The Deputy's Proof Read online

  He focused his attention back on her. “You haven’t answered my question. Why, Savannah? Why are you doing this?”

  He studied her intently, wanting her to explain, to tell him what the payoff was for pretending to be her sister’s ghost. She frowned and looked out the darkened window.

  Josh was a patient man. It was one of his strengths as a deputy. He leaned back in his chair, not willing to go anywhere until he had the answer he needed from her.

  Was she crazy, as many people thought? Had the murder of her sister, the destruction of her family and her own isolation from everything and everyone caused mental illness of some sort?

  She finally looked back at him and leaned forward. Her hair came untucked from the back of her ear, the long dark strands shining beneath the hanging light over the table.

  “A month after Shelly’s murder, my parents forbade us ever to speak her name again,” she began. Her dark gaze went over his shoulder to the bare wall behind him. “They packed all of her things away in the storage shed out back and pretended she had never existed.”

  She looked back at him, her eyes filled with a depth of simmering emotion. “I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my sister, my best friend and the person I’d shared a bedroom with since I was born. As time passed and Bo left town, everyone stopped talking about Shelly. It was as if she had never existed anywhere at any time. Even after my parents left town and I tried to talk to Mac about Shelly, he shut me down. He was so angry, still is so angry. He definitely didn’t want to hear Shelly’s name or anything I had to say about her.”

  Josh understood her pain. He’d lost a twin brother when he’d been fifteen years old, and he knew for the rest of his life he’d feel as if an integral piece of himself was missing.

  “I found the tunnel a year ago,” Savannah continued. “It took me weeks to get up the nerve to go down inside and explore where it went. When I finally did and realized it came up next to the place where Shelly had been murdered, I came up with the ghost plan.”

  “But why? What do you get out of pretending to be her ghost?”

  “I get to hear squealing teenagers say her name. I make sure nobody forgets about her. I keep her alive by pretending to be her apparition in death.” She shook her head. “I know it sounds crazy and you probably can’t understand it, but for those few moments when people are crying out Shelly’s name, I feel better. I feel as if she’s still with me.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Josh replied. “You’re sneaking out of your house alone in the middle of the night to go down into a tunnel that you don’t even know is safe. There could be a cave-in, or somebody could come after you while you’re doing your little show.”

  A whisper of a smile curved her lips, and for a moment Josh saw the semblance of the young woman she’d once been. “Actually, a couple of weeks ago Bo McBride did come after me. Apparently his new girlfriend, Claire Silver, told him about Shelly’s ghost and encouraged him to see the spectacle. I’d just finished my walk when he jumped over the bushes and chased me into the woods. I jumped into my rabbit hole and disappeared.”

  “But that’s my point,” Josh protested. “You disappear down that tunnel, and if anything happened to you, nobody would know you were in trouble.” He leaned forward. “I want to check out this tunnel.”

  Her eyes widened, and her gaze slid away from his. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ve been using it for almost a year, and it’s perfectly safe.”

  “I’d still like to check it out for myself,” he countered. She looked at him again, and he knew in his gut that she was hiding something. “I figure you’ve got two choices.”

  “And I figure I’m not going to like either one of them,” she retorted.

  “You can take me down through that tunnel and I can see for myself that it’s safe and secure, or I can get a backhoe in here to fill in the entrance in your backyard.”

  She sat up straighter in her chair, a flash of anger in her eyes. “You can’t do that. My backyard is private property.”

  “I can do it,” he replied calmly. “That hole is a danger. A small child could fall down it. I can make a case to have it filled in without your permission for the safety of the community.”

  She glared at him. It was the most emotion he’d seen from her since her sister’s death. “Fine, I’ll take you down into the tunnel.”

  Josh nodded and stood. “Why don’t we plan on around noon tomorrow? I’ll come here and we can check it out.”

  She stood as well, her body vibrating with tension. “Don’t take this away from me, Josh. It’s all I have in my life.”

  He had a ridiculous impulse to step forward and pull her into his arms. Instead he stepped toward the back door. “I’m just trying to keep you safe, Savannah. That’s my job.”

  “If I felt unsafe, I would have called Sheriff Walker,” she replied.

  “Maybe you aren’t in a mental state to know what’s safe and what isn’t.”

  He knew he’d spoken the wrong words by the flash of unbridled annoyance that filled her eyes and stiffened her stance.

  “Contrary to popular belief, I’m perfectly sane. I know people think I’ve become a weird recluse who only comes out at night to work at the local haunted hotel, but that’s my choice. The way I live my life is nobody’s business but my own.”

  “Point taken,” Josh replied. He opened the back door. “I’ll see you at noon tomorrow. Good night, Savannah.”

  She shut the door behind him with more force than was necessary, and he headed for his patrol car parked at the curb in front of her house.

  He got into the car and started the engine but didn’t immediately drive away. Instead he sat and stared at her house. No lights shone from the front windows just as very little light had shone from her eyes on the occasional times he’d seen her in the last two years.

  Despite his intense attraction to her two years ago, since that time he’d tried not to think about her. It was only curiosity about Shelly’s “ghost” that had brought him here tonight.

