The Masked Man

by B. J Daniels

  Mac groaned. “So my nephew decided to sell the coins, instead?”

  “No,” Zoe said indignantly. “He had to come up with some way to return them without actually going there, you know?”

  Jill nodded. “So he hid the coins in the dough, then you baked them.”

  “Spider called, left a message that the rolls were on their way and to look inside them,” Zoe said.

  “Not a bad idea. When were they delivered?” Mac asked.

  “The day of the party.”

  Jill shot a look at Mac. The coins had been returned? Then why was Mac still looking for them?

  “How many did Shane return?” he asked.

  Zoe smiled. “You know, I kinda like the name Shane.”

  “How many coins did he return?” Jill prodded her.

  The girl blinked. “Oh, we returned all but two. Shane gave one to…someone because he thought that was only fair that he be paid—” Marvin, Jill surmised “—and he kept one. So I guess we sent ten rolls in the delivery.”

  “Tell me you didn’t send the rolls in one of The Best Buns in Town bags,” Jill said, almost adding, like you did the one for Marvin.

  “Of course not,” Zoe said. “We used a plain white bag. We didn’t want him knowing where the rolls came from.”

  Thank goodness for that. Jill looked at Mac. “Where were these rolls delivered?” She figured to the home of the man Mac was working for.

  “To Inspiration Island,” Zoe said, making them both stare at her. Zoe nodded. “When Shane called back a second time to see if the guy got the first message, he said to deliver them to the island and leave them at some cove.”

  “Shane took them out by boat?”

  Zoe shook her head. “He hired some kids to take them out. You know, just in case it was a trap.”

  Mac groaned. “How do you know the kids actually took the rolls to the island like they were told to?”

  “Shane called him back the next morning. He got the rolls.”

  “But?” Jill said, hearing the but in Zoe’s voice.

  “But he wants the rest,” she said, and sighed.

  “The coins are part of a twelve-piece set,” Mac said. “I imagine the owner wants all twelve back. Shane never told you the man’s name?”

  She shook her head. “Shane’s in trouble, isn’t he.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Mac said. “There’s a killer out there who seems willing to do anything to get these coins. You have to tell me where I can find Shane.”

  “I don’t know, honest. He can’t stay in one place. So he calls me at night from a pay phone.”

  “When he calls, I want you to talk him into calling me.” Mac handed her his card. “If you care anything about him—”

  “I love him.” Zoe began to cry in earnest. “Please help him.”

  Jill put her arm around Zoe and looked beseechingly at Mac, who groaned.

  Chapter Twelve

  After Jill assured a teary-eyed Zoe that she wasn’t going to fire her, Zoe promised to go home and stay there.

  “What do we do now?” Jill asked Mac once they were back in his pickup.

  “I wait to hear from Shane.” And try to keep his distance from Jill. Her baking assistant had been a real surprise. He couldn’t see anyone as straitlaced as Jill hiring a girl who looked like Zoe. And yet Jill had. He liked this woman more all the time—which wasn’t the plan.

  He glanced over at her. There were so many layers to this woman he knew he’d never see them all in a lifetime.

  “While we wait, we find Rachel and complete our deal,” he said. The sooner Jill went back to baking the better.

  “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “I’m a trained professional, remember? We consider where Trevor could have met her. I take it he spent a lot of time on the island, right? She probably doesn’t live in his condo complex.” Jill nodded. “So what does that leave?”

  “Meals.”

  He smiled. “Oh, you’re good.” He had a pretty complete picture of Trevor Forester from everything he’d learned. “I doubt he spent much time in the kitchen cooking for himself, right?” Or much time alone. Nor did he probably have much trouble picking up women.

  “Trevor? He couldn’t boil water. And I didn’t see much of him so…”

  “Where did he eat?”

  She thought about that for a moment. “I know of a couple of places.”

  The first one, a sandwich shop along the highway south of Bigfork, was a bust. No Rachel worked there or hung out there. They tried several fast-food places near Trevor’s condo and finally stopped at a burger joint along the lake that also served alcohol.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry,” Mac said, grinning as he pointed to one of the Employee of the Month photos on the wall.

  “That’s her!” Jill whispered. Rachel Wells, the name under the photo read. January’s Employee of the Month. “I’m starved!”

  Mac led them to a booth by the window so they could catch the last of the sunset—and keep an eye out for Rachel. He sat across from Jill and flipped open the plastic-covered menu, trying to concentrate on food rather than the woman across from him. “How does a cheeseburger deluxe sound to you?”

  “Wonderful,” she said, and seemed to relax.

  But Rachel Wells, it appeared, wasn’t working today. At least they didn’t see her.

  They talked about lakes and what they loved about them and how they couldn’t imagine living away from water, then laughed that they had that in common, both pretty convinced they only had one thing in common and that was the night they’d shared in the cottage.

  But Mac was learning just how much they shared. It made what happened between them the night in the cottage make more sense. He also noted that Jill was beautiful when she laughed. Her whole face lit up, her brown eyes dancing.

  When the burgers arrived, Jill dug right in.

  They had that in common, too, it seemed, he thought. They loved to eat. They ate in a comfortable, contented silence, appreciating their burgers and fries and each other. He felt as if he’d known this woman always. The closeness was almost painful for him.

  When he’d finished eating, he pushed back his plate, sighed and looked at her. “That’s the nicest meal I’ve had with a woman since…I can’t remember when,” he said as he watched her dunk the last of her fries in ketchup and take a bite.

