The Smoky Mountain Mist. Paula Graves
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think I am,” she said. Her voice had taken on a definite slurring cadence. But he decided she didn’t sound drunk so much as drugged. Had someone given her a sedative after the funeral? Maybe she’d had a bad reaction to it.
“I don’t think you’re cursed,” Seth disagreed, easing his hand toward her in the dark. “I think you’re tired and sad. And, you know, that’s okay. It means you’re human.”
Her eyes glittered in the reflected light of the Char-ger’s flashers. “I wish I were a bird,” she said plaintively. “Then I could fly away over the mountains and never have to land again.” She took a sudden turn outward, teetering atop the rail as if preparing to take flight. “She said I should fly.”
Then, in heart-stopping slow motion, she began to fall forward, off the bridge.
Chapter Two
He wasn’t going to reach her in time.
A nightmare played out in his head as he threw himself toward her. His hands clawing at the air where she’d been a split second earlier. His body slamming into the rail that stopped him just short of throwing himself after her over the side of the bridge. He could see her plummeting, her slender body dancing like a feather in the cold October breeze until it shattered on the rocks below.
Then his fingers met flesh; his arms snaked around her hips, anchoring her to him. Though she was tall and thin, she was heavy enough to fill the next few seconds of Seth’s life with sheer terror as he struggled to keep her from tumbling into the gorge and taking him with her.
He finally brought her down to the ground and crushed her close, his heart pounding a thunderous rhythm in his ears. She pressed closer to him, her nose nuzzling against the side of his neck.
“This is nice,” she said, her fingers playing over the muscles of his chest. “You smell nice.”
His body’s reaction was quick and fierce. He struggled to regain control, but she wasn’t helping him a bit. Her exploring hands slid downward to rest against his hips. His heart gave a jolt as her mouth brushed over the tendon at the side of his neck, the tip of her tongue flicking against the flesh.
“Taste good, too.”
He dragged her away, holding her at arm’s length in a gentle but firm grip. “I need to get you home.”
She smiled at him, but he could see in the dim light that her eyes were glassy. Clearly she had no idea where she was or maybe even who she was. Whatever chemical had driven her up on the girder was still in control.
“Rachel, do you have the key to your car?” He didn’t want to leave her car there to be a hazard to other drivers trying to cross the bridge.
She shook her head drunkenly.
Keeping a grip on one of her arms, he crossed and checked the vehicle. The key was in the ignition. At least she hadn’t locked the door, so he could move it off the bridge. But did he dare let Rachel go long enough to do so?
“Rachel, let’s take a ride, okay?”
“’Kay.” She got into the passenger seat willingly enough when he directed her there, and she was fumbling with the radio dials when he slid in behind the steering wheel. “Where’s the music?”
“Just a minute, sugar.” He started the car. A second later, hard-edged bluegrass poured through the CD speak-ers—Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson. He had that album in his own car.
She started singing along with no-holds gusto, her voice a raspy alto, and complained when he parked the car off the road and cut the engine.
“Just a minute and we’ll make the music come back,” he promised, keeping an eye on the road. There had been no traffic so far, but his luck wouldn’t hold much longer. He needed to get her out of there before anyone else saw the condition she was in.
He almost laughed at himself as he realized what he was thinking. He’d been a cover-up artist from way back, trying to hide the ugly face of his home life from the people around them. He’d gotten good at telling lies.
Then he’d gotten good at running cons.
Still, he thought it was smart to protect Rachel Dav-enport from prying eyes until she was in some sort of condition to defend herself. He didn’t know what had happened to her tonight, or how big a part she’d played in her own troubles, but he didn’t care. Everybody made mistakes, and she’d been under a hell of a lot more pressure than most folks these past few weeks.
She could sort things out with her conscience when she was sober. He wasn’t going to add to her problems by parading her in front of other people.
He buckled her safely into the passenger seat of the Charger and slid behind the wheel, pulling the bluegrass CD from a holder attached to his sun visor. He put the CD in the player and punched the skip button until the song she’d been singing earlier came on. She picked up the tune happily, and he let her serenade him while he thought through what to do next.
Delivering her to her family was the most obvious answer, but Seth didn’t like that idea. Someone had gone to deadly lengths in the past few weeks to rip away her emotional underpinnings, and Seth didn’t know enough about her relationship with her stepmother and stepbrother to risk taking her home in this condition. She seemed friendly enough with them, but they didn’t appear particularly close. In fact, there was some speculation at work whether Paul Bailey was annoyed at being bypassed as acting CEO. He might not have Rachel’s best interests at heart.
The particulars of George Davenport’s will had become an open secret around the office ever since he’d changed it shortly after his terminal liver cancer diagnosis a year ago. Everybody at the trucking company knew he’d specified that his daughter, Rachel, should be the company’s CEO. It had been a bit of a scandal, since until that point in her life, Rachel Davenport had been happy working as a librarian in Maryville. What did she know about running a business?
She’d done okay, taking over more and more of her fa-ther’s duties until his death, but would Paul Bailey have seen it that way?
The song ended, and the next cut on the album began, a plaintive ballad that Rachel didn’t seem to know. She hummed along, swaying gently against the constraints of the seat belt. She was beginning to wind down, he noticed with a glance her way. Her eyes were starting to droop closed.
Maybe he should have taken her straight to the hospital in Maryville to get checked out, he realized. What if she’d overdosed on whatever she’d taken? What if she needed treatment?
He bypassed the turnoff that would take him to the Edgewood area, where Bitterwood’s small but influential moneyed class lived, and headed instead to Vesper Road. Delilah was housesitting there for Ivy Hawkins, a girl they’d grown up with on Smoky Ridge.
A detective with the Bitterwood Police Department, Ivy was on administrative leave following a shooting that had left a hired killer dead and a whole lot of questions unanswered. Ivy had taken advantage of the enforced time off to visit with her mother, who’d recently moved to Birmingham, and had offered Delilah a place to stay while she was in town.
“Rachel, you still with me?” he asked with alarm as he noticed her head lolling to one side.
She didn’t answer.
He drove faster than he should down twisty Vesper Road, hoping the deer, coyotes and black bears stayed in the woods where they belonged instead of straying into the path of his speeding car. He almost missed his turn and ended up whipping down Ivy Hawkins’s driveway with an impressive clatter of gravel that brought Deli-lah out to confront him before he even had a chance to cut the engine.
“What the hell?” she asked as she circled around to the passenger door.
“You did some medic training at that fancy place you work, right?”
Delilah’s eyebrows lifted at the sight of Rachel Davenport in the passenger seat. “What’s wrong with her?”
“That’s