Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  Behind me, Angela whispered to Mason, “She’s a famous self-help author?”

  “Yep. And she’s good, isn’t she?”

  I smiled a little, warmed a little when I heard that, then slapped myself down again. “Don’t listen to him, Angela. He wouldn’t know, having never read a word I’ve written.”

  “Actually, I’ve read the last three books,” he said.

  I looked at him with my jaw dropping. “You have not.”

  “I have. Rosie’s wife, Marlayna, loaned them to me. Good stuff.” He walked past me, leaned close and whispered, “You should practice following your own advice.”

  Well, I’ll be dipped.

  * * *

  The morning dragged, and Mason could see that Rachel was itching to get him alone, either to talk about David’s behavior and bounce him around as a suspect, or to talk about the wild and amazing sex they’d had the night before.

  He didn’t want to talk about that and hoped she didn’t either. It was sex. It was incredible sex. But it didn’t have to mean anything, she’d said so herself. And he hoped she was still on board with that, because if she wasn’t it could really make a mess of the work they had to do.

  Rachel was gifted. There was no question she could tell when someone was lying, and she seemed to read their emotions as if she could look inside their skulls and interpret their brain waves. That had already been a huge help with this case.

  Besides, he liked her. So he hoped to God the sex last night hadn’t screwed that up. And he hoped to put off the morning-after conversation for another day or two. Or forever.

  CHAPTER 20

  I couldn’t wait for Mason. For all I knew, David the nut case might be out beating someone’s brains in with his handy hammer right this minute. I had to know if it was him. And I was itching to get out on the lake, as if the answer was out there. As if my brother was out there.

  And maybe he was.

  I didn’t know shit about boats, but I figured I ought to be able to handle a rowboat, and I was right. It was fairly simple. Sit in the seat and row. The oars were attached to the sides with oversize metal pins that dropped into oversize metal holes, so it was impossible to make much of a wrong move. I pushed my end of them forward, lowered the flat ends into the water and pulled back. Lift up, push forward, lower and pull back. Nice easy rhythm, and a pretty good workout, I figured. As I started out from the shore, the oars came up bearing tangled, dripping seaweed, but once I got out into the deeper water that stopped happening. I looked back toward the house, but I didn’t think anyone had noticed I was missing. And that was just as well. I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing out here.

  And just what the hell am I doing?

  Rowing. And that was enough.

  I had a notion to make my way around the perimeter of the lake, far enough out from shore to avoid the weeds, but near enough in to pay attention to the look of the shoreline, the shapes of the trees. The ones from my dream were burned into my brain, and I thought I could spot them again pretty easily.

  Only I couldn’t. Everything looked alike, and it wasn’t long before I started to wonder if it was even this lake that I’d seen in my dream. And then I started to wonder if I would even be able to find my way back to the lake house.

  Just follow the shoreline, dumb ass. You’ll see the house when you get to it. And the dock and the little wooden canoe will still be there. Easy.

  Right. Easy.

  Still, after an hour, I decided this was a stupid idea. The trees all looked the same, and I wasn’t going to be able to search the entire lake, which was apparently way bigger than my imaginary estimate, all by myself. And what would I see if I did? It wasn’t like the bodies would be on the surface. There had been cinder blocks in the dream.

  I pulled in the oars and sat floating for a minute, because my arms needed a rest. It was nice out here, I thought. Birds singing, and here and there some waterfowl swimming along. I saw ducks. I saw loons. I saw what I’m pretty sure was a blue heron, standing in the cattail forest of the shallows like a ghost. They hadn’t migrated south yet, I guessed. But it wouldn’t be long. Today was nice, nicer by the minute with the sun beaming down full force now. I took off my coat as the temp pushed up toward sixty. With the exertion of the rowing, I was plenty warm without it.

  The boat drifted of its own accord, and I was content for a moment to lean back and let it. It seemed hard to believe, lying there, staring up at the bright blue sky, that this lake was hiding any dark secrets.

