by Kay Hooper
“Thanks for the warning.” Navarro felt another kind of warning twinge in his head, and added, “Unless they enjoy hiking in stormy weather, they won’t be going anywhere today. I’d say we’ve got about fifteen minutes until the skies open up.”
“You can feel storms coming too? They make me jumpy as a cat.”
He wondered absently if she was a latent, but another, stronger twinge made him say, “The low barometric pressure of a storm affects a lot of people in different ways. Trivia,” he added rather dryly. “Writers tend to know a little bit about a lot of things.”
“Probably comes in handy at party trivia games,” she said with a smile.
Navarro almost said he wouldn’t know about that, but instead returned her smile, lifted a hand slightly in farewell, and continued on past the common rooms to the hallway that would lead him to the two ground-floor guest suites Rayburn House boasted.
The Garnet Room and the Opal Room. All the guest suites in the inn were named after precious or semiprecious gems. He had no idea why, though he supposed the names were more welcoming than simple numbers.
He had almost reached the hallway when he heard Penny call out from the desk, “Oh, Emma, Dylan’s here, in the kitchen. He wants to talk to you about that new stove.”
Navarro felt another twinge in his head. But, even stronger, he felt something else, a tugging deep inside, a compulsion he couldn’t ignore. He stopped and turned, just in time to see a woman emerge from another rear hallway of the big house, this one leading to Penny’s office—and the office of the owner of Rayburn House.
She was a tall woman of maybe thirty with a voluptuous figure, dark hair, and striking blue-green eyes. Her face wasn’t beautiful, but it was curiously memorable with its almost sculpted high cheekbones and vulnerable mouth.
Navarro certainly remembered it. Her.
She saw him, her features tightening briefly in an expression he wasn’t certain was shock or some kind of anger. But it passed quickly, and though she waved a hand at Penny in acknowledgment of the message, she didn’t turn toward the kitchen, but instead took several steps toward him.
“So you’re the writer,” she said, her voice pleasant, almost musical.
“And you own the place.” His own voice was rougher than he wanted it to be, and he couldn’t look away from those eyes, couldn’t stop searching them for…something his head told him wouldn’t be there. “Emma Rayburn.”
“Yes.”
“You had a different name in St. Louis.”
She didn’t blink. “So did you.”
Navarro was highly conscious that they stood on the edge of the common areas, quite probably under the observation of more than one pair of curious eyes. The inn was having a busy Wednesday, and this was neither the time nor the place to go into all the questions and explanations tumbling through his mind. So, in the end, all he could say was, “We need to talk.”
“Do we? Well, maybe later. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, Mr.…Navarro.” This time she did turn toward the kitchen, her movements as graceful as he remembered.
He watched her until she turned a corner and vanished from his view, then forced himself to continue toward his suite. He thought he did a pretty good job of keeping his expression pleasant and neutral, at least until he got into his room and closed the door.
Then he leaned back against the cool wood and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. It didn’t help.
A relatively simple investigation had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. And a whole lot stranger.
NINE
JULY 2
“It’s the what?”
“The Arts Festival,” Emma repeated patiently. “On July Fourth. Day after tomorrow. Saturday.”
Jessie looked at her with a curiously blank expression for an instant, then blinked and appeared to actually see her sister. “The Arts Festival. I take it this is the sort of event where they block off Main Street and there are booths and tables and tents and every possible kind of junk food imaginable?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but, yeah. Pretty much the whole town turns out, plus tourists. The artists that don’t have storefront space can display and sell their stuff, and there’s always some kind of raffle and other prizes, and live music, fireworks at night, of course, and…You’re really not listening to me, are you?”
Jessie blinked again. “Sorry. My mind was wandering. What do you do at this festival?”
“This year I’ll be the Band Nazi.”
Jessie frowned at her. “Excuse me?”
Emma sighed. “There’s a lineup of local and regional bands that play all day and into the evening. On the courthouse steps. I’m responsible for making sure each band is ready to go on when the last one is done with their set, that they have everything they need. It can be fun, or it can be a pain in the ass.”
“Sounds like the latter to me.”
“I did it last year. It wasn’t so bad.” Emma shrugged. “Anyway, I wanted you to know what’ll be going on, in case you want to not disappear that day.”
Jessie didn’t attempt to deny her frequent absences over the last couple of days; she merely said, “There’s been a lot of land to check out. I had no idea.”
“I hope you at least took cover yesterday during that god-awful storm.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Of course. It gave me a headache, though, so that’s why I went to bed early.”
Without seeing or speaking to her sister.
Emma said, “I thought maybe the spirits of Rayburn House were still bothering you.”
With a fleeting look of surprise, Jessie said, “You know, I’ve hardly noticed the last day or two. Other things on my mind, I guess.”
Aware of her sister’s barely masked impatience to be on about her business—whatever that was—Emma said, “I guess. Should I expect you back for supper?”
“Well, back by dark, at least. Whatever you want to order in is fine with me.”
“Okay.”
Jessie didn’t appear to notice anything odd about Emma’s voice, but just waved a casual hand and left the inn, shrugging into her ever-present backpack.
