Chapter 12

Trisha slipped quietly through the front door and dropped her keys on the hall table. She pulled off her shoes and headed into the living room, stopping short at discovering her dad in a chair with an unopened book in his hands.

Smiling, she walked over and sat by his feet to set her head in his lap, just as they used to when she was young. Before bed, she'd read to him from one of her storybooks and he'd brush her hair.

"Are you pretending to not wait up for me?"

Chuckling, he pulled the bobby pins from her hair. "Yes. Did you have fun?"

"I guess. Nick's okay," she mumbled, the sleepiness sneaking through her voice.

"Nancy said he's got a crush on you. He seemed decent enough to me." He placed the last of her hairpins on the table next to him.

She uttered an exaggerated grunt. "Adults don't get crushes, Dad."

He paused. "When did the nightmares kick up again?"

"A couple weeks ago." She sighed. Lifting her head, she dropped her chin on his knee and searched his kind blue eyes. His face had deeper crevices, the wrinkles in time showing his age. His hair was almost all white now, still thick and wavy. "You can tell, huh?"

"You're easier to read than a book. You don't hide your guilt very well."

"I don't think it's guilt. I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"They're not the samelike they were before." His expression went from concern to fear in a blink. She backtracked to explain. "As long as I can remember, the dreams were the same, like a continuous loop. But now, I don't know, it's like a memory instead. Is that stupid?"

"No." He touched her chin with his thumb. "What do you remember?"

She shrugged a shoulder. "I was running down that path by the tree line and I fell. This woman was there. She was frightening. I couldn't see her face. I woke up when she reached for me."

His other hand stopped short in motion above her head. Though he was looking straight at her, he wasn't in the same room. He wasn't even her father. With his jaw set, his eyes glazed over. A cold trickle of beaded sweat rolled down her back.

"You did take a fall," he said at length.

"What?" She straightened. "What do you mean?"

He rubbed a hand over his chin. "When you were little, you went wandering off and we heard you scream this God-awful shriek. We couldn't find you." He cleared his throat and stared into nothing again. "The whole town was looking for you. They had the Madison Police Department up here, too. We thought you'd been kidnapped. The scream," he shuddered, "the scream was bad enough. But when you stopped"

His hands were ice cold when she reached for them. "Oh, Dad. That must have been terrible. But I was okay, just a scratched knee, right?" That's what she determined from her dream anyway.

He jerked his gaze back to her from the nothing he was looking into and widened his eyes. His hands flexed in hers and gripped them so tight she cried out. "Don't speak of this anymore, Trisha. I mean it. You understand? Keep this between us. It was a scraped knee a long time ago."

"You're scaring me--"

He let go. "I'm sorry." He scrubbed his hands over his face. Features now calm, he smiled like he had a thousand times before and stroked her cheek with his thumb. "The dreams are just a way to remember. You were fine, and we'll let it go now."

She rose and headed for the stairs, completely shaken. "'Night, Dad."

Trisha sank onto her bed and wrung her hands. Her dad, usually sweet and funny, had just stopped her heart mid-beat. The look in his eyes, pure fear, had jarred her. What was that about? What could be so frightening about a scraped knee?

Taking a deep breath, she stood to undress, focusing instead on her evening out. She wasn't accustomed to dating, finding it useless and a waste of time. Not that she was prudish or anything, but it had been awhile. Romance and gushy verses were an ineffective, futile means to end up in bed, and she much preferred getting right to it. She didn't need wooing, didn't have the time.

So when Nick Mackey showed up at her door earlier for their supposed date, she hadn't known what to expect. She wasn't even so certain she wanted Nick in bed, and that their date had been one gigantic, monumental lapse in better judgment. On the occasion she did take a lover, guys like Nick weren't the sort who attracted her. So why was he making her break the norm?

The man had a speech deficit. He was incapable of conversation, and when he did talk, he said inappropriate, odd things like, you should smile at me more often. He was rude, arrogant and, despite what Nancy said, too good looking.

What he'd said about the shooting, though, really got to her. It explained a lot about him and why he seemed so distant. He was obviously still haunted by the event, and that softened her heart toward him. It must've been awful, taking a life.

Nick Mackey wasn't what she'd been expecting at all. There was heat between them, no doubt. And a deeper part of himself he didn't allow to the surface. She couldn't help but be interested in exploring that.

Walking to the window, she reached for the drape cord and paused. In the barren spot where the tree had been cut down a week before, a shadow moved. The row before it was partially blocking her view, but the shadow wasn't from the moonlit trees.

She put a hand to her chest to still her heart and squinted through the darkness. When the shadow moved again, she gasped. A man stepped out from behind the row, his arms motionless by his sides. He was one big black blur. She couldn't even get a body type.

But he was looking right at her. At the house. She stared, wondering if it was one of her men, but her gut said no. One of her workers wouldn't stand in the dark staring at the house. Her window. At her.

He tilted his head, raised his arm, and pointed to the empty spot where the tree once stood. Slowly, his arm came around until he was pointing at her.

Blood froze in her veins. Her hands fisted around the drape cord.

After staring for several more seconds, she snapped out of her haze and reached for the phone.