by Leslie Kelly
“It’s okay,” I whispered again, “almost there, almost there.”
After nine hours in the car, I damn well should be almost there. That useless Internet map I’d dug up had predicted six or seven hours on the road. Of course, it couldn’t have predicted the wicked storm that had been dumping water by the trailer load on my windshield since I hit the Pennsylvania line. Or the mountain that seemed to go straight up at a ninety-degree angle.
Or the vision of hell waiting for me at the top of that mountain, which was probably why my foot had been much more on the feather side of the scale than the lead one with every additional foot of altitude.
“Don’t be a chicken,” I told myself, thinking of how utterly humiliating it would be if Mark or Nick—the twins, who were the next up from me in family hierarchy—found out I was scared of some old house. Just because it looked like something out of a Wes Craven movie. Well, that and because a convicted serial killer—Josef Zangara—had lived there in the 1930s. Turning his mansion into an exclusive hotel, he and his business partner had been very successful. But it hadn’t been enough for Zangara, who’d gotten his real kicks out of kidnapping and murdering unsuspecting victims from the town below.
It was a wonder the hotel run by the infamous murderer hadn’t been torched by an angry mob when its owner’s crimes had been discovered. From what I’d learned, his partner—who’d bought out the killer’s widow and taken over Seaton House after Zangara had been tried and executed—had hired armed guards to watch the place for the first few years after the crimes.
Good thing, because if it had been destroyed, I wouldn’t have this job. My professor was paying me to get information for his book on lesser-known serial killers, ones who’d somehow flown under the radar of most of the history texts. And Zangara was included.
The money had sounded great. The idea of getting out of Chicago until the end of the month was even better. Though, honestly, I was glad I’d be going home on Halloween day. I sure couldn’t see spending that night in Seaton House.
Actually, I couldn’t see spending any night there. I’d never pictured myself chugging up this mountain scared out of my mind well after dark on a stormy night. I’d hoped to arrive here on a nice, sunny fall afternoon so I could pretend everything was okeydokey. Why had I thought this research assistant thing was a good idea again?
I didn’t have time to wonder because suddenly, as if my car had driven into another dimension, I rounded a curve and saw the huge, hulking shape of the hotel directly in front of me.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, immediately reaching for my chest, where my heart was pounding like crazy.
Braking hard and throwing the car into Park, I sat there at the edge of the driveway. I peered through the rain-splashed windshield at the dark, enormous building crouched against the stormy night sky. And gulped.
Seaton House was three stories tall, a fifteen-thousand-square-foot stone mansion constructed in the gothic style. I’d easily been able to track the place back to the Seaton in question, a robber baron who’d built it in 1902 after a visit to Europe. The man had apparently had a thing for the great cathedrals there because when he’d built his American palace, he’d demanded flying buttresses reminiscent of the basilicas of Italy and gargoyles that looked like they’d crawled off the corners of Notre Dame.
Those spiky spires had looked threatening in pictures taken during the day. By night, awash with lightning, they looked capable of supporting the heads of Henry VIII’s murdered wives.
“Enough,” I snapped out loud, trying to stop myself from going down that imaginative path. “Just look.”
So I did. I sat there and I looked, letting my visual impressions mesh with what I already knew about Seaton House.
First impressions are usually the best ones, and, after a few moments, I realized what I really thought about the hotel. It was mysterious.
Not terrifying.
My heart stopped thudding and my hands stopped shaking. Now, confronted with the actual place, my irrational fears began to quiet and this became just another building. A business establishment with fading white lines striping its parking lot, with a sign pointing to a delivery entrance, and another toward the scenic overlook.
Just an old house turned hotel.
I wanted to sigh in relief. I settled for easing the car back into Drive and creeping closer, studying the place all the while.
Obviously, the millionaire who’d built it had had delusions of grandeur. The presentation of the house—its location near the edge of a cliff, as if taunting everyone below to look up and not tremble—said as much about its builder as its dramatic design. From his broad, two-hundred-foot verandah, he could have looked out over everything he surveyed and felt like a king.
His delusions hadn’t been enough to save him a few decades later. He’d supposedly taken a swan dive off his own cliff in 1929 after losing all his money in the stock market crash.
That’s when Zangara had stepped in. He’d been an Italian immigrant—supposedly a minor prince. And right away he’d become known for the interest he showed in the pretty young women living in the town at the foot of his mountain. A number of whom had disappeared during his time in residence.
“Zangara,” I murmured, instantly picturing the one grainy black-and-white photograph I’d seen of the man. Dark and handsome with a boyish face, thick black hair and deep-set, soulful brown eyes. He’d looked anything but ruthless. In fact, if I disregarded his long, handlebar mustache, I’d have to describe him as a total Hottie McHotHot. How any young girl from Trouble would have been able to resist him if he’d quirked a finger in her direction, I had no idea.
That was probably why he’d been able to get away with it for so long. The man had been charming and handsome, a prince. He’d been sought after by every single woman in town even though he was married. And when he’d brought in a partner and transformed his palace into a public hotel—providing jobs for a lot of the destitute people in the town below—he’d become a savior.