Crossing from the reception desk, Penny said sympathetically, “If you need a shoulder, I’m here.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“You mean obvious that you and Jessie haven’t exactly connected since she’s been here? Afraid so.”
“Well, I don’t know why I expected it to be otherwise. We weren’t emotionally close as kids, and we took two very different paths in growing up. Fifteen years is a long time.”
Penny frowned. “Yeah, but…Look, it’s none of my business and you can tell me so, but if you ask me, Jessie didn’t come back here to connect with family. There’s something else going on with her, and whatever it is, it’s very, very important to her. She’s a woman on a mission.”
The word choice didn’t strike Emma as at all odd. She thought about the little Jessie had confided about the fuzzy but clearly disturbing memories of something happening to her that last summer all those years ago, and nodded slowly.
“You didn’t live in Baron Hollow then,” she said, “but…it was an odd, tense kind of summer, even before Jessie left. I can’t really explain it, but I felt it, and I was only fifteen. As for Jessie…I don’t know all of it, but I do know she went through something traumatic. Traumatic enough that it drove her to run away for good. I think this trip is about healing.”
Blunt, Penny said, “If she was hurt here, then I think this trip is about evening the score. Or at least about something a lot less benign than healing old wounds. Emma, even someone who never knew her can see that Jessie is driven, and that there’s a lot of anger in her. And it’s like she’s only got so much time and she knows it. Maybe it’s just that her vacation is ticking away and she’s got to do this before she leaves; maybe she knows she’ll never come back to Baron Hollow again. But whatever it is, she’s pushing herself to get something done, and I don�
�t think it’s healing.”
“Yeah.” Emma sighed. “Look, I have a couple of errands this afternoon. Can you hold down the fort?”
“Sure. I’ll watch Lizzie if you like.”
“No, I’ll take her with me.” She usually did, especially since most of the downtown businesses had no problem welcoming a well-behaved dog on a leash.
One of Emma’s appointments was at the family lawyer’s office, but that was later on; right now, she had a restless need to be out of the inn, and knew she had to obey the nagging urge to tell someone about her latest dream.
Even if he did pat her on the head, metaphorically, for her trouble.
Police Chief Dan Maitland didn’t quite do that, but he also couldn’t quite hide his impatience. “Another dream? Emma—”
“I know, I know. We’ve talked about this before. But this time I have a name, Dan. Carol Preston. Could you at least check and see if she’s on a missing-persons list somewhere?”
He jotted down the name on a notepad by his phone. “I’ll check it, but I can tell you she isn’t on any local or statewide list, not unless she was just added. I’ve been poring over those lists since the body was found up on the mountain.”
“No luck yet, I take it?”
“No. And, honestly, I’m not expecting any. Even when the lab gives us DNA, chances are high that hers isn’t in any database because most people’s isn’t unless they’re known criminals, government, or military. Hell, I’m just now getting my people registered into the law enforcement database, and in some small towns they aren’t bothering to do that. Still a lot of debate about the information being misused.” He shrugged a bit wearily.
Knowing he had undoubtedly put in some long hours since the remains had been found, and had more long hours to come because of the festival, Emma got to her feet. “I know you have things to do. Just…If that name should show up in any of your searches—”
“I’ll let you know right away,” he promised, also rising. “In the meantime, why don’t you and Lizzie go enjoy the preparations for the festival. She’s giving me that look again.”
Emma glanced down at her dog, who was standing by his desk and was indeed staring up at him, and laughed. “Sorry, but you know she doesn’t like many men. She growls at Victor, and I think he takes it as a personal insult.”
“Because not everybody loves him?” Dan suggested wryly.
“I think that’s it, though he just says animals always like him and that Lizzie is the problem.”
“Uh-huh. Figures. Well, I won’t blame her for not liking me, but that stare is a little unnerving. If not before, I know I’ll see you at the festival. You’re in charge of the bands again this year, right?”
“For my sins, yes.” Emma lifted a hand in farewell and left his office. She said hello to a few of the officers and staff she knew, but kept moving through the building and outside.
She checked her watch and frowned to find it had stopped, but didn’t think much about it since a clock on the corner of a downtown bank told her what time it was. She still had some time to kill before her appointment at Trent’s office, but she was too restless to return to the inn.
At least, that was what she told herself as she set out for what she trusted appeared to be a leisurely walk with her dog.
She was just restless. It had nothing to do with Navarro.
Nothing at all.
SHE HAD THOUGHT—hoped—that her eyes would accustom themselves to the darkness and she’d be able to see at least some details of her prison. At least, part of her hoped that; another part of her didn’t want to see.
But as the hours passed, Carol Preston discovered that there was a darkness so absolute that human eyes were not designed to penetrate it. There was no light in this place, absolutely no light.
If she was going to explore her prison, it would have to be by touch.
Everything in her shuddered at the idea.
She would never have called herself brave, but she always had been confident. She clung to that, telling herself that she needed to do her best to figure out just how bad the situation was. After all, maybe her captor had slipped up and left something within her reach that she could use to free herself.
