Officer in Pursuit (31 page)

Her shirt slipped out of her hands and
landed on the wet sand. She grabbed it before a wave could take it
away, then turned to face Grey.

With the sea breeze blowing against
her bare ribs and belly, she felt the tiniest bit
self-conscious.

Seeing the look on his face made it
all worth it.

CHAPTER 23

Kerry had to admit, Faye’s decoration
ideas had been worth all the work. It was Halloween afternoon and
the entire festival set-up on Wisteria’s front lawn was swathed in
gauzy black tulle spangled with silver sequins. The sky was
cloudless, and later, when the stars came out, it would look like a
little bit of the night sky had floated down to cloak the
festivities.

No one but Kerry, Faye and Alicia knew
of the insane hours that’d gone into making the
decorations.

Kerry smiled. Really, it was lucky
Faye had chosen such a demanding project. If she hadn’t, Kerry
would’ve been out of work while her hand healed. She’d scraped by
though, getting in enough hours to make sure she’d be able to keep
a roof over her head.

“So, do you need a cider sampler
before the masses arrive or what?” Grey appeared in front of
Kerry’s cider booth. “Because I volunteer.”

He was dressed as Superman – in other
words, he wore nothing but blue and red spandex, from head to toe.
That, and a cape. He was so muscular, and the material was so
clingy, that Kerry blushed every time she caught sight of
him.

With his dark hair, he actually did
look the part.

“Sure,” Kerry said, ladling some cider
out of a bowl and into a plastic cup. “You’ll need all the energy
you can get to run the duck pond game.”

“Why?” He tipped back the cup and
drained it in all of five seconds.

“Because it’s the perfect game for
kids between the ages of, oh, two and eight.”

“So? The kids will love me. You’ll
see.”

“That’s because you’re one of them.”
Sasha appeared out of nowhere, carrying a tray of cookies and
shining in a long-sleeved red bodysuit, complete with glittering
tail and a matching headband that placed pointy little horns on top
of her blonde head.

Grey swiped one of the cookies from
the tray before she could react. “Who let you out of the kitchen?
Shouldn’t you be slaving away in there with all the heat and
flames?”

Sasha just smiled. “We closed down the
restaurant for the night to focus on the food we’re serving for the
festival. I’ll be overseeing the serving.”

“Great costume,” Grey said. “It’s like
the manufacturer had you in mind when it was made.”

“Careful, Grey. I wouldn’t provoke the
person in charge of the food, if I was you.” She sauntered away,
her cookie tray held high.

Grey charmed Kerry into giving him a
second cup of cider, then tipped his head toward the gates. “People
are starting to show up. Looks like all the regular parking spaces
are taken already. I bet Henry’s having fun out in the overflow
lot.”

Liam, Henry and Grey had all
volunteered for the festival. Henry had gotten stuck with directing
parking in the open field beside the lawn – a job he’d said he was
glad to take, since there was no way in hell he was going to wear a
costume.

Liam and Alicia were running a couple
of game booths.

“You’d better get to your station,”
Kerry said. “I see some families with little kids
coming.”

He ignored her suggestion, leaning
instead on the cider booth. “Have I told you how amazing you look
in your costume? I have to hand it to you – a shell bra is the only
thing better than a corset.”

Kerry’s blush deepened, and she
diverted her gaze down to her mermaid costume. It was basically a
tube-style dress that flared at the bottom, gauzy swaths of fabric
giving the illusion of a tail. Blue and green sequins glittered all
over, like fish scales. And while purple sequins had been sewn on
to look like seashells over her breasts, she was covered from just
below her collarbones to her feet, with only a hint of cleavage
showing.

“It’s not like I’m walking around in
just a bra,” she said.

“No, but this is a close second. I
can’t wait to get you home.”

She couldn’t help but smile. Peeling
him out of all that spandex wouldn’t be so bad, either. “Well, it’s
going to be a long time.”

He grinned. “You’re telling
me.”

“No!” She laughed and lowered her
voice, aware that families were beginning to enter through the open
front gates. “I mean here – the festival won’t be over until
midnight.”

“I don’t care how long I have to wait;
I’m getting you out of that shell bra tonight. And now, I have to
go… This spandex isn’t very forgiving, if you know what I
mean.”

She blushed as she watched him walk
away to man the duck pond game. She could watch him from the cider
booth, which was centrally located among all the others and was
expected to draw a lot of customers. With that in mind, she started
unpacking and stacking the plastic cups she’d be serving the cider
in.

When a shadow fell across her,
diminishing the late afternoon light, she looked up, expecting her
first customer.

Instead, she nearly had a heart
attack.

“God!” She stumbled backward, almost
putting her elbow in the cider bowl. “Alicia! You scared
me.”

Alicia grinned, the expression
creasing her moon-white make-up. “I look scary, then? I was going
more for ethereal, but…”

Kerry’s heart was speeding like a
racehorse. It kept going like that as she looked Alicia up and
down, taking in every detail of her heart-stoppingly detailed
costume.

She was a ghost bride. Draped from
head to toe in white lace, her mesh veil only half-concealed her
painted face, which was artfully made up. When she looked closely,
Kerry could see it wasn’t just white make-up – it was white blended
with shades of blue and grey to exaggerate her bone structure,
bringing every angle to the surface. Only her lips were colored –
blood red against the stark paleness of her face.

“Are those dead roses?” Kerry asked,
nodding toward Alicia’s bouquet and trying to sound like she hadn’t
been scared halfway out of her wits.

“Yes. They’re a nice touch, aren’t
they? They were Liam’s idea.” She nodded toward her husband, whose
costume looked tame compared to hers.

“Are you supposed to be a lumberjack?”
Kerry asked.

