exit sign indicating several service stations caught Savannah’s attention. “Listen, I’m about to get off the interstate and get some gas.”
“Okay. Be sure to let me know if there’s anything I need to do.”
“Will do. Love you.”
Savannah took the exit and pulled into a gas station. As she pumped gas, a large sign advertising a little mom-and-pop restaurant a couple of miles away tempted her. Problem was, she wasn’t hungry. The enticement came not from wanting to eat but from procrastination. For someone who prided herself on not putting things off, this particular event was much too long in the making. Determination forced her to finish filling the tank, get back in her car, and keep going.
Now set on getting the trip over with as quickly as possible, Savannah clicked on her CD player, hoping the diversion would take her mind off what lay ahead. Weird, but every song that played worked against her. Themes of lost love and old acquaintances and melodic warnings of “you can’t go home again” bombarded her. If she were a believer in signs, she’d definitely turn back around.
A quick glance up at the sky made her wince. Even the clouds looked ominous. When she’d left Nashville, the sky had been a piercingly clear azure blue, but now, wicked, thunderous clouds obscured the sun. There should be more than an hour of daylight left, but it had gotten so dark, it seemed much later than the 6:30 P.M. on her dashboard clock.
She shook her head, undeterred. She was going back, come hail or high water. And from the look of the sky, both were possible.
MIDNIGHT, ALABAMA
She was coming home today. Zach had done his best to forget that knowledge and go about his normal routine. Of course, he would keep an eye on her, but only because that was his job. He had taken an oath to protect every citizen of Midnight, including one who was only here temporarily and would drive him out of his ever-loving mind while she was here. He would do what he was paid to do and nothing more.
Staying clear of her should be no problem. She was here to pack up the family’s belongings and put the Wilde house on the market, not gallivant around town. And he had his hands full, including another vandalism. This was the fourth one in the last two weeks and he was getting damn tired of them. Once again, there’d been no clues, no witnesses. Nothing but badly misspelled words and a few satanic symbols that a five-year-old could have drawn better.
“Who do you think is doing this, Chief?”
Zach glanced over his shoulder at his deputy, Clark Dayton. He and Clark had never been easy around each other. Even before the incident with Savannah, some might have called them enemies, though Zach never could figure out what he had done back then to piss off the guy. The Daytons had been on the lower end of Midnight’s society, but compared to Zach’s family, they had been upper-crust wealthy. At that time in his life, to Zach, if a person had regular meals and clothes without holes, he was doing damn good. Back in those days, Clark had carried a giant chip on his shoulder and had delighted in pointing out the differences between his family and anyone poorer. He had often been Dayton’s prime target. Zach hadn’t cared. The man’s opinion hadn’t mattered then or now. He had ignored him, which somehow seemed to infuriate the guy even more. Then one night, everything had changed and Clark had done something that couldn’t be ignored.
Savannah had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, Clark had been way past drunk, and Zach’s life had changed forever.
“Guess that means you’ve got no suspects?”
Zach mentally shook his head. What the hell was he doing daydreaming about Savannah? “None yet, but they’ll screw up eventually and we’ll find them.”
Clark scratched his neatly trimmed beard in an absentminded fashion Zach had become familiar with. It was usually followed by a hypothesis and then a conclusion. Clark had had a year and a half of college before he’d dropped out. Somehow, in that short amount of time, the man became a self-avowed philosopher and psychologist. Zach braced himself for one of his theories.
“I’m suspecting it’s that new family that’s moved into the Hogans’ old house. They’ve got two teenaged boys that look just about right for this kind of thing.” Another slow beard scratch and then he added,