“Storm?” Bran looked blank. “Wow, I must have been more tired than I thought.” He shook his head, then glanced around. “I’m surprised Allie didn’t turn some lights on though, since she knew you were coming. Uh, can I offer you a glass of wine or something while you wait for her to come down?”
Mason started to demur, then considered his sweaty palms. “That would be brilliant. Thank you.”
Bran, coming back to himself a little as they made their way to the bar tucked into the corner of the parlor, raised a brow at Mason’s attire. “I do believe this is the first time I’ve seen you looking decidedly British,” he said, approval in his tone. “You wear it very well.”
“Yes, well, I’ve generally tried to blend in before. While in Rome and all.”
Bran sighed as he poured the wine. “And God knows the men here aren’t exactly fashionistas. Not that I don’t approve of a really good pair of worn jeans.” He waggled his eyebrows. “But it is nice to see a man who knows an ascot from a bandana.”
“You’re a bit out of your element here, aren’t you?” Mason said as he laid the gift bag on the bar and accepted the glass Bran offered in toast.
“I used to think so,” Bran said, sipping his own wine. “That’s why I ran off to Europe the minute I had access to my trust fund. But you know, since starting up the Playhouse again, being here with my family, I’ve realized more that I was running away than running toward. And that’s not something I’m particularly proud of. I guess your element is where you make it, and for now, I intend to make it here.”
“Noble of you,” Mason said.
“More stubborn,” Bran clarified. “I am who I am, and I’m no longer willing to let anyone convince me that’s something I should be ashamed of. Plus, it’s been rather amusing to shock the sensibilities of some of the stuffier denizens of the town. Imagine, a gay man residing among them and still no horsemen of the apocalypse in sight.”
“Dogs and cats, living together…”
Bran chuckled, and then winked. “It’s just a shame Allie saw you first. Speaking of Al.” He glanced toward the doorway. “I thought she would have realized that you’re here seeing as her room is right over the front door, but maybe she was drying her hair or something and didn’t hear you knock. Hang on.” He moved over toward a panel on the wall. “Intercom,” he explained. “Makes it easier to communicate in this place. Allie, my treasure?” he said as he pushed a button. “Your knight in shining Burberry is here.”
He waited a few moments, but didn’t get a response. “Allie?” he said as he pushed the button again.
“Perhaps she’s changed her mind,” Mason suggested.
“And give people something else to talk about? I doubt it.”
“People are talking about… right, right. Of course,” Mason said when Bran gave him a look. “How silly of me.”
“Just as an FYI, you may want to skip making reservations in the future, unless you want your plans to become public knowledge. Or hell, drive over to Savannah. People are still crazy over there, but there are a lot more of them to keep the gossips busy.”
“I’ll remember that for future reference.” A grandfather clock somewhere chimed the hour, and Mason shifted on the stool. “Perhaps she’s waiting to make a dramatic entrance.”
Bran rolled his eyes. “Allie’s version of a dramatic entrance is to trip over her own feet. Let me just run up, see what’s keeping her.”
Mason looked about the parlor while he waited. Exquisitely furnished with antiques, a number of which Mason gathered were probably original to the house, the small signs of habitation – a pair of shoes that had been discarded beneath a wing chair, the wrapper from some sort of snack food crumpled into a carnival glass dish – nonetheless lent it a comfortable air. It wasn’t too unlike his mother’s parlor, though his mum would have taken one glance at the discarded wrapper and given him and his father one of her infamous looks – as effective as a cracking whip.
Not unlike the old woman, Josie. Mason could only assume that she was no longer in residence here, as he’d noticed the way the Hawbaker men, in particular, danced to her tune like especially well trained circus elephants. Judging by what he’d seen of her immaculate kitchen at the Dust Jacket, he doubted that she would tolerate even minor displays of slovenliness.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs pulled Mason’s attention back to the present moment. Branson rounded the corner, his brows drawn tightly together.