  I sighed, closed my eyes. This was nice. I was glad I’d come out here, despite the fact that it hadn’t accomplished anything. I’d needed to relax, to work off some stress and unwind, alone. After all, my brain had been like a hurricane lately. I tried to push everything aside. The murders. My brother. The dreams and visions. But the one thing that refused to be pushed aside was what had happened last night with Mason. I couldn’t stop thinking about that. And more and more, what I was thinking was that it was going to be damn hard not to go back for more.

  Something splashed, and I sat up fast, spotting a tail that vanished beneath the surface of the water and then the ripples that emanated from the spot where it had been. A fish. A big one, I thought. And I wondered for the first time if it would be fun to go fishing, or if I would hate it.

  Looking at the water, I glimpsed a flash as the fish—or maybe some other fish, how would I know?—swam just below the surface. The water was clear out here, I realized. You had to sort of refocus your vision to look past the reflection of the puffy clouds, to see the creatures underneath. And this one fish, or however many there were, kept swimming past, vanishing deeper, surfacing again. It jumped as I watched like an excited kid. Shiny, with speckles and rainbow colors flashing before he splashed down again. And I realized there was a little swarm of bugs just above the surface right there. They looked like a tiny puff of smoke but were in fact bugs, and the fish was happy to eat them.

  I leaned over the side a little, watching for the fish, smiling in spite of myself when he swam past again. Damn, was I going soft or what? Getting all Zen and basking in nature like this. It was like what I advised my readers to do in times of stress, but I’d never taken my own advice to heart. I’d been mostly rehashing what other modern-day gurus taught, just putting my own sassy spin on it.

  I saw another fish, this one down a little deeper. Oddly, it wasn’t moving.

  Did fish sleep? It was just sort of floating down there in the weeds. Maybe it was dead. Curious, I took one of the oars out of its oarlock and thrust it down to poke at the lethargic creature, and sure enough it came loose from the tangled weeds and bobbed up to the surface.

  Huh, that’s not a fish….

  It was a hand and part of an arm.

  I jerked backward so fast the boat rocked and I went backward over the side. The shock of the ice-cold water made every muscle in my body tighten and try to pull free from my bones. I couldn’t even move for an endless moment.

  Then I forced my eyes open and stopped thrashing. I was sinking, and I told myself I needed to swim, that cold or not I needed to—

  Oh, my God.

  I was in a weed jungle, and I was surrounded by bodies. They were floating at various heights, ropes anchoring them in place, some upright, some lying facedown like skydivers, some so rotten you couldn’t tell what they were, some with parts missing, all of them with hamburger heads.

  My heart jolted and took off at a full gallop, and my arms and legs did likewise, while my lungs screamed for air. I surged upward, wondering how the surface could be so far away, and as I did, I saw a cinder block go floating past me, heading to the bottom, towing a rope behind it…a rope that was towing a body behind it. One foot was bare, one wore a penny loafer. Jeans, a shirt floating up like a parachute to show me the pale skin of the belly, the chest. I could co
unt his ribs. His head was hidden by the shirt, floating up as he descended, and his long arms stretched above him like an extra in a spaghetti western when the bad guy yells, “Reach for the sky!”

  Wait, go back. Descending? He’s descending?

  He’s descending!

  I was breaking the surface and realizing the awful truth at the same time.

  This body, this skinny male body, had just been dumped.

  I wiped the water out of my eyes and looked around me, saw the lake, the distant shore, the sky—

  Hands came around my neck from behind, and I was pulled out of the water. The hard side of a boat scraped my back as I kicked and clawed and swore. I landed faceup in the bottom, and then something clocked me in the head and it was lights out.

  * * *

  “Has anyone seen Rachel?”

