A Shadow on the Ground (8 page)

A gust of air lashed against her neck. A shiver swept across her shoulders, then down her spine to her toes. Someone walking over her grave, the old people called it.

The forgotten strings of the tiny white lights Sean had wrapped around the fence posts at Christmas twinkled softly, warmly, as if the people inside were standing by the fireplace, waiting for their holiday guests to arrive. Morgan walked to the end of the porch and yanked the electrical cord out of the socket, plunging the upper half of the driveway into darkness. As she stood, staring into the night, Opal’s ceramic wind chimes jangled over her head.

She wrapped her arms around a post and gazed up at the stars. She should tell Opal about Sean’s arrest before the Riverbirch grapevine reached Grace Church Village. She wasn’t sure Opal really cared all that much about her or Sean, but it was the right thing to do. But what would she say? How could she explain what she didn't understand herself?

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.
The world has gone batshit crazy.
First Harlan dying, then Gage Kirkland showing up out of the blue, and now...
this
? Her brother getting arrested for a crime he could not have committed? She’d looked after Sean for most of his life, taught herself how keep the big, bad ugly world at bay for him. How was she going to pull it off this time?

Morgan had arrived on the planet four minutes ahead of Sean, but she’d always felt years older. It was natural she should look out for him. She’d been born the tough one, the skeptical one, the one with the acid tongue who could drive the school bullies away. Even while their parents were alive, Sean had needed her protection. His tender, trusting heart was a flashing neon sign to the sharks and misfits of the world, a magnet for every lowlife with a hard luck story and an outstretched hand. Her brother gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, and she would never understand how he could continue to see the good in people she wouldn't trust as far as she could throw a piano.

How could she help him now? This wasn’t as simple as reading Clyde Jenkins the Riot Act for throwing a Fourth of July sparkler at her brother. This was a murder charge. According to Sheriff Stallard, someone had deliberately killed Harlan Spannagel. But if Sean didn’t do it, then who had? And why were they trying to pin it on her brother?

She glanced up at the sky. “I have to stay strong,” she whispered. “No matter what happens, I cannot fall apart.”

The soft roar of a car engine droned in the distance. Across the road, twin headlight beams flashed the side of the Jenkins’ barn.

Morgan's heart picked up speed. She stood frozen, waiting. Would the car pass the entrance to the orchard or turn in at the gate? The sound drew closer, echoing off the side of the mountain until it burst into the open. A long black van turned into the driveway and cut its lights.

Her first instinct was to run for the front door and bathe herself in the brilliant rectangle of light spilling onto the porch.

Her second, more rational instinct was to slip into the shadows. Her left hand coiled around the cordless phone in her pocket. Her right hand picked up the garden trowel she'd left beside a concrete planter.

The van stopped a few feet from the utility pole.

The door opened. A man, shorter than Finch but taller than Mendoza, stepped out, unfolding his long legs one by one.

Chapter 4

“Stay where you are!” Morgan cried. “I have a weapon!”

Gage didn’t move. Beneath the mercury vapor lamp, his shadow stretched across the ground in front of him like a dark crack in the earth.

“Morgan.” His low baritone sounded distorted and gruff, as if his voice had pushed her name through the thick night air. “It’s Gage.”

“What are you doing here?”

He stepped forward and cupped his hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare. Beneath the light, all he could make out was her silhouette standing beside the porch swing. If her weapon of choice was a loaded gun, and it was pointed at him, he hoped she knew what she was doing.

“I asked you a question,” she said.

“I’m here to beg a favor.”

“Well, that’s easy. The answer is no.”

“Look,” he said. “I get that you don't want to see me. I understand. More than you know, probably. But I can’t change the past.”

“Neither can I. Go away.”

“I need—”

“I don’t care what you need. Get back in your big black car and drive toward the mountain. Or off the mountain. Your choice.”

“Not a good time to stop by, huh?”

