The Masked Man

by B. J Daniels

  Little. Right. Mac sighed impatiently. “I told you—”

  “You’re already on another job. Yes, you told me.” Pierce picked up a plain black videotape from beside the recliner. Mac hadn’t noticed that Pierce had put it there. “Take a look at this. If you still aren’t interested…” Pierce shrugged and tossed Mac the tape.

  Mac caught it and watched Pierce leave. He stood there, listening to Pierce retreat down the old wooden dock until the footfalls became too faint to hear. Then he looked down with apprehension at the videotape in his hand.

  What the hell was on this? Something that Nathaniel Pierce was confident would change Mac’s mind about the job offer.

  That alone was enough to make Mac nervous as hell. But to find Pierce sitting in the dark on the houseboat drinking beer, waiting…

  Mac walked over to the VCR, turned on the TV, popped in the tape and hit Play. The images were blurred, everything a grainy black and white. The tape appeared to be a security surveillance video.

  In the soundless recording were three people. Two wore ski masks, one of whom carried a sledgehammer. A third stood just out of the camera’s view, but part of that person’s shadow could be seen against the side wall.

  Mac watched as the one with the sledgehammer worked to break through some expensive-looking wood. The other man in the ski mask had his back to the camera. The third appeared to be just watching, but the other two would glance back at him from time to time and say something Mac couldn’t make out.

  After a few minutes the hammer had made a large hole in what appeared to be a hidden compartment in the wall. The other masked man pushed the one with the sledgehammer out of the way and took a metal box from inside the compartment. The box looked to be about eight inches square and three or four inches deep. There didn’t seem to be anything else in the hole in the wall because the men turned and left, disappearing from the camera’s lens.

  The videotape flickered, and the setting changed to outdoors. An old Ford van, dark in color, sat with the engine running, and the driver’s face was captured on film. He was watching out the windshield, looking very young and very nervous. He was the only one not wearing a mask.

  An instant later the two men in ski masks emerged from the house and ran toward the van. As they ran, they ripped off their masks. Mac’s heart stopped.

  One of the men was Mac’s nineteen-year-old nephew Shane Ramsey, who was supposed to be in Whitefish with Mac’s sister.

  The other man running toward the getaway van was Trevor Forester.

  Chapter Three

  Mac couldn’t sleep. He lay sprawled on his back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, afraid to close his eyes. When he’d closed them, his thoughts closed in on him, an unsettling mix of pleasure and pain.

  Even the pleasure was painful. He’d promised himself in his youth that he wasn’t going to be one of those men who had regrets. Not like his father. Or his father before him. That was why he lived the life he did. On his own terms.

  What a joke. He knew regret as keenly as he knew sorrow. And tonight would be a night he knew he would live to regret.

  He gave up on sleep, got up, pulled on his jeans and, taking a cold beer from the fridge, wandered out on the deck to sit in the cool darkness.

  The marina was dead quiet. The lake was calm under a limitless sky of dark blue velvet and glittering stars. He closed his eyes and tilted the mouth of the bottle to his lips. The glass was cool and wet, the beer icy cold as it ran down his throat.

  He opened his eyes. It was the darkness, he realized. The blackness behind his eyelids that stole any chance of sleep. The same kind of blind darkness that would always remind him of the intimate inkiness inside the cottage—and her.

  He smiled to himself wryly, remembering. He’d been lost the moment his lips touched hers. She’d stolen his breath, taken his pounding pulse hostage and carried him away to a place he’d sworn to never go again. Never find again even if he’d been tempted to look.

  And what surprised him was that she’d seemed as blown away by the experience as he’d been. Something had happened tonight in the cottage, something that scared the hell out of him, because it made him feel as if he’d boarded a runaway freight train that couldn’t be stopped. And now all he could do was wait for the inevitable train wreck.

  He’d known that in one split second, one moment of weakness, life could irrevocably change. Mac had seen his father go from wealthy to piss poor in one of those seconds. The man’s reputation ruined. His life destroyed. How many times had his father wanted to take back that instant in time?