  Mason had been busy trying to keep Josh from dying of boredom and his own mother from picking fights with Marie, not to mention trying to keep one eye on Jeremy so he didn’t do something stupid, like take off. He’d lost track of Rachel after she said she was going to take a nap in her room and was only now realizing it had been a couple of hours.

  “I thought she was in her room,” Angela said, sending a frown back at him.

  “I just checked, she’s not in there,” he said.

  Mason sent the same question to the boys with his eyes. Josh shook his head no, then said, “I’ll go check downstairs!” and was thundering away before he finished speaking.

  Jeremy looked worried. “I saw her down by the dock earlier. Didn’t want to bother her.”

  “When?”

  “When Mom made those sandwiches. What time was that, Mom?”

  “Noonish.” Marie looked concerned.

  Mason didn’t say anything else, just crossed to the patio doors, and went out and down the back steps. He crossed the grass in long strides that came faster as his gut wound tighter. Something was wrong. Every cop instinct he had was telling him so.

  The rowboat’s gone.

  He saw it before he got to the dock, the slightly green-tinted water with sunlight flashing from every minuscule crest where the boxy fishing boat should have been. Why would she take the boat out? He knew that she’d wanted to talk to him—had been trying to get him alone all day—but it had been impossible with the family all over him.

  Bullshit. You didn’t want to get her alone because you were afraid she wanted to talk about the sex last night, not to mention you want to do it again so bad you can taste it.

  “I’m gonna take the canoe and go out after her.”

  “Do you really think that’s necessary?” Marie tipped her blond curls sideways.

  “I doubt she’s ever even been in a boat, Marie. And you know I have reason to believe she’s in danger. That’s why I brought her up here. And why I wanted the rest of you up here with us. I was afraid it wasn’t safe at home, but now I’m not so sure it’s safe here, either.”

  Jeremy came out the back door with Mason’s fleece-lined denim jacket over his arm, jogged down the steps to the ground and sprinted the remaining distance. He was wearing a parka and a knit hat, and he shoved Mason’s jacket at him.

  “Thanks, kid.”

  “I’m coming with you. If she’s in trouble I—”

  “I need you here, Jer. I need somebody to watch the family. Keep them safe. Get ’em inside, lock the place up and stay put until I find out what the hell is going on here. Anyone shows up here, and I mean anyone, you call nine-one-one. I mean it.”

  Jeremy backed up a step, and Mason knew it was pure fear that pushed him. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know yet. Just do what I said, okay? I’m counting on you. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Go on now. Go.”

  Jeremy nodded, backing off the dock, wide-eyed, and finally turned to his mother, saying, “You heard him. Let’s get inside.”

  Mason sighed in relief, zipped up his jacket and eased into the canoe. He’d gone a half mile before he looked down and saw the knit hat sticking out of one coat pocket, the gloves sticking out of another. “Nice, Jeremy. Maybe you are growing up after all.” He laid the paddle down long enough to pull on the hat. Then he was pushing hard, quickly stroking the paddle through the calm, deep water, then switching to the other side, then back again. Falling into the mindless rhythm, he tried not to let his thoughts wander too far afield.

  She’s fine. She got bored and decided to go for a row. That’s all. There’s nothing bad going on here. David isn’t the killer. He came here because he’s a jealous loon, not to take her out to—

  Stop it. Just stop it already.

  “Ah, shit.” The rowboat was up ahead, and there was no one in it. One of the oars was floating up near the stern, knocking gently against the metal, over and over.

  He paddled up beside her, looked inside. The life jacket was there, lying on the floor, dammit, along with the fishing box and rod that were left aboard from April to Halloween every year.

  Then he saw something else in the water, something floating, white and bloated, with a rope writhing snakelike by its side. What was it?

  “Shit!” It was a hand.

  Not hers, not hers, not hers.

  Of course it’s not hers. Look at it. It’s been here awhile.

  The rope. It had been tied down.

  Shit, is this where he dumped them?

  Did he dump her, too?