  Guilt was a terrible thing, he thought as he finally pulled away from the curb. Savannah was broken. She’d been broken since Shelly’s murder...a murder that had never been investigated as vigorously as it should have been.

  As a deputy, Josh had followed orders, but as a decent man, he had known nobody was doing enough to close the case. Closure might have made a difference to Savannah.

  Yes, she was broken, but he had no hero complex. He wasn’t the man to fix her, but what he could do was make sure she was safe if she insisted on doing her ghostly walks.

  He couldn’t go back in time and do things differently in the case of her sister, but he could see to it that if Savannah insisted on continuing her haunting ghostly walks, at least the tunnel she used was safe.

  Chapter Two

  Savannah awoke with the unaccustomed emotion of anger tightening her chest. It had been so long since she hadn’t awakened with the familiar grief that it took her a moment to recognize the new feeling that pressed so tight inside her.

  Then she remembered the night before and Deputy Josh Griffin and knew immediately he was the source of her unusual anger. He was going to be here at noon and insist he go down into the tunnel with her, and when he did, he’d ruin everything.

  He’d see that it wasn’t just a single tunnel but rather a network of tunnels. Word would get out, people would start to explore and her nights of ghost walking would be over forever. She’d never hear Shelly’s name again except in the deepest recesses of her broken heart.

  She rolled over in bed and stared at the opposite side of the bedroom. The wall was covered with pictures of Shelly and Savannah, hugging each other when they were ten and eleven, Shelly dressed for prom at sixteen with Savannah posing with her, moments captured in time of the closeness of the two.

  A desk held items that had been special to Shelly—the dried flower corsage that Bo McBride had given to her on prom night, a framed picture of the Manhattan skyline at
twilight, a ceramic frog and a variety of other knickknacks.

  Savannah had unpacked the items from the shed after Mac had moved out, comforted by the little pieces of Shelly that now remained in the room the two had shared for so many years of their lives.

  She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Just after ten. Normally she’d sleep until at least noon or one due to her overnight work hours at the Pirate’s Inn. She’d be sucking wind tonight if she didn’t get a nap in sometime during the afternoon or early evening.

  Minutes later, as she stood beneath the shower spray, her thoughts turned to Josh Griffin. Before Shelly’s death, she’d thought him one of the most handsome, hot single men in town.

  He’d only grown more handsome in the past two years. As he’d sat at the table the night before, she couldn’t help but notice on some level how his dark hair enhanced the crystal blue of his eyes.

  It had been impossible not to notice how his broad shoulders had filled out his khaki deputy shirt and that he’d smelled of spicy cologne that had stirred her senses on some primal level.

  She didn’t want to like Josh Griffin. As far as she was concerned, he was just part of the law enforcement in town that had botched her sister’s murder case. And now he was going to ruin the only thing that made her feel just a little bit alive.

  She dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a light blue T-shirt and then made a pot of coffee. The silence of the house was comfortable to her. When she and Mac had shared the house, there had always been shouting and cursing. Now the silence was like an old familiar friend.

  Mac had been one of the loudest voices proclaiming the guilt of Bo McBride in Shelly’s murder. But he’d always thought Bo wasn’t good enough for her. Sometimes Savannah wondered about her brother...but she never allowed the perverse thought to take hold.

  She sat at the table to drink her coffee and stared out the window that gave her not only a view of her own backyard but also a partial view of her neighbor’s.

  Jeffrey Allen was out there now, weeding a flower bed, his bald head covered against the July sun by a large straw hat. Jeffrey wasn’t a pleasant man. In his midfifties, he worked as a mechanic at the local car repair shop and for the past five years or so had had a contentious relationship with the Sinclair family.

  She only hoped he finished his lawn work before Josh arrived to check out the tunnel. The last thing she wanted to do was give Jeffrey any ammunition to work with to get her out of this house.

  He’d made it clear that he wanted to buy her house for some of his family members to move into, but Savannah had no plans ever to sell.

  By eleven forty-five, Jeffrey had disappeared from his yard and gone back into his house, and a nervous energy flooded through Savannah’s veins. Within a few minutes, Josh would arrive and destroy the one thing that had kept Shelly relevant beyond her death.

  Savannah was still seated at the kitchen table when Josh appeared at the back door. She wanted to pretend he wasn’t there, ignore the soft knock he delivered, but she knew he wasn’t going to just go away, especially since he could see her through the window.

  Reluctantly she got up to let him inside. Josh worked the night shift, like Savannah, and so instead of his uniform, he was clad in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.

  With his slightly unruly black hair and his usual sexy grin curving sensual lips, he looked like the proverbial irresistible bad boy. He was a bad boy. He was about to rock her world in a very adverse way.

  “Good afternoon,” he said when she opened the door.

  “Not particularly,” she replied, embracing the alien emotion of the anger she’d awakened with. It felt so fresh, so different from the pervasive grief that had possessed her for so long. “It would be a good day if you’d kept your nose out of my business.”

  He frowned, the expression doing nothing to distract from his handsome, chiseled features. “Savannah, I’m not the enemy here.”

