| |
––––––––
I PILED THE GROCERIES into the backseat of the VW—I'd bought enough to feed an entire army, more or less—and smiled to myself. I might have gone overboard, but it would mean none of us would have to go back to the store anytime soon. And with another mouth to feed in the house—and that mouth attached to a rather large man—I'd thought it better to err on the side of buying too much.
The smile on my face got even bigger at the thought of Warren being back home in the house waiting for me, and I marched around to the driver's side of the van, already thinking about what we were going to make for dinner. Then I saw the bakery on the other side of the road and paused. I hadn't been there since I’d first came back to town, and suddenly all I could think about was their shortbread. Buttery and flaky and sweet, they were better than almost anything else in the entire world.
I wondered if Warren liked cookies.
I wondered if he liked shortbread in particular.
I was betting he did.
I leaned in and rolled the window down a bit, then gave Silver a quick scratch behind the ears. “I'm going to the bakery for some cookies, girl,” I told her seriously. “Hold down the fort. I'll be right back.”
I didn't like the idea of leaving her in the car—hell, I'd taken her into the store with me for that very reason—but I didn't like the idea of taking her into the bakery. People were making things for other people to eat in there, and though this might be a small town with small-town sensibilities, people got weird when you had a dog in a place where they were cooking food. I just wasn't in the mood to make any trouble.
I had enough of that on my plate as it was.
I closed the door, looked both ways for cars, and dashed across the street, my stomach already growling. I couldn't remember eating much today, and the idea of getting something at the bakery, both for right now and for later, was starting to sound even better. When I got to the bakery's side of the street, I turned and glanced back at my bus, feeling slightly nervous about having left Silver there. The dog was sitting in the driver's seat with her head hanging through the window, tongue lolling and ears back, though, and looking like she was the queen of the world.
Silver had spent a lot of time sitting in that old bus by herself, I reminded myself. We'd lived in it for years, and she'd never had a problem with it. She'd be fine. Besides, I could see her from the bakery's windows and get there in seconds flat if anything went wrong.
Silver would be fine.
Turning, I stepped up onto the curb and reached for the door handle.
Amy appeared before I even got the door open and threw her arms around me, screeching in excitement. “Lily! I thought you weren't coming back!”
I laughed and managed to pull myself out of her grip. “Why would I not come back? I sort of live in town, Amy, in case you'd somehow missed that.”
Her smile dimmed a bit, and her eyes narrowed. “Oh, I know. But when someone comes to a bakery and has a bad experience, sometimes they don't come back.”
Right. The last time I was here, when I was newly back in town, I'd had a run-in with Tony McCarthy in this very bakery. He'd made a pass at me and then gotten pushy when I turned him down, and it had led to an all-out fight and me nearly hitting him with my car when I hauled ass down the street. It had been the first time I'd seen him since he’d tried to kill me, back when we were still together and the first time I'd had any contact with him since his father had essentially paid me to leave town and not come back.
I'd come back only because my mom needed me, and seeing Tony had made me realize that I might have created even bigger trouble for both of us. He'd been friendly at first but had become combative very quickly. And he hadn't been shy with his threats.
After that, things had gone downhill quickly. I'd had threats from the cops, who refused to take me seriously when someone broke my windshield, and had opened the door one night to find Tony on my doorstep, ready to threaten me with bodily harm if I didn't do what he wanted. A few nights later, I'd been in Warren's house when it had caught fire. Then Tony had kidnapped me the moment I got out of the house and threatened me again.
Warren had saved me more times since I'd come to town than I cared to count. But he wasn't here to do it right now when I was out in the open.
Luckily, I didn't think I was going to run into Tony again in my very own bakery.
I threw an arm around Amy's shoulders. “I don't see how I could stay away, seeing as how my family owns this place,” I told her, forcing my voice into a light octave. “Besides, this place happens to have the best shortbread around.”
“You should know,” she murmured. “You've eaten your weight in it more than once.”
I giggled, mostly because she was right, and we strolled together toward the counter, each of us talking over the other as we tried to go through all the things that had happened since we'd last seen each other. Amy, as my best friend, knew just about everything when it came to my life, including what Tony had done to me, and when I told her about the house—which she'd heard about—and the nightmares—which she obviously hadn't, she gasped.
Then I told her about the squirrel.
“You're kidding,” she said quietly.
“Unfortunately not. And you'd be surprised how much a dead squirrel on your doorstep can dampen your day.”
“More than dampen it,” she replied. “That's downright horrifying. Did you call the cops?”
“Course not,” I said, pulling her to the opening of the counter with me to where I'd have better access to the cookies. “The cops are all in his pocket.”
And then I launched into the experience Warren and I had had when we tried to report Tony for shoving his way into my house and pinning me against the wall to threaten me. Warren had been there to save me on that occasion as well and had taken me right to the police department to file a report, but the officer on duty had refused to take it.
Instead, he'd laughed in our faces and told us that it didn't sound like any harm had been done.
It had been obvious right from the start that Tony and his father had paid off the local cops to keep them from making any reports, and that made sense now because looking back on my time in the hospital, when everyone had known that Tony had been beating me up, it had been the doctors asking questions.
Not the cops.
The cops had actually been pretty light on the ground, now that I thought about it. It was the doctors who were most concerned about knowing what had happened to me and why I wasn't reporting it.
It was a doctor who had told me when I was out to dinner with Warren that I shouldn't be back in town and that it was dangerous for me.
