Silent Killer Page 0,18

But facing her in-laws had not been easy, nor had accepting the fact that she would have to regain her son’s trust before she could fight the Cantrells for custody. One of the lesser challenges had been forcing herself to pretend she didn’t hear the whispers or notice the curious stares when she attended Sunday morning services yesterday. And whenever a customer commented about her year away and how horrible it must have been in that place, she simply forced a smile and told them it was wonderful to be home and back at work.

Of all the challenges that she had known she would face and could deal with, helping the new owner decorate the old Perdue house had not been one of them.

You can do this. It’s just a house. Mr. and Mrs. Reaves are both dead. Maleah lives somewhere in the Knoxville area. And Jack…

She gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled strength.

“Jackson Perdue.” There, she’d said his name aloud, and the earth hadn’t opened up and swallowed her. God hadn’t struck her dead. “Jack.” She spoke his name softly.

Cathy wasn’t surprised that Jack and Maleah had sold their mother’s house, considering how much they had both hated their stepfather and how quickly they had both left home when each had turned eighteen. They had returned briefly for their mother’s funeral five years ago. She had caught a glimpse of them, from the back of the church, when she had slipped in and sat in the very last pew. She hadn’t spoken to either of them at the church and hadn’t gone to the cemetery or to the house.

Cathy put the SUV in reverse, backed up and drove down the alley to the side street. On the short drive from Main Street, where their shop was located, to West Fourth, she wondered about the people who had bought the old house. Were they a young couple, middle-aged or elderly? Were they locals or people from another town or even another state?

When she parked in the gravel drive at 121 West Fourth, she noticed the door to the carriage house stood wide open. The interior of the in-need-of-repair structure was bare to the bones. Apparently the new owners had already started clearing out things in preparation for the renovations. She got out of the Jeep and searched for the owner’s vehicle, but didn’t see one. Was it possible the potential client had forgotten about their appointment? If no one was here, she could wait for them, but not for long. Seth was coming to Lorie’s tonight for dinner. Nothing, not even a rich client, was more important.

As she made her way to the sidewalk, her leather high heels marring up in the wet ground, she inspected the three-story house, one of several Victorian painted ladies that still graced the downtown streets of Dunmore. How dark and dreary this place looked, the gray paint peeling, the faded white shutters in need of repair, the wide porch empty. She rang the doorbell.

Seconds ticked by and quickly turned into minutes.

She rang the doorbell again.

Silence.

Apparently no one was at home. Should she go or should she wait?

Before she could decide, a sheriff’s car zipped into the drive and pulled up alongside her SUV. She turned and watched as the tall, muscular man in uniform emerged from the Crown Victoria.

As he approached the front porch, Cathy’s chest tightened. Her heartbeat accelerated. With slow, easy strides, he came up the walkway. His hair was darker now, a rich sandy blond, and just a tad longer than a regulation military cut. When he stepped up on the porch, he removed his sunglasses, squinted and stared at her.

“Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” he said, then stopped dead still when less than six feet separated them.

He was the same and yet different. Older, broader shouldered, harder. And battle scarred. The boyish smoothness of his handsome face was gone, replaced with an imperfect roughness.

“Hello, Jack.”

He stood there speechless, staring at Cathy Nelson. No, not Cathy Nelson—Cathy Cantrell, Mark Cantrell’s widow. He had figured that sooner or later he’d run into her, considering that Dunmore was a small town. But he sure as hell hadn’t expected to react this way—as if he’d been hit between the eyes with a two-by-four.

As a teenager, Cathy had been a pretty girl in her own shy, sweet way. But the woman standing there, her blue-green eyes fixed on his face, her mouth open in shock as if she’d seen a ghost, was more than