Whatever Remains (26 page)

             
He glanced up as she entered, eyes lingering on her in a way that left her face heated. “Thanks,” he said as he took his drink, and Jade settled on the other side of Clara, keeping her between them.

             
Now what?
she thought. Last night had been about fear and circumstance and comfort, for both of them. But anything that happened tonight wouldn’t be so sudden and unavoidable; it would be deliberate, tinged with longing and soft with promise. Needing him in the grip of terror was one thing; needing him now was just about…needing him, and nothing else.

             
They sat in silence; Jade, at least, cloaked in the illusion of normalcy. She knew it had to end, and it did at Clara’s bedtime.

             
Ben surprised her, though. Over the top of Clara’s head, he asked, “Can I take her up?”

             
“Sure,” she said, stunned. “I’ll do night check while you tuck her in.”

             
He went stiff all over. “You’re not going down there by yourself.”

             
She almost smiled at his tone. “I go down there by myself lots of nights.”

             
“Yeah, and you end up calling me from the hayloft.
Do not
go down there. We’ll go together.”

             
Again, Jessica’s words came back to her; if she could be believed, then not just Chris, but both Haley brothers were protective to the extreme. It was the military man in each of them. And something genetic, most like.

             
Jade couldn’t let him play white knight in this instance, though. “We can’t leave Clara up here by herself,” she reminded. “One of us has to stay with her.”

             
Damn
, she swore she heard him curse inside his head. His forehead did complex things in the familiar way it did when he knew she was right. He hated when she was right and she knew it, smiling behind the rim of her wine glass.

             
“Fine,” he said. “You put her to bed and I’ll do night check.”

             
Somewhere, pigs were taking flight and Hell’s lakes were starting to crystallize. She snorted before she could catch herself and squelched it with a hand. “
What
?” she asked from behind it, laughing. “
You
are going to do night check?
You
? You are
volunteering
to be near my horses? And to do something
nice
for me? Here.” She reached over to feel his face and he swatted her away, frowning. “I was going to check your temperature,” she chuckled. “Because you’re clearly delirious with fever.”

             
“I’m not being nice,” he said, scowling and as petulant as a kid. “I’m trying to keep you
alive
.”

             
“Right. And that’s really nice of you.”

             
He gave her a warning glare…that was flickering around the edges with something warm and pleased. He loved the banter; he loved to be teased. It was one of the reasons they’d worked so well before Clara…

             
That line of thought had a sobering effect. Jade got to her feet and smoothed Clara’s hair off her forehead. “Come on, sleepyhead. Bedtime.”

             
Ben rose and stretched, joints popping, spine cracking. He had an old soul – his age was irrelevant – but sometimes hearing his neck crack was a surprising reminder for her that he was forty-six, and that Age was putting her claws in him. It worried her. Who massaged the knots out of his shoulders? Who ensured he ate well? Who bugged him about going to the appropriate doctor’s appointments? The answer was no one, and she wished it were her.

             
“Tell me what to do,” he said sourly as Clara roused and slid off the couch.

             
With an inward head shake of disbelief, she told him: “They all get one flake of hay apiece. There should be an open bale in the feed room, so you won’t have to go into the loft. Just toss it in over the door, nothing fancy. Make sure the water buckets are at least half full.” She told him what signs of colic to keep an eye out for: sweating, kicking, biting at sides, restless pacing or listlessness. “If they all eat their hay, then they’re all fine. Oh, and I usually take them carrots.”

             
“I’m not taking them carrots. Fu…” He put a hand on Clara’s head. “Forget that.”

             
“Fine. The hay will do.”

             
But as she herded Clara upstairs – after she’d said goodnight – she heard the fridge open, and smiled. He’d taken the carrots.

“Shithead,” Ben accused as he pulled his hand back. The little gray pony that Clara went on and on about had almost snapped off one of his fingers. “Like fuck are you getting more carrots.” But he dropped one through the stall bars into his feeder anyway.

The last one in line was Jade’s big bay gelding.
Atlas
gleamed on his brass stall plate and he watched Ben with pricked ears, head bobbing in anticipation. Ben felt awkward and novice as he held out half a carrot on a flat palm and watched Atlas lip it up like a gentleman, thick whiskers on his muzzle scratching against his skin.

Jade’s other baby: he was a big animal, with feet the size of dinner plates, all rippling muscle and shiny coat. He had big, chocolate-colored eyes that Ben foun
d disconcerting for some reason; he knew stuff, that horse. He nuzzled Ben’s hand for another treat and looked at him with more depth than half the suspects he’d interrogated in his life. He was Jade’s horse – he understood Jade, conversed with her, with an ease that Ben had never been capable of – and for that reason, he found a kernel of respect for this horse where he had none for the others.

“Alright.” He gave the place one las
t glance; all the horses were eating hay under the droning tube lights. He flipped the switch and went back to the house.

The world was tumbling headlong into autumn, and in the dark of night, all the greens and
golds were nothing but a black mosaic of shadows, each more sinister than the last. The air was still, damp, and cool tonight, dew dropping and mist creeping. Thinking about Jade walking through it alone, beneath the dark dapples of the driveway oaks, left him angry, with himself more than anyone. Brave girl or not, there was something primitive and male in him that loathed the idea of her doing this without a protector.

