Sound of Secrets (A Saltwater Romance)

CHAPTER ONE

While Cara Donnelly fought the feeling that she was returning to a place where she had never been, her gaze snagged on the majestic oak tree whose branches cast eerie shadows over a once-grand church.

Its limbs were bent like the arms of an octopus, just as Cara had known they would be. The tree had been there for so long that many of the branches intertwined while others beckoned like long, bony fingers.

Gripping the steering wheel, Cara swung her eyes to the other side of the road. The graveyard with the haphazard rows of granite tombstones came into view in less than a minute, with tall weeds and dying plants nearly obscuring some of the weathered markers. A lone grave in the middle of the cemetery, carefully tended and covered with a blanket of red blossoms, stuck out like a gaily dressed mourner at a funeral.

Cara's brain screamed that she shouldn't be on this lonely road. The fuel indicator showed her tank less than half full, but she should have waited to get gas until one of those highway symbols showed that an approaching exit had a service station.

She would have waited if she hadn’t seen a singular name on a road sign. Secret Sound.

She couldn’t place where she’d heard the name of the town before, but it seeped inside her and resonated with haunting familiarity. Before Cara could reconsider, she’d abandoned the carefully constructed road-trip plan that was supposed to land her in Miami Beach by early evening.

The friends she was meeting at a beachfront hotel had been able to get away days earlier than Cara, which had prompted her to consider canceling the trip. Flying made her so nervous that she wouldn’t get on a plane, and she hadn’t relished the idea of making the twelve-hour drive from her South Carolina home town.

In the end, her need to get away eclipsed her reluctance to travel alone. She’d plotted most aspects of the trip in advance, even deciding which interstate exits to use for meals and bathroom breaks.

Then she’d seen the sign, impulsively swung her car off the exit ramp and headed east toward Secret Sound by this eerily familiar route.

The two-lane road cut a swath through a thicket of tall Australian pine trees. Cara imagined that the branches of soft needles gently swaying in the wind gestured for her to turn around, which was patently ridiculous.

So was the overwhelming sensation that she was returning to a familiar place, because Cara had never before been to Florida. It wasn't like her to imagine things, but the certainty that this wasn't the first time she had traveled this road grew with every passing second.

Cara had switched off the radio before veering from the interstate, and the silence was almost as creepy as her premonitions of what lay ahead.

When she spotted the cemetery, Cara's heart thumped as wildly as the sticks of a drummer in a rock band, making her chest tighten and ache. The fast-food chicken sandwich she'd eaten for lunch roiled greasily in her stomach.

She'd rolled down the windows, and the air blew freely through the car, but she couldn’t suck enough oxygen into her lungs. She realized that the rapid, shallow rasps she heard were her attempts to breathe.

Her hands, slick with sweat, slipped on the steering wheel. Two of her tires slid off the road, kicking up dust and gravel. Cara squeezed hard on the wheel and jerked the car back onto the pavement. A pickup truck traveling in the other direction swerved as it passed her, its horn blaring, the sound becoming less insistent as the truck grew smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror.

Although she knew it was crazy, she leaned forward in her seat, angling her body so she could peer upward through the windshield. She half expected the eagle that haunted her dreams to swoop out of the sky and pluck her from the open window of the car. But all she saw was the darkening gray of twilight.

It didn’t matter that the eagle wasn’t there. Her heart knocked insistently against her breastbone while her breathing grew even more shallow.

Oh, no, Cara thought, not again.

This couldn’t be happening now, not when she hadn’t had an anxiety attack in more than six months. She’d thought, hoped, that she’d finally conquered the shameful attacks she worked so hard to conceal from her friends and family.

She once again scanned the landscape that couldn’t be familiar, and her anxiety grew thicker than the palm trees lining the road. She gasped for air, more certain than ever that the swaying fronds were telling her to retreat.

Obeying, she eased her foot off the gas pedal while she looked for a place to turn around. Then she glanced down at the car's dashboard.

