Is another one on its way?
“Was about to investigate, but I wanted to make sure all was okay at the house first.” She turned to the pastor. “You want me to check the grounds?”
“Oh, please do,” he replied, relief washing over his face, “I have enough trouble to contend with inside.”
“Oi!”
We all turned.
Someone was hollering from farther away on the grounds.
“What’s going on now?” said the pastor, the worried look coming back to his face.
Somebody was yelling at the bottom of the driveway, from where Tetyana had just come. We could see a figure running toward the house now.
“Who’s that?” said the pastor, peering out.
“Jim!” I said.
“Is he all right?” said Katy.
“Hey!” hollered Jim as he ran toward us, flapping and flailing his arms.
“What in God’s name is going on?” said the pastor.
“The bridge!” shouted Jim, panting loudly. He stopped next to his truck and leaned against the door, hyperventilating.
“Speak, young man,” said the pastor in an exasperated voice. “Did someone else die?”
Jim gave a wide-eyed look at the pastor.
“It’s the bridge.”
“What about it?”
“It’s gone!”
“What in heaven’s sake are you babbling about?”
“The storm... It swept it away.”
“Are you serious?” I said.
Jim looked at me, still breathing hard. “It’s in pieces, I tell you.”
“My goodness,” said the pastor, his face turning pale. “You really mean to say the bridge has crashed?”
“Gone,” said Jim, gesturing with his arms. “The river’s rushing. Must have loosened some nuts—”
“How are we going to get to town now?” said Tetyana.
Jim gave her a confused look and wiped the sweat running down his face. He shook his head.
“We’re all stuck here now.”
“What a nightmare,” said the pastor. “What a horrible nightmare...”
An emergency siren in the distance made us all turn.
“The police!” cried Katy.
Tetyana turned to us.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go check what’s going on here.”
Katy, Tetyana and I turned around and marched down the driveway toward the bridge.
After a few minutes, we heard the men follow us from about twenty feet away, the pastor breathing laboriously.
The siren was getting closer and louder. And the sky was getting lighter.
I couldn’t wait for morning to come. This place was creeping under my skin and burying itself there.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I glanced behind to make sure the pastor and Jim weren’t within hearing distance.
The pastor had slowed down and Jim was walking at the older man’s tempo to stay with him.
Good.
I turned back to my friends. “Funny how the cop heard the bridge go,” I said, lowering my voice, “I thought he worked in town, half an hour away.”
“Lurking around here, probably,” said Tetyana.
“In the middle of a stormy night?”
“Maybe he was hanging around to help us?” said Katy, her voice sounding hopeful.
“My guess is they have one police officer for the entire town,” I said. “If the power lines and cell phone towers are down, you’d think he has better things to do than drive up here to take care of a small group of people.”
“I’d bet the cell phone and the Internet issue was localized to this house,” said Tetyana.
“Someone tampered with them?” said Katy. “To distract us from Mrs. Robinson’s death?”
“Maybe to spook us,” said Tetyana. “One more way to scare us away from this place.”
We took the last curve on the driveway. From here, we could see the bridge and the road that led to this house.
“Oh, my,” said Katy.
“Unbelievable,” I said.
Jim was right.
The bridge had disappeared.
A large part of the structure had fallen into the water, exposing rusted iron cables and rotting wood jutting from the two ends. The leftover portion was the size of a footbridge, but I doubted it was safe for anyone to walk on.
“Hey, there!” said Katy with a wave.
The same officer who’d stopped us earlier was now standing on the embankment across from us. He was staring at the broken bridge, hands on his hips.
The squad car’s headlights shone across the open chasm, the halogen lights bursting through the swirling fog.
Tetyana, Katy and I walked up to the edge of the bank.
The officer didn’t wave back. He didn’t even smile.
The stream had become a raging river now and was gushing furiously, reaching a crescendo as it hit the rocks below. I wondered how much force it would have needed to break this bridge down.
A nagging feeling came to the back of my mind. Was it the storm or was it a person who did this?
“Ahoy there!” Pastor Graham shouted from behind us.
The officer turned to look at the men joining us. He didn’t smile or acknowledge them either. His frown deepened.
“What happened here?” he hollered.
“Heard a bang and saw it down,” shouted Jim, trying to make himself heard over the rush of the water.
“Everyone okay?”
Next to me, I heard the pastor take a deep breath in as if to calm his nerves.
“No one was here when it happened,” shouted Jim.
“Oh, good,” said the officer.
“But we have a death, Officer Jensen,” called out the pastor.
“A what?” exclaimed the officer, putting a hand around his ear.
“Mrs. Robinson...” said the pastor, raising his voice. He paused and took another deep breath. “Heart attack, we think.”
The officer’s eyes widened.
“She’s gone,” said Jim.
“Doctor Fulton’s here,” continued the pastor, shouting, though his voice was cracking now.
“Mrs. Robinson died?” said the officer in shock.