  Mac had always sworn he wouldn’t end up like his father. He’d live his life, take on little baggage and never care too much about anything. He’d screwed up once and it had cost him more than he could bear. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

  He’d slipped up tonight in the cottage. He just hoped to hell he could weather the storm he feared was coming because of it. Every action had a consequence. The moment he’d kissed her. The moment he saw his nephew and Trevor Forester on that videotape. Both life-altering in ways he didn’t even want to think about.

  And now he was working for Pierce. He swore. Mac had few ways he could be coerced. His sister and nephew were the only family he had.

  Mac swore as he looked out over the dark lake and thought about his nephew, a spoiled kid who’d hated his grandfather for losing the family fortune. Thanks to previous Cooper generations, though, both Mac and his sister had substantial trust funds. Just enough, it seemed, to make Shane crave real wealth. Apparently the kind Nathaniel Pierce had.

  Mac took another long drink of his beer, dreading what Pierce would tell him in the morning. There was a reason Pierce hadn’t called the sheriff when he’d been robbed. Mac knew Pierce hadn’t done it out of some loyalty to either Mac or his nephew. Not Pierce. No, Pierce didn’t want the cops knowing about the metal box. Now why was that?

  Not that it mattered. There was no way Mac couldn’t take the job. Not if he hoped to save his nephew—although it might already be too late for that. Someone had murdered Trevor Forester tonight. What were the chances it wasn’t connected to the robbery?

  Mac also suspected that Pierce wanted him in on this for reasons of his own that had nothing to do with Shane. Shane was just a means to an end. And that made Mac worry he was already in over his head.

  Leaning back, he stared up at the stars and knew this restlessness he felt had little to do with Pierce or Shane. As a breeze washed over the bare skin of his chest, he found himself drowning in memories of the woman from the cottage. He breathed in the night, the cool, damp scent of the lake. Closing his eyes, he was engulfed by the darkness and the feel of her. Jill Lawson.

  Seeing her was out of the question. But he could no more forget her than he could the image of his nephew and Trevor Forester in ski masks on a grainy black-and-white videotape.

  Pleasure and pain. He opened his eyes. A moment of weakness, he thought with a curse as he went inside the houseboat for his shirt, shoes and weapon. There was no turning back now.

  AFTER THE DEPUTIES left, Jill locked up the front door and walked through the bakery to the rear of the building and the inside stairs that led up to the apartment.

  With her father’s encouragement and some money her grandmother had left her, she’d bought the two-story brick building right out of college and started her bakery, The Best Buns in Town. Gram Lawson was the one who got Jill hooked on baking in the first place. Grandpa had always said Gram made the best cinnamon buns in town.

  From the time Jill was a child, she remembered Gram’s house smelling of flour and yeast. She loved that smell. Especially tonight as she walked past the now-silent equipment, the sparkling kitchen. The mere sight grounded her and gave her strength.

  As she started up the narrow back stairs, she felt a draft and looked up. Her breath caught. The door to her apartment was standing open. She always kept that door closed and locked when she was gone.

  She fro
ze, heart pounding, and strained to listen. She heard nothing but silence overhead. Maybe she’d left the door open earlier. She’d been so upset about Trevor not picking her up on time…

  Slowly, she climbed the stairs, all the horror of the night making her jumpy. Her head still ached from where she’d been hit and she felt sick to her stomach when she thought about Trevor. He’d been her first. The only man she’d ever been intimate with—until tonight. Dead. Murdered.

  At the top of the stairs she stopped and listened again. Silence. Cautiously, she reached through the open doorway and flicked on the light, illuminating the small kitchen and breakfast nook. Beyond it to the left was the living room.

  She blinked in disbelief and horror, a small cry of alarm escaping her lips. Her apartment had been ransacked—just as Trevor’s had.

  She heard a floorboard groan in the direction of the pantry. She started to turn, and then she saw him. A man wearing a black ski mask. She screamed as he grabbed her, but the sound was cut off by his gloved hand clamping over her mouth.