The red indicator light shone like a beacon, and she gradually became aware of the acrid smell of hot metal. How long, she wondered, had her car been trying to tell her something was wrong?

Attempting to swallow the lump of dread in her throat, Cara pressed the gas pedal down hard and headed for the service station that was just ahead on the right side of the road.

It came into view just as she had known it would, and her hands shook so violently she had difficulty maneuvering the vehicle into the parking lot.

How had she known a service station was here? How could she know anything about a place she had never been in a state that had been a distant temptation until yesterday? How could an obscure name on a traffic sign and even the encroaching darkness that cloaked the street seem familiar?

Get a grip, Cara, she said aloud. She tried the breathing exercise she had used with some success over the years, gradually filling her lungs with fresh, clean air before slowly releasing her breath. She spoke the next sentence carefully, emphasizing each word. You have never been here before.

Cara had barely unbuckled her seat belt and opened the car door before she doubted her proclamation. She hadn't pulled up to one of the gasoline pumps, but off to the side of the station, and her eyes swept the establishment.

Even though darkness had descended on the poorly lit station, everything about it looked familiar. There was a small office, a large garage and only two pumps, one of which had a car in front of it. This service station, obviously, hadn’t yet been swallowed by the wave of impersonal super stations sweeping the country.

It wasn't until Cara's eyes gravitated back to the street that she saw the child. Judging from his size, he couldn't have been more than five years old. She wasn't able to see his features clearly, but she could tell a shock of dark hair framed his face.

He was on the shoulder of the road, turned toward Cara, and she had a powerful sense that he expected something from her. Cara's desire to reach out to him was so strong that she extended her arm, but then the child turned and dashed across the street.

His movements weren't graceful, but herky jerky in the manner of a young child not yet in full control of his motor skills. He's running scared, Cara thought, although she wasn't sure how she knew that.

The glow of a distant streetlight silhouetted the child's shape for one interminable second, almost as though he were caught in a freeze frame of a horror movie.

Then the world spun into motion once more. Cara heard the onrushing car, and her eyes widened in horror as she anticipated the terrible moment when the two would collide.

She opened her mouth to scream a warning, but it was too late. The brakes squealed in agony, and then Cara recoiled from the sickening thud as the car slammed into the child's tiny body.

She couldn't be sure whether the child's scream or her own pierced the early evening tranquility as he went flying like a rag doll through the air.

CHAPTER TWO

Gray DeBerg's fingers eased on the nozzle of the gas pump as the woman's piercing scream split the air.

His eyes worked as well as the next guy’s so naturally he’d noticed her when she got out of the overheated car with the out-of-state plates. He’d seen the steam seeping out of the hood first, but the long legs she swung out of the car quickly overshadowed that image.

The rest of her presented a picture as appealing as her legs. He couldn’t make out her face from a distance, but he’d never been attracted to the reedy models who graced billboards and magazines, and he liked the way she filled out her clothes.

He’d taken a long look and then went back to filling up the gas tank of his unmarked police car. Both because it was part of his job and his nature, he normally would have offered assistance to a woman with car trouble. But this woman was at a service station, more in need of a mechanic than a cop.

He might have been able to convince himself of that if she hadn’t screamed.

She held herself rigidly, almost like a small child too afraid to move, and she stared transfixed at the road. Gray's eyes swung to the road, but he saw nothing. Not a car. Not a dog or cat crossing the street. Not even an oil slick.

Great. Just great. Whatever had her spooked was most definitely in her mind.

With a snort of impatience, Gray quickly surmised that she was an out- of- towner on a very bad trip. He guessed LSD was her drug of choice, because people reckless enough to ingest that poison experienced vivid hallucinations. From the sound of her scream, she thought she was looking at something horrendous.

Gray glanced at the service station office which doubled as a small convenience store and saw that the door was closed. Through the window he spotted Sam Peckenbush, the proprietor, talking on the phone with his back to the street.

Sam's had been the low bid on a contract to provide fuel for police-department vehicles. Even if Gray hadn’t suspected the woman was in possession of an illegal substance, he would have felt obligated to make sure she didn't scare away customers.

