“What do you want?” he asked eventually, bothered by her teasing.
“Just checking in on you,” she said with a smile. “That’s okay, right?”
“Depends,” he answered.
With a painful grunt, he used the side of the bed to pull himself upright. They were standing close enough to touch then, and Drake was acutely aware that she’d left his door open, almost begging someone to walk by and find her in his room, dressed in only the robe. After looking down at the bed, he saw that she’d set down a wrapped bar of soap, something they were running low on. When she followed his gaze to it, she bent at the waist and brushed the top of it with her fingers.
“I snuck an extra bar out of the supply room yesterday. I thought you might want it,” she said sweetly.
“Gee, thanks,” he answered, struggling to not roll his eyes or laugh.
“Don’t mention it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She smiled at him and watched as he lowered himself onto the bed, and propped one leg up on the mattress. He wanted her to leave, to find another project to work on that required more clothing, and didn’t include being in his room. Ashlyn made him about as comfortable as a cornered dog. When she sat down on the edge of his bed, her robe parted and he got an eyeful of her upper thigh before glancing the other way. He cleared his throat and stared over her shoulder at an old water stain on the wall.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said to the spot.
“What do you mean?” Ashlyn asked, glancing over her shoulder before returning her gaze to his.
He leveled his glare with hers, being careful to not look below her neck, because she’d made no attempt to keep the front of her robe closed. “What happened, did he piss you off?”
“What? Who?” She blinked at him, innocently.
“Connor…did he piss you off? He did, didn’t he? Or, no, wait…he rejected you. Told ya ‘no’ for the first time ever.” Her face flushed and he knew he’d hit the spot.
She leaned on one arm and the robe fluttered open down to her stomach. She ignored it, but Drake couldn’t. After making sure he’d gotten an eye-full of her bare breasts, she slowly pulled the folds together and licked her lower lip.
“How are you so sure that he rejected me? It could’ve been the other way around,” she purred.
Oh, she was good, he thought. And familiar. He realized, as she sat on his bed naked under the robe, blinking her large eyes up at him, that she reminded him a lot of his ex. Beautiful, but dangerous. A master manipulator of men who used her body to get what she wanted. With a passion so sudden it alarmed him, he hated her.
“You know, Ash,” he said, using Connor’s nickname for her. “I just realized something.” He smiled, and she scooted closer to him.
“What’s that?”
“I know your type,” he answered.
Her laugh bounced around the room. “And what type is that?”
“It would be impolite to say.”
She narrowed her large eyes at him, and then pushed a section of her bangs aside. “Is this when you play the nice guy card, and then send me back to my room after a ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech?”
He laughed. She was good. “Something like that.”
“I bet I know your type, too,” she said, inching closer, and touching his knee with her hand.
“Enlighten me.”
She bit her lower lip and grinned. “Oh, this will be fun.”
KRIS
With every passing hour of sunlight, the dog became more and more restless, wanting nothing but to be outside, so they kept her leashed and near the back patio. It had thawed enough for them to shove the snow free from the door, and the pile was slowly melting into a wet heap that made the wood planks slippery. Kris lost her footing twice and slid on the deck, and fortunately for her, she was near the railing and able to steady herself both times.
She unlocked the dog’s lead, and let Zoey trot down the steps and into the snow. She whimpered as she stared up at the mountains and then finally turned in several circles before doing her business. Kris had to tighten the lead to get her back up the stairs and onto the deck. The dog, anxious and with wet and cold feet, paced around Kris and jumped up to have her head scratched.
“We’re leaving soon,” Kris whispered. “And don’t worry, I’m taking you with us.”
When she straightened and turned toward the door, the wind, which had been calm and quiet for days, struck her side and pushed hard. Kris looked up at the sky. From the south, miles beyond the farthest tree tops she could see, the horizon had darkened into a slate gray. Another storm was coming.
“Shit,” she mumbled. She dragged the dog inside and took the stairs up two at a time, intent on finding Drake to tell him it was today that they had to leave. Now. Right now.
