Secrets Rising Read online

  He’d bought her a birthday present in advance, too. Jake wondered if she’d opened that little box. But a gift from her dead husband seemed private. He hesitated to ask about it, but what if it was somehow connected to the murder?

  “Maybe you know something and don’t realize it, or maybe someone might just think you know something. You should be careful. Have you opened that present he left for you?”

  She froze. “No.”

  “What if it has something to do with the murder?”

  She gasped. “I don’t think so. He wouldn’t leave me a present that had anything to do with a murder.”

  “He left you a skull.”

  “We don’t know that!”

  Not yet. But Jake wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  “I’ll open it later,” she said quietly. “I’ll give it to the police if it looks suspicious.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.” He didn’t like the anxious light in her eyes. “Where are you staying?”

  “There’s an apartment over the store. I’ll be living there for now. The building is secure,” she added. “The apartment can only be reached through the store, and the store has locks and I can lock the apartment, too.”

  Someone didn’t have to get inside to get to her. They could catch her outside at night, or worse, set the building on fire. Anything was possible.

  “Good. Don’t forget.” He reached for the door now. He was in too deep already and if he didn’t get out of here, he might get in deeper. He might touch her again, and he might not be able to resist kissing her if he did.

  “Umm…Jake?”

  He looked back. She looked incredible, her spun-gold hair messy, bundled up on top of her head and falling down in rebellious tendrils that caressed her cheeks. She looked tired, too. Stressed out.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being my friend.” She chewed her lower lip and conflicted shadow passed over her gaze. She sighed, lowered her lashes to avoid his eyes while she continued on, blurting the next words. “I lied. I’ve never had a one-night stand before.”

  His hand slipped out, tipped her chin, while he valiantly resisted the urge to pull her to him and kiss her.

  “I already knew that,” he said.

  He saw the way she fought for control. Her eyes brimmed, emotion threatening to spill out, but she blinked it back. “Okay. I just wanted to say thank you for being my friend because, well, because it’s not like I share that kind of thing with just anyone. I’d really like it if we could be friends.”

  Right. Friends. No problem. It had been his own idea.

  “Of course,” he lied, to himself, to her. But he’d make it true. “I promise. We’re friends.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t like promises.”

  “I don’t break mine.”

  A long, achy silence weighted the room.

  “I almost believe you.” She stepped back now. He dropped his hand. “If you want to, it’d be nice if you came to dinner tonight. My parents wanted to meet you, and Lise is right, you’re new in town. Haven is a friendly place. You haven’t had a very good welcome to it. And you are one of my friends now.”

  He should have said no. What good could come of getting more involved in Keely’s life? If he hadn’t come to Haven, if he hadn’t rented a house from her, if he hadn’t had to go out to her farm to get the key, if his car hadn’t been crushed by that tree, if he hadn’t happened to be there in her house when the quake had struck—

  If he’d believed in things like fate, it’d be easy to think he was in Keely’s life for a reason, and that that reason was bigger than whatever fears he had that were making him want to say no. He didn’t believe in fate. But his insides twisted with a sense of urgency, and all reasoning vanished when she was near.

  “It won’t be a huge crowd or anything,” she added. “Just my family and a few friends. But no present, okay? I know it’s my birthday, but I don’t want you to get me a present.”

  His well-famed self-discipline that had gotten him out alive from numerous dangerous situations was failing him badly. And he didn’t mean the danger swirling around Keely. Keely herself was a danger—to his peace of mind.

  She was making him feel strange and vulnerable in some unfamiliar way. His pulse was racing for no good reason.

  “I promise, no present,” he said. “I’d like to come to dinner with you. Thank you.”

  Chapter 9

  Primping. She was actually primping. And she was running late after a state trooper had stopped in at the store, finally, to take her statement. A forensics team had been called out of the city to take a look down at the farm and she’d be notified when the scene was cleared for her to attempt to salvage anything out of the pile that was left of her home. For now, it was a crime scene.

  Her home, which, by the way, was demolished, was a crime scene. She could definitely use some distraction from that, and maybe it explained the primping.

  Or maybe she was just kidding herself, big-time. There was something peculiar happening inside her whenever she looked into Jake’s eyes. She got the feeling she was seeing a soul that matched her own—a little wounded, a little protected, a little scared, pretending to the world and themselves that they didn’t want or need anyone else. That thought drew her up short. She was in serious danger of getting stupid about him.

  Keely put her brush down and stared at herself in the mirror. Her lipstick looked perfect now, but it’d be all gone with the first bite of food. Somehow Lise could eat an entire meal without so much as smudging her lips, but Keely hadn’t been born with that gene.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn anything but jeans and a T-shirt, even to the small community church she’d attended all her life. Haven was on perpetual casual Friday dress code. It was just that kind of town. Country folk.

  But she was wearing Lise’s clothes tonight, a bundle Lise had brought over for her this morning since all her own clothes were buried under a pile of rubble at the farmhouse. Lise tended to be a bit dressier than most people in Haven. She had an image to maintain, the town manager’s wife with political aims beyond the local scene.

