Sound of Secrets (11 page)

"So what?" Karen challenged, ignoring the twinge of conscience that told her Cara Donnelly didn’t deserve to be treated this way. "Is your name supposed to mean something to me?"

"We have an appointment." She glanced at her watch and then back down at Karen. "At two o’clock?"

"What appointment?" Karen asked even as she remembered a hesitant voice on the phone that morning asking if she could spare some time that afternoon. If she had known it belonged to this woman, she would have refused. "Never mind. I remember now. I just don’t remember what you wanted to talk about."

"The newspaper. I’m doing a story on small-town newspapers," she supplied, stepping farther into the room. "Since your family owns the Sun, I’d like to talk to you."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Karen said, although she wasn’t, "but, as you can see, this isn’t a good time. I’m in the middle of something."

Instead of retreating, the woman crouched down and picked up a hibiscus with a broken stem. Karen bit back guilt that she could have deliberately damaged something so fragile.

"I don’t mind helping you clean up." She snapped the stem off the broken end and carefully arranged it into the new vase. "I think we can save most of them. These are so pretty it’s a shame you dropped them."

"I didn’t..." Karen began, but stopped before she admitted her crime. She couldn’t give this woman ammunition against her, especially if she had Gray’s ear. "Listen, uh, Miss Donnel, I—"

"It’s Donnelly. I’d prefer it if you called me Cara."

"Whatever." Karen breathed out heavily through her nose. The woman wasn’t budging. She was tougher than she looked. "If you were doing a story about singing in a rock band or trying to make it in Hollywood, I’m your girl.” Karen didn’t add that she had failed miserably at both pursuits. "But since you don’t, go find my Uncle Curtis. The Sun’s been operating for seventy-five years. I’ve only been working here for one.”

"I had an appointment with your uncle, too, but the receptionist said he was unexpectedly called away from the office."

"Then reschedule,” Karen said.

"I already did,” she said. “I’d rather not reschedule with you, though. I won’t take up too much of your time. I promise."

Karen shook her head, admiring, despite herself, the other woman’s persistence. Isn’t that what she preached to her own reporters? That you should never, ever take no for an answer when on the trail of an important story.

Thankfully for her reporters, they didn’t often run into sources as unflappable as Karen was. Or as determined not to be helpful. She chucked a few more pieces of broken glass into the waste basket and stood up.

"I don’t have the time to spare, Miss Donnelly." She deliberately ignored the woman’s request to use her first name. "It is Miss, isn’t it?"

"Yes, but—"

"I’m sure you can find the way out by yourself."

"We haven’t even finished cleaning up your spill."

"I can manage by myself." Karen put on her best satisfied smile. She’d been such a handful as a little girl the teachers at the church school had told her she’d go to hell if she lied. So be it. "Besides, Gray can always send me more flowers. He knows these are my favorites."

Karen had to give the other woman credit. Even though she blanched at the revelation, she very deliberately, very carefully placed the last of the hibiscus in the vase. Then she stood up. Karen was childishly glad that she topped her by a few inches taller, because she felt it gave her an advantage. And, all her life, Karen had been looking for an advantage. Without one, she couldn’t even begin to compete.

"If you change your mind, I’ll be staying at the Hotel Edison. Room 123."

"You’re a tourist just passing through then?" Karen asked hopefully. Perhaps she had been too hard on the other woman. Then again, she’d been pining long enough and hard enough for Gray DeBerg she didn’t intend to let anyone get in her way.

"Actually, I’ll be staying a while. So feel free to leave a message at the hotel if you change your mind about talking."

"Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing that," Karen said, putting a hand on her cocked hip. “I’ll keep it in mind just the same."

As Karen watched her go, she considered the other woman’s statement that she’d be staying in Secret Sound. Despite her words, she’d sounded unsure, as though staying was the opposite of what she wanted.

Karen tapped her bottom lip with her index finger, wondering exactly how big of a nudge she’d have to give Cara Donnelly to persuade her that leaving town was in her best interest.

"Some investigative reporter you are," Cara said aloud as she pulled her car out of the newspaper’s parking lot. "You can’t even get people to talk to you."

