Along Came Trouble(62)

“You said I wasn’t supposed to go for a walk, not that I can’t drive anywhere. This is insane. This jackass can’t keep me here against my will. I’m not a prisoner. Get this car out of my driveway, Clark, or I’ll call the cops. It’s a violation of my rights!”

She had a canvas bag slung over her shoulder with a towel sticking out the top, and she smelled like coconuts. “Where you headed, Squirt? Taking the baby surfing?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment, smart guy.”

He raised an eyebrow and waited for her to fess up.

“And then I was going to go to the lake for a while,” she grumbled. “I’m bored, Caleb. I can’t stay indoors all the time. I’m not a house plant!”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the appointment?”

“Because I’m not six years old, and you’re not my daddy.”

It would almost be funny, but there were at least a dozen cars in the cul-de-sac now. Which meant Caleb’s ass was on the line.

“You know they’ve taken about a thousand pictures of you since you came outside, right?” Whereas Ellen’s house was tucked back a bit behind a slight curve in her driveway, Carly’s was a straight shot from the road. Anything that happened in front of her house could be seen from the street.

“They can take all the pictures they want. I’m sick of it. I’ve decided I don’t give a flying—”

He cut her off. “And you know if you drive out of here by yourself, fifteen cars are going to be following you by the time you get to Mount Pleasant, and another ten when you leave the doctor’s office? You want to sit in the sand with a bunch of reporters for company?”

“I thought of that. I was going to ditch them.”

Carly knew every back road within sixty miles, and she drove like she did everything else—too fast, with a lot of flair but not much sense. Or she used to. Caleb hadn’t been in a car with her behind the wheel in more than a decade.

“I’ll drive you.”

He tossed his keys to Sean, who’d been standing mute with his hands on his hips since Caleb arrived. Sean was good at mute. It was half the reason Caleb had offered him a job one night a few weeks back when he’d met him at the village pub—Sean didn’t say much, but what he said, Caleb liked.

Katie had gone to high school with him, and she said he was also some kind of genius. Sean kept quiet about that, too. Caleb liked the guy. They were getting to be friends, slowly. Sean didn’t talk enough for it to happen fast.

“We’re taking Eddie and the SUV. After we go, you get Bryce off Mrs. Callahan’s driveway to cover for you, and you move my car over here. Then you call Katie and have her send the backup team over. Once they get here, drive my car to the hospital and park it on the south side. Come around the front, and Eddie will bring you back to Burgess. Then you can send the backup guys home. Got it?”

Sean nodded.

Carly screwed up her mouth and wrinkled her forehead as if she were about to object, but just then a couple more cars pulled up to the cul-de-sac, and she gave in. “Will you take me to the beach after?”

“Don’t push your luck.”



Caleb went the wrong way into town. She felt obligated to tell him. If he’d taken Granger to Shady Hill and then come around the back side of the hospital, it would have been faster.

He didn’t thank her for the advice. He was too busy driving and ordering around the lanky guy who worked for him.

Every time she twisted to look out the back, the conga line of idiots following them was a little shorter, though, so she let it go. Caleb could handle these douche bags. He’d driven Hummers in Iraq. Katie had shown her pictures once of him in fatigues, with a helmet on his head and some building out of Aladdin behind him. He’d been smiling that breezy Caleb smile as if there weren’t people waiting to kill him just outside the frame.

There had been, though. During his deployments, she’d never quite managed to forget it. No matter how invincible his smile, every time she heard about casualties in Iraq, she would wonder if this time he’d bit it. So she’d gotten into the habit of ragging on him unmercifully for being a jarhead.

Everybody had their coping mechanisms.

Caleb somehow magically managed to make a barricade appear at the hospital. They pulled inside it, and he got a big OSU umbrella out of the trunk, which he used to shield her from view as they walked into the lobby. He was good at this security guard stuff. It didn’t exactly surprise her. He’d always been smart, though school wasn’t really his thing.