  Keely didn’t worry too much about her image, but it was her birthday, right? She didn’t turn thirty every day.

  You get to start over.

  Maybe Jake had been right. Maybe letting her anger out today had been good for her. Venting out loud to someone.

  But what did she really know about him? She’d made bad judgments about men before. She’d told him a lot more about herself than he’d told her about him.

  Her instincts, if she could trust them, told her he was a good person. Anyway, he was just a friend, so what did it matter? She had told her mother so quite firmly when she’d called earlier to let her know he was coming with her.

  So why did this tiny voice inside her keep reminding her that the way she felt about him had nothing to do with friendship? She worked to block it out.

  She wasn’t really dressing up that much, just a soft, black halter top instead of a T-shirt, and she’d still put on jeans—jeans with embroidery across the rear. Lise was a few pounds lighter than her so they fit snug and she felt sexy. It was good to be thirty and feel sexy.

  It was bad to be ridiculously excited about seeing Jake again.

  She left the tiny bathroom and walked back into the studio-style apartment on the second floor of the store. The rest of the upstairs was devoted to a sort of antique-store-type room, huge and open, where local crafters sold goods on consignment along with whatever antiques Ray had supposedly collected from estate auctions. The inventory still made her uncomfortable, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

  There was no proof the items were hot. She’d stickered them at bargain basement prices after Ray’s death and she donated the profit beyond what covered her living expenses to the church. She’d be glad when it was all gone.

  The apartment was dusty and she hadn’t had a chance to
clean it with her time focused on straightening up the store, but she’d brought fresh sheets to put on the pullout sofa bed tonight. There was a mini-fridge in the pint-size kitchen that was really just a wall of countertop with a hot plate against one side of the apartment. The bachelor who’d owned the store before Ray bought it had lived in the apartment for years, so it was comfortable if spartan, all the necessities in place. A long-dead philodendron sat in the window that overlooked the road.

  She missed the farmhouse.

  Keely sat on the worn but serviceable sofa and stared out the window, across the road. There were lights on inside the rental house. It was a tiny, quaint, white clapboard home, perched near the road with a cliff dropping down behind it. She saw the front door of the house open, and Jake emerge.

  She rose, looking back at the small marble-topped coffee table in front of the sofa. The box from Ray sat there.

  What if it was connected to a murder? She couldn’t believe that, or maybe didn’t want to any more than she wanted to believe Ray had been involved in a murder at all. She didn’t want to believe any of the events surrounding that skull she’d found.

  Almost not wanting to touch it, she took the box from the table. The air in the room seemed to rush around her. Her vision swirled and her pulse rocked.

  Her heart hammered painfully. She heard a thunk and realized she’d dropped the box. Her vision cleared and she felt as if some kind of energy sucked back from her, shaking her on her feet.

  She blinked several times. She should have eaten lunch. She was hungry and tired and—She bent down, reached for the box. A shiver ran through her.

  Picking up her purse, she quickly tucked the box inside. She didn’t plan on opening it in front of her parents, but she didn’t like leaving it just sitting here, either.

  What was she going to do, though? Carry it around—for how long?

  She was scared to open it, she confessed to herself. It was silly. If it proved to be some sort of evidence connected to the skull, she’d give it to the police. If it was just a guilt gift from a philandering husband to his wife, then she’d deal with that, too, and all the emotions it brought up. She knew she had to open it alone. She didn’t want to listen to her family and friends putting down Ray while she was receiving a gift from him.

  She’d end up defending him out of some sense of obligation, dammit, and she didn’t want to defend him. Letting out that anger today had been good for her.

  Downstairs, the store was still busy. Customers moved around the aisles, but up front the line of people at the checkout stood still, heads all craned to the TV over the counter, which was tuned to cable news. Tammy, ample and fortyish, had her fingers frozen over the register. Video footage of Haven’s main street stopped Keely short.

  “The four-point-three shock wasn’t all that took rural residents of the small West Virginia county by surprise last night,” the female announcer stated. “Panicked homeowners reported bursts of horizontal light and a reddish haze in the air. Volunteer fire trucks responded to a variety of locations, but found no flames to douse. One resident called a paranormal detective after a four-year-old boy was found, scratched and confused, along a roadside this morning. The boy claimed to have been trapped inside a red ball of light.

  “What’s behind all these strange reports? Is it panic? Shara Shannon from PAI, the Paranormal Activity Institute, is on the ground in Haven, the epicenter of the quake, with town mayor Johnny Southern.”

  Oh. My. God.

  Keely couldn’t believe her ears. She stood, rooted, staring at the TV along with the other customers. She knew Johnny Southern wanted to ramp up Haven’s profile—turn the sleepy farmtown into some kind of artsy-craftsy tourist mecca, taking advantage of its close proximity to the city. He’d been pumping his ambitious plan for years.

