Page 49 of Liar Byrd
I watch him walk back up the stairs, waiting until I no longer hear his footsteps. Only when it’s completely silent do I turn from the stairs and put away my cleaning supplies before I head out on an errand that I’m already dreading.
As I walk to the front door, I pass by a room I’ve avoided almost as much as Vonn.
The music room.
I clean around the sleek, beautiful grand piano that pulls my attention like nothing else, and I always close the door after me.
But the door is open now, if only partially.
I don’t know what Lydia does because I never see her cleaning. Nance is always in the kitchen cooking, or in the laundry room ironing and folding linen. Kit is outside when he’s not staring at me from over the big table in the kitchen and putting me off my meal.
It’s not the first time I’ve found the door open. At first, I thought someone was playing a trick on me, tempting me with something I loved. Then I realized I was being paranoid. No one here knows I play the piano.
So, who was in the music room, and why do I never hear anyone play the piano?
“Are you still there?” Nance shouts, and I twist to find her hanging out of the kitchen. “Go. I need that flour.”
Forcing a false smile to my lips, I nod and slip outside.
I peer over my shoulder. No one is watching me. Yet, I feel eyes on me. Shaking off my unease, I drive into town with my fingers sweating on the steering wheel.
It was a forty-minute walk for me. In a car, it’s maybe fifteen minutes.
My heart is an orchestra playing a climax when I arrive, and I’m driving at a crawl so slow an old lady could overtake me on foot.
Jeremiah doesn’t know you’re here, I tell myself.And even if he sent his men to Massey, they would poke around town, not find you, and go elsewhere.
“You’re being paranoid,” I whisper, my eyes probing every figure on the street as I approach Main Street.
I park outside the grocery store, and I just sit there. My heart is racing. My palms are sweating. My eyes haven’t stopped searching the streets for any big men with long dark beards and navy linen.
And even though there is no sign of Jeremiah’s acolytes, I’m too afraid to get out.
Chapter 17
Vonn
Idon’t know what possessed me to climb into my car and follow her.
Jessica couldn’t have made it any clearer if she’d tried that she wants nothing to do with me. That I scare her.
But something brought her here to Massey. Something put fear in her eyes and had her cowering away from me when I took a step toward her. Someone hurt her, and it didn’t feel right to let her go into town alone when it sounded like Nance had bullied her into it.
So I followed, keeping my distance so she wouldn’t spot my dark gray truck trailing Nance’s navy sedan.
I didn’t come empty-handed.
I don’t have a permit for the handgun I have in the glove compartment, but as a former soldier, I know how to keep my head down when I want to. And to kill, if I need to.
If trouble follows Jessica here, I intend to do something about it.
She’s sitting in her car when I slow my truck and park up behind her outside the grocery store. She doesn’t know what vehicle I drive, and as long as she doesn’t look in her rearview mirror, she won’t know I followed her into town.
She cuts the engine.
I can’t see what she’s doing in there, but as the seconds and then the minutes tick by, she makes no move to get out.
I watch her with a slight frown, growing more certain by the second that somethingiswrong and that my spontaneous decision to follow her was a good one.
