“My flame-haired goddess,” Wes whispered, kissing her collarbone now, pulling her blouse open and moving lower. “You’ve put a spell on me.”
An aisle over, someone pulled a book roughly from the shelves. A woman’s high, annoyed cough followed.
Crystal clamped her mouth shut, straightening as Wes paused with his lips on her chest.
The moment was reminiscent of their last encounter in his office and, for a moment, Crystal feared Weston would get spooked a second time.
He looked up at her, biting his lip to keep from laughing.
Relieved, Crystal’s own laughter gurgled and burst forth before she could rein it in.
The woman made an irritated sighing sound as if she’d just discovered two children drawing nude pictures in the books.
Crystal heard her move down the carpeted aisle.
Before the woman passed their row, Wes grabbed Crystal’s hand and dragged her deeper into the annex.
“Come on,” he whispered.
He tugged her down a narrow hallway.
“What’s back here?” she whispered.
She’d only ventured into the annex a few times and had never noticed the dark hallway in the back of the section.
“Storage,” he said trying doors, which proved mostly to be locked. The third one wasn’t.
When he opened the door, they discovered a tiny room, not stuffed with books, but containing several worn armchairs.
“A daydreaming room,” she whispered.
“A dream-making room,” he corrected, his lips tickling the sensitive contours of her ear.
She shivered, and goosebumps rose along her arms.
He sat in a chair and pulled her onto his lap. As they kissed, he buried his hands in her hair, massaging her scalp, tilting her head back to run his fingers over her delicate throat.
They kissed for an eternity until the bright light of day softened and flowed in amber rivers across the shabby carpet.
“Come home with me,” she whispered.
He pushed her long hair away from her face and studied her.
She saw something in his eyes, that murky secret crawling into the recesses, taking refuge from her gaze.
“Yes,” he murmured.
10
Now
Bette stood in the crowd of people. Police officers and volunteers swarmed the dirt parking lot that lined the wooded expanse behind Crystal’s apartment building.
It was likely to be a futile search. If Crystal had wandered into the woods, her car would be sitting in the parking lot, but after four days and no leads, Bette managed to convince Hart to organize a search party.
Hart stood next to Bette, watching other officers dividing searchers into groups.
A bearded man, wearing a cowboy hat and a stained white t-shirt, broke from the throng of people and ambled over to Hart and Bette.
“Are you Officer Hart?” the man demanded.
“Yes. What do you need?” Hart asked, his eyes barely registering the man as he continued to scan the group of people.
“My name’s Alvin,” the man told him. “I found something.” He shifted his bloodshot brown eyes from the officer to Bette and then back to Hart.
“I’m sorry, just now?” Hart asked, paying closer to attention to the man before him.
“Last night,” the man said. He spoke in a deep gravelly voice. “Real late. I called the police station, and they said the man working the missing girl’s case would be here. So here I am.”
Hart glanced at Bette and she thought he might ask her to leave.
She wouldn’t go.
“I was parked up by Frasier Gorge last night around midnight. I sleep in my truck most nights and there’s a gorge up there, a nice little spot to park and look out over the trees. I was sittin’, havin’ a smoke, when a little girl stepped out of the road and onto the dirt lot.”
“Hold on,” Hart said. “A little girl was out at Frasier Gorge at midnight?”
Alvin nodded and scratched his beard. “That look yer havin’ right now about sums up how I was feeling. What in God’s green earth is this child, no more than eight or nine, doing in these woods in the middle of the night? I had my windows rolled down, and she was singing that funny little song kids like, “Ring around the rosie, pockets full of posies-”
“I know the song,” Hart interrupted before the man could sing the entire nursery rhyme.
“Anyhoo,” Alvin went on, “I sort of craned around, looking for her parents or maybe an older brother. There’re a few houses up that way. Not many, mind you, and most of ‘em a good mile from that spot.”
He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his worn blue jeans.
“That little girl walked right up to the lip of the gorge and stopped singing, and I thought she was gonna jump. I was about to hop out of my truck when she started throwing pebbles off the cliff into the canyon below. Ain’t nothing down there but a bunch of woods, or so I thought. But as I’m sitting there, quiet as a cup of soup, I hear these little metal pings.”
He paused as if to make sure they were still following the story. “Ping… ping… they went. Each time she threw a pebble, another little ping. Add I’m thinking, there’s something metal down in that gorge. I’m a scrapping man. Something I do for a few bucks on the side, but I’m only half thinking that because I’m still wondering where this strange girl's parents are. Finally, I think I need to say something, so I gather myself and step out of my truck and… poof, she was just gone. Gone like a rabbit, I guess, into the forest.”
“She ran away?” Hart asked.
Bette stood beside him, trying to puzzle the story together, her hands growing sweaty in the pockets of her shorts.
“I didn’t see her run away, but she must have, because by the time I closed the door of my pickup, she was long gone. I listened real good, thinking I’d hear her in the woods, ya know? Twigs snappin’, leaves crunchin’. But nothing, not a peep. I did a little walk around. Walked out to the road, walked into the brush a bit and finally decided she’d run off real quiet like, probably noticed me in the truck and got spooked.”
He tugged on his beard. “The kiddies don’t like this beard, or so my brother says; his young-uns run like wild pigs when I show up. I waited a few more minutes and then thought what the hay, might as well climb down that gorge and see what the girl had been hittin’ with her rocks. I went back to my truck and grabbed my flashlight and walked down.”
Alvin paused as a few other searchers moved closer. They too were listening to his story.
“About halfway down, I shined my light and spotted something blue. A light blue, but it was kinda covered over with leaves. I got all the way down and saw it was a car, a Beetle Bug or whatever they call those with the round top. This one had a black soft top, the kind that folds down. Anyway, there’s a light blue Beetle sitting at the bottom of Frasier Gorge like somebody drove it right off that cliff.”
Bette’s knees buckled, and she hit the grass with a thud, sinking her butt onto her heels.
She shook her head from side to side.
“Homer,” Hart called out, waving.
Bette’s dad looked up from where he’d been cross-sectioning a map with another searcher. When he noticed Bette, he ran towards them.
“Gosh, I’m sorry, Miss. I didn’t mean to—” the bearded man said, removing his Stetson hat and holding it over his chest.
Homer knelt and took Bette’s hand.
“Are you having a panic attack, Bette?” he asked.
She shook her head and pointed a shaky finger at Alvin