  She wasn’t against anything that would boost her own bottom line at the grocery store, but along with most residents, she didn’t want to see Haven lose its small town charm.

  Making the town sound like a loony bin wasn’t charming. She hoped his appearance didn’t mean he was willing to go that far.

  “What’s going on here in Haven, Mayor Southern?” the cable anchor asked. “Panic or paranormal activity? Some people have even suggested the possibility of UFOs in the area.”

  “An event like we had last night here in Haven takes everyone by surprise,” the mayor said, his gravelly voice steady with a slight edge of nervousness. “Haven has never been known to have an earthquake. Emergency officials inside and outside the town are to be commended for their quick response and efficient clearing of roads and bridges. Volunteers have been out in droves today providing water and other necessities, particularly to our older residents. Most buildings received minimal damage and we plan on having the town back to normal as soon as possible.”

  “But things don’t sound normal in Haven, Mayor Southern,” the anchor pointed out. “What do you think is behind these bursts of horizontal light?”

  Johnny Southern’s expression remained noncommittal. He doesn’t know which way the wind is going to blow on this, Keely thought. He’s playing politics—happy to gain attention for himself and the town, reluctant to take a real stand till he knows how local residents are going to react.

  “We did have a lightning storm last night, hitting right before the quake—” the mayor started.

  “I believe I can answer that question,” Shara Shannon, the PAI spokesperson, cut in. Her hair was a deep auburn, sleek, brushing the shoulders of her stylishly cut suit. She didn’t look like a crazy person, but—

  The bell over the door dinged.

  “Let me start by saying that UFOs aren’t behind what witnesses saw in the Haven area. Conditions last night, the low pressure and dense moisture, combined with an earthquake of that particular magnitude, form the ‘perfect storm,’ if you will, of atmospheric conditions to release positive ions into the air,” Shara Shannon explained. “Positive ions trigger supernatural wavelengths, and those bursts of reddish light reported by residents are in line with what PAI has long tracked in other parts of the world as foundational movement.”

  “Foundational movement?”

  “Yes. Foundational movement for oncoming paranormal activity.”

  “What type of paranormal activity can residents of Haven and the surrounding areas expect?”

  Keely couldn’t tell if the anchor was taking this interview seriously or not.

  “Anything can happen in Haven now,” Shara Shannon replied. Her eerily bright green eyes gazed directly into the camera. “And probably will.”

  Keely had the urge to roll her eyes but a sudden pounding headache stopped her. Or maybe it was the chill fingering down her spine. Shara Shannon was a nut. Nobody in their right mind would take her seriously.

  “On that note, we’re out of time, but please come back again, Ms. Shannon,” the cable anchor said. “Our thanks as well to Haven mayor Johnny Southern.”

  A commercial flashed on, replacing Shara Shannon’s perfectly groomed, seriously spooky face on the screen.

  “I’m locking my doors tonight,” one of the customers, an older lady with her hair up in a tight bun, said.

  “People have been saying all day that they saw those lights,” Tammy said.

  “I didn’t see nothing,” a man in overalls put in.

  A little girl, ice-cream cone dripping down her hand from the short-order counter at the back, leaned around her mother.

  “What are positive tryons?”

  “Ions,” her mother said. “Positive ions. I don’t know.” She looked uneasy. “But I don’t like it. I wonder if I should let you go to school tomorrow.”

  “Tammy.” Keely nodded pointedly at the cash register. People were standing in line and the line wasn’t moving. And she was afraid if they stood here much longer dwelling on that news interview, there was going to be a panic.

  Earthquakes were rarely felt in West Virginia. The quake had turned everyone’s world upside down by surp
rise and people were vulnerable. Even she had gotten a little shaky thinking about that flash of light right before the house had caved in on her. And the way that box had tumbled into her hand. But it was all explainable in the realm of reality.

  “Okay, okay.” Tammy got back to work.

  Keely turned and all but bumped right into Jake Malloy’s hard chest. She hadn’t even realized he’d been in the store.

  The chill inside her turned hot. Was that her heart thundering in her ears?

  “Hi,” she managed.

  He was wearing the leather jacket again, this time over a white button-down shirt. He’d dressed for dinner, too, and looked more devastatingly handsome than ever. Even the most hardened of women would have to notice him. Small comfort.

  “Ready to go?”

  “My truck’s not back. It is still at Dickie’s, by the way.” That had been a relief. It wasn’t her truck that had busted out of the barn earlier. “Can we go in your car?”

  “Sure.”

  She glanced back at Tammy, who unfortunately was not the most hardened of women and most definitely was noticing him along with the entire checkout line. Trouble with a small town was the gossip. She’d just become the center of some of that, she figured.

  “I’m going to my folks’ for dinner. Lock up, okay?” The store closed at nine and the way her family liked to talk, she didn’t think she’d be back in time.

  Outside, Jake turned to her.

  “Did you hear from anyone about what you found out at the farm?”

  She nodded. “A trooper came out and took my statement. You?”