a muggy June morning, his thoughts, and the back-pack slung over one shoulder. He carried a good twenty pounds of rock he’d dug from the base of a waterfall. Twenty pounds of mountain bedrock that no one else would have given more than a passing glance. But when he finished chipping it apart, he’d find something—specks of color, the gleam of perfect crystals. His knack for mining had faded over the years; that had worried him. But the intuition was growing stronger every day. He could make a living the way he had before. That much, at least, consoled him.

Bo padded along, wheezing. “Old dog, you shouldn’t follow me,” Jake murmured gruffly. Telling Bo to stay behind was useless.

Samantha followed them both some days. When she
could catch them before they left. Jake always knew when she was nearby. Thinking about her watching him was a key reason he couldn’t concentrate on his work—didn’t want to concentrate. It was pitiful and agonizing—the two of them slipping around in miserable secrecy, glad to be within sight of the other, unable to say so.

He crossed the clearing where his parents’ house had stood, where they and Ellie had died. He mourned them as if their graves were still fresh, and he listened for their voices, tried to feel the breath of their shadows. Sometimes he was certain he did, but bitterness and grief—unsettled business—made him ashamed to answer.

His black mood gave way to wary surprise. A knitting needle protruded from the red-clay earth before his tent. A slip of notepaper had been taped to it, fluttering in the soft breeze like a small flag of surrender. Or a challenge. Samantha’s way of leaving a message and a point.

He scooped it up.
Someone called. A tracking job. I have the details. I’m going with you. No arguments. You can’t drive—you haven’t renewed your driver’s license
.

He shut his eyes and laughed humorlessly, rubbing the tip of the knitting needle along his lower lip as if he could taste her through it. He’d served time for killing a man, and that didn’t repulse her, but, by God, she wasn’t going to let him get as much as a speeding ticket.

Whale music. Sam sat in the middle of Granny’s spring, in cold water to her waist, dressed in white shorts, a white T-shirt, braless, with a boom box perched on the shallow bank beside her, listening to a CD of mournful instrumental music that evoked images of large, solitary mammals calling to their lost mates in dark waters.

A little eccentric, to say the least. She didn’t care. It suited her mood these days. Every time she thought about her encounter with Alexandra, she felt angrier at herself, and more depressed.

Lost in black thoughts, she splashed the cold, clear spring water to her face and let it splash heedlessly down her thin shirt. There was something to be said for ritual
bathing. If she sat here in Granny Raincrow’s spring, maybe she’d rinse away her failures.

“It’s not a birdbath,” Jake said behind her.

She twisted quickly and stared up at him through a length of damp blond hair that slid seductively in front of one eye. He stood at the edge, his feet hidden in a thick fringe of ferns, as if he’d been planted in their midst. His presence charged the cool, shadowy air. His shuttered gaze dropped down her body, where the water had plastered the thin cotton to her breasts. The look in his eyes made her dizzy. She shared that raw and barely restrained hunger. But she could only provoke him, and he would only keep away.

“Okay, so I’m a bird,” she said. She flashed a look at her chest, then back at him with challenge. “A yellow-crested titmouse.”

The whale music rose to a haunting crescendo. He scowled at the big portable player as if searching for distractions. “You wanted to talk to me. I can’t talk with that fish opera going on.” He moved quickly to the boom box, dropped to his knees, and jabbed one blunt finger against a delicate button. The music continued, but the cassette berth opened. He stared at the player, his expression growing darker. He balled his hand and smacked the top of the player. “How do you turn off the damned radio?”

Sam gaped at him. “Don’t whack my boom box. That’s not the radio playing, it’s …” Her voice trailed away. He wasn’t familiar with compact discs. The world had moved on without him for ten years. Compact discs, VCRs, fax machines, portable computers, car phones. Cable television. A thousand small changes waiting to remind him that he’d been left behind.

Her throat aching, Sam scrambled over to the player and pressed a control. The music ended abruptly. Beneath a small window on top, a shiny disc spun to a stop. His eyes narrowed as he watched, and understood. A muscle flexed in his jaw.

Sam was close enough to hear the soft intake of his breath and see the brief glimmer of humiliation in his
large, hooded eyes. She ached to reach for him, to hold him protectively. Their eyes met. Sam struggled to hide the tenderness he might mistake for pity. “The important things haven’t changed,” she said hoarsely. She gestured toward herself. “No strange new equipment
here
. Push
my
buttons.”

“
Samantha.
” He spoke her name with warning. He spoke it with a raw undertone of desperation. She leaned closer, drunk on the sound. “I haven’t heard you say my name in ten years. Please, say it again. I sit on the porch at night, wrapped in nothing but a blanket, praying that you’ll walk up and say my name, and slide your hands under the blanket, and—”

“Stop it.” His voice was ragged. He vaulted to his feet and walked a safe distance away, his big shoulders hunched. “You said I have a tracking job. Tell me the details in the car. You got your wish—you’re going. We’re wasting time.”

For a moment she was too grief-stricken to answer. The connection had been so strong. If he felt the same helpless, overwhelming need, how he could turn away from her? “If I were a man who hadn’t had sex for ten years,” she said wearily, “I don’t believe I could turn down an offer. For any reason.”

“That doesn’t say much for your opinion of men in general and me in particular.”

“No, I’m saying I must rank somewhere below lepers and sheep.”

He was silent and deceptively still, as if paralyzed by too many conflicting emotions he couldn’t describe or release. Then, slowly, his expression softening enough to bring tears to her eyes, he said, “At night you sit in the rocking chair nearest the steps, and sometimes after you fall asleep your arms relax, and the quilt slides down around you. When the moon sets, its light comes under the porch roof. First on your hair, then your face, then on down, letting me see just a little of you at a time. The rest is always hidden in the shadows. It’s a kind of torture. I spend the night trying to put you together, but I never can.”

Sam felt drugged. The breath soughed out of her. She could only look up at him in silent, dazed wonder, the way he was looking at her. He shifted as if groggy, scrubbed his hand over his face, and the mask slipped back into place. “We’re wasting time,” he repeated. “Change your clothes. I’ll get Bo and wait at the car. How far do we have to go?”

“A long way.” She hadn’t recovered enough to offer practical details.

“Then move it.” He pivoted quickly and strode up the knoll.

A long way
, she thought.
But another step closer
.

Charlotte had a bad case of the creeps. She didn’t like being alone in the Cove—at least, she thought she was alone. Sam had gone somewhere—the house had been locked when Charlotte arrived, and Sam’s car wasn’t in the yard. Jake, of course, was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t prowling the woods like a bear with a thorn in his tail.