No one said anything for a while. Everyone bowed their heads, watching the river.
It was surprising how a stream could turn into this powerful force of nature in such a short time. I wondered if I’d been wrong. Maybe this was an act of god, after all.
The storm could have easily wreaked havoc on the bridge and brought it crashing down. I remembered how terrified I’d been to drive over it only a short while ago.
I looked up at the officer who hadn’t yet said much. He looked as unsure as we all were.
“Is everything okay back in town?” I yelled across the water.
He turned to me with a strange expression on his face.
“Yeah, why?”
“Internet’s down here. Cellphone reception’s out too. And the electricity’s acting strange,” I shouted back. “What about the town?”
The cop shook his head.
“Nothing that bad. Just a few branches down. I’d know if that happened.” He took off his hat and scratched his head like that would help him think more clearly. “Strange that.”
“We’ll manage,” said Jim, walking along the embankment, examining what was left over of the bridge.
“You need emergency supplies?” called out the cop.
“Have a diesel backup generator,” Jim shouted back. “Already up and running. We’ll be good.”
“I guess we can live without a phone for a short while,” I heard the pastor say in a quiet voice next to me.
“We have electricity, food, and water and a place for everyone to sleep,” said Jim. “We’re good for a week.”
A week?
I wondered if he had counted us in there as well, not just the immediate household members.
“Best to ride the storm out then,�
� hollered the officer, looking relieved, “I’ll get some help from town to fix this thing up.”
Jim gave him a wistful smile. “Hey, Jensen, if the food runs out, shuck a few hot dog packets across the water, would you?”
No one smiled, least of all the officer.
“What about a rescue team?” said the pastor, his frown deepening. He seemed more worried than any of us at the state of the bridge.
“A rescue team?” echoed the cop.
“Through the mountains,” said the pastor, though his voice was unsteady now.
“In this weather?” said the officer. “Too risky to come through the mountain pass.”
“There are five inches of snow up on the trails,” said Jim, turning to the pastor.
“I’ll call for reinforcement,” said the officer. “They’re all out of town, but I’m sure I can rustle something up.” He stared at us for a second. “Best for y’all to stay put right there.”
Officer Jensen was at least twenty feet from us, across the gully. But something in his demeanor, even from this distance, told me he wasn’t telling us everything. It was the way he stared and frowned, like he suspected all of us.
Does he have a connection with anyone in this house? Does he know something we don’t know?
“What about Mrs. Robinson?” I asked.
Everyone turned to me.
“Where is she?” I said, turning to the pastor. “What did you do with her body?”
“The wine room,” said the pastor.
“The wine room?”
“Behind the servants’ quarters. It’s not a fridge, but it has stone slabs for walls, no heating and faces north, so it stays cool. It will have to do for now.”
No one spoke for a while.
I felt a pang of sadness to think Mrs. Robinson was no longer with us. We’d been talking to her only a few hours ago. She’d been an intelligent and welcoming woman who’d wanted to get to the bottom of a cruel mystery.
Something stirred in my gut. It was odd for the bridge to break down like this. It was too convenient.
I turned to Tetyana and Katy and noticed a steely look in their eyes.
One thing was for sure. Our wish had been granted.
They couldn’t get rid of us now.
Chapter Thirty
Tetyana spotted the two strangers first.
“Friends of yours?” she asked.
The five of us had turned back to the house and were walking abreast, immersed in our own thoughts.
Officer Jensen had promised to check on us the next day, but I felt a hard knot in my stomach to see him drive off, knowing our only route to the rest of the world had been temporarily cut off.
My mind had been whirling.
The universe had a funny way of answering our prayers. We needed to be more discerning about what we asked for, I thought.
We were halfway up the driveway when Tetyana spotted the figures.
“Who are you talking about?” said the pastor, glancing around him.
I peered into the woods through the fog. “Where?”
“At eleven o’clock,” said Tetyana.
We all turned.
Katy gasped.
About a hundred yards ahead of us were two silhouettes standing under a lamppost, right next to our car. They looked uncanny, like ghosts appearing through the mist.
“Is that Nancy and Lisa?” I said, squinting to see if I could make out the resemblance, but these two were taller and skinnier.
“Negative,” said Tetyana.
The pastor halted, making all of us stop too.
“Who in the good lord’s name is that?” he said, frowning.
“Where in tarnation did they show up from?” said Jim.
“I take it you’re as surprised as we are?” said Tetyana.
Jim and the pastor looked genuinely bewildered. This place is getting stranger by the minute, I thought with a shiver.
“Do you have other houseguests we haven’t yet met?” I asked.
The pastor shook his head. “I know everyone who comes and leaves the house.”
“We have no guests, other than you three,” said Jim.
Katy and I exchanged a quick glance. I knew what she was thinking.