A long, silent pause. “No, Gage, this isn’t a good time. This is a terrible time. The only thing that could make this time any worse was if I was covered head-to-toe with poison oak and had scarfed down the Fried Clam Special at Maxie’s Diner. I can’t talk to you right now. I can’t talk to anybody.”

He reached out his hand as if he were approaching a skittish colt and edged closer. “I know you’ve had a bad day, but please, hear me out.”

“
A bad day
? Are you serious?” She laughed harshly. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

“It’s about Jeremy. I’m here because of my son.”

Another long, interminable pause. She glanced at the stars, sighed, looked back down. Then she moved out of the shadows and stood beside the porch railing. “Oh, what the hell,” she said tiredly. “Come on up.”

The night air, humid and cool at the same time, fueled his imagination. As he neared the house, he thought he could feel her heartbeat thrumming deep within his chest, pulling him toward her. But maybe it was his own heart flailing against his ribcage, hard enough to stall his breath, like something held captive inside him trying to break free.

He chided himself for not calling first. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her, or throw suspicion on himself. He was there to do a job. He shouldn't be hanging around her house at night while she was home. It was unprofessional and incompetent, and a gross conflict of interest. Something he’d never cared much about honoring before. But this time was different. This time he gave a damn.

He had solid reasons for saying yes to Tyson, but the cool impassivity he thought he could maintain long enough to satisfy his curiosity about Morgan had taken a dive. Right off the edge of the earth. One look at her and every screwed up fiber of his being knew that this time, if his heart stayed intact, it would be a bloody miracle.

“What about Jeremy? Is he all right?”

“He's fine.” Gage glanced at the trowel and chuckled softly. “Is that your weapon? What were you going to do, plant one on me?”

“I still might.” She set the trowel on the railing and crossed her arms over her chest, which every man who had ever tried to talk to an angry woman knew was Body Language 101 for
Stay the hell away from me.

“Jeremy?” she prodded. “The reason you’re here?”

It was too late to turn back. Gage swallowed hard. “Those things Jeremy said about his mother's death, I...I feel like I need to explain. When Suzanne, my ex-wife, died, we’d been divorced for five years.”

“Please.” Morgan held up her hands. “You do not have to tell me this.”

“Yes, I do.” Gage stepped up on the porch, barely missing a basket of raggedy geraniums.

She looked at him then glanced at the geraniums. “Then you’d better sit down before you brain yourself.”

He sunk into the wicker armchair and tried to decide the best way to start. Why hadn’t he planned what he was going to say before he jumped in the car and tore over the mountain to Riverbirch? Why hadn’t he thought things through? He should know by now that spontaneity always got him into trouble.

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The words weren’t exactly pouring out. He took a deep breath and clasped his hands in front of him, like a preacher signaling for the congregation to bow their heads. Then he took another breath. “Jeremy lost his mother two months ago, and he's a mess right now. He keeps lashing out at me, hoping to make me hurt as much as he does. I'm sure you've figured that out. But I want you to know I did not kill his mother.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“It was an accident. She pulled out of the driveway into the path of an oncoming car. There were extenuating circumstances which Jeremy blames me for. Actually, he blames me for all of it. But I did not—I could never—” He lifted his eyes and looked at her. “I don't want you to think badly of me.”

“That's why you came back here tonight? So I won't think badly of you?”

“Yes. I mean,
no
. I just—”

“Well, I do think badly of you. I'll always think badly of you.”

“You don't mean that.”

“Why not? I can think badly of you if I want to. Most girls have a guy in their past they wish they'd never met. You're mine. Of course, most girls don't get to experience the thrill of having the guy show up out of the blue twelve years later. With his kid. On the worst day of their lives.”

“If I'd known you were going to find a dead body today, I would have waited until tomorrow to show up.”

She leveled her gaze at him. “I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel.”

“Morgan, please. I wish you could—” He stopped. It was no use. Nothing he said would ever change her mind about him. He had set their destiny in motion. She hated him. He had to accept that and let her go. He would never deserve a second chance with her, and that couldn’t have hurt more than a punch to his gut. Why did he care so much, after all this time, what she thought of him? Because seeing her again had awakened something deep inside he'd forgotten could even exist? Because the desire he'd felt for her the autumn he turned twenty-two was the elusive high he'd been chasing, and never come close to duplicating, with every woman who'd made a quick detour through his life?