Headlights sliced through the fog up at the top of the drive: Jeremy home from his date. As he walked, Ben watched his Lexus (Daddy had money and was generous with it) pull up to the garage doors and go dark. Jeremy stepped out in impeccable khakis and light sweater, shiny hair catching moonbeams. Ben kept silent and moved without sound, curious to see if he could…

“Jesus Christ,” Jeremy said, whirling, whites of his eyes flashing like one of the horses’. When his hand moved around to the small of his back, Ben remembered the little .38 he’d had in his hand the night before and suddenly the joke of scaring him wasn’t funny anymore.

“It’s me.”

“Ben? Holy shit.” His tone made his expression easy to imagine. “It’s not enough just to torture Jade? Now you have to play boogeyman with me too?”

Ben was ready for the counter attack. “Or did you mean to say ‘thank you?’ I’m here keeping your farm and your friend locked down while you go out on the town.”

He was defensive in an instant. “I would never have left Jade if she’d been even a little scared. And I’m home in time to do night check. My personal life isn’t your business; this farm, and my friend, aren’t your business.”

“I already fed the horses,” Ben said coolly. “And Jade is one hundred percent my business. Or isn’t that what you were getting at last night?”

How typical of him: Jeremy wanted to spew self-righteous bullshit, but he didn’t want Ben to actually step up and take a role in Jade and Clara’s lives. “Yeah, well – ”

A sound arrested him midsentence. An indeterminate
bang
down at the barn snatched their heads around.

             
“One of the horses?” Ben asked. He was fast deciding he hated all this motherfucking
dark
.

             
A fast glimmer of shine proved Jeremy had pulled his gun and Ben reached for his own. “I don’t know,” he said, his anger redirected into nervous energy. “I doubt it.”

             
Ben had a flashlight in his jacket pocket and pulled it, leaving it off. “I’m gonna take a lap. Don’t shoot me.”

             
For once, Jeremy didn’t have a smartassed response. He nodded.

             
Ben was in front of the barn doors when the banging sounded again; it wasn’t a horse. Something had struck the side gate, the same one that had frightened Jade the night before. He took gun and flashlight in both hands, flashlight on and braced beneath his .45, safety off and ready to fire. The shadows thickened outside the Maglite’s flare, even blacker than before. The tubes of the gate were red, glaring in the light, and swinging. The hinges creaked and the chain caught with a rattle and Ben saw a fast snatch of
something
ducking around the back corner of the barn.

             
“Shit,” he hissed, and moved. He went over the fence, flashlight in his teeth, gun in one hand, and landed in the dew-slick grass with a jolt that went all the way up his calves and slammed into both knees.
Damn
. He was going to be on arthritis meds before he was fifty. He’d worry about that later, though, as he took off after the noise-maker.

             
There was an asphalt pad behind the barn, a makeshift wash rack where Jade and Jeremy bathed the horses in the summer months; footsteps slapped across it as he rounded the corner and sent the flashlight beam chasing after his quarry. He saw a flash of hoodie and the white soles of sneakers, and he lengthened his stride. He might have arthritis, but he didn’t have his little brother’s catastrophic knee blowout to contend with, and he caught up in the long grass between the barn and the property line.

             
Ben tackled the guy. He put an elbow in his back and threw all his weight behind it, realizing in the process that whoever this was was a lot scrawnier than he’d originally thought. Under the hoodie, it felt like taking down a scarecrow. He screamed – it had a male voice, the hoodie – and Ben laid him out flat on his stomach in the grass, catching a thin wrist and wrenching it behind him, settling a knee in the middle of his back. Ben had him secure in a matter of seconds; Jade could have taken the guy down.

             
“Lemme up, lemme up!” he squealed, twisting.

             
Ben took both his wrists in one hand and worked the flashlight with the other – the gun he’d laid in the wet grass with a silent apology and promise to clean it; he passed the light over the boy’s face and saw that he was just that: a boy. Blonde, maybe fifteen or sixteen, he had a dewy complexion and looked like he hadn’t shaved a day in his life. One blue eye rolled in terror, pupil a pinprick under the assault of the flashlight.

             
“Please.” He sounded close to crying. “Please, man, lemme go!”

             
“What’s your name?” Ben demanded.

             
He writhed against the pressure on his wrists and Ben put all his weight on his knee, and on the kid’s spine. “Ow! Shit, please…”

             
“I’m a cop, dipshit, and I asked you what your name is.”

             
“A cop…? Oh,
shit
. Shit, shit, shit – ”

             
“Hey, answer the goddamn question.”

             
“I wasn’t doing anything; I swear! I was just – ”

             
“Alright.” Ben stowed his flashlight, found his gun, slipped it into his waistband at the small of his back, and stood, all in the space of a moment, hauling his captive up by the wrists. “You can tell me when we get to the station.”

             
“Station? Oh, shit,
no
, man.” He planted his feet wide and tried to resist, but Ben kicked him hard in the ankle and shoved him forward. He yelped. “Dude, you can’t just arrest me!” he said in a high, hysterical whine. “I’ve got rights! I’m, like, an American citizen!”

             
“You’re also a trespasser,” Ben said calmly, marching forward. “And you’re trespassing on a murder scene and scaring involved parties. I can, like, totally arrest you,” he lied. He could at least take him down to the precinct for a little chat and call his mommy to come pick him up.

             
“Oh, man,” he whimpered. “Oh, man, oh, man.”

             
Jeremy was halfway down the drive, the flashlight app on his phone illuminating the underside of his face, his .38 in his right hand with all the nonchalance that proved he knew how to use it. His eyebrows lifted and threw triangles of shadow up his forehead. “What in the
hell
?”