Mrs. Robinson had invited us over without telling the family. They were still under the impression that we were lost tourists. We had no idea if she had invited others too, surreptitiously.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Tetyana pull her sidearm from her holster. A quick glance at Jim and the pastor told me they hadn’t noticed her movement, their eyes on the strange apparitions on their driveway.
“Well, let’s go find out, shall we?” I said, putting a hand inside my vest, ready to bring my weapon out too, if I needed to.
There were five of us and two of them. Plus, two of us were armed, if it came to that.
We continued walking abreast, but at a slower pace, as we gauged the strangers with every step forward. For just one moment, we temporarily forgot our differences as we joined in solidarity against this unknown adversary.
But the two figures didn’t budge. Or make any threatening movements. They just stood by our car, waiting for us.
How did they get here?
Tetyana had been hanging around in front of the house most of the night, which meant she would have noticed anyone walking up from the woods or the driveway.
The bridge had collapsed and the mountain pass behind the house had been snowed out, making it too precarious to use. There was no other way onto the grounds as far as we knew.
The fog lightened as we got closer to the house, and the strangers’ profiles became clearer.
It was a couple, a young couple, in their mid to late twenties. They were wearing hiking gear and were carrying oversized backpacks.
Hikers?
From behind the house, I could see the smoky shadows of the mountains emerge like a pastel painting. The storm had passed and dawn was breaking.
The two people under the lamppost didn’t move as we got closer, but I could see they were watching us as warily as we were watching them.
At twenty feet, the pastor stopped and called out.
“Hello there?”
“Hi,” replied the man with a wave. He sounded younger than he looked.
“Can we help you?”
“Yeah, we got lost.”
“How did you get here?” asked Jim.
“Got sidetracked up on the mountain late yesterday,” replied the man. He pointed at his silent partner. “Sprained her ankle, so we thought to make it back to town, but we took the wrong way.”
The man was only wearing a lumberjack shirt, not the most appropriate clothing if he’d been hiking on the range in this weather. The woman next to him was standing still, almost pouting, like a petulant teenager. She was in hiking pants and jacket and had her long brown hair in a ponytail.
“You walked all night?” asked Tetyana. “On a sprained ankle?”
The man nodded. The woman stood like a statue, without even a twitch of her face.
The most unusual thing about the woman was the tinted shades she had on, those small, round, grandma-like glasses. Most prescription eyewear with sun protection turned dark when exposed to the sun, but there was no sun at this time.
Who wears sunglasses at night?
“Must have been a hell of a hike,” said Tetyana.
“Worst ever,” said the man.
“In this storm, it would be,” said the pastor in a quiet voice.
“We’re experienced hikers. We do a trail every weekend, but the mountain sure beat us this time.”
“No hypothermia?” said Tetyana.
The man showed us a small, heated lamp he was carrying.
“We have our winter gear. Got our layers on and brought our fleece too. Normally, we’d be all right. Could have camped up in the mountains for the night and come down tomorrow. But it was getting nasty with the rain, so we followed the light.”
I wondered wh
at someone who’d hiked all night through a snowed-in mountain pass, in a terrible storm, would look like.
Not like these two.
They looked too well put together. They were trying too hard.
“The light?” said Katy. “What light?”
“This place,” the man said, gesturing to the mansion behind us.
“We didn’t know if it was a shack or a cabin, or if someone had put up a tent, but we thought lights meant people, and people meant a way back to town, so we came through the trail real fast as soon as the storm cleared.”
I looked over at the mansion.
Jim’s generator was humming somewhere in the background, and the lights were still on. I wondered where Lisa and Nancy were and what they were up to.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Jim, “but there’s no way to town anymore.”
The man raised his eyebrows but didn’t reply.
“Our bridge is down,” continued Jim. “Happened half an hour ago. No way out until we fix that.”
The couple didn’t respond. There were no gasps of horror or worried looks, just placid acceptance at the turn of events.
“That’s too bad,” replied the man in a flat voice.
“Well...” said the pastor, looking around him, flustered. “We can give you shelter and food at least, but I’m afraid we’re all stuck here for the time being.”
Jim nodded somberly. “There’s no way in or out.”
“Except for the mountain trails, apparently,” said Tetyana. I detected a hint of sarcasm, but no one else seemed to notice.
Given our past, it was difficult for me to not feel paranoid. Every shadow had a double meaning. Every word came with a potential threat. It had been a strange forty-eight hours. I had to keep my emotions in check.
“Well, I’m sure we can get you cleaned up and find a place for you to sleep,” said the pastor, separating from us and walking toward the house. “God knows, we will all need some rest after this,” I heard him mumble as he walked away.
“I’m going to go check on the generator,” said Jim, as he stepped away from us and walked toward the barn.
Tetyana, Katy, and I looked at each other. That left us in the awkward position of welcoming these two arrivals to the house, despite being unwelcome guests ourselves.
Merciless Legacy: Merciless Murder - A Thrilling Closed Circle Mystery Series Page 14