  Yes, he was. He just didn’t realize it yet. Right now he was the beginning of the end of her world. With even Shelly’s ghost gone, Savannah didn’t know who she was or where she belonged.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” she replied. She noticed that he carried a high-beam flashlight, and she walked to the cabinet under the kitchen sink and grabbed a flashlight for herself.

  As she followed Josh out the back door, she hoped his shoulders got stuck in the hole, then realized he would probably somehow manage to get out anyway and bring in that backhoe he’d talked about the night before.

  She just had to come to terms with the fact that he was about to discover not just her secret, but a secret that had been hidden from the entire town for who knew how long.

  As they reached the bush, she stepped in front of him and caught a scent of the sexy cologne she’d noticed the night before. It only aggravated her more. “I’ll go first,” she said and bent down to shove aside the branches to reveal the hole.

  She used the narrow earthen steps to go down. “Okay, your turn,” she said and moved away so that he could drop in.

  He didn’t use the steps but landed gracefully on the ground. Apparently a three-foot drop wasn’t a big deal for a tall man with long legs.

  He clicked on his flashlight and shone it straight ahead. “Wow, who would have thought?” he exclaimed in shock.

  From this vantage point, the other passageway entrances weren’t visible. “See, it’s safe as can be,” she said. “The earth is hard-packed and solid.”

  He shone his light beyond her. “I want you to take me to where you come up to do your nightly walks by the swamp.”

  This was what she’d been hoping to avoid, but she knew there was no way to stop him. “Follow me,” she said in resignation. It would take only about three minutes for him to know that “her” tunnel wasn’t the only one down here.

  “Did it ever occur to you that the person who murdered Shelly might have used this tunnel to escape the scene of the crime?” he asked after only a step or two.

  “You mean the murderer you all never caught?” The anger was back. She stopped and turned to face him, her light shining in his eyes.

  He winced. “You don’t believe that Bo McBride was responsible?”

  “No, even though nearly everyone else in town, including all of you lawmen, believed him guilty. I never believed in my heart that he’d hurt Shelly. He loved her more than he loved himself.”

  “Did you know he’s back in town to stay?” Josh asked. “And turn that light away,” he added with an edge of irritation.

  She lowered the beam to the center of his chest. “He’s been back for over a month. I know he’s living with Claire Silver because the creepy stalker that was after her burned Bo’s family house down. I also know he and Claire are trying to find the truth about who murdered Shelly. When he chased me that night, I already suspected he was back in Lost Lagoon to stay.”

  “Look, I’m not down in this dungeon to reinvestigate your sister’s murder. I’m sorry how things turned out and that nobody was ever arrested, but that’s not why we’re down here.”

  “You were the one who brought it up,” she replied.

  Suddenly she just wanted to get this over with, get back into her silent house where she lived with just memories of the family who had once filled the quiet with life.

  She turned around and continued walking, and when she came to the first passageway that shot off the main tunnel, she heard Josh gasp in surprise.

  “I thought you said this was just one tunnel, from your backyard directly to the edge of the swamp.” He shone his light down the new tunnel.

  Once again she turned to face him. “I lied. There are tons of tunnels down here. I think they run under the entire town, and now that you know that, everything is going to be ruined for me. You’ll feel obligated to tell somebody, and word will get out, and there will be tons of people down here exploring everywhere.”

  To her horror, she burst into tears...the first tears she had shed since the day they ha
d buried her sister.

  * * *

  JOSH WASN’T SURE what shocked him more, the discovery of the other tunnels or Savannah’s unexpected tears. No, they weren’t just simple tears. She leaned against the earthen wall and sobbed as if her heart was breaking.

  “Savannah,” he said softly, and he touched her arm. She jerked away and cried harder. “Savannah, please don’t cry.” Not knowing what to do, unaccustomed to sobbing females, he tucked his flashlight into the back of the waist of his pants and pulled her into his arms.

  She stiffened against him and then melted into him, crying into the hollow of his throat. Although she was tall, she felt small and fragile in his arms. Her hair smelled of wildflowers, and she fit neatly against him.

  It lasted only a couple of heartbeats, and then she twirled out of his embrace and swiped at her tears as if angry at herself for the display of emotion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  She faced him, the eerie illumination of their flashlights casting dancing shadows on her features. “You just have no idea what you’re taking away from me.”

  “Why don’t we continue on, and we can talk about it all when we’re above ground again,” he suggested and pulled his flashlight out of his waistband.

  She nodded and turned to lead the way once again. Josh tried to keep pace with her, but he slowed each time he passed yet another tunnel that branched off the one they followed. And there were plenty of branches.

  Throughout the walk, he could tell they were descending, although it was impossible to tell just how deep they were beneath the ground.

  He counted at least seven branches of darkened tunnels by the time they reached the end of the main one. Plank steps led upward. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other as they’d travelled forward.

  He’d been too amazed by the subterranean world he’d been introduced to by Savannah. Where did the other tunnels lead? How big was the network? Who knew about it besides Savannah?

  He was fairly sure the answer to the question was that nobody except Savannah and now him knew about the underground network. Otherwise he would have heard about it before now. Lost Lagoon was a small town, and a secret this big would have been revealed.