In the Waning Light (33 page)

Meg stared, dumbfounded, at her house as Blake pulled into her driveway and drew to a stop. The windows had all been replaced. The blood graffiti had been washed off and the walls repainted.

“What the . . . ?” Meg flung open the door, and jumped down. Digging in her tote for her keys, she made rapidly for the front entrance.

She unlocked the door, stepped in. Blake followed. A clean lemony scent greeted them. The broken glass had been cleared away, the carpets vacuumed. Fresh flowers smiled from a vase on the dining table. Beneath the vase was an envelope.

Meg ripped it open, and glanced up at Blake. “It says, courtesy of Kessinger Restoration Services.”

“Tommy’s guys,” Blake said.

“Why would he do this?”

“Well, you’re the one who said he’s practically family.”

She eyed him. “If I didn’t know better, Mr. Sutton, I’d say you were jealous.”

His features tensed, and his eyes grew dark. She swallowed. He stepped forward, grabbed her shoulders, and kissed her hard, backing her up against the wall. “Maybe I am, Meggie Brogan,” he murmured over her mouth, his hand sliding down her back, and cupping her buttocks. Heat arrowed instantly into her groin. She was turned on by his rough and sudden intensity. “Shall we christen these nice clean carpets?” he whispered, his mouth moving down her neck, down to the vee in her shirt. Her nipples contracted.

Meg felt herself melting, her legs turning to water. She laughed, a little breathless, seriously contemplating it, but she placed her palms flat against his chest and pushed him away, even as she still kissed him. “Noah. School. Will . . . be . . . late.”

He pulled back, his chest rising and falling fast, his green eyes sparking. He lifted her left hand and gently thumbed her naked ring finger as his gaze locked with hers. Silence simmered. Her heart beat louder, faster.

“I love you, you know that, Meg Brogan?”

Blood drained from her head.

But before she could think, or respond, he was making for the door. “Get what you need. I’ll be in the truck.”

Meg ran upstairs, feeling she was suddenly pushed up against the edge of an abyss. Blake was serious. Dead serious. She’d felt it in the aggression of his kiss, the intensity in his eyes. Heard it in the catch in his voice.

I love you, you know that, Meg Brogan?

She had to commit, or cut it off with Blake right now.
This
was the point of no return. She’d already taken off her engagement ring. She was growing in love with the idea of staying here, not going back to Seattle. But at the same time all her fears of commitment and intimacy were starting to clang like fire alarms around the edge of her brain. It made her skin prickle.

Tension tickling, she rummaged quickly through her mom’s closet. As she moved the clothes, the scent of her mother’s perfume rose from the fabric. How was that even possible, after all this time? Was she just imagining it?

Look for that dress, Meggie-Peg. The red one.

A chill lifted the hairs at the nape of her neck at the sound of Sherry’s voice. Meg stilled. Slowly she glanced over her shoulder, fully expecting to see Sherry sitting there on the bed. All she saw was her own reflection in the far mirror, and for a startling moment she thought it was her mom. Her pulse quickened. Memories were strange. Scents especially could trigger them so strongly that the resulting memory almost seemed to hold enough power to physically reconstruct a person long gone, make them shimmer in front of you like some holographic image.

She returned to the clothes, and found a red dress hanging neatly in a protective plastic laundry sleeve.

Yes, that one. Killer dress, Meggie, Just retro enough. Full circle . . . what do they say?
. . . Fashion goes in twenty-year cycles . . . and you do need a killer look tonight. Tonight’s the night, tonight will be the big one . . .

Meg heard Blake’s diesel truck engine rumble to life. Had to get to Noah. Couldn’t be late for the kid, not with the strange mood he was in. Meg grabbed the red dress from the closet, held it up in front of her, and turned quickly to the mirror.

See, Meggie-Peg. Killer. Now grab some shoes . . .

No. She had boots with a heel in her truck. Boots would be better in this weather.

At least take the fake fur, kiddo . . .

Meg scratched deeper into the closet and found her mom’s fake fur coat, and smiled. She folded it all into a bag, and made for the stairs. Jonah would die if he saw her in this outfit. But she didn’t give a hoot. In fact, the very idea of dressing up as a version of her mom lightened her heart. Sherry would have gotten a kick out of it. As she hurried through the living area, she stalled at the sound of Sherry’s voice again.

Meggie, remember my goldfish? They lived on that shelf, in their perfect world . . .

Her gaze shot to where the fish tank used to be. Where the safe was now in full view.

No predators in their waters . . .

The safe door was shut. She went over and tugged on it. Locked. The combination must have been turned. She was sure she’d left the door open while Kovacs was standing here. One of Tommy’s cleaners must have closed it. Not that it mattered—why should it? But something suddenly felt off about the cleanup job, and people inside her house.

Meg locked the front door and hurried out to the waiting truck. As she climbed in and shut the door, it struck her how wrong Sherry had been all those years ago.

Sometimes the predator lives right here, and he looks just like the rest of us . . .

