Rebel In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

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СКАЧАТЬ door into the store, a nice relief from the heat of the blacktop parking lot. The clerk, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair, ignored her as Mara passed through the automatic doors. The woman’s hair might have changed color since Mara left Slippery Rock ten years before, but that frown on her face was as familiar as the bored tap-tap-tapping of her fingernails against the counter. A teen with red-and-blue-striped hair—the high school colors—sat on the end of the check stand, chewing gum while he waited for a customer to come through the line. A few glass-domed cameras looked down over the front of the store, but again, in the back there was little security. She scribbled more notes. To test the system, she put a box of cookies in her bag along with a small carton of milk.

      She waved to the clerk as she left the store. The clerk ignored her. No sirens sounded, and the teenage bagger remained at his perch at the end of the check stand.

      Not good. No wonder the grocery store wanted an upgrade. They were probably losing a small fortune in junk food to kids who either didn’t have the money to buy it or simply didn’t want to pay. The fact that the beer aisle was one over from the cookies probably pushed their loss ceiling even higher. A man with only a couple of dollars in his bank account and a tremendous thirst for a Budweiser wouldn’t think twice about risking a run through the less-than-secure store.

      Mara turned around and headed back inside, and as she stepped into the revolving door, buzzers began beeping, and the mechanical door stopped moving altogether, trapping her in between a wall of glass and the inner door. Mara tried to stop, but her shoe slipped against the floor, and she lost her balance. Her shoulder slammed into the glass, making her wince in pain. Mara regained her footing only to find she was trapped inside the door. She had never encountered a system that trapped only people who returned to a store with stolen merchandise. For that matter, she didn’t think such a system existed. Probably some kind of kink in the software.

      The gum-smacking teen pointed a broom handle at her as if she were under fire, and the bored clerk talked animatedly into the phone, waving her hands as she said something Mara couldn’t make out from her side of the thick-paned door.

      She motioned to her bag and tried to shout above the racket of the beepers. “I’m with Cannon Security,” she said, but the teenager kept wielding the broom handle at her like it was a machete. “I’m on a security check,” she said, trying again, but neither of the employees seemed able to hear her. Maybe the two of them didn’t want to hear her.

      Damn it. She checked her watch. She needed to be at the bed-and-breakfast in twenty minutes, and she didn’t see that happening. Crap, crap, crap. She never missed Zeke’s postnap snack. Never.

      A crowd gathered behind the check stand, mostly middle-aged women wearing jeans and T-shirts and probably boots, just like their husbands would. A few had small children with them and pushed the kids behind their carts as if Mara might be dangerous. “Turn off the buzzers,” she yelled, putting her hands over her ears.

      The checker hung up the phone and came over to the glass. She said something that sounded peculiarly like “Criminals deserve discomfort” before backing away to the safety of her check stand. As if Mara was about to draw a gun or something.

      “Now I know what the goldfish at the office feels like,” she muttered, still holding her hands over her ears. She pushed one foot against the inner and outer doors, but neither budged.

      Finally the beepers stopped and everything quieted. Mara took her hands from her ears and tried the doors again. They didn’t budge. She repeated her call through the thick glass.

      “I’m here on a security check. I need to speak with Michael Mallard.” The clerk shot a glance behind her toward an area marked Employees Only. No one appeared. The crowd began to disperse, lessening the goldfish effect.

      She tugged at her earlobe when a low siren began to wail. Was this some kind of second-tier warning system? The clerk crossed her arms over her chest as if in triumph. The wailing became louder, and it wasn’t coming from inside the store. Mara pressed her face against the outer door, looking left and then right.

      “No, no, no. Please, no.”

      The siren grew louder, and a few cars passing on the street pulled to the side.

      “Let it be a fire. Let it be a fire.”

      But it wasn’t a red fire truck that entered the parking lot. It was a big black SUV with Wall County Sheriff plastered along its side. She was definitely not making it to the B and B for snack time.

      As the SUV came to a stop, she could make out the driver, a large man with brown hair and big aviator sunglasses over his eyes—eyes she knew would be the color of molten chocolate. This man had been interrupting her dreams since she’d hit puberty and began to figure out why male and female body parts were made so deliciously dissimilar.

      “Crap, crappity crap.”

      * * *

      JAMES PULLED INTO the parking lot of Mallard’s Grocery and sighed. He could see a tall, thin woman caught between the double doors, and she looked annoyed. Her long hair was pulled through the back of her Kansas City Royals baseball cap, which obscured her face. Probably another customer who’d reentered the store after making a purchase. He’d been called out here at least a dozen times since Christmas, when the store’s security system started going wonky. Not once in all the calls he’d answered had anyone actually been stealing from the store. Of course, that didn’t stop CarlaAnn from acting like she’d been deputized every time. And, crap, was the bag boy wielding a broom at the woman?

      That alarm system was a menace. Mike should invest in better locks and leave it at that. There was no need for expensive—and defective—security systems in Slippery Rock.

      He got out of the SUV, blistering afternoon sunshine reflecting off the pavement. Since the tornado, the summer temperatures had been relatively mild, but according to the local weatherman, this heat wave would continue for at least a week.

      James knocked on the glass of the entrance, his attention focused on the woman still caught between the doors. She turned and faced the store, her shoulders and spine seeming rigid beneath the vibrant blue of the tank top she wore. Cropped jeans hugged the curves of her lower half, making his mouth go a little dry.

      CarlaAnn, the clerk at the checkout, pressed the button that disabled the alarm, allowing the doors to whoosh open, but the woman caught inside didn’t budge until the door pushed her gently forward. She stepped from the doorway, holding on to her oversize shoulder bag with both hands, gaze focused intently on the empty aisle leading to the butcher counter. Maybe she wasn’t a typical customer. James put his hand on his holster just in case as he motioned for her to follow him to the check stand.

      “We’ll get this straightened out in a moment,” he said.

      “I wasn’t stealing anything. I had a reason for being in this store,” she said, and her husky voice sent a shiver down James’s spine. He knew that voice. Even after two years, he knew it.

      “Mara?” He turned his shocked gaze to her. She’d let her hair grow, and she wasn’t the stick-thin girl he remembered either from high school or the day she’d walked out on him two years ago.

      “I swear,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a box of cookies and a small carton of milk, “I have a really good explanation for this.”

      Well, that much, at least, was familiar. Mara Tyler always had a good explanation, both before she acted and after the fact. While in high school, the six СКАЧАТЬ