Since they’d opened a handful of windows to let in fresh air, some of the musty smell had begun to leave the lodge, but as she hit the top landing, with her feet moving faster than the rest of her, Kris caught an odd smell coming from the room opposite of hers, a disinfectant or deodorizer. And something sick.
She skidded to a stop, and put her hands on the wall for support to keep from falling over her legs. That room wasn’t occupied, because its mattress had been stripped from the bed, something they’d found odd, but didn’t question. The lodge had been ransacked more than once before they arrived. But the strange and new smell was strong, like someone was inside cleaning it. Curious, and with the storm clouds in the distance temporarily forgotten, she allowed her feet to take her to the closed door. She pressed an ear to it, and heard no one. After jiggling the handle, the door creaked open, and Kris took a step back, waiting for a voice from the group to greet her. But nothing happened. She poked her head inside, and the room seemed to her exactly as it had the first and only time she’d glanced into it weeks before. The bed sat in the middle of the room against an empty wall, its exposed box spring faded and uncovered.
“Hello?” she whispered into the room.
The waft of cleaner was overwhelming, and she brought a hand to her mouth to keep from coughing. The room was colder than the hall, and Kris pulled her light jacket tight around her throat as she moved deeper into the space. Someone was in the bathroom, she imagined, cleaning it with bleach or ammonia, or both. The smells mixed together as she got closer to the door, but something else lingered in the air. Like rotted wood and plaster.
“Hey, Ashlyn?” she asked the closed bathroom door. “Are you in there?”
It couldn’t be Jacks, she knew, because he was downstairs with the baby. She frowned as from the small crack under the door, a shadow moved, and she backed up, watching it cross in and out of view several times. She tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. Slowly, she pushed the door inward, expecting to see Ashlyn scrubbing the sink, but instead, a short woman with a round stomach and even rounder breasts stood up from the tub, and smiled at her. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun. Her eyes, though soft around the edges from laugh lines, were dark and hollow. Empty. She held a sponge in one gloved hand, and a towel in the other, and Kris knew instantly from her uniform that she was a housekeeper. When she opened her mouth to ask the stranger who in the hell she was, the woman brought a dry and cracked finger to her closed mouth, and then pointed up at the ceiling. The bathroom changed then. When Kris blinked, the room transformed from the light and airy bathroom, to a dark and wet hole. The woman had vanished. The ceiling was caved in, the plaster and beams above the sink having dropped down in moldy chunks onto the floor. The tub was nearly black with grime and dirt, and the air smelled sweetly of vintage death.
Horrified, Kris looked up at the destruction, and to a broken pipe that hovered above the ceiling hole. Protruding from the crawlspace was a skeletal hand, attached to an equally decomposed arm. She followed the bones up to the shoulder joint, feeling the air catching in her throat. The corpse rested on its side, and though nothing of its features remained, Kris recognized the uniform the
moment she saw it. The maid, who had just been standing in the bathroom scrubbing the tub, had died long ago, and was stuffed neatly in the crawlspace above the second floor. As she stared, the skull shifted and rotated downward, and even with no eyes left in the sockets, Kris knew it was staring at her. Kris opened her mouth and screamed until her lungs shook.
DRAKE
Ashlyn was trying everything to push Drake over a line she knew he wouldn’t be able to cross back over. Vague flirting on her part turned into clear desire, and had Kris not screamed the moment that Ashlyn dropped her robe, Drake was certain that for the first time in his life, he would have thrown a naked woman out of his room.
Though it spun his head wildly, he flew off the bed and pushed by Ashlyn, making it into the hall at the same time Connor and Jacks started pounding up the stairs from the lower level. Following the screeching cries, he reached the abandoned room first, and found Kris standing in the center of it, shaking, pale, and crying. Zoey, who ran faster than the other two men, bound into the room in a flurry of startled barks, racing to be by Kris’ side.
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “What? What happened?”