Resigned to no longer having time to go home and change his clothes before heading into town for his weekly poker game, Gray walked toward the woman. He was the town's police chief, and he'd long ago gotten used to being on duty even when he was off.

He wouldn’t be able to arrest her unless the drugs were in plain view, so Gray figured he’d have to settle for helping the woman help herself. He mentally ticked off the places — Secret Sound’s drug treatment referral center, the hospital that treated addicts, the psychiatric ward — that might be able to help.

A slight chance existed that her behavior stemmed from something other than drugs, but Gray seriously doubted it. He'd taken some college psychology courses before settling on the law, and whatever was wrong with the woman had nothing to do with reality. If she weren’t on a bad trip, chances are that she was stark, raving nuts.

When he was close enough, he reached out and touched her, hoping to jolt her back to reality.

***

The sensation of something warm and firm gripping Cara's arm was enough to stop her scream. She glanced down at the object on her arm, vaguely concluding that it was a man's hand, before she yanked her gaze back to the crumpled boy laying in the street.

Except he wasn't there.

Cara blinked once, then twice, but she couldn't deny the stark reality of the scene in front of her. The road was deserted except for an empty fast- food container that tumbled with the wind. There was no car. No tire rubber burned into the road. No stricken child.

But that's impossible, her mind screamed, even as her eyes scanned the road. A moment ago, a small child had run to his doom. And now he was gone as if he had never been.

Except that she had seen him, heard him, felt for him.

Excuse me.

A rich, distinctive voice disrupted her thoughts, and Cara remembered the hand on her arm. She tore her gaze from the lonely street, and tried to focus on the man. His khaki shirt was the same color as the one the little doomed boy had worn. She swallowed another scream.

Is something wrong?

Of course, she wanted to yell. A helpless child had been run over by a car!

Cara shook her head mutely. How could she explain what she had seen to a stranger who had every right to be suspicious of her? Especially when what she had seen was no longer there.

She tilted her head back to look up at him, and blinked hard when she encountered blue eyes she had seen before. Not the blue of a Caribbean sea or a child’s building block, but the dark, dangerous shade of the summer sky right before a storm.

But his eyes soothed instead of frightened because something in their depths told her he could offer shelter from the very storm he portended.

From somewhere she gathered the strength to fight off the anxiety attack that had gripped her. She drew in a long, slow breath and took her time releasing it.

Don't I know you from somewhere? To her dismay, her voice trembled from the aftereffects of shock.

A corner of his mouth lifted in wry humor, and she found herself staring at it, wondering why she yearned to reach out with her fingertips to trace his lips and the line of his strong, square jaw.

Believe me, lady, you make quite a first impression. His low-timbered voice was as commanding as his presence. She raised her eyes from the level of his mouth, and guessed that he was at least six feet two. He had a strong face, with a nose that might once have been broken, a broad forehead and well-shaped dark eyebrows that matched hair that was short in front but brushed his neck with soft, unkempt curls. Her eyes dipped below his chin, registered an impression of solid sinew and muscle, and she thought inanely that nothing short of a bulldozer could knock him over. If we had met before, I’d remember.

Disappointment coursed through Cara. His eyes were drawn together so that an indentation appeared between his brows, his mouth was a pencil-straight line, and he was looking at her as though he'd never seen her before in his life.

She didn’t know why that should matter. If this man had approached her in a social setting, she would have made excuses to get away from him. He was too big, too imposing, too much the opposite of the type of man she felt comfortable with.

But she wanted him to look out of those familiar stormy blue-gray eyes and say that he’d felt the same crazy spark of recognition that she had.

Somewhere nearby a dog barked. Cara looked away from the man long enough to see a thick-necked pit bull the color of midnight straining against a fence that enclosed an automobile graveyard. Briefly she wondered if the dog were barking at them or the horror she had seen on the street.

If you tell me what's wrong, I can help you, the man said, and Cara felt even more miserable and lost than she had a moment ago, because this man was unquestionably a stranger.