“I could use a drink,” she said. “Do you want a beer?”

“Sure.”

“Then I'd like to hear more about Jeremy. He reminds me of a heartbroken kid I used to know.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

She turned to go inside, and as she stirred the air, he breathed in her faint, sweet scent. She crossed the porch, and he tried to burn the image of the woman she’d become into his brain, where it could ground itself in reality. Thick dark waves bounced against her shoulder blades. The narrow straps of a dark pink bra crisscrossed her back beneath her white T-shirt. Faded jeans hugged the contours of her thighs, sat low on her soft, rounded hips. He loved those hips. The memory of holding them as they moved against him blazed across his mind for an instant. He pushed it away.

If only he could...
no.
He couldn’t. He was sitting on her porch, swallowing his pride for Jeremy. He’d plead his case and go away like she’d asked him to. She'd made it clear she didn't want anything to do with him, and he’d respect that. Wondering what might have been didn’t do anybody any good. His and Morgan’s time had come and gone. Which, in theory, should make it easier for him to stomach deceiving her. But once she was out of his system, and he’d closed that chapter of his life forever, his new life, the responsible, grownup life he was determined to make with a son he barely knew, could finally begin.

And if he believed that, he was a bigger fool than he thought.

Christ, he was in trouble.

Big. Big. Trouble.

He and Tyson were friends, but if Tyson learned Gage had compromised this job, he would hand it over to Bobby Poole or that money-grubbing jerk, Cal Leonard. Neither one of those boys would give a damn about Morgan, or protect her if she got caught in the crossfire. If Tyson found out about his connection to Morgan, he'd tell Gage to get a grip or get the hell out. Then he'd tell him to go to a bar, find some hot little number to shake the cobwebs off his privates, and get back to work.

The screen door creaked. He looked up, and she was standing in front of him.

A little jolt ran through him. He still wasn’t used to having her near enough to touch instead of hovering like an apparition at the edge of his dreams. In the world he was used to inhabiting with her, he’d be waking up right about now, squinting hard against the stark morning light, bracing himself for the mother of all hangovers.

She handed him a beer and sat across from him on the frayed wicker loveseat. Her perfume, so quiet he wasn't even sure it belonged to her, roused his senses as it lingered in the air. She’d turned out the porch light, and the glow from the stained glass lamp in the living room caressed the soft planes of her face, making her look younger and more vulnerable than she had in the harsh light of day. She'd swept her long hair up and harnessed it into one of those plastic claw-things at the crown of her head. A few tendrils trailed against the nape of her neck. He remembered the long ago feel of it sweeping against his bare shoulder. Then later, after they lay tangled in each other’s arms, the tickle as it draped across his chest. He had the urge to unclasp her hair and thread his fingers through it, then cradle her head in his hand.

“You could have asked me this big favor tomorrow, you know.”

“I needed to get out and drive. I love driving. It clears my head.”

“That's what I'm using the beer for.” She took a healthy swallow. “Well, no. Actually, I'm using it as a sedative, but it's going to take a lot more than a bottle of Coors Light to make me forget this day.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t think it will ever be over.”

“I don’t think
we’ll
ever be over,” he whispered.

“What did you say?”

“I said I should have brought some wine.”

“Well, you do live in a winery. Your uncle’s winery.”

“Blackstone Hollow Winery.”

“Right.” She took another swallow of beer. “So, tell me, how is dear old Uncle Bert? Has he calmed down since the night he caught us going at it on the bow of his catamaran? The night he called me—now, let me get this right—'a conniving little gold-digger, who's not getting one red cent out of this family if she gets herself knocked up.’”

“He was angry.”

“Ya think?”

“I'm sorry for the things Bert said to you. If I could, I'd drag him down here and make him apologize. He can be an awful person.”