  He slammed her against the wall, knocking her breath from her lungs, and struggled to pull a wadded-up rag from his pocket. She fought him, but he was too strong for her.

  “Where is it?” he demanded, removing his hand from her mouth.

  She tried to scream, but he quickly stuffed the nasty-tasting rag in her mouth, pinned her hands to her sides and flattened her body against the wall with his own. She couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t scream! He was going to kill her. Or worse.

  “Where is it, bitch?” the hoarse voice demanded. “Where’s the damned ring?”

  The ring? She felt him pull hard on the silver charm bracelet at her wrist, felt pain tear down her arm. She struggled to get one leg free of his body and brought it up hard into his groin.

  He let out a howl of pain, then reared back and hit her in the side of the face. As she slid to the floor, she heard him stumbling down the stairs and out of the building.

  “AS FAR AS YOU CAN TELL nothing seems to be missing?” Deputy Rex Duncan inquired. Duncan had done a thorough search of the apartment while Samuelson had gone down to the bakery to make sure no one was in the building.

  Jill felt numb as she shook her head. She sat in one of her overstuffed chairs watching the deputy as he looked around the room. The paramedics had left, after telling her how lucky she was. She just had a cut on her forehead, a small abrasion on her cheek where she’d been hit and a scrape on her wrist. Neither blow tonight had been life-threatening. Nor was anything broken. No concussion. Just a headache from the first blow and a bruise to go with the other one.

  “No signs of forced entry,” Samuelson said as he came up the steps and joined them in the living room.

  Jill saw the two exchange a look. “What does that mean?”

  “Is it possible you forgot to lock a door?” Duncan asked.

  “No. They were all locked when I left for the party.”

  Samuelson was eyeing her again as if she was lying. “Unless you left the door open or the guy had a key.”

  “Who has a key to your apartment?” Duncan asked.

  “My father and…Trevor had one.”

  “There were no keys on him other than the boat key when he was found,” Duncan said.

  Her blood went cold. “You mean the person who was in my apartment had Trevor’s key?”

  “We don’t know that,” Samuelson said.

  Jill shook her head. “Trevor’s key to my apartment was on the same ring as the one to my car. It stands to reason that whoever has my car has a key to this apartment.”

  “But you said you thought the person at the condo earlier who’d been driving your car was a woman,” Samuelson pointed out.

  She nodded, her head aching. “I smelled the perfume, but I never saw her. I can’t be sure.”

  “You’re sure the person in your apartment tonight was a man, though?” Duncan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you said nothing seems to be missing.” Duncan glanced around. “The place has been tossed pretty good.”

  “He must have been up here waiting for you while we were downstairs in the bakery,” Samuelson said. “It seems like we would have heard him.” He turned to Duncan. “Make some noise,” he said, and went downstairs again.

  Duncan walked around, opened and closed drawers, moved furniture. Jill watched him, knowing what Samuelson was trying to prove. That maybe she herself had torn up this place, hit herself in the head, pretended she was attacked. And for what possible reason? To somehow cover up killing Trevor? She groaned and closed her eyes as she heard Samuelson come back up the stairs.

  “Well?” Duncan asked.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” the other deputy said, sounding disappointed. “The apartment is over the kitchen, not the coffee shop, and the building must be pretty well insulated.”

  “It appears he was looking for something in particular,” Duncan said. “He didn’t take the stereo or the TV or that expensive camera sitting right there on his way out. It has the same MO as the others.”

  The Bigfork area had been hit by dozens of burglaries over the past year, all believed to have been executed by someone local who knew exactly what he was after because of the items he didn’t take.

  With a start, Jill opened her eyes. “He asked me where my ring was.”

  “Your ring?” Duncan asked.

  “I assume he meant my engagement ring since it’s the only one I wear—wore.” She frowned and looked down at her bare wrist. “He broke off my bracelet.” Her skin was raw where the chain had scraped her.

