Page 92 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

Following her.

Making certain she was safe.

Somehow the thought that he was nearby made her feel safer as she drove down the cold, lonely streets and watched the play of light from her own beams splash against the boles of trees, white fences and the road winding ahead of her. She saw a few cars going the opposite direction and her beams had caught the eyes of an opossum before it lumbered beneath a hedge of azaleas and ferns. In a weird, all-too-needy way, Nikki was touched that Reed had elected to escort her home. It was the kind of emotion she usually detested.

But then, she was dead on her feet. Not thinking clearly. That explained her odd feelings for Reed. Had to. Nothing else made sense. Even though in a few hours her page one story would hit the stands, she couldn’t wait up for it. She pulled into her parents’ tree-lined drive and parked. Reed’s Cadillac glided into the spot next to hers. He rolled his window down. “I’ll wait until you get inside,” he said.

“Thanks.” Waving, she hauled her bag to the garage, punched in the code for the doors to open and walked past her mother’s fifteen-year-old Mercedes and her father’s new BMW convertible—a midlife crisis except for the fact her father had sped past midlife ten or fifteen years earlier. As she opened the door to the kitchen, she nearly ran into her mother, frail thing that she was, all wrapped up in a fluffy yellow bathrobe and matching slippers.

“My God, Nicole, what’s going on?” Charlene asked, worriedly fingering the diamond cross that forever hung around her neck. “It’s this Grave Robber thing, isn’t it?”

Nikki couldn’t lie. “Yes. Please, Mom, don’t panic, but since you’re going to read the papers in a few hours, you may as well know that the guy contacted me.”

Charlene gasped. “The killer?”

Her father filled the doorway to the den. “Contacted you?” he repeated gruffly, his voice still deep from recent sleep, his thinning hair mussed, eyeglasses a little angled over his nose. “How?”

“It’s a long story, Dad, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

“Are you in danger?” he demanded.

“Oh, God.” Charlene rubbed the diamond cross as if in so doing she could ward off the devil. “Of course she is. She courts it and now…if that monster is contacting you…”

“I don’t know that it’s him for certain,” Nikki answered honestly. “It could be someone else just jerking my chain, but I don’t think so.” She lifted a weary hand. “So, it’s okay if I crash here?”

“Of course.”

Her father managed a smile as he engaged the alarm system. “Always, Firecracker. You know that. If anyone tries to mess with you here, he’ll have to deal with me.”

“And your personal arsenal.” Nikki unbuttoned her coat.

“That’s right.”

Her father was ex-military, but took the Second Amendment to the nth degree. His right to bear arms was one he’d fight for to the death. His life had been threatened on more than one occasion. And he’d been on the bench long enough that criminals he’d put away for life, were now, thanks to prison rehabilitation or trusting parole boards, on the streets again.

Big Ron believed in being armed and he had the shotguns, revolvers and AK-47s to prove it.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” She made her way up the stairs to the room she’d grown up in and snapped on the bedside lamp. Warm light illuminated walls papered in a floral pattern she’d helped her mother choose over twenty years earlier. The maple bed with its matching desk and bureau were situated exactly as they had been when Nikki was growing up.

“Jesus, this is almost spooky,” she thought aloud as she fingered the tennis trophies she’d won in high school that were mounted on a shelf. The corsage from her senior prom was still pinned to a bulletin board and there were snapshots from high school as well as her college years. The faded tassel from her mortarboard hung over the corner of a mirror, hiding a picture of Andrew and Simone Nikki had tucked into the mirror’s frame. She pulled it out now and stared at the image.

Andrew, so vital and alive, his arm slung around Simone’s shoulders. Dark-haired, willow-slim Simone with her trace of Mediterranean ancestry evident in her dark eyes and deeper skin tones, and Andrew, tall and fair, built like an athlete, reminiscent of a Norman warrior. In that frozen instant in time, when the camera had flashed, Simone had stared up at him as if he were a god. Or a fallen idol, Nikki thought, chewing on her lower lip and wondering what it was that bothered her about the picture and coming up blank.

“You’re just tired,” she muttered, replacing the photo to glance around her old room. Obviously Charlene Gillette was a

firm believer in holding on to the past, no remodeling or updating or redecorating her children’s rooms into sewing centers or mini gyms or even guest rooms.

At the desk, Nikki opened a drawer and found a dusty photograph album. Her album. Inside were her favorite snapshots from grade school, high school and college. She flipped the pages quickly and saw pictures of her family and friends. Andrew, of course, was predominate. His smiling image leapt off the pages, whether he was clowning around or posing in a football uniform. His hair was always cut short, his face clean shaven to show off a square jaw that was identical to their father’s.

Andrew had been built like Big Ron, strong as an ox, yet fast enough to play tight end or quarterback on the football team. Though smart enough, he’d lacked the ambition and dedication of the man who had sired him and had taken the easy path too often…unlike herself. She was the one of Ronald Gillette’s children who had inherited the old man’s drive. Lily and Kyle were in many of the family photographs, but it was Andrew to whom the camera gravitated and Nikki wondered if it was just that her eldest brother had been so photogenic, or that the eye of the photographer had always been looking for him.

There were others in the pictures as well. Cliff Siebert was sprinkled into the snapshots, clowning with Andrew, making faces at the camera, occasionally mugging and leering at Nikki. Simone appeared in the later shots, either laughing with Nikki or hugging Andrew. A stunning couple, they’d been so much in love.

Or so it had seemed.

But it had been a lie. Andrew had broken up with her.

“You’re making too much of it,” Nikki whispered, realizing she was dead on her feet. Yet she continued to flip through the pages, to shots of college and the summers between, including her first real newspaper job at the Sentinel. There was a picture of Nikki and Sean, their arms wrapped around each other’s waists, the wind catching their hair as they stood on a sand dune, beach grass ruffling at their bare feet. Sean had looked younger then, his face clean shaven, his smile more boyish and innocent, but he’d been fit and strong, about to join the navy and probably already involved with the other woman. Nikki wondered what had happened to that girl…what had her name been? Cindy Something-Or-Other. She hadn’t lived in Savannah and Nikki had never heard what happened to her, though she didn’t care enough to take Sean up on his offer of a drink or to catch up. It had been too painful a time in her life; not only had Sean dumped her, but she’d nearly screwed up her career and ruined her father’s reputation all because of the LeRoy Chevalier trial. She didn’t want to think about Chevalier, how he’d butchered a family, his girlfriends family.

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