The cops, I'd learned, didn't really give a damn what happened to me.
Amy shook her head as I stopped talking, her eyes large and hard. “That son of a bitch.”
“More like son of a bastard,” I replied quickly. “I never knew his mom, but I notice she's not exactly in the picture. I'm guessing she figured out exactly who her husband was and got out as quickly as she could.”
Amy snorted, but there was no amusement in the laugh. She looked furious... and protective. “And yet here you are, coming back to town and showing them they can't scare you.”
Showing them they couldn't scare me. Well, at least I was putting on a good mask.
Before I could answer her, someone bumped me hard from behind, sending me stumbling into my best friend. I turned, frowning in surprise at someone being that rude, and saw a man in uniform.
A man in a cop's uniform.
I lifted an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to apologize for having run right into me, but he just stared back at me, his own eyebrows lifted.
“Got a problem, missy?” he sneered.
I had to fight to keep from backing away from him. I didn't know who this guy was, but the way he was sneering at me told me that he knew exactly who I was—or didn't care, which might have been even worse. What kind of cop ran right into someone like that and didn't bother to apologize or even say 'excuse me'?
The kind that knew he had every right to do whatever he wanted. Because someone had told him that this person wasn't someone to be respected.
“Only that you ran right into me,” I finally said. “Any decent person would have apologized for that.”
He got up in my face, the sneer getting even more pronounced. “Then maybe that makes me an indecent person. Or maybe it just means I looked at you and realized you weren't worth the time it would take to apologize. What do you think?”
I heard the gasp from my right, where Amy was still standing, but put a hand out to stop her from saying anything. I might be in the middle of something I didn't understand with this asshole, but that didn't mean I wanted her involved. I'd already put too many people I loved in harm's way.
I was going to keep Amy safe.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked. “A cop, I can see that much. Does your supervisor know you go around shoving innocent women out of your way just to get to some cookies?” I forced myself to laugh derisively. “Is that what you're after? Some cookies? And you need to shove people to get to them? How pathetic.”
His hand flew up so quickly I barely got out of the way before it hit my face, but when I came back up, I had my own hands up in fists in front of me. I might have put up with a man hitting me when I was younger, but I was a different person now. I'd been on the road on my own for five years.
And I'd learned how to take care of myself.
Before I had to use any of my training, though, the cop was jerked backward and pushed to the side by someone. I looked up, wondering if Warren had somehow showed up to save me, and saw instead Mark McCarthy.
Looking just as oily and dangerous as he always had, and like he'd just done me the biggest favor in the entire world.
He leered at me in what was probably supposed to be a friendly smile and then turned to the officer. “Diggs, what the fuck? You're in the bakery of all places, picking on a harmless set of girls? What are you doing?”
The words were harsh. His tone of voice was not. Still, the officer cowered in front of him like a dog that was used to being hit.
“Sorry, sir. I didn't mean no harm, honest.”
“Then I suggest you say you're sorry and get the fuck out of here,” Mark snarled, doing a slightly better job of sounding like he actually meant it.
The officer—Diggs, evidently—mumbled an apology and then got out of the bakery as quickly as his pudgy legs would move.
I watched, confused and surprised, and then turned my eyes back to Mark. “Thanks,” I muttered.
I stepped to the side, intent on nothing but getting out of the bakery and back to my van, but he put out a hand to stop me.
Oh, crap. A chill shot through me at the contact, and though I tried to shrug him off again, he wrapped his fingers around my wrist, squeezing hard enough to leave a bruise. I looked up again, already knowing what I was going to see, and took in the chilling, slimy smile of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
“You have to be careful out here on your own like this, Lily,” he said softly. “You shouldn't be out without your dog, at least. Bad things happen in small towns all the time to girls who let themselves be caught unawares. And you should tell your man, too. Tell him to be careful out there. It's a dangerous world, after all.”
My mouth went dry at his tone. At the words he was using.
Because he wasn't telling me to be careful because he cared about me. He was threatening that something bad was going to happen to me.
I gave him a quick nod and ducked around him, yanking my arm from his hand and making for the door as quickly as I could. Once I was through it, I increased my pace even more, my eyes on my VW and the dog sitting in the driver's seat. Silver's happy smile was gone now, and she was tense, her jaw clenched and her neck tight.
She was staring at the bakery behind me, and I knew she was looking right at Mark McCarthy. Probably seeing him for exactly what he was and yearning to go after him.
I walked even more quickly, then, because that meant he was still behind me and no doubt watching me leave. My skin was crawling at that thought—and the feeling that more eyes were watching from across the street. Down the alley. On the other side of the bakery. I felt surrounded, like I'd never get away from the people looking at me, and I just wanted to be home. I wanted Warren to put his arms around me and tell me it was going to be okay.
I didn't want to be alone.
I jumped into the van, pushing Silver over to the passenger seat, and stuck the key in the ignition. When I turned it, the van jumped to life—but so did Silver. She started growling and barking, her hackles up and her nails digging into the fabric of the seat. I looked up at her and saw that she was still staring back at the bakery.
Reluctance flooded through me. I didn't want to look. I didn't want to know.
But I knew I had to.
I turned my eyes in that direction, my heart hammering against my ribs, and saw what Silver was staring at. Mark had come out of the bakery and was standing on the sidewalk now, staring right at me. His eyes were a cold, terrifying silver.
And he was still smiling that smile.