“Are you sure you didn’t get your wires crossed, maybe Allie thought she was supposed to meet you at the restaurant?”
“No,” Mason said slowly. “We actually had a rather pointed discussion on the matter. She knew I was to pick her up. Why?” he said, and the first finger of uneasiness tickled his chest. “Was she not in her room?”
“Not in her room, not in Dad’s room. Not asleep in Dad’s chair in the library, which is where I usually find her. I tried dialing her phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Was her car in the drive?”
“No,” Mason said. “Nor was it at the store. I saw her leaving there around five o’clock, as I was on the porch with Tucker at the time.”
Bran chewed his lower lip. “Let me call Sarah, she if she’s heard from her.”
“Let me ring Sarah,” Mason suggested. “While you contact your brothers. If she had… car trouble or something, she might have rung one of them for assistance.”
Mason kept his voice level while he spoke with Sarah, though he couldn’t stop his stomach from executing small, almost painful flips. No need for panic, he told himself even as Sarah informed him that she hadn’t seen or heard from Allie since she’d left for the day.
“She…” Sarah hesitated, then blew out a breath. “She received some flowers this morning. From Wesley. She was fairly upset, but she wouldn’t let me get rid of them. Told me that she knew just the thing to do with them. She had them with her when she left, so I assume she was going to do… whatever it was she was planning to do before going home. I should have asked her what her plans were, but I didn’t want to distress her any further. She seemed to want to close the subject, if you know what I mean.”
The sharp edge of concern in Sarah’s voice had his own discomfort rising. “If she was going to be late, she would have called you, Mason. Are you sure you didn’t miss any calls? Or texts?”
“I’ve checked,” Mason said, and he glanced over as Bran said goodbye to Harlan, offered Mason a little shake of the head. No luck, then. “But Branson is about to ring up Will. I’ll call you back when I’ve learned something.”
“Please do. Mason… I don’t like the fact that someone tampered with her car yesterday. What if it wasn’t just the battery? She could be in a ditch somewhere.”
“Let’s not borrow trouble,” Mason said, even as fury swelled inside him at the very idea. “I’ll be in touch.”
Still clutching his phone in his hand as if it were some sort of lifeline, Mason looked at Branson. “Will, it’s Bran,” the other man was saying. “We seem to have misplaced Allie. If you’ve heard from her, give me a call back.”
“I’m going to send him a text as well,” Branson said. “Sometimes he can’t answer a call for whatever reason, but he will respond to a text.” Thumbs flashing, he shot off the message, then stood there staring blankly at the floor.
He raised worried blue eyes – eyes so very much like his twin sister’s – toward Mason. “I don’t like this.”
“That makes two of us. Three, actually. Sarah brought up the issue of Allie’s car having been tampered with yesterday.”
“You think that has something to do with this? I thought she got a new battery.”
“She did. I looked it over myself. Everything seemed to be in order.”
“Given how unreliable that damn lemon of hers is, though, it’s not unreasonable to think she might have had more trouble.” He seemed to brighten just a little at the thought. A simple, logical explanation. “And God knows there are pockets around
here where the cell reception sucks. Maybe she simply hasn’t been able to get a hold of anyone.”
Mason wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of Allie stranded somewhere along one of the dark, lonely roads in the area, but he had to admit it seemed a reasonable possibility. “Sarah mentioned that Allison was headed somewhere after work – she wasn’t sure where, exactly – to… dispose of some flowers she received this morning.” His lips thinned with displeasure. “From her ex.”
Bran’s expression mirrored Mason’s. “The little toad sent her flowers, did he? I was wondering how long it would be before he attempted to ingratiate himself. I don’t know if Tucker has said anything to you, but his grandfather has expressed a willingness to sell the piece of property that’s blocking the land Harlan invested in from development. At a nice profit, of course.”