  She smiled and licked her lips. “What made it so nice? The fries? The burger?”

  “You,” he said truthfully.

  She raised a brow. “Honesty becomes you. I feel comfortable with you, too. Maybe it’s because of the other night in the cottage or maybe we would have felt this way, anyway.”

  “We’ll never know,” he said, and dug out his wallet to pay the check. What he did know was that they wouldn’t be together now if it hadn’t been for what happened in the cottage. He went out of his way to avoid attachments. He would have avoided Jill Lawson like the plague.

  How could Trevor Forester not have seen what a kind, loving woman Jill was? Maybe Trevor wasn’t looking for that kind of woman any more than he himself was, Mac thought.

  She was watching him with her big doe eyes, studying him as if she could read his mind and found it amusing that he was fighting this spark—hell, forest fire—between them. How could she not see how hard he was struggling to keep his distance from her?

  “It wouldn’t work, you and me,” he said, not sure who he was trying to convince. “I go wherever the wind blows me. You—”

  “I own a bakery, an apartment, a building,” she said, her gaze meeting his and holding it. “Definitely not compatible.”

  He knew she was making fun of him. And he couldn’t blame her. What a fool he was, trying to convince her that their problem was location. Or that the air between them wasn’t charged with current, or that he didn’t want to take her in his arms and kiss her every time he looked at her, or that what they’d shared the other night wasn’t incredible.r />
  All powerful stuff. All wrong at this point in their lives. At any point in his. But damned if he didn’t want to see where this chemistry took them—just as she did. Except…he knew exactly where it would take them. And he couldn’t go there.

  Jill had been hurt enough by Trevor Forester. Mac didn’t want to cause her more pain. He knew that she’d be far more hurt if they became lovers again before he left. And he would leave.

  The young blond waitress with the ponytail and bright red lipstick brought their bill. “Excuse me,” Mac said. “I was hoping Rachel was working today. I promised a friend I’d tell her hello.”

  “Rachel?” The girl looked toward the kitchen and the cook. She lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t mention Rachel if I were you. She hasn’t shown up for work. Bud gave her the morning off for the funeral—Trevor Forester’s funeral, you know. But she was supposed to work this afternoon.”

  Obviously Rachel hadn’t been planning to give two weeks’ notice before running off with Trevor. Or maybe she’d never planned to go because she’d planned to kill Trevor, instead.

  “Are you a good friend of hers?” Jill asked.

  The waitress made a so-so motion with her hand. “Rachel’s all right. Not exactly friendly to other women, if you know what I mean. Prefers men.”

  Men? Plural? “I thought she and Trevor Forester were pretty serious,” Jill said.

  The waitress shrugged. “I never thought Trevor was serious about her. And it wasn’t like Rachel didn’t keep her options open—and so did Trevor.” She bent down a little and whispered, “He asked me out just last week.”

  Jill found R. Wells in the phone directory in the telephone booth outside the burger joint and read off the address to Mac. It was dark now. Still no call from Shane, and Mac was getting more worried all the time. He didn’t think going over to Rachel’s house was a good idea, but he knew Jill would go alone if they didn’t.

  “Why don’t you call the sheriff’s department and let them handle this?” he suggested.

  “Come on, it doesn’t appear they’ve made any effort to find her. I don’t think they even believe she exists.”

  Mac couldn’t argue that.

  “I also don’t want her to get away again,” Jill said. “Arnie has a cousin who works next door to the sheriff’s department. Arnie has known too much not to have been getting inside information. And if Trevor knew Rachel, then so did Arnie. Arnie was his shadow.”

  Rachel Wells lived in a small apartment north of Bigfork. Jill’s red Saturn was nowhere to be seen.

  “She doesn’t know me. Why don’t you let me go to the door? If she spots you, she might bolt.”

  “All right. Just don’t let her get away.”

  He smiled. “I’ll tackle her if she makes a run for it.”

  “You used to play football, didn’t you?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “I’ll bet you were good. High school? College?”

  “Both.” This kind of talk was making him uncomfortable. He didn’t tell anyone about his past. “Sit tight.”

  Mac knocked. No answer. He tried several more times, then peered in the windows. The place looked as if it’d been ransacked. Impossible to tell if it had happened before or after Rachel Wells had packed up and cleared out. There was a photo on the floor, the frame and glass broken. It was the same woman as in the Employee of the Month photo.

  He checked the back, then returned to the pickup and Jill. “It looks like she’s taken off. The place has been ransacked.”

  Jill groaned. “I just know she’s involved in Trevor’s murder somehow. She warned me at the funeral that it was dangerous to be asking questions about the murder.”

  “I believe I told you the same thing,” Mac said. “Call the sheriff’s department. Maybe she left a clue in the apartment about where she went, and they can go in and find it.”

  He listened while Jill placed the call on her cell. Deputy Duncan wasn’t in, so she left a message for him with Rachel Wells’s name and address.

  When she hung up she looked over at Mac. “Well, I guess that’s it. I helped you find Marvin and you helped me find Rachel.”

  He looked out at the darkness, not wanting to leave her any more than he suspected she wanted him to. “Technically, we didn’t find Rachel.”

  “True, and we might not,” Jill said. “I’m sure she’s skipped town. And to add insult to injury, probably in my car.”

  This was crazy. And dangerous. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

  She shot him a look. “What are you suggesting?”

  He had trouble saying the