Last Chance Christmas (Last Chance #5)(22)
Author: Hope Ramsay

And then something hit her fishing line and pulled hard. The bobber went under, and her fishing rod bent almost double. “Oh, shit, I think I just caught something. Help, what do I do now?”

Stone unfolded himself from the bench and stood beside her. “Just let the fish take the line for a minute.”

His gentle voice continued to give her directions on when to reel and when to let the fish have line. The fish pulled and tugged and swam one way and then another. Eventually, she brought it up to the surface, where its back flashed silver against the dark water. She handed the rod over to Stone at the last. He walked over to the gap in the railing where a ladder stepped down into the current. He’d grabbed a fishing net, and dipped it into the water and hauled up the fish.

“Holy crap, he’s really big,” she said.

Stone chuckled. “No, not so big.”

“No?” The fish looked to be about eighteen inches long.

“It’s a channel catfish. This is a baby compared with the big ’uns that you can catch. Hardly worth the work of cleaning it.”

The fish was flopping and struggling in the net, and suddenly Lark wasn’t nearly as excited about fishing as she’d been when she was battling the fish on the line. “So, we’re going to throw it back?”

Stone had the fish in his hands now and was carefully taking out the hook, even though the fish was flipping its tail wildly. There was something unbelievably gentle about the way he managed the fish. And he didn’t just toss it back in the water. He submerged it and gently let it go.

Lark breathed a sigh of relief as the fish swam a little way off and disappeared into the murky depths of the river.

He stepped back up onto the pier, grabbed a towel that lay across his tackle box, and dried his hands. “So,” he said, pinning her with his green-eyed stare, “now you know why I usually don’t bother with bait.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

He sat down on the bench and picked up her camera. “You’ve been out taking photos of our fair town, huh?” he asked.

The unease crept up her back. She remained silent, and he looked up at her, his eyes sharp and questioning.

“Sometimes I feel like maybe I should shoot photos without a memory card,” she finally whispered.

“Is that so?” He looked down at the camera and found the on button. And without any permission, he began to flip through the paltry collection of photos she’d shot the last couple of days.

He grunted as he flipped through the photos of himself. “You snuck up on me,” he muttered.

“Yeah. I have a talent for that,” she said.

He didn’t react to her snark. Instead he kept flipping through the photos without comment for half a minute until something stopped him.

A frown rumpled his brow, and he squinted at the screen. “What the hell is that?”

“What is what?” She sat beside him on the bench.

He angled the camera in her direction, so she could see the small screen. It was one of the photos she’d taken of the heron, right before the gunfire had thrown her into the flashback.

“It’s a heron.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He pointed at a small red speck in the background. She had used a big depth of field so the background was in focus. “What’s that?”

“I have no idea. I wasn’t photographing that.”

“It’s red.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You might see some red berries out in the swamp this time of year, but that is not berry red. You see orange safety vests out there all the time. But not red ones.”

“It could be a bird. A cardinal?”

“No way. You got a way of blowing this up?”

“Sure. I’ve got my computer up at the house, why?”

“Because I have a bad feeling about that photograph. Jimmy Marshall was wearing a red golf shirt the day he disappeared.”

She stared at Stone while a familiar chill crept through her body from her head right down to her boots.

Stone shouldn’t have said anything. He should have simply asked for a copy of the photo. But no, he’d had to open his mouth. And the minute he told Lark about Jimmy Marshall, her face drained of color. She suddenly transformed into the sick and troubled woman he’d found out at the golf course a week ago.

When had he stopped thinking about her as a problem and started thinking about her as one of his own? One of the people he was sworn to defend and protect.

He couldn’t say. But the frightened look in her doe eyes put a kink in his gut. Damn. What was wrong with him?

He should never have looked at her photos. He should have stood behind her and helped her with the rod. He should have made a move while they were standing together that way. He should have…

Well, it was water under the pier now. He stood up. “C’mon, let’s go look at that picture. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

She took her camera back and gave him a stiff-shouldered shrug. “No, I’ve got a feeling it’s something.”

“Why would you say that?”

She put the camera around her neck. “Because I have a talent for capturing shadows.”

She turned and hurried up the riverbank. It took him a minute to snag his pole and tackle box. Giving her a head start.

He’d seen her photos. They captured light, not shadow.

He ran after her. “Wait, Lark.”

She didn’t wait. She marched up to Hettie’s house and through the door. By the time he caught up, she had already fired up her laptop.

“What did you mean back there? About the shadows?”