Who’d have suspected he was behind the disappearance of a slew of chambermaids and shop girls during the depression?
Zangara was, obviously, the one I’d come here to learn more about, at Professor Tyler’s request. Having been accused and convicted of killing fifteen women—and suspected of more—the man was surprisingly unknown. Never mentioned in the annals of the most horrible murderers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Tyler wanted to know why. And it wasn’t just my ambitions in research journalism that made me want to know why, too. I was, to put it bluntly, fascinated and wanted to learn more.
Curiosity. It killed the cat. But hopefully not the girl.
Okay. Cool. I was ready for this. I felt calm and collected. Zangara was long gone—electrocuted and buried. Everything would be fine.
Even as I told myself I was ready for my stay in hotel hell, I couldn’t help noticing—and worrying about—how empty the place looked. It was dark but for a few downstairs windows. There were no lights at all on the upper floors, except for a faint flicker in the very highest window on the north side.
Hey, maybe the guests were just the early-to-bed types. Which might be good…after nine hours in the car, my hair had to be a straggly mess. My makeup had washed off my face in warm beige streaks during my last gas-up because the old station hadn’t had an awning. So privacy was a good thing. Hopefully I could just check in, escape to my room, get a good night’s sleep, then tomorrow morning meet up with Roger Denton, the current owner of Seaton House.
That was the plan, anyway.
So, taking a deep breath and reaching for my small overnight bag—which I’d thought to leave on the passenger seat rather than in the trunk with my bigger suitcase—I opened the door.
And immediately got drenched. The rain washed down and flooded me as soon as I stuck my head outside. “To hell with it,” I muttered as I hopped out, my black leather boots immediately sucking up a few gallons of water from a puddle like a
baby diaper sucks up…well, you know.
Not pausing to lock the car, I dashed toward the front of the hotel. Skidding and sliding on the watery gravel, I kept my head down to protect my face from the stinging pellets of freezing cold rain, and literally took the porch steps two at a time. I leapt up onto the verandah, immediately grateful for the shelter of its roof. Shaking out my wet hair, I groaned, imagining how I must look now, with thick, dark curls plastered to my cheeks and sticking to my eyelashes.
Even Zangara himself wouldn’t want me now.
While standing up on the verandah, I glanced out toward my car in the parking lot, reaching for my keychain so I could remotely lock it. My brothers were such worrywarts that they’d installed this superfancy antitheft system on it, with all the bells and whistles. Sometimes I considered trying to make the thing stand on its back tires and dance like Herbie the Love Bug.
But as I clicked the lock button and saw the headlights flash in response, I suddenly made a really strange realization. One I should have made as soon as I arrived.
My pretty yellow PT Cruiser was sitting completely alone out there in the parking lot. There wasn’t another other car in sight. Not anywhere.
Perfect. I was the only guest. Just call me Janet Leigh and yell for Norman Bates because this was exactly how her night started out, wasn’t it?
“You’re being an idiot,” I mumbled as I swept my wet hair back, straightened my shoulders and strode across the veranda to the front door. The striding wasn’t terribly effective since a cup of water squirted out of my boots with every step, but I did the best I could, just in case anyone was watching from the closest window.
Grasping the knob, I twisted it…and realized it was locked. Strange. I’d never heard of a public hotel that locked its doors when guests were expected. Especially since it was only 9:00 p.m.
Sighing, I lifted my hand and grabbed the ornate brass door-knocker. I somehow couldn’t muster up any surprise that the thing had a weird-looking gargoyle head. Cracking it hard against the door, I waited. And waited. And waited some more.
“Come on, it’s fricking cold out here,” I muttered as I knocked again.
More waiting.
Really getting annoyed, I lifted that sucker with both hands and slammed it hard against the brass plate, whacking it a few times just like I used to whack my brothers in the head with a Ping-Pong paddle when they were picking on me.
This time, somebody answered. I’d been lining up to take another swing, and the door opened so fast—thrown back almost violently—that I fell forward into the place. Stumbling over my own wet, slippery boots, I skidded, dropping my overnight bag on the slick tiles inside in the process.
I didn’t hit the floor. But I still landed against something hard. Something really hard. And big. And warm.
Something that smelled downright sinful—musky, spicy and male.
My fingers clenched reflexively as I realized I’d fallen right into the arms of a strange man, whose big, delicious-smelling form was the only thing keeping me upright.
A normal person would pull away and start stammering apologies, right?
I closed my eyes and remained where I was.
How could I not? He was warmth personified and I was freezing. And he smelled…oh, God, amazing. That hot scent filled my head until I felt as though I were drawing in his essence with every breath I inhaled.
“Mmm,” I groaned, opening my eyes again. Though the light was dim and shadowy, I could easily make out the powerful ropy muscles of his neck. I could even see the pulse in his throat, which was an inch from my mouth.
My fingers were clenched in the soft white fabric of his loosely buttoned shirt, which didn’t do much to cover his firm chest.
Put your hands in the air and step away from the hot dude.
But I couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t move backward. I couldn’t even look up. Because as soon as I did—as soon as I saw confusion or amusement on this stranger’s face—this surreal, intoxicating moment would end. Mystery solved, secrets revealed.