It was possible.
It was all the hope she had.
Bracing herself mentally, she began to slowly feel her way around the entire cot. The mattress had many wet spots, plus the stiffness of material that indicated it had been wet once but had dried.
As her nose had adjusted to the smells of her prison, she had identified both urine and feces, and with her own bladder beginning to be uncomfortably full, she had been conscious, absurdly, of the entirely human, shameful fear that she would wet herself. Or worse.
Now, feeling the wet and damp and stiff areas of the mattress, she had a good idea that she wasn’t the first with that problem. She hunched over to smell the mattress here and there, and definitely smelled urine as well as blood.
With an effort, she put that out of her mind and, with an almost overpowering reluctance, eased off the cot and onto what felt like a hard-packed dirt floor. The chain that fastened her to the wall allowed her to move only that far, only off the cot and onto her knees. She couldn’t even maneuver herself to get her taped ankles in a position so she could get to her feet.
In fact, her feet felt numb, and for the first time she wondered if the duct tape was so tight it was cutting off the circulation to her feet.
Nifty little way of keeping your captive from running.
Kneeling there, terrified, she slowly reached out, inching her fingers along the dirt floor.
Wood. It felt like the leg of a chair or something, but when she felt all the way to the bottom, she realized it was sunk into the ground. She didn’t know how far, only that the leg hardly moved at all when she wrapped her cold fingers around it and pulled.
She felt a bit more, and discovered a second leg. This time, she slowly, very slowly, worked her fingers up until she felt the edge of a seat.
A chair. She was almost sure it was a chair.
Almost at the limit of her reach, she probed a bit farther and felt…hair. Long strands. Sticky.
Sticky with blood?
Her stomach heaved, but once again Carol managed not to vomit. Instead, she stretched out as far as she could, barely feeling the pain of her manacled wrist, and forced herself to follow the trail of hair across the chair’s seat.
She felt something else. At first, because her fingers were so cold, she thought that was why what she touched seemed so very cold. But then, as she pressed, then slowly explored, she realized she was touching human flesh that had been refrigerated. Or frozen.
She was touching a terribly beaten and swollen human face, and it was turned toward her.
A face. A head.
No body.
Carol Preston scrambled back onto her cot, not even aware now of the high-pitched keening sounds coming from her own throat.
NELLIE HOLT STRETCHED luxuriously, gauged the lack of reaction from beneath half-lowered lashes, then sighed with more impatience than hurt. “You really are a bastard, Vic; you know that?”
“Why this time?” Victor Rayburn asked absently.
“We just had hot monkey sex in the middle of the afternoon, and both your hands are on your BlackBerry instead of my boobs.”
“Well, ‘had’ being the operative word,” he said, still without looking at her. “We had hot monkey sex. We’re done now.”
Nellie threw a pillow at him.
He ducked, proving both eyes hadn’t been on his cell phone, and tossed the small device aside as he reached for her, grinning.
She evaded him. “Oh, no, not now, you don’t. I’ve been insulted. No more hot monkey sex for you, buster.”
“How about hot doggie sex? Or even—”
“I’m sorry I started this,” Nellie announced, cutting him off before he could become even more outrageous.
He pushed her back onto the remaining pillows a
nd let her know in no uncertain terms that hot sex of any variety was still very much on his mind.
“Okay,” she said at last and somewhat breathlessly, “I’m game if you are. But it is nearly four, and—”
“Oh, hell,” he said, sitting up.
He hardly sounded out of breath, Nellie noted ruefully. “Appointment?” she asked.
“Yeah; sorry.” He ran his fingers through dark hair and sent her an apologetic look from blue-green eyes. “I have a meeting with Emma at Trent’s office.”
Nellie banked pillows behind her as she watched him moving around the room, naked and unself-conscious, gathering his clothing. “How come you and Emma can only talk with a lawyer in the room these days?”
“You know Emma.”
“Yeah. And I know you. Better than most, I dare say. So what’s going on with you two?”
“Usual family shit.”
Since he hadn’t confided what sort of “usual family shit” was going on between him and his cousin, Nellie opened her mouth to ask. But before she could frame the question in some innocent, undemanding way, he asked an entirely normal question of his own, so normal that she tried not to think he had deliberately cut her off before she could ask him anything more.
“Do you mind if I take a quick shower?”
“No, of course not. Go ahead. I left out clean towels for you.”
“Thanks, love.” He disappeared into the bathroom, pushing the door to behind him, but not closing it all the way.
Lying among tumbled sheets, Nellie thought about that. And about the careless endearment. He’d steam up her bathroom and half her bedroom before his “quick” shower was done. And as for the endearment, she was neither young enough nor naive enough to take it at surface value.
She was not Victor Rayburn’s love.
A month ago, even a year ago, she would have said with confidence that his love was himself, pure and simple. Vic Rayburn thought a lot of himself. It was part vanity, part arrogance, and an awful lot of confidence. He enjoyed being a Man to Be Reckoned With in Baron Hollow, a man with money and influence, a certain amount of power. A very good-looking man with charm and sex appeal oozing out of his pores.
