Читать книгу When You Call My Name - Sharon Sala - Страница 7

“Don’t turn on the light.”

Wyatt’s fingers paused on the edge of the switch. The panic in her voice was too real to ignore.

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

Glory nodded, then realized that in the dark, Wyatt Hatfield couldn’t see her face.

“Yes, I’m serious. Please wait here. I have a candle.”

Wyatt did as he was told. He set down his duffel bag and then closed the door behind him, thinking that the dark in here was as thick as the woods through which they’d just walked. Moments later, he heard the rasp of a match to wood, focused on the swift flare of light and watched a wick catch and burn. And then she turned, bathed in the gentle glow of candlelight. Once again, Wyatt was struck by her fragile beauty.

“Will the pup be all right outside?”

“Yes,” Glory said. “Follow me.” Wyatt picked up his bag. “This is where you’ll sleep,” she said, and held the candle above her head, giving him a dim view of the tiny room and the single bed. “I’m just across the hall in Granny’s bed.”

“Granny?”

“My father’s mother. This was her cabin. She’s all the family I have left.” And then her face crumpled as tears shimmered in her eyes. “The only problem is, she’s ninety-one years old and in a nursing home. Half the time she doesn’t remember her name, let alone me.”

As she turned away, Wyatt set his bag inside the room and followed her across the hall, watching as she set the candle on a bedside table, then ran across the room to check the curtains, making sure that no light would be visible from outside.

“Glory?”

She stilled, then slowly turned. “What?”

“Talk to me.”

She understood his confusion, but wasn’t sure she could make him understand. With a defeated sigh, she dropped to the corner of the bed, running her fingers lightly across the stitching on the handmade quilt, drawing strength from the woman who’d sewn it, and then bent over to pull off her boots. She tugged once, then twice, and without warning, started to cry quiet tears of heartbreak.

Wyatt flinched as her misery filled the tiny space. Without thinking, he knelt at her feet. Grasping her foot, he pulled one boot off and then the other before turning back the bed upon which she sat.

“Lie down.”

The gentleness in his voice was her undoing. Glory rolled over, then into a ball, and when the weight of the covers fell upon her shoulders, she began to sob.

“He was laughing,” she whispered.

Wyatt frowned. “Who was laughing, honey?”

“My brother, J.C. One minute he was digging through the grocery sack for Twinkies and laughing at something the pup had done, and then everything exploded.” She took a deep, shaky breath, trying to talk past the sobs. “I should have been with them.”

Wyatt cursed beneath his breath. Her pain was more than he could bear. He wanted to hold her, yet the unfamiliarity of their odd connection held him back. Slowly, she rolled over, looking at him through those silver-blue eyes while the skin crawled on the back of his neck.

“I was the first female born to the Dixon family in more than five generations. They say that my eyes were open when I was born, and that when Granny laid me on my mother’s stomach, I lifted my head, looked at my mother’s face and smiled. An hour later, my mother suddenly hemorrhaged, then died, and although I was in another room, Granny says that the moment she took her last breath, I started to cry. Granny called it ‘the sight.’ I consider it more of a curse.”

Wyatt brushed the tangle of hair from her eyes, smoothing it from her forehead and off her shoulders. “It saved me,” he said quietly.

She closed her eyes. A tear slipped out of each corner and ran down her temples and into her hair.

“I know.” Her mouth twisted as she tried to talk around the pain. “But why couldn’t I save Daddy and J.C.? Why, Wyatt Hatfield? Tell me why.”

Unable to stay unattached from her pain, Wyatt slid his hands beneath her shoulders and lifted her from the covers, then into his lap. As he nestled his chin in her hair, he held her against him.

“I don’t know the whys of the world, Glory Dixon. I only know the hows. And I swear to you, I will keep you safe until they find the man responsible.”

It was the promise he made and the honesty with which it was said that gave her hope. Maybe together they could get it done.

I’m so glad he’s here, Glory thought.

“I’m glad I came, too,” Wyatt whispered.

Glory froze. Without realizing it, he’d read her thoughts and answered. And as she let herself draw from his strength, she faced the fact that she’d given more than just blood to this man. It seemed impossible, and it shouldn’t have happened, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

A dog ran across the street in front of the car as Wyatt turned a corner in Larner’s Mill, aiming for the local police department down the street. He knew where it was. He’d been there yesterday when asking directions to the Dixon home. The people were friendly enough, but he wasn’t sure if one small-town police chief and two part-time deputies were going to be up to finding a killer. When they’d driven out of the yard earlier that morning, no one had even bothered to stop them and ask why they were near the scene. On the surface, they seemed geared more toward drunks and traffic violations than tracking criminals. He hoped he was wrong. As he pulled to the curb and parked, Glory’s nervousness was impossible to ignore any longer.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said.

Her eyes were wide and on the verge of tears, her mouth set. He could tell she was hovering on the edge of panic.

“They’re not going to believe me,” she said, but when Wyatt slipped his hand over hers and squeezed, the fear receded.

“It doesn’t really matter whether they believe you or not, as long as they proceed with some kind of investigation. Besides, don’t forget Lane’s coming.”

Glory nodded, remembering their earlier phone call to Wyatt’s brother-in-law.

“Having a U.S. marshal on our side isn’t going to hurt,” Wyatt added, then glanced down at his watch. “In fact, I’d lay odds that he’ll be here before dark.”

Glory bit her lip and then looked away.

“You have to trust me, girl.”

She turned, and Wyatt found himself looking into her eyes and fighting the sensation of falling deeper and deeper into a place with no way out. And then she blinked, and he realized he’d been holding his breath. Muttering to himself, he helped her out of the car.

Glory took heart in the fact that as they walked through the door, he was right beside her all the way.

“God Almighty!”

Anders Conway jumped to his feet and stumbled backward as the couple came in the door. He’d been police chief of Larner’s Mill for twenty-nine years, but it was his first time seeing a ghost.

Wyatt felt Glory flinch, and instinctively slipped a hand across her shoulder, just to remind her that he was there.

“Chief Conway, I came to report a murder,” Glory said softly.

He was so shocked by her appearance that her remark went right over his head. “We thought you were dead,” he said. “Where on earth have you been, girl?”

“Hiding.”

“Whatever for? No one’s gonna hurt you.”

Glory looked to Wyatt for reassurance. The glint in his eye was enough to keep her going.

“The fire at my house was not an accident. Someone deliberately turned on the gas jets. I saw them. When Daddy and J.C. walked in the back door with our groceries, it was nearly dusk and the house must have been full of gas. Wyatt says that one of them probably turned on the light, and that was what sparked the explosion.”

Conway frowned. Apparently, none of this was making much sense. “If you saw someone turning on the gas, why didn’t you tell your family? Why would your father knowingly go into a house set to blow?”

This was where it got rough. Glory braced herself, readying for the derision that was bound to come.

“I didn’t actually see what had been done until the house was already burning, I just knew that something was wrong. I tried to stop them from going inside. I called out, but it was too late. They were already there.”

The look on Conway’s face was changing from shock to confusion. Afraid that he’d run her out before she got a chance to explain, she started talking faster, anxious to get it all said.

“I know it was a man who did it. I could see him in my mind. I saw the back of his hands as he turned on the jets on the stove. He even broke one of them so that it couldn’t be turned off. I saw the back of his pant legs as he ran through the other rooms, doing the same to our heat stoves. One in the living room…and one in the bathroom, too.”