the circular drive. Two men were looking nervously around and also up at the sky—which had darkened considerably since that morning. Another man was sitting in the extra car. It was Bob Mansard—who stared balefully at the house.
Morgan glanced at her watch. It was late in the afternoon; the clouds were obviously making it look closer to sunset.
The men turned toward the door when they heard it open. All of them eyed her—and Andre. Mansard stayed in the car, and she wondered again if he’d been one of the men who’d followed her from town the day she’d arrived.
And one of the standing men could have been his slenderer companion, although she couldn’t be sure, because of the baseball caps they’d been wearing.
All the men were bareheaded now. The ones in the driveway looked to be in their mid-twenties, with dark hair growing a bit shaggy. One wore overalls. The other was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt.
The guy in overalls shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We need to be getting on back,” he said, his voice coming out gruff and nervous.
“Okay. How much is the bill?”
He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his overall pocket and handed it to her.
Smoothing out the wrinkles, she read the amount. It was less than she expected.
“I’d like to check the brakes, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“We have to be getting back.” Nervously, he glanced at the sky again.
“This will only take a few minutes.”
Probably if it had been between her and Mr. Overalls, he would have insisted on leaving right away. And Mansard looked like he was going to add his weight to the discussion. But when Andre took a step closer, Mr. Overalls stood back and pressed his lips together.
She fished her keys out of her purse, then strode to her car and climbed behind the wheel. After starting the engine, she drove around the circle in front of the house, stopping every so often to make sure the car wasn’t acting the way it had on the road. Because she couldn’t get up much speed, she started down the access road.
Behind her, she heard loud shouts of protest. When she looked back, Mr. Overalls was running after her, for all the good that was going to do him. Quickly she accelerated to thirty, then slammed on the brakes. They responded well enough, so she made a U-turn and came back to the house.
The men, especially Mansard, were looking daggers at her as she climbed out, and she almost felt sorry for them. If they were in a hurry to get back, she wasn’t helping. But she was enjoying a bit of payback. Not her usual behavior. Today she thought she was justified.
She wrote a check to the gas station, handed it over, and added a twenty-dollar bill.
“Thank you for delivering the car,” she said sweetly.
“Thank you,” Overalls responded. Then added, “We’d best be going.”
When they had left, she turned to Andre. “Are they afraid that it’s going to rain—and there will be another flash flood.”
“Maybe. But I think they’re more worried about the cat. With the sky so dark, they may think it’s late enough for the local monster to jump out of the bushes.”
“Is it?”
“No,” he clipped out, then said, “I’ll check your car to make sure the work is satisfactory.”
“Thank you.”
“Why was Mansard along? As a bodyguard?”
“He likes excuses to come out here and stare at me. . . when he thinks the odds are favorable.”
“Nice.”
Andre gave a shrug, looking uncomfortable.
And now that they were alone, she felt uncomfortable, too, as she remembered what they had been doing in the library when Janet had interrupted them. What was his reaction now? Was he sorry that he’d started something? Or was he thinking about how quickly she’d responded. She should remind him that they were going to keep their relationship on a professional level. But she could hardly blame the whole incident on him. He’d found her looking at dirty pictures, after all. Then he’d come up behind her—close behind. And she’d welcomed his touch.
She was angry with herself for reacting to him. Angry at him for putting her in that position. And angry that the easy relationship they’d established while she was still in Beltsville had suddenly changed when she’d gotten down here.
She had planned to bombard him with questions. But now because she needed to put some distance between them, she went up to her room until dinner—where she