games or start on his version of the Great American novel. The story of how one cynical journalist, semi-retired, discovered a way to put an end to all turf wars, ethnic vendettas and ideological battles.
But as long as he was in the neighborhood, he might as well pay his respects to Mrs. Sullivan. Maybe she’d offer him a cup of tea.
Or a cream cheese sandwich.
Finding her had been easy enough. He was not, after all, without investigative skills. According to the ex-senator’s yard man, she had not been to the Wye River place in nearly a year. None of her former friends had offered a clue—of course, they might have been in protective mode. Taking the next logical step, he had checked out public records. Wills, taxes, tax maps.
Bingo. If he could do it, it was a sure bet he wouldn’t be the only one. Sleazy exposés were a dime a dozen. They seldom changed the course of history, but they could generate a few column inches in the tabloids and make life miserable for the victims before they were bumped off the lists by the next contender.
Discounting their one brief encounter, Rocky really didn’t know Sarah Mariah Jones Sullivan at all. By now she might even welcome the attention. But if she was anywhere as vulnerable as she’d looked during the hearings—as she’d struck him that day over twenty years ago when she’d watched her father use her and discard her as casually as he would a soiled tissue—then maybe she could use a friend.
And if he happened to have guessed wrong about which way she’d jumped—if she was kicking up her heels in some fancy resort instead of hibernating in corn country—no problem. He’d needed an excuse to get out. Needed to start getting involved again.
Slowing down, he took the Snowden turnoff, rounded a blind curve on a narrow blacktop, crossed over a railroad track and began looking for a dirt road that led off to the right. The only sign of life was a big buck deer and a flock of gulls following a tractor, reminding him that they were only a mile or so from Currituck Sound.
He spotted the dirt road and turned off, driving slowly. Tax maps didn’t reveal a whole lot of detail, but there was supposed to be another road of some sort.
And there it was. Two leaning posts, one supporting a newspaper box, the other a mailbox. The name on the mailbox said Gilbert, which, if memory served, was the name of the relative whose house Sarah had inherited. Rocky pulled off the road and parked behind a dusty red compact. After a moment’s hesitation he set the brake, locked his eight-year-old SUV and set out on foot down the winding, rutted lane. He’d gone barely a dozen yards when he spotted a guy armed with a videocam jogging toward the house.
Evidently his suspicions had been justified. The lady was about to find herself in the crosshairs again. “Yo! You with the camera!”
The guy glanced over his shoulder, but instead of stopping, he picked up speed. It occurred to Rocky that he could be an innocent nature photographer—maybe a stringer for some hunting-fishing rag. He didn’t think so, though. There was something a little too furtive about the way he kept checking his six.
One thing he’d learned during a career that spanned more than two decades was that while photos could easily lie—and people often did, intentionally or not—the subconscious mind was the closest thing to a truth detector any man possessed. If he knew how to use it.
The other fellow had the advantage of youth and a head start. Halfway down the lane, Rocky planted his feet and used his fingers to issue a shrill whistle. Occasionally the unexpected trumped any advantage.
At the sound, the photographer came to a dead halt. Roland “Rocky” Waters stood in the middle of a country lane and wondered, Okay, what now, Rambo?
Three
Damn blasted board. It should have been replaced years ago, just as the gutters should have been repaired or replaced. Aunt Emma had been in her eighties, for heaven’s sake. Sarah should have come down here and seen to all the repairs, herself. At least she could have hired someone.
But she hadn’t. Too wrapped up in her own woes. And now everything needed fixing. Whether she sold the house, which would break her heart, and moved back to the city to find work, or turned the place into a bed and breakfast catering to people looking for a place in the slow lane—in this case, the very slow lane—things needed doing. She tackled them one after another.
Yesterday it had been the grapevines, which she still hadn’t finished. Today it was the board she stubbed her toe on every time she walked down to this end of the porch. Clutching the hammer just behind the head, she glanced up at the sound of a car out on the road. It was so quiet she could hear for miles…not that there was much to hear. Crows. Farm equipment. Now and then a barking dog.
Between cornfields that had been leased out to the same farmer for years, the overgrown shrubbery and the tall, longleaf pines that shed all over the roof, clogging the gutters, she couldn’t see as far as the dirt road, much less the blacktop. Later on, during hunting season, she might see half a dozen hunters, even though her land was posted.
The man jogging toward her house didn’t look like a hunter. Nor did he look lost. In fact, she thought uneasily as she sat back on her heels, scowling against the sun’s glare, with that big camera thing he was carrying, he looked suspiciously like one of the flock of vultures that had once made her life such a living hell.
What on earth could have happened to bring the press down on her head this time? Surely the Poughs hadn’t gone public, not after all this time. That would be killing the golden goose. She hadn’t missed a single payment, and while it wasn’t much, it was the best she could do.
It occurred to her that it had been weeks since she’d spoken to her father. If something had happened to him, surely someone would have called her. She didn’t like the man, certainly didn’t trust him and wouldn’t particularly care if she didn’t have to see him for the next few years, but she supposed she still loved him. Daughters were supposed to love their fathers, and if nothing else, she’d been trained to be a dutiful daughter.
By now she had a pretty clear view of her visitor. He was no one she’d ever seen before, of that she was certain. He certainly didn’t look like anyone her father would have sent after her.
Still on her hands and knees, Sarah tried to make up her mind what to do. She had learned the hard way to avoid confrontation whenever possible, but to stand her ground when escape was not an option. She was still trying to make up her mind when a shrill whistle split the air.
A whistle? What in God’s name was going on?
And then a second man came into sight around the curve in her rutted, overgrown lane. Clutching the hammer, she almost forgot to breathe. Something must have happened—something awful. Maybe someone was in trouble. Maybe there’d been an accident out on the highway. Maybe someone needed her help—or at least, her telephone.
“Miz Sullivan?” The first man was panting, clearly out of shape. At closer range, he appeared younger than the man following him. The second man, taller, darker, slightly older, sprinted forward, grabbed his arm and swung him around.
Sarah scrambled to her feet. “Just what is going on?” she demanded at the same time the older man began to speak.
“Didn’t you see the signs? This is private property,” she heard him say. Well built, he was wearing jeans and a khaki shirt—standard wear for the locals. Did she know him? Was he a neighbor she hadn’t yet met?
“Both