She turned away from the pit bull and back toward the man, belatedly realizing that his khaki shirt was part of a uniform that included brown slacks, a gun belt and a gold badge inscribed with the word Chief. She closed her eyes briefly and cursed her bad luck.

Nothing's wrong, Cara mumbled. She couldn't accept his offer, because doing so would mean telling him that she had seen something in the street that was no longer there. Could he arrest her for that? Especially if it hadn't been there in the first place?

Then why were you screaming?

The question was harsh and perfectly logical. Cara would have asked the same one had their positions been reversed. It dawned on her that he still held her arm, and she was drawn to his warmth. Then he removed it, and chilling reality hit Cara. The man seemed to be questioning not her, but her sanity. The upshot was that she didn't have a sane answer.

I thought... she began, and faltered when she saw the doubt that already cloaked the eyes that had seemed so familiar. It already mattered what he thought of her, and that couldn't be anything flattering. I thought I saw something.

The man's eyebrows rose. He didn't look like any police chief she had ever seen. He was too young, for starters, probably no more than his mid-thirties. And, even though she wasn’t drawn to the overly masculine type, much too attractive. Even now, moments after the strangest, most traumatic moment of her life, Cara recognized his appeal even though she couldn't figure out why she recognized him.

How could you have seen anything when there’s nobody here but me?

Cara looked around almost frantically, taking in their surroundings. He was right. There wasn't anybody here but him. How could Cara, who prided herself on being sensible, argue with that indisputable fact? She cast about wildly for the first plausible explanation she could think of for her screams.

A bat. She fought the unfamiliar cloud of confusion threatening to engulf her. I saw a bat.

A bat? He screwed up his forehead so that a network of lines formed on his brow. He deliberately surveyed the sky around her, which was as free of bats as the street was of life. Or death. I don’t see a bat.

There was one here a minute ago. A great big one, Cara snapped, upset because he wasn’t even trying to use diplomacy. He didn’t believe her, and he didn’t care if she knew it.

And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you always scream like that when you see a bat?

He’d cocked a hand on his hip and made his eyes go wide. Normally, such blatant skepticism would have made her back down and admit everything, but the mocking light in his hypnotic eyes irked her.

I don’t owe you any explanations. Cara opened the door of her little green Mazda and scrambled inside, intending to get away both from the vivid apparition that had appeared in the street and the incredulity on the man's face. Thanks for your concern, but I need to be on my way.

She tried to close the car door, but the man placed a restraining hand on it. Instead of fear, hope leapt inside her. She leaned her upper body halfway outside the car and looked up at him expectantly. She wanted him to tell her that she hadn't been imagining things, that he too had seen the boy in the street, that he glimpsed the same familiarity in her eyes that she detected in his.

You saw something, too, didn't you? she asked, her voice slightly breathless.

All I see, the man said, indicating the hood of her vehicle with a sweep of his hand, is white steam seeping out of the hood of your car.

Instantly reminded of why she had pulled into the service station, Cara sprang out of the overheated car. Confusion and embarrassment mingled to make her cheeks as hot as the car engine. She couldn't drive off with steam pouring from her car, no matter how much she wanted to.

It probably only needs a little water in the radiator.

Lady, you sure do have a vivid imagination, he said dryly. There's something more seriously wrong with your car than the water level in your radiator.

Irritation bubbled in Cara, because this wasn't supposed to happen. Her car wasn’t new, but she never missed a factory-authorized tune-up and had gotten it checked thoroughly before embarking on this trip. But she knew instinctively that the Secret Sound police chief wasn’t a man who made many mistakes.

Whatever it is, with any luck it won't take too long to fix, Cara said.

He shrugged, and his eyes seemed to inspect her for defects. After the way she had acted, he couldn't know she was a sensible woman, able to deal with whatever problems confronted her. Except maybe the appearance of a boy who wasn't there, a little voice inside her head whispered.