That was why, she thought wryly, her dream of becoming a reporter would probably remain just that. Hadn’t she known, way back when she’d argued with her parents about their refusal to let her go off to college, that she wasn’t suited for the job anyway? Isn’t that why she’d given up so easily?

A journalist couldn’t be afraid to stir things up, and she hadn’t even liked being at odds with her own parents. She was better suited to remain behind the scenes, tucked safely behind her desk in the circulation department where nobody expected her to drag information from reluctant sources.

She frowned, because she had to find a way to do exactly that if she had a prayer of discovering how Skippy Rhett fit into her life. There had to be some way to convince Karen to tell her what she knew about her brother’s death.

The road veered to the right, and Cara focused on negotiating the curve. When she hit the straightaway, her thoughts returned to Karen Rhett’s baffling hostility. She set her lips as a possibility occurred to her. It was so painful she felt a little stab in the region of her heart.

If Gray DeBerg were close enough to Karen to send her flowers, maybe he was influential enough to convince her not to answer any of Cara’s questions.

But if he were so close to Karen, what had he been doing kissing Cara on the beach? The question prompted an instant memory of Gray’s hungry mouth on hers, his body hard against hers. There was no question that he had wanted her, so why had he sent Karen flowers the next day? Guilt, perhaps? Karen shook her head, trying to shake her thoughts of Gray. She was in Secret Sound to find the answer to a far more important question.

Why had she seen little Skippy Rhett die again?

The question seemed absurd in the bright light of day, when the sun was shining gloriously overhead and turning her world golden.

It would be easy for Cara to convince herself the boy, as well as the eagle in her dreams, were figments of her imagination and that Secret Sound was no more familiar to her than a hundred other towns in a hundred different places.

Then she looked at the road, and knew everything she had just told herself was a lie. The route she was taking back to the hotel bisected a different, older residential neighborhood than the one Cara had driven to the newspaper.

This time, the slope of the road and the scenery were jarringly familiar. A portion of Cara's brain remembered the barrel-tile roofs on some of the older homes and the profusion of football fields, their goal posts erected on what were soccer fields in the summer.

The road gradually broadened from two lanes to four, unsurprising considering that increased traffic had forced lots of towns to widen their roadways. Except Cara didn't merely suspect that was what had happened in Secret Sound. She knew.

Her lungs felt starved for air, and Cara tried to calm herself, taking the long, deep breaths that the proponents of the relaxation exercises suggested.

There had to be a reason for the things that were happening to her, and the most logical was that she had been in Secret Sound before.

She reached for the cell phone she'd tossed on the passenger seat with shaking hands, noticing her battery was nearly dead. What’s more, she was fairly certain she’d forgotten her charger. She hit speed dial for the phone number of the only living person who could confirm this wasn’t her first time in Secret Sound, hoping the battery lasted the length of the conversation.

"Hello," a creaky, familiar voice answered after the phone had rung six times.

 
"Aunt Clarice? It's me, Cara."

 
"My lord, child. Is everything all right? You're not supposed to call until later in the week. I told you this trip to Miami wasn't a—"

 
"Good idea," Cara finished for her, deciding not to worry her aunt further by sharing her troubles. She'd already been repeatedly subjected to her aunt's opinion of a woman traveling alone to a strange state, an opinion that, strangely, she had agreed with even as she’d set out on the trip. "Please don’t worry about me, Aunt Clarice. Everything’s fine."

"Then why are you calling?" Her aunt's voice was suspicious, and Cara tried to think of a reply that wouldn't worry her. Since Cara's parents had died, Aunt Clarice had appointed herself Cara's surrogate mother, father and guardian.

 
"A silly reason," Cara said finally, opting for the truth. "I wanted to know if I'd ever been to Florida before."

"Wouldn't you know if you'd been to Florida before?"

Cara fought impatience while she navigated the road, wishing she had pulled over before calling. She wanted a quick answer, but her aunt wouldn’t provide one without an explanation. "Only if I were old enough to remember. Did Mom and Dad ever take me to Florida when I was really young? So young that I wouldn’t remember the trip?"