“Tucker hasn’t said anything, but then that’s not unexpected.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Bran said drolly “seeing as he’s such a chatterbox. Anyway, with the way the real estate market’s starting to turn around, if Harlan can get the project back off the ground, he – and by extension, the family – stands to make a decent amount of money. It’s a big ‘if’ at this point, given Harlan’s… well, I’m sure you know that his reputation for reliability has suffered over the past couple years, and getting new investors might be tricky. But let’s just say it comes as little surprise that Norbert has come sniffing back around.”
“Not to be crude about it, but the man will have to sniff elsewhere or next time I might be obliged to break his nose.”
“All this brawling in bars and you’ll start getting scripts for the remake of Roadhouse.”
“One can dream.”
Bran grinned, but it faded as he checked his phone again. “Nothing from Will yet.”
Mason ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to go look for her.” It might be pointless, but he couldn’t just sit here any longer.
“Let me call Josie,” Branson said. “Dad deeded her the caretaker’s cottage years ago, so she’s close by. If she can come over and sit with him, I’ll go with you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE pounding woke her up. Raining again, Allie thought. Sometimes, when it rained really hard, it sounded like the pounding of horses’ hooves across the metal roof. It had scared her as a young child – she’d been convinced that they were ghost horses carrying haints, or maybe boo hags, trying to find a way in. She would lie there in her frilly, lonely room, until the fear grew so big that she bolted across the hall and climbed in bed with Branson. Will made fun of her when he found out about it, so Bran got in the habit of coming to her first whenever there was a storm. They didn’t have that sixth sense about each other that so many twins spoke about, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know each other inside and out.
Allie shifted, tried to open her eyes, and with the pounding came a sharp, searing pain. She cried out, but all that emerged was a sort of rough whimper.
Not rain, she realized. The pounding seemed to be coming from inside her head.
She held still, perfectly still, until the throbbing noise quieted a little, the pain easing off to a dull if persistent ache. If she didn’t move, maybe her skull would hold together instead of splitting into dozens of pieces.
Allie sniffed, an unpleasant scent crawling slowly into her nostrils so that they flared, and then pinched in revulsion. It smelled like the dank corner of the crawlspace under the house. Damp masonry, mildew, mold. Animal feces and decay. And something vaguely… yeasty. One time a raccoon had climbed in there and died, and the stink from it had eventually worked its way into the house. The stench now wasn’t quite that bad, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant.
She should tell Josie… no. Josie didn’t live with them anymore. They were all adults, and no longer required a nanny. Well, Will probably required a nanny, as he tended to be a slob and essentially useless in the kitchen, living primarily on coffee and peanut butter and jelly toast, but…
Will. She should tell Will to check out the stench in the crawlspace. She would do it herself – she wasn’t a baby anymore, after all – if her head didn’t hurt so much.
There were other aches, also. The floor – and she didn’t understand why she was lying on the floor – but the floor was really hard. And cold. Strange that it should feel so cold.
Her arm…she couldn’t feel her arm. She was pretty sure it had fallen asleep, seeing as how it was pinned beneath her body.
Had she fallen out of bed?
She didn’t want to open her eyes. They felt so heavy, and the last time she’d made the attempt, her head had tried to fall right off her shoulders. But she couldn’t just lie here on the floor. There was something…
Wasn’t there something she needed to do? A little voice in the back of her head was trying to make itself heard over the throbbing pain, but she couldn’t quite concentrate on what it was saying, no matter how hard she tried.
Concentrating was hard. The floor was hard. Everything was hard.
And it smelled.
A noise near her feet – at least she thought that was the direction from which the sound had come – caused her to hold herself even more immobile. It sounded like skittering. Squeaking. It sounded like...
Rats. Living as close to the river as she did, she’d seen, and heard, her fair share of the beady-eyed little creatures. Maybe that was the smell. Rodent droppings.
They’d need to contact the exterminator again.
Something brushed against her bare foot, and Allie jerked her leg in reaction, inadvertently jarring her head.
