No Perfect Hero(96)

I will find the truth.

And then, just maybe, I’ll find out what this could be with Hay.

When we break apart, her eyes are starlight seen through smoke. She clings to me for one last trace of my tongue against her upper lip, one last graze of her teeth against my tingling mouth.

“I’ll be back for you,” I promise again, then make myself pull away and stride toward my truck. I’ve got work to do.

Dead men don’t wait for love.





19





Last Run (Haley)





I don’t like watching Warren drive away like this.

Not just because by that simple act, he’s made himself a fugitive suspect in a murder investigation.

I miss him.

I miss him and he’s only been gone for five damn minutes, but even worse...

I can’t shake this terrible sense of foreboding that everything is about to go terribly wrong.

Letting myself into the cabin, I sink down on the couch, leaning forward and pressing my face into my palms.

“Man, Haley,” I mutter, blowing out between my fingers heavily. “When you step in it, you really step in it.”

Running away from my failed life, my cheating fiancé, and my best friend to get stranded in the prettiest little Podunk town I’ve ever seen.

Getting threatened with craft supplies.

Playing mom to my niece in ways that make me wonder when I’ll ever get to settle down.

Meeting the most infuriating, sexy, idiotic, caring, ridiculously noble beast-man I’ve ever known.

Discovering what family means and rediscovering my sister all over again.

And now...the murder of a kind, older man who’d helped me one day just because he could, with nothing in it for him.

That escalated quickly. My whole life.

I’m so tired, spun in so many circles, it takes a few minutes for the silence to sink in. The cabin is empty. Tara promised me she was safe to stay on her own for an hour or so while I went to spring Warren, insisting that she was ten now and it was okay, and if she got scared, she’d go up to Ms. Wilma’s.

But the cabin is empty.

There’s no Tara in sight.

Oh, no.

Oh, fuck – I’m the shittiest, most irresponsible aunt ever!

I swallow something tight in my throat. Tell myself she's probably somewhere, maybe out back, chasing butterflies with Mozart or something.

“Tara?” I call tentatively, standing and peering through the house.

No sign of her in the bathroom, the bedroom, or out on the back deck. My heart sinks.

She hasn’t snuck into Warren’s place, either. It’s locked down tight and dark, just as I left it when I let myself out this morning.

There’s a sick, scared feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I won’t panic just yet. If she’s not with me, Tara’s always with Ms. Wilma.

I’ll probably find her in the atrium with her sketchbook in her lap, picking out the perfect colored pencil to capture a glimmering hummingbird’s breast against the yellow of a daffodil.

But that sense of unease haunts me as I head up to the main house. Call it intuition, call it spidey sense, I don’t care – something's wrong. My palms are sweaty by the time I step inside the lobby and almost smack into Ms. Wilma.

I stumble and she catches my shoulders, steadying me and looking down with worried eyes. “Haley? Dearest, what's wrong? You look a fright.”

“Tara,” I say quickly, my mouth drying as I realize, before I can even get the words out, that I’m at a dead end. I slump. “She's...she's not with you.”

Ms. Wilma’s eyes widen, her mouth a startled O. “No, dear, I haven’t seen her since last night. She—oh, shit.”

Any other time I might have burst out laughing at prim, ladylike, elegant Wilma Ford gasping shit.

Now, though, all I can think about is my niece, suddenly MIA.

My pulse ramps up hot, and I rake my hair back, pacing back and forth. “She might still be in the house. We can split up, search—”

“Of course.” Ms. Wilma nods decisively. “I’ll get Flynn to help and call round to the staff.” She clasps my hands warmly. “It’ll be all right. We’ll find her.”

I nod, swallowing against the terror in my throat, and dash off down the hall.

I check the atrium first, but there’s no sign that Tara had even been there today. The next twenty minutes dissolve into a frantic haze as I race from room to room and floor to floor, calling “Tara? Tara!” while other voices echo the same.

I’m going to throw up.

This is my fault.

I shouldn’t have left her alone for even a minute. She’s not here.

She’s not here, and I don’t know where to look for her.

When Ms. Wilma and I reconvene in the lobby, it’s with grave faces. She squeezes my hand one more time, but her touch is no longer so certain. “I’ll call Sheriff Langley and ask him to come out immediately,” she promises, only to be cut off by the trill of my phone.

I fish it from the little hidden pocket inside my skirt, fighting the folds of fabric frantically when everything in me screams that it’s Tara. It has to be, and then she’ll laugh and say gotcha, I’ve been hiding all this time and everything will be okay.