Unable to answer, she pointed over his shoulder at the bathroom. He had no weapon, so approached it slowly, expecting to find an intruder hiding behind the door. Instead, he found a mess. The bathroom was destroyed, but not recently. He glanced back at Kris and shrugged.
“Please tell me you didn’t scream like that because you saw a fucking spider.” As she shook her head and wiped at her eyes, Connor and Jacks reached the doorway.
“Jesus, Kris,” Jacks gasped, coming up to her side and gently taking hold of her elbow. “What’s going on?”
Connor, who gave Drake a disgusted look before coming into the room, also approached Kris. “You okay?” he asked her.
“I-I-I’m fine,” she stammered, squatting so she could squeeze the dog. “Look…” she said. “Look up in the ceiling.” All three of the men did as she asked, but none of them screamed.
“Well, that’s new,” Drake said, rubbing at his chin.
“Yep,” Jacks agreed.
Connor raised an eyebrow at Kris. “You found this?” He pointed at the body that hung from the hole above them.
She nodded her head, and squeezed the dog tighter, but Zoey didn’t try to escape. She was a good dog in that way, Drake thought. Patient and kind. Especially with the kid.
“Shit, Kris,” he grumbled, feeling the ache in his head spread down his neck. “It’s not the first time you’ve seen a dead body.”
When she stood, her lower lip quivered. “It’s not dead.”
Connor glanced at Jacks, and Jacks glanced at Drake. He shrugged his shoulder and scowled at the man, as if to say, ‘You deal with this’.
Jacks approached her slowly, then wrapped her up in a hug. “Maybe you need a rest, kiddo.”
She pushed him off and hugged herself. “It wasn’t dead!” she snapped.
Drake looked at the corpse that had been buried in the lodge crawlspace for at least a decade. “Babe,” he said to Kris. “That chick is most definitely dead.”
“It moved,” she argued, struggling to hold another cry in. Her lip moved as if charged by an electrical current.
Drake softened his voice and gestured for her to follow him out of the room. “We’ll take care of it, okay?”
“What do you mean?” she said, looking over her shoulder at the bathroom as Drake led her into the hall.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s gone. We’ll…clean her up.”
She nodded, satisfied but still tremendously freaked out. Zoey, her furry escort, stayed by her side all the way into her own room and to the bed, where the two cuddled into a ball. He closed her door then stood in the hall rubbing his face again.
“Well, that was a bizarre surprise,” Jacks mumbled from the doorway. He rubbed his hand against his pants as if he’d touched something dirty, a habit he’d developed since the baby was born.
“Not as disturbing as that,” Connor quipped, gesturing at Drake’s doorway, which wasn’t empty. Ashlyn stood gripping the frame, her robe untied and showing off more than a little skin.
Jacks coughed into his hand, and then waved at her. “Uh,” he said, clearing his throat.
She looked down, then quickly pulled the front of her robe shut and retreated into her room, slamming the door. The men stood awkwardly in the hall, looking at the walls, their feet, and the grooves in the wooden planks of the flooring. Anything but at each other.
“So,” Jacks said after enough time had passed to take a power nap. “Who’s on body removal duty?”
Drake mumbled, “I’ll do it.”
Connor clapped Jacks on the shoulder. “We got this, mate. Go check on Lily.”
Jacks didn’t argue, and left Drake standing in the hall with Connor, the only person in the lodge he’d choose drinking bleach over hanging out with.
He pushed by him and found his way back to the bathroom with the mysterious body in the ceiling. When he felt Connor behind him, he said over his shoulder, “This’ll take five minutes. I don’t need help.”
“Fine,” Connor said. But he didn’t leave.
Drake half-turned and glared at him. “I don’t need a babysitter, either.”
Connor laughed softly. “Okay, then I’ll watch.”
Drake, beyond ticked, turned to face Connor and put a hand on the doorframe to steady himself. He was in no shape to take a hit, or give one, but his mouth still worked.
“What the hell do you want, Connor? To hold my dick for me? I don’t swing that way, man.”
