Cover Of Night

"Of course I am," Cate said. "I want my children safe, and right now I don’t feel they are. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I don’t care."

Sheila hugged her. "It’s your prerogative to overreact. And I won’t hold it against you if you change your mind in the morning… much."

"Oh, thank you, that’s reassuring," Cate said, and laughed. She hugged the boys and kissed them good night, explaining that Mommy was tired and was going to bed early, but that Mimi would put them to bed tonight, and they were satisfied. All the excitement had worn them out, too; they were already yawning and rubbing their eyes.

Cate brushed her teeth and showered, then fell into bed. She was so tired her body felt boneless, but her thoughts chased around like crazed squirrels, darting hither and you, unable to settle on anything. She kept reliving snippets of the day, flash-card images: Neenah’s white face, the look in Calvin’s pale eyes as his finger tightened on the trigger of the shotgun – She hadn’t really noticed it at the time, but now she saw it over and over, the slight twitch of his finger that meant he intended to shoot.

Mellor must have seen the same thing, she thought, that telltale little motion, and decided to do things Calvin’s way. She shivered, feeling cold, and curled up in the bed so she could tuck her feet closer to her body for heat. She was often cold at night, and sometimes it wasn’t so much her reaction to the temperature as it was her aloneness, which seemed more acute in the dark. Tonight she huddled under the blanket with fear as a companion, fear for her children, fear of the violence that had come to her home that day, and she was made colder by the company.

Her subconscious replayed the look in Calvin’s eyes. She had known him for three years, but she felt as if she had seen him, really seen him, for the first time today. She had discovered a lot of things about her neighbors today, appreciated them in new ways, but this was different. Her perception of Calvin hadn’t undergone an adjustment; it had suffered a sea change.

Never again could she look at him and see just a painfully shy, good-hearted handyman.

Even worse, she felt as if more had changed than she realized, as if there had been a major shift in her life, but she hadn’t yet found exactly where, or how much the foundations had moved. She didn’t know how to react, what to think, because she didn’t know if she stood on solid ground or on quicksand.

The memory of Calvin’s pale eyes, the expression in them, arrowed into her with piercing clarity, and she went to sleep while trying to puzzle out if she should feel safer now, or more in peril than before.

Cal Harris had long ago discovered that if he stood at the window in his darkened bedroom, he could see the light in the window of Cate Nightingale’s bedroom. The B and B was perhaps the equivalent of a block and a half down the road, but the road had a dogleg angle in it that let him see the windows of the two front bedrooms. The first set of windows was the twins’ bedroom. The second set was Cate’s.

He’d been in her bedroom when he was working on the plumbing in the attached bath. She liked pretty things, like fancy throw pillows on the bed, and in the bathroom were thick cotton rugs that matched the shower curtain and the thing that covered the lid of the John. Her bedroom smelled good, too, like a faint perfume… and like a woman. He’d looked at her bed and his imagination had gone wild.

His reaction to her was so strong he couldn’t control it. He blushed and stammered like a fourteen-year-old, to the endless amusement of their neighbors. For three years they’d been urging him to ask her out, but he hadn’t. From the way she called him "Mr. Harris" and looked at him as if he were her grandfather, he knew she was nowhere near ready to start dating.

It had been a while since he’d aimed a weapon at another human being with the intention of pulling the trigger, but that bastard, Mellor, had come within a hair of having his head blown up like an exploding pumpkin. Only the realization that Cate was watching, and that she would have been even further traumatized, had stayed Gal’s finger on the trigger. He never wanted her to look at him with the sort of terror that had been in her eyes when she’d looked at Mellor.

Tonight her bedroom window was dark. He saw the twins’ light come on, then go off about fifteen minutes later, but Cate’s light never came on. Intuitively he guessed she was exhausted, and was aheady in bed; her mother must have put the boys to bed.

For three years he’d waited, and common sense had long since told him to give up and move on, but he hadn’t. Whether it was bone-deep stubbornness that held him, or the little boys clinging to his legs and his heart, or Cate herself, he hadn’t been able to say, "That’s enough, I’m through.”

The day’s terror had broken down some barricades. He sensed it, knew it. Today, for the first time, she’d called him "Calvin." And she’d been the one blushing.

He went to bed feeling as if the world had shifted, and he would start tomorrow standing in a new place.

Chapter 11

The next morning, Goss and Toxtel sat in Toxtel’s motel room, a map spread out in front of them on the rickety round table. They were drinking bad coffee made in the motel’s cheap, tiny four-cup maker, and eating stale honey buns bought in a convenience store. The town had a mom-and-pop restaurant that served breakfast, but they couldn’t discuss business in the middle of a local gathering place.

Toxtel pushed a sketch across the table toward Goss. "See, here’s the layout of the place, as I remember it. If you remember something different, say so. This has to be accurate."

Toxtel had made a rough drawing of Trail Stop and the road leading to it, putting in stuff like the bridge, the stream, the river roaring on the right, the mountains looming tall on the left.

"I think there’s a pig trail coming in from the right somewhere along that sorry excuse of a road," Goss said. "Couldn’t tell if it was a driveway or some sort of hunting trail."