“It’s like I said before, sometimes I wish I shot images without a memory card.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes bright.

“The photo of the heron in flight was a beautiful thing, Lark.”

“Not if it’s also a photo of a dead body.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“No, but that’s the way it always works. The shadows are there in the background. Always.”

Her voice grew rough, and the brightness in her eyes turned into tears. She fought them bravely and turned her focus on the computer and her camera, despite the fact that her hands were shaking.

Stone stood there, not certain what to do. He wasn’t a very smooth guy. He had virtually no experience with women. He’d already blown his chance for flirting down at the river.

Now Lark was on the verge of a meltdown, and it was partially his fault. Sharon rarely had crying jags, but then Sharon had never been to war, had never seen the things Lark had seen.

“Here. Here’s your damn photo,” Lark practically choked on the words and then she stood up and walked into the kitchen.

Stone forgot all about the photograph and followed her. She was standing by the sink, staring out the window at the river, but Stone had a feeling she was a million miles away. He had a lot of buddies who came back from the Gulf War with post-traumatic anxiety. He knew the signs. She was deep in its grip.

For some reason, war had never affected Stone that way. He’d seen terrible things, lost buddies, done things that he didn’t want to remember. But all of those things had made him stronger somehow—more determined to keep the people he loved safe. He hadn’t done a good job of that with Sharon, and in some ways, that failure just ticked him off.

Well, here was someone who needed him right now. And he wasn’t going to stand there and do nothing.

So he walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

He halfway expected her to argue with him, but instead she surprised the crap out of him by turning around and wrapping her arms around his middle.

She fought against that first sob. And he admired her for it, but he knew somehow that she needed to lose that battle. He didn’t say a word. He just stood there being strong for her.

She fell apart in his arms. And it was all right. For the first time in a long, long time he felt useful. Like he understood why God had put him here. He was here to hold Lark while she confessed her fears, fell apart, and put herself back together again.

And he discovered that Aunt Arlene was right. Pouring yourself into something that wasn’t alive anymore made the hole inside seem deep and vast and endless. But giving himself to the living made him feel complete. It was almost as if he could feel his heart beating again for the first time in years.

Lark sat in the passenger’s seat of Stone’s police cruiser, a blanket tossed over her shoulders and a Styrofoam cup of coffee clutched in her hands. A weather front had come through an hour ago, and a cold, miserable rain had started to fall.

She shivered.

After she’d embarrassed herself by getting tears and snot all over Stone’s crisply pressed uniform shirt, she had insisted on leading Stone into the swamp and showing him where she’d shot the heron in flight. It hadn’t taken them more than ten minutes to find the dead body. By that time, she had completely resigned herself to the fact that the little speck of red in the background of the photograph was the late James Marshall.

Not that anyone could have recognized the dead man after he’d spent a few days in the swamp. But Stone said it was Mr. Marshall, and she was ready to defer to his judgment.

The Allenberg County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene pretty quickly, and within half an hour of the body’s discovery the swamp was filled with flashlight-toting deputy sheriffs wearing bright orange rain slickers.

They left Lark alone. And despite her fear, she found herself framing and shooting photos. Each photo was a battle with her nerves. But she managed to find the shutter and press it. Again and again.

She captured the scene: The cop cars with their lights ablaze. The trickle of water down a windshield. Drops of water on a bright yellow body bag. But these photos were different. Stone Rhodes appeared in every single shot. He seemed to be the only human being she was brave enough to frame in her lens. With him in the photo, she could find the courage to press the shutter.

Without him there, however, she would have been a shivering wreck.

If she were good at lying to herself, she would have come away encouraged by her progress. But she was a terrible liar. She couldn’t fool herself. Her flight to Africa left in just a few days, and she wasn’t ready. She was going to have to call Greg and let him know.

And if she wasn’t ready to go back to Africa, where the hell did she belong? That was a truly terrifying question. Because wherever she went, she was going to be utterly alone. Aside from her war correspondent friends, she didn’t have much of a life, and with Pop dead, she didn’t have any family either.

Stone opened the cruiser’s back door, pulling her from the dark thoughts that assailed her. He tossed his wet hat on the backseat, then took his place behind the wheel.

He wore a big, heavy raincoat, and he was drenched. Despite his Stetson, his hair clumped damply along the back of his skull; even his eyelashes looked waterlogged. She studied every detail of him, cataloging his face. This is how Stone Rhodes looks when his hair gets wet. This is how Stone’s whiskers look after a long day. This is how the light from the overcast sky makes his eyes go a little gray.