“You swing Ashlyn’s way now?”
Drake considered his next words carefully. “Never have, and never will. She’s all yours.”
Connor’s smile faded. He tugged on the front of his shirt and then pulled on the sagging waistband of his jeans. “Let me guess, she started it.”
“What are you, five?” Drake scoffed.
With a sigh, Connor leaned back to look through the room, ensuring it was empty, Drake assumed. “I told her to leave me alone…in a not very nice way.”
“So, you were an asshole. Nothing new. She’ll get over it.”
“You know, Drake, you’re no ray of fucking sunshine yourself, mate.”
Drake, tired of the chat, pushed off the doorframe. “I’m not your mate.”
“Be careful,” Connor warned. “She sleeps with a blade under her pillow.”
Drake laughed. “It’s a good thing I don’t plan on visiting her room any time soon, then.”
“By the end of the week, she might have it strapped to her thigh,” Connor predicted.
“Great,” Drake said with an exaggerated sigh. “I feel a Basic Instinct moment coming on.”
“You have no idea.”
He turned around and faced the bathroom, stepping over the fallen sections of plaster carefully. With a grunt, he stepped onto the cracked toilet rim and put his hand into the hole above him. “I’m pulling on three,” he said.
Connor stepped back as Drake heaved. It took more than three seconds, but eventually whatever the body was snagged on came free, and the mummified skeleton flew out of the crawlspace, landing in a dusty heap at Connor’s feet.
He jumped back and looked up at Drake as if it was intentional. “You did that on purpose.”
Drake jumped off the toilet and stepped around the body, waving at the musty air that lingered around them. “No, but that was great aim,” he laughed.
Connor bent and carefully lifted the upper half of the skeleton, and Drake lifted the lower half. The woman was curled in the fetal position, except for her right arm, which was pointed away from her body, as if she had fallen asleep on it. But one did not simply take naps inside crawlspaces. Someone had put the woman there, for a nefarious reason.
They made it only two short steps when a piece of the skeleton shifted and fell to the floor. Drake cursed. “Wait,” he said, lowering the folded legs back to the ground. �
��We lost a piece.”
Connor, careful to keep his face away from the outstretched arm, set his side down as well, and both men stared at what had dislodged from the corpse and rolled to a stop next to Drake’s feet.
“Fucking shit,” Connor mumbled, stepping back.
“Is that what I think it is?” Drake croaked. He’d never seen a skeleton so small before. It was curled up much like its mother, about the size of a bowling ball, a life lost before it was born.
“Damn,” Connor whispered, using his shoulder to swipe at an itch on his chin.
“Yeah.” Drake looked back at the bathroom with disgust. “I bet this explains why she was up there.”
“Fucking sad,” Connor muttered.
Drake eyed him. “Don’t start crying on me, man. I’m not in a hugging mood.”
Connor turned away from him and walked to the window, pulling on one of the curtains. The rod came with it, and the crashing sound echoed down the hall. The men winced, hoping that Kris and the others would stay where they were, and not come investigating.
“Let’s wrap them up,” he said, draping the curtain over the woman first.
Drake backed up. “I can’t…” he stammered, looking down at the mini-skeleton on its side by his feet.
Connor cursed, and circled around toward Drake. He scooped his hands around the fetus, and then carefully tucked it under the curtain, back where it came from. When he was done, he spun around and wiped his palms on Drake’s shirt.
“What the fuck, man!” Drake snapped, jumping backwards.
“God,” Connor complained, shivering. “Let’s get this done so I can scrub my hands clean till they bleed.”
It’s hard to burn a desiccated body in the snow, so they placed it on a makeshift bed made of pallets and dragged it out behind the storage shed, where Kris and the others wouldn’t have to see the fire. Standing in snow up to their knees, they doused the wood with lighter fluid, and just before Drake flicked a lit match at it, Connor stopped him.
“Wait,” he said, tugging at the curtain.
Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost Page 11