Liam nodded, hefting a foam axe. “It
was the only costume I could come up with that didn’t involve
buying or making anything, other than this.”

“I bought the axe for him,” Alicia
said. “He was planning to just wear jeans and a flannel shirt. Can
you believe it?”

“Hey, I’m just here to run the ring
toss. I’m not participating in the costume contest.”

“That’s not the point,” Alicia said,
nudging him. “Where’s your Halloween spirit?”

“I think I left it behind in junior
high.”

Alicia rolled her eyes, but didn’t
stop smiling. Her left hand sparkled with a diamond and bands that
had nothing to do with her costume as she took Liam by the
arm.

“We’d better get going,” Alicia said.
“I see some kids closing in on the ring toss. I love your costume,
Kerry – we’ll have to do a group picture tonight, before everyone
goes home.”

Kerry took a few moments to regroup
after Alicia left, waiting for the tremor to leave her hands. It
was ridiculous, but when Alicia had appeared, Kerry had mistaken
her for the Lady in White.

She wasn’t alone at the cider booth
for long. Customers were trickling in and most of them wandered the
grounds for a couple minutes before gravitating to the cider booth,
as if it were the obvious first stop. Even the parents who got
dragged off to the games came around eventually.

A pattern quickly became obvious:
about 1 in 10 customers asked Kerry if she worked at Wisteria, and
if she did, did she think it was really haunted?

At first, Kerry didn’t know how to
respond. Wisteria didn’t give ghost tours and she was pretty sure
Benjamin would fight tooth and nail to keep anything as déclassé as
a haunted house from taking place on its grounds. But the
well-known rumors of spirits added a certain mystique to the
property and evoked a sense of an enduring legacy, a past that was
still, in a way, alive.

So, she settled for a watered-down
version of the truth, the sort of thing she figured most of them
really wanted to hear, anyway. “There’ve been plenty of times I’ve
gotten the sense that I wasn’t alone. You always feel like you’ve
got company, in the house.”

It was true. Even now, her heart
fluttered at the thought of Elizabeth, the Lady in White. She was
so used to seeing her every morning that it would’ve felt strange
not to. And she didn’t think of her as a malevolent presence – far
from it. She was Wisteria’s guardian ghost, a messenger – a sad
spirit with good intentions. And yet…

She existed, lingered at her old home,
to inspire fear. Fear that might save someone – a wariness that
might stop a disaster from reaching the final, irreversible stage
that would take someone’s life. It was a sobering theory – one
Kerry believed to be true. And so, yes, Elizabeth’s presence scared
her, even if Elizabeth herself didn’t.

Lately, she couldn’t help but feel
that she had more than ever to lose. Getting close to Grey and
becoming even closer to Sasha and Alicia, now that there were no
secrets between them, had given her a sort of happiness that
couldn’t be crushed by circumstances, no matter how
dire.

She wanted to stay alive and healthy
for a long time, enjoying what she had.

“Excuse me.” A mother with two kids
dressed as pumpkins approached. “Can I get three ciders please?
Thanks.”

Afternoon faded to evening in a haze
of transactions. Both the cash box and the credit card reader were
given a workout as Kerry took the guests’ money and served their
cider. It was even busier than she’d anticipated, a fact that had
her feeling optimistic. Wisteria had suffered from lost income
after the fire, but this would help make up for that in part, and
it might even become a tradition.

She’d gladly help out again if it did.
Standing in her booth, glittering with sequins, she was basically
getting paid to watch Grey move around in his spandex suit. It was
quite a show, and he was right: the little kids flooding the duck
pond seemed to love Superman as much as they loved the game itself.
Some parents even took pictures of their kids posing with
him.

He was tireless, seeming to thrive off
the attention and the kids’ jokes. Kerry had never given it much
thought before, but he seemed like he’d make a great
parent.

A pang of sadness sailed
through her as she was reminded of the child she’d lost and the man
she’d almost made a father. She’d been honest with Grey – she
w
as
glad she
hadn’t had any children with Brad. She couldn’t stand the thought
of a kid suffering through a childhood with an abuser for a father.
If she had children, she’d want them to have a father who met the
highest of standards – someone selfless and kind.

Someone like Grey.

Not that she was looking that far in
the future or itching to start a family, but it was true all the
same. Grey was the kind of person who could improve anyone’s life
just by being a part of it.

“Nice view, huh?” A twenty-something
woman in a cat costume popped into Kerry’s field of vision,
blocking her view of Grey. “I wish I’d borrowed one of my nieces or
nephews for the night so I’d have an excuse to go play duck
pond.”

Apparently, Kerry wasn’t the only one
staring. Cat Girl shot her a conspiratorial grin, and Kerry
couldn’t help but laugh, mildly embarrassed for being caught ogling
Grey while she was working. Really, though…

They shouldn’t have put her where she
could see him so clearly if they didn’t want her to look. It was
simply impossible not to stare.

It wasn’t until well into the night,
when most of the families with young children had left and the
crowd was teeming with adults jittering with nerves from the
haunted house next door, that Kerry actually got a chance to talk
to her personal superhero in spandex again.

* * * * *

“So, my ducks are basically dead in
the water,” Grey said, leaning on the cider booth wall. “All the
kids are gone.”

He was frowning.

Kerry had to fight a smirk. “It looked
like you were having a good time.”

“I was. Did you know—” he arched an
eyebrow “—that the average five year old is completely incapable of
telling the difference between the real Superman and a guy in a
costume? Basically, I’ve been a god for the past five
hours.”

“You mean a superhero. There’s a
difference.”

“Yeah, whatever. The point is, I
received autograph requests.”

“Any phone number requests?” She
arched an eyebrow.