Oh God, oh God. It hurt. She lifted a hand to the crown. When it encountered something wet, something sticky, Allie opened her eyes.
And was met with darkness.
Oh God. Was she blind? The pain in her head… did it have something to do with her vision?
No. No, there was a sliver of grayish light beyond her feet, coming from what looked like the crack between two doors. Except that made no sense. Her room didn’t have double doors. The master suite did. Maybe –
Allie screamed and struggled to sit up. It hurt, but the rat – it had to be a rat – had just run right over her leg. Thank God she’d worn pants to work today…
Work today. She’d gone to work today. She wasn’t home, wasn’t on the floor of her room. She closed one eye, because that seemed to help stem the pain, and glanced frantically around at the darkness surrounding her.
Just where the hell was she?
Allie tried to remember what she’d done after she’d left work, but… nothing. There was a hole in the fabric of her memory. She grasped at threads, and when she couldn’t weave them back together, her breath began to come in short, choppy bursts.
Stop, she told herself firmly. Panicking wouldn’t solve anything. She had to examine her situation logically. She couldn’t remember how she got here – wasn’t entirely sure where here even was – but it seemed to be alone inside a dank, smelly, room of some sort.
Not entirely alone, she amended, shuddering. She couldn’t forget the rat.
Had she gone down into the crawl space? No. She wasn’t entirely sure how she could tell, but the space around here didn’t seem to be that big. It felt closer. More confined.
Claustrophobic.
Fighting off the resurgence of panic, Allie began to scoot closer to that sliver of light. If there were doors, she should just… open them. Why she hadn’t considered that plan of action before she wasn’t sure. Possibly because her train of thought kept derailing before it could reach the station.
Her hand bumped against something hard, something that made a sharp, hollow sound as it rolled away. A glass bottle, she thought. Like a beer bottle. That was the other scent she’d smelled. Had Harlan…
No. Allie refused to believe it. Harlan was almost six months sober. He’d worked too hard to get sober to fall off the wagon now. She only wished they’d realized he’d had a problem before it got so bad. He�
��d started drinking in high school, but that wasn’t so unusual. Most teenagers –
Allie froze. Teenagers. Drinking.
Her head spun, and she had to grab it with both hands. The dizziness passed, but behind it came a rush of horrified awareness.
The mausoleum. Someone had broken into the mausoleum. She’d stopped to see if they needed help and…
A whimper emerged from Allie’s throat, the sound of a wounded animal.
Oh God.
She knew exactly where she was.
WILL stopped at a service station to grab a cup of coffee, and scrolled through his messages while he was waiting in line for the clerk to ring him up. He yawned, looking forward to an early bedtime for a change.
The text message from Branson woke him right up.
“Sir?” The little old lady behind him tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re next.”
Will glanced around. The cashier looked back at him with impatience.
“Here. Keep the change.” He slid some bills across the counter to pay for the coffee, called Bran back as he shouldered his way out the glass door. The sweetly metallic scent of rain hung heavy in the air as he hustled back to his car.
“What the hell do you mean, misplaced?” he demanded when his brother answered.
“She didn’t show up for her date with Mason. No one has seen her or heard from her since she left the store this afternoon.”
“I saw her. She was at the cemetery, putting some yellow daisies on Eugene’s grave.”
Bran relayed the message to someone. “Hang on,” Bran said. “I’m driving, so I’m going to hand the phone over to Mason.”
“Branson indicated you’ve seen Allison?”
“Ditched you, did she?” But because he heard the concern in the other man’s voice, he quickly added “Yeah, I’ve seen her. I ran into her at the old cemetery over on Burnt Church. I’m sure you’re familiar with the spot.” Will sat the Styrofoam cup on the roof of his SUV as he unlocked it, climbed inside. “But that was over two hours ago. I can’t see any reason she shouldn’t be home by now.” And it wasn’t like Allie to miss an appointment without calling ahead, let alone a date.
Admit One (Sweetwater Book 2) Page 16