  “Rachel!” He tore off the coat and hat, and dived into liquid ice. Fighting past the paralyzing cold, he stroked downward and found them. The garden of bodies, in various stages of decomposition. But not her. He didn’t see her.

  And then he had to surface, gasping, stiff with cold almost to the point where his muscles would no longer respond to his commands. He dragged himself back into the canoe, no easy task. He’d done it a hundred times, of course. As kids he and Eric would row out here together to swim and raise hell.

  And this is what it meant to him? This?

  But he’d never gone swimming in water this cold.

  He was lucky. The sun was at its warmest, and it had been in the upper fifties when he’d left. He wouldn’t freeze to death. Not right away, anyway.

  He peeled off his wet shirt and put on his dry jacket, zipping it all the way to his chin with shaking fingers. He wrung out his hair and pulled on the hat, put on the gloves and picked up the paddle.

  Something else caught his eye out in the water, too far away to see. He paddled nearer. A boat cushion.

  Not one of ours.

  There was another boat out here!

  Okay, okay, that meant she might still be alive. He pulled the boat cushion aboard, then paddled directly toward the shore, because that was what made sense to do. If you’d snatched a fighting, feisty woman like Rachel off her boat and onto yours, that was what you would want to do. Get off the water as fast as possible, before she drowned you both.

  Mason pulled out his cell phone, praying there would be a whisper of a signal. There was service at the lake house, but out on the water it was iffy. He needed to report this. Bodies in the lake. Rachel missing. But not a single bar showed. He pulled up the text message screen and didn’t have to consider who to contact. Jeremy’s phone was never turned off and never far from his hand. And sometimes texting worked even if there were no bars showing. He typed a quick message. Call 911. Bodies in lake. Rach missing, prob abducted. Suspect David Gray.

  His finger hovered over the send button. He hated to send such a dramatic text to his nephew. But he had no choice. Rachel’s life was on the line, and Jeremy was his best bet at making contact. He hit the button and watched a narrow blue line creep across the screen as the message started to go.

  “Come on, come on.”

  The blue line stopped just before it reached the end, and it didn’t
start up again.

  “Dammit!” He jammed the phone back into his pocket, furious at himself for wasting precious seconds, then grabbed the paddle and headed toward the forested shore again. Twenty feet out he turned the canoe and followed the shoreline in the shallows, aiming for silence but pushing for speed as his eyes scanned the woods in search of anything—any sign of her or the other boat.

  After what seemed like an hour but he knew had been more like ten minutes, he glimpsed smoke and the shape of a cabin in the woods.

  As he drew closer, he saw a boat. Someone had dragged it up onto shore and left it between two clumps of brush, deliberately trying to camouflage its presence.

  Has to be Gray. He said he was camping up here.

  Mason bent low to avoid creating a big silhouette and catching anyone’s eye, and let the canoe drift past the boat, then he sat up again and stroked to shore.

  * * *

  Why the hell does my head hurt so much?

  I squeezed my eyes shut tighter against the throbbing pain and automatically went to press my hand to the spot where it hurt, but my hand wouldn’t move. My arm wouldn’t move.

  What the hell?

  I opened my eyes. I was in a room. A house. A log cabin. On the floor in a corner with my hands tied behind my back and what I guessed was a strip of duct tape over my mouth and wrapped around the back of my head. And there was a man pacing back and forth in front of me.

  About that time the memories came back to my addled and probably concussed brain. The ice-cold water, the bodies, including the newly dumped one, and the sudden realization just as I came up for air that the killer had to be there waiting.

  Then being yanked onto the boat, dropped onto my back and bashed in the head with something.

  Oar, my inner genius guessed.

  He turned my way, and I quickly closed my eyes again, all the while working on the duct tape with my tongue, pushing it away from my lips, poking behind it, and panicking about what would happen if I developed a stuffy nose.

  “She’s a woman,” he said to no one. He shook his fist. “She’s not what you want.”