“Who’s going to stay with
me
if you’re both going to the party?” Noah complained, testy, weepy, and tired as they pulled into the marina parking lot. He hadn’t eaten his school lunch, and according to his teacher had not participated in his art class.

“Your uncle Geoff,” Blake said.

“He’s not here. Look. His car’s gone.”

“He will be. He promised.” Blake’s blood pressure rose. He tried to tamp down his temper, but he was frothing at the bit about Geoff not being here. The clock was ticking. He needed to know from Geoff if Henry had driven his red van to the spit that day. And he had to tell Meg.

“Other kids are going,” whined Noah. “There’ll be rides in the harbor on the whale-watching boat. For free. Every hour, even in the dark.”

“Those kids are older. And the weather might not be good, Noah. I doubt it’s going to happen.” Blake swung open his door, refusing to look at Meg. He’d laid his heart bare, and he could see it had unnerved her. What did he expect? For her to say,
I love you, too, Blake Sutton
? He was grabbing too hard and fast, because he was shit scared it was all going to go to hell in a handbasket now.

“But they said!” Noah yelled.

“Come, out,” Blake said, opening Noah’s door.

Noah dropped out of the truck and stormed toward the house, his shoulders and chin set forward.

“You sure Geoff will be here?” Meg said gently, touching his arm.

“He promised.”

“Blake, maybe you shouldn’t come tonight. Maybe you should stay with Noah.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go alone, that’s all.” He raked his hand over his hair. Thunder cracked. A jagged fork of lightning speared down over the spit. Daylight was waning. Puce and black clouds boiled in. Water slapped against the shore with the growing tidal surge. Another smash of thunder sounded right above them and the heavens suddenly let loose. Marbles of rain bombed to the ground. Together they ran for cover. A curtain of water pummeled down onto the tin roof of the marina, and the sky turned black.

He held open the door for her.

“I won’t be alone,” she said, entering the marina office. “The place will be packed with people. And I don’t plan to stay long. I basically want to talk with Kovacs, and maybe Ryan Miller, and I want to ask Tommy a few more questions in light of Emma’s latest revelations. And thank him for the renos. I can’t accept the freebie. I need to pay him back.”

“Everyone’s paying him back. He owns the whole damn town.” He made for the kitchen.

She grabbed his arm. “Blake, what is it?”

“Nothing. I’m just frustrated with Noah. It was going so well.”

“And then I came along.”

He held her eyes. Thunder cracked again outside, and growled into the distant mountains. “And Geoff is pissing me off. He should be here.”
And I love you. I want you. I don’t want to lose you
. “And I don’t feel it’s safe for you to go alone. That’s the bottom line. And if I don’t go, you shouldn’t go, either.”

Her mouth tightened. “This is about what you said earlier, at the house, isn’t it?”

His heart beat faster.

“It’s because I haven’t said anything in return, is that it?”

“You took off his ring, Meg. I thought—”

“Blake . . . just give me a little while, okay?”

“It was a mistake.” He turned from her and went into the kitchen.

You asshole. She told you herself she had trouble committing. She told you how Dr. Shrink backed her into a corner by pressing for a marriage date, and look what happened—she ran to Shelter Bay, a place of last resort. Now you’re trying to push her into the same kind of corner? Asshole . . .

“Noah!” he barked up the stairwell. No answer. He grabbed his phone, called Geoff. It kicked to voice mail. He swore again. Meg entered the kitchen behind him.

“Blake?”

“Go get ready,” he said curtly, not giving her his eyes. “Geoff will be here by the time you are. I need to go unload those sandbags, just in case.”

From the upstairs window, Meg watched Blake reverse his truck up to the garage. He began to haul sandbags out from the corner of the garage and toss them up into the bed of his truck. His movements were powerful and angry, unrestrained. Meg swallowed, and her eyes burned. She clasped her hand around the diamond ring at her neck.

Maybe I love you, too, Blake Sutton. Maybe I always have. Maybe this was something else Jonah was wrong about—perhaps, deep down,
you
were the real reason I could never commit.

As she watched Blake, she wondered about destiny. If some things were just written into the cosmos. If Sherry’s murder had been like a weird blip in a time-space continuum that had bumped lives into the wrong groove, and she’d been meant to return here, to rectify the blip, rewrite the ending, and reset the clock.

Her thoughts circled back to what Blake had told her in bed, that his father had beat them. And as she watched Blake laboring with the sandbags, her heart torqued with compassion.

Oh, the secrets we keep. How we deceive ourselves, often in the name of love . . .

How had this shaped Geoff? What invisible scars did he now bear?

Wait. Stop! Don’t run, Meggie, don’t run!

Geoff’s voice. Her pulse stuttered as Geoff’s face suddenly loomed into her mind again, waxy white, shining with rain. This time she saw a cut on his cheek. Shit. She rubbed her arms. Had she just added that detail because of what Blake had told her?

He struck a particularly violent blow early that morning you went missing, cutting open Geoff’s cheek . . .