He’d be just another guy with a laugh and a leer. Or bad teeth and a hooked nose. So with one quick, appreciative glance at his strong, square jaw, outlined by a layer of dark stubble, I looked down instead.
The stranger’s button-up shirt was open almost to his middle, revealing a swirl of dark, wiry hair and ripples of flexing muscle. Just below his collarbone, I saw the puckered edge of a raw, fresh-looking scar that disappeared beneath his shirt. For some crazy reason, I wanted to lift my hand and scrape my fingers across it. To soothe away the redness. To shiver as I wondered how he’d gotten it.
Lottie, wake up!
No. Not yet. I didn’t want to.
My wet, jean-covered legs were almost entwined with his and even through the soaked fabric, and his own dark pants, I could feel the powerful warmth of his thighs. Our position was almost sexual, with one of his limbs caught between mine, so I couldn’t muster up any surprise when my body reacted in a typical way.
The shakiness in my thighs now had nothing to do with my stumble or my wet boots. A warm current of want drifted through me, making my nipples pucker hard against my thin sweater. And lower I felt a flow of moisture between my legs as my sex swelled against the seam of my jeans.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low and thick. He almost combined the words you and all, his soft drawl giving a tiny hint that he was from the South.
I thought about his question. Was I all right? No. Not at all. I was ravenous and hot, even while wet and freezing. I was aroused over a complete stranger whose face I hadn’t yet seen and was wrapped around him in the shadows while the rain still pounded outside and a strong October wind blew through the open front door.
“Still with me here?” the voice said, sounding a tiny bit amused.
That hint of amusement finally pierced through the hazy cloud of sensual awareness that had been filling my head. Blinking rapidly, I cleared my throat and slowly—carefully—pulled away. I regretted the loss of his warmth the moment an inch of cool evening air separated our bodies.
“I’m okay,” I managed to whisper.
Then I looked up and saw his face. And my heart stopped.
In the shadowy light spilling into the foyer from a nearby room, I could just make out the thin scar marring the perfection of his forehead. My breath catching in my lungs, I realized his hair was jet-black. Just like Josef Zangara’s. His eyes…also nearly black. Also like Zangara’s.
He looked angry. He looked forbidding. And he looked like a fricking serial killer.
I was definitely not okay.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, already backing toward the door.
Shaking my head—doubting my senses—I quickly chose the storm over the ghosts in this place. When my heels hit the threshold, they kept right on going. Onto the slick wooden planks of the porch. Farther. Farther.
He followed, those intense dark eyes narrowing as he slowly stepped toward me, like some kind of graceful-but-deadly cat stalking its prey.
Graceful. Deadly.
Yes. That pretty well summed him up. Because though my brain told me it was impossible—that I didn’t believe in ghosts—I couldn’t stop the fear rushing through every inch of me. Did I say I had an imagination that worked overtime in some situations? Well, right now, it was deserving of triple pay.
“Don’t come any closer,” I whispered.
“Who are you?” he asked, all traces of amusement gone. “What do you want?”
Just to not be slaughtered by a murderous ghost or a reincarnated serial killer. That’s all I wanted. To make it back to my car and put the pedal to the metal and race down the mountain like the hounds of hell were after me.
Not hounds, I quickly clarified. Hound. Just one terrifying, murderous creature.
Named Josef Zangara.
2
Simon
SIMON HAD STILL been shaking off the tension and trauma of what he’d seen on his laptop scree
n when the banging on the front door had finally burst into his consciousness. He was unaccustomed to receiving visitors. Just a cleaning lady from a local maid service company, a mailman, occasionally a delivery of groceries. Sometimes old Mr. Potts, who had recently purchased most of the town of Trouble, stopped by. Other than that, he lived in complete solitude.
Which was exactly what he wanted.
So who would pound on his door during a stormy, violent night, he had no idea. He just knew he didn’t appreciate the intrusion—not now, not when he was still so concerned about what had just happened. Doubting your own sanity was difficult enough to do in private. In front of unexpected—and unwanted—guests, it was beyond bad.
When he’d yanked open the door, ready to tell whomever was on the other side of it to stop that incessant banging before his head blew off his shoulders, he certainly hadn’t expected a woman to fall into his arms. Or that she’d stay there.
Or that she’d feel so incredibly good.
For a few long moments, he’d remained still, soaking in the surprising pleasure of physical contact. He hadn’t experienced that in a long time, and until the dark-haired stranger had landed in his arms, he really hadn’t known how much he missed it.
Her soft, curvy body, her sweet-smelling skin—even her tangled wet hair—reminded him that it had been a very long, celibate four months since he’d touched a woman. Considering how very much he liked to touch women, that he hadn’t exploded out of sheer sexual frustration before now, was the biggest surprise of all.
As a globe-trotting writer of travel guides and newspaper columns, he made a damn good living. And as someone who’d been born with a lot of confidence and the ability to get around the defenses of just about any aloof, sexy woman, he’d never lacked for female companionship. His little black book could probably double as the yellow pages and every one of his friends had harassed him for years about what a lucky son of a bitch he was when it came to sex.