You okay? the man asked, possibly because she was standing rigidly beside her car. Her next step should be to seek help from the mechanic on duty, but she couldn't seem to move. She thought that concern, real and somehow urgent, had stamped out the wariness in his eyes. She had a wild urge to confide the strange things that had happened since she'd left the interstate.

Are you okay? he repeated.

She nodded even though she had never been less okay in her life. She hadn't even been this out of control a month ago when her much- loved parents had died within days of each other. They had been elderly and ailing, and the doctor had told her to prepare for their deaths. But how do you prepare to go out of your mind? And how do you tell a stranger who probably had the power to commit you to an asylum that it's happening?

Listen, the man said and paused, and something she recognized burned in the depths of his eyes. Is there someone I can call for you?

There’s no one. Cara’s voice caught at the realization that she didn’t have anybody in whom she could confide about the strange visions. Except, perhaps, the man standing in front of her. She bit her lip before she could say so, because that was lunacy.

***

Gray scratched his chin as he examined the woman’s face, more puzzled by the minute. Despite what he'd said about not knowing her, for a moment he thought he glimpsed something familiar in the line of her jaw and curve of her cheek. But then the flash of recognition was gone, and he knew he had imagined it.

How could he not remember her when she wasn’t the sort of woman he’d forget? Her voice was pure honey, the vowel sounds sweetly rounded by a mild southern accent, but she looked even better than she sounded.

Her mouth was too wide and her nose too long to fit the classic definition of beauty, but he couldn’t drag his eyes from her. Much of her golden-brown hair had escaped from a barrette at her nape and flew freely about a pale face that tugged at something deep inside him. Her big, dark eyes were too trusting; her trembling lips hinted at a vulnerability that he found hard to ignore.

He had a sudden impulse to pull her into his arms and tell her that everything would be all right, that he would see to it that nothing and nobody would hurt her. But he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that.

Only a foolish man let a woman have power over his emotions, and Gray wasn’t foolish. He liked women, and he liked to have a good time, but that was as far as he was willing to go. His father had gone further, and look what it had gotten him: A few years of fragile happiness followed by a quarter-century of pain.

Gray could handle this instant, unwanted attraction as long as he remembered he was a professional offering help to somebody in need.

He didn’t bother to analyze why he felt compelled to offer his assistance when she’d already refused it. He had no grounds to charge her with any crime, and no reason, other than her scream, to believe she was on drugs. He’d already fulfilled his cop’s duty, and that should have been the end of it.

His obvious next move was to wish her well and walk away, but he couldn’t make his feet move.

If there isn't anybody you can call, I’ll take you to the hospital. They can check you out, make sure everything's working okay.

Instead of the docile acquiescence he anticipated, storm clouds rose in her eyes. Her back arched, like that of a cat ready to flee danger.

If I'm not under arrest, I don't have to go anywhere with you. I'm certainly not going to a hospital, she said, marking the first time he'd heard any force behind her voice. She rested her hands on her hips, and her eyes flashed so they seemed more golden than brown. The fireworks illuminated her entire face, infusing it with a beauty that had only been hinted at before, infusing him with a heat that burned low in his gut. There's nothing wrong with me.

Look, he said, irked at himself. Not only was he having inappropriate thoughts, but he was actually going to try to convince her to accept help she’d already twice refused. Don’t let your pride get in the way of your common sense. You obviously had a hallucination. Professionals are trained to help with this sort of thing.

Professionals? Her eyes flashed anger, but she made a concerted effort to rein it in. She backed away, toward the service-station office. I don't need professional help, except with my car. I already told you why I was screaming, so you don't have to concern yourself with me any longer. Surely there's a criminal somewhere who needs to be arrested. I'm just going to see about my car, and then I'll be on my way.

Nobody’s stopping you. Gray fought the urge to do exactly that. It would be best for both of them if he pretended to believe her implausible story about the bat and let her go about her business.

As he watched her walk toward Sam Peckenbush's office, however, he had to bite his lower lip to keep from calling her back.

Sighing, he crossed the parking lot to where his patrol car stood in front of the gas pump. He leaned against the