  “What kind of bracelet was it?” Samuelson asked.

  “A silver charm bracelet with a small silver heart with my name engraved on it,” she said. “It was a present from Trevor.” She could feel Samuelson staring at her again, wondering no doubt why the thief would take something like a cheap charm bracelet and not her camera.

  “Is there someone you could stay with the rest of the night?” Duncan asked.

  Her eyes felt as if they had sand in them. She was bone tired. Her head pounded. And she was sore and scared and angry and as vulnerable as she’d ever been. She just wanted the deputies to leave.

  She wasn’t waking up her father at this time of the night. Not when he’d been too sick earlier to attend the party. Nor was she going to a friend’s. She just wanted to go to sleep in her own bed and pretend none of this had happened.

  “I’m staying here. I’ll lock the doors from the inside with the slide bolt. The windows are locked. I doubt he’ll come back tonight, anyway.” She saw the deputies exchange a look, but she didn’t give a fig what they thought at this point.

  “I suggest you get your locks changed,” Duncan said. “In the meantime we’ll see if Trevor’s keys turn up. You have my number.”

  She nodded and followed them downstairs to lock and bolt the door, then she checked the entry to the bakery. Double locked and bolted.

  Back upstairs, she headed for her bedroom. She would straighten up the mess in the morning. Tonight all she wanted was to get out of this ridiculous costume, take a hot shower and go to bed.

  By the time she finished, she was so exhausted she crawled between the clean sheets and fell into a comalike sleep haunted by men with ski masks—one masked man in particular.

  JILL AWOKE to pounding. Without opening her eyes, she reached for the man next to her in the bed, the memory of their lovemaking so fresh—

  Her eyes flew open, and her hand jerked back from the empty space next to her, the memories coming in nauseating waves. Trevor. Murdered. Trevor, the man who had betrayed her.

  She sat up, remembering the other Scarlet silhouetted in the doorway, the woman’s words echoing in her head. A woman who called Trevor “darling” and had planned to run away with him last night.

  Jill groaned as she recalled that last night she, the woman who’d made love only once before, and that with her fiancé, had made love—an amazing and passionate and wonderful
experience—with a complete stranger. And now she was a suspect in Trevor’s murder.

  She wanted to bury her head under the covers and stay there, but the pounding wouldn’t stop and she realized someone was downstairs banging at the outside door. She glanced at the clock, shocked to find she’d overslept. It was almost three-thirty in the morning.

  Hurriedly, she pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweater and her slippers. As she opened her bedroom door, she saw her ransacked apartment and remembered the man in the ski mask. A shiver of fear skittered up her spine.

  In the wall mirror she caught a glimpse of herself. She looked as if she’d gone ten rounds in a boxing ring—and lost.

  At the bottom of the stairs she turned on the outside light and was relieved to see Zoe Grosfield, her baking assistant. Zoe mimed that she’d forgotten her key, then mimed a heartfelt apology.

  Oh, why hadn’t Jill thought to call Zoe to tell her not to come in today?

  “Hey,” Zoe said as Jill unlocked and opened the door. “Sorry. You know me, airhead extraordinaire.” She pretended to refill her head with air as she breezed in, bringing the fresh, cold morning with her.

  Just the sight of Zoe cheered Jill immensely, and she realized that she needed to bake today, needed that normalcy and the comfort her work afforded her. She could lose herself in baking, and today that was exactly what she needed.

  “So you want me to start the breads?” Zoe asked with her usual exuberance as she headed for the kitchen.

  Zoe’s hair was green today, spiked with a stiff gel that made her head look like an unkempt lawn. She’d filled her many piercings with silver and wore makeup that gave her a straight-from-the-grave look. Frightening. Especially at this hour of the morning.

  Jill had thought twice about hiring Zoe. For one thing, she was young—only seventeen, not even out of high school. Cute as a pixie, but her makeup was heinous, her many piercings painful-looking and her neon-bright, short spiked hair changed color with frightening regularity. Jill had been afraid the girl would scare the older customers.