they were all still involved in the middle of their workdays. Not the time for a conversation like this.
She took another bite of her sandwich just as her cell rang. With a muffled groan as she tried to chew and swallow fast, she pulled the phone from her pocket as the ring tone played the same bars of “Carmina Burana” for the second time.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Trish, it’s Gage.”
“Oh, hi, Gage. Thanks for calling. I’m sitting here concluding yet again that I’m overreacting to that guy.”
“Conclude away. I did the ‘stop and identify’ I promised you I would last night.”
“I saw you. You’re going to think I’m nuts.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “Not a chance. Why?”
“Because after you left I went out and talked to him. And then I met him at the truck stop and we talked longer.”
“Well, I’ll give you credit for guts and curiosity, but I’m not going to tell you that was a wise thing to do with a total stranger.”
“Well, since I’m getting concerned about the state of my own mind right now, I have to agree. I bounced from he’s not really a threat to feeling stalked, and now I’m on my way back again.”
At that Gage really laughed. “It’s hard to reach a conclusion in the absence of facts. But I have some facts for you. Interested?”
“In anything that might help me get my balance back. When I have to stand back and look at my own mental workings, something’s not right.”
She could hear the smile in his response. “Smart people do that all the time. It’s the idiots who never selfexamine. Anyway, I do have some info for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“I couldn’t find anything on him yesterday because he used a fake name on the motel register.”
“Not good.”
“Not a crime. When I stopped last night and talked to him, I got his driver’s license. No wants, no warrants, great credit rating and he owns property in California.”
“That’s a long way away. Anything else?”
“Actually, yeah. But nothing that raises a red flag.” Gage fell silent a moment. “Did he give you his full name?”
“No, just Grant.”
“Well, until the guy does something wrong, I don’t feel I have the right to share any more. Sorry, but there are limits. Just ask him his full name. Then you can find out what’s in the public record just as I did. But I don’t have the right, legally or ethically, to go beyond what I just told you.”
She almost sighed, but knew he was right. How much would she want Gage to invade her own privacy just because she made someone feel uneasy?
“Thanks, Gage. I appreciate your help.”
“You’re more than welcome. If he does anything else to concern you, let me know immediately, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
She closed her phone, slipped it back into her pocket and felt an urge to laugh at herself. Oh, it was so shocking! Yep, really shocking. Some guy sits on a public park bench, legal even at one in the morning, and nobody could do anything about it.
For some reason, her grandmother’s voice floated into her mind, the woman’s plainspoken way of telling someone to think about what they were doing: Are you tetched in the head? Always delivered in a kind voice, but always in its own way like a jerk back to a calmer state of mind.
“Are you tetched in the head, girl?” she asked out loud.
Yeah, maybe she was. And maybe tonight she’d go out and ask Grant for his full name. Or maybe not. Just because Jackson was a lying scoundrel didn’t mean every other man on the planet was.
She finished her sandwich in a calmer frame of mind. Then she grabbed a heavy flannel shirt and her book and went out back. Ten minutes later she had a small fire burning, and she curled up on a chaise with her coffee to read.
Clouds might be moving in, but that didn’t mean winter had arrived.
Yet.
The deepening night chill, which had begun its arrival with rain in the late afternoon, bit at Grant’s exposed skin as he limped his designated path from the motel to Mahoney’s, where he spent fifteen minutes sipping an excellent rye, and then again as he limped his way toward the park to sit in front of Trish Devlin’s house. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, but the night managed to bite even through his jeans, and his hood couldn’t cover his cheeks. If he was here much longer he might have to upgrade his clothing.
But he had no choice yet. His path was ordained, by what he couldn’t really say. All he knew was that he’d ignored something like this before and had lived to regret it. He wished he hadn’t lived.
So he followed the plan, according to what he knew, even though it was entirely possible he couldn’t make any difference at all to the outcome. How would he know? Science didn’t like these questions and had never tried to answer them. Theology even tried to steer away from this place.
But here he was in the midst of it. After nearly a year of thumbing rides around the country, trying to deal with his demons, he’d become aware of a different demon. And somehow he’d known he’d arrive in the right place at the right time.
The minute that last rig had pulled into the truck stop here, somewhere deep inside, he’d known: this is it. Certainty as strong as a compulsion had led him to check into the motel, then hunt for the bar he was sure he’d seen before. The clock he recognized over the bar. The time that had been nagging at him. The subsequent walk to a park and a bench that were somehow familiar.
Sometimes he wondered if his experience was something like that of serial killers who talked about a compulsion, an inner pressure to hunt a victim whom they somehow recognized even if they had never met.
Sometimes he wondered if he’d gone off the deep end. Sometimes he wondered if he himself was the demon he was hunting.
But he was here, guided by God knew what to this out-of-the-way place, and fear of failing yet again made him follow this set path night after night. The only reassurance he had that he wasn’t the demon was his own distaste for making Trish Devlin nervous.
He wished there was another way.
But there wasn’t. He just knew he had to be on that bench at that time. Period. And he couldn’t explain it to another soul without getting himself committed.
Smothering a sigh, ignoring the grinding pain in his hip and the stabbing pain in his thigh and the incessant ache in his back, which probably came from limping around so much, he plowed through the night, feeling as if he were walking through an iceberg rather than air. At times it was almost as if something pushed back at him, told him to turn around. But the compulsion overrode everything else,