"Why do you want to know that?" Aunt Clarice asked.

Cara stopped herself from demanding an answer. She’d long ago gotten used to her aunt’s habit of answering her questions with a question. “No special reason, Aunt Clarice. It's just that some things here look familiar.”

“Maybe you're remembering pictures you've seen in magazines,” Aunt Clarice said. “Because you’ve never been in Florida before.”

Cara's heart plummeted. "Never? Mom and Dad never took me here?”

"They never did," Aunt Clarice said, her tone closing the subject. It felt as though someone had slammed a door in Cara's face.

"Are you sure?"

"For heaven’s sake, child. Your mother was my sister, and I lived next door to the woman from the time she married your father to the time she died. Of course I’d know if she’d ever taken you to Florida. I’m telling you, you’re probably remembering pictures."

Would Cara's reaction to Secret Sound really be so vivid if all she had seen were photographs? Could she have conjured up Skippy Rhett only because she'd come across his photo or possibly even read a story about the tragedy?

After telling her aunt her cell phone was almost dead and giving her a number where she could be reached at the hotel, Cara pressed the disconnect button. She felt vaguely guilty for not explaining the contact number was in Secret Sound instead of Miami Beach.

Then she laid the cell phone back down on the passenger seat, looked up at the familiar road and saw that it took a sudden ninety-degree turn to the right fifty feet in front of her.

She prepared to turn the wheel. Incredibly, it didn’t respond to her pressure. Disbelieving, she tried again with the same result.

The steering wheel, she realized with dawning horror, was stuck.

This can’t be happening, Cara’s mind screamed.

She wasn’t traveling particularly fast, probably not even forty miles an hour. With sickening clarity, she realized that a car moving in the opposite direction would hit her head-on if she couldn’t coax the steering wheel into turning.

She was near the outskirts of town, away from the main street with its collection of businesses and shops and pedestrians. Traffic was mercifully light.

The sun glinted off the silver chrome of a fender, indicating a car fast approaching on the other side of the road. The vehicle was a metallic gray-blue, like the eyes of a man she might never see again.

"Turn, damnit, turn!"

She gripped the steering wheel and yanked with all her strength. Her car kept heading toward certain disaster, never deviating from its path.

Wrenching her foot off the gas pedal, she violently hit the brakes.

The car slowed. Sweet, short-lived relief flowed through her. Deceleration had a price. The tires spun, sending the car into a lateral slide.

She glanced up and saw the gray-blue portent of doom getting closer. Her car slid across the double-yellow line. She braced her body, locking her arms on the steering wheel, and waited for the crunch of metal on metal.

The blare of a horn fueled her panic. She screamed. The other car swerved into the lane in which she’d been traveling, neatly avoiding her out-of-control car.

Her heart beat so hard it felt like it would jump out of her chest. Her car continued to spin, a dizzying spiral that seemed to go on and on, affording glimpses of pavement, blue sky and green grass.

The car came to a jarring stop in the front yard of a house set back from the road. Her body jerked, the seat belt preventing her from slamming into the steering wheel.

Her head still spinning and her hands shaking, it took her three tries to turn off the ignition. Then she dropped her head on the steering wheel and shut her eyes.

"Jesus, lady. Weren’t you watching where you were going?" The gruff male voice that drifted through her closed window was more panicked than angry. The other driver. She said a prayer of thanks for his quick reflexes. "Do you know how close you came to getting us both killed?"

Cara allowed herself another moment before lifting her head. A beard covered most of the other driver’s face. His eyes were so wide she could see white all around his irises.

“Sorry,” she choked out.

Even as she apologized, she knew her power steering hadn’t failed by accident, not after she'd had the car thoroughly checked before the trip. Not after the barely concealed resentment her questions about Skippy Rhett had stirred.

Her heart hammered, and her breathing became shallow.

Somebody, it seemed, had just tried to kill her.

Gray DeBerg grimaced as the strong black coffee slid down his throat, tasting so cold and rank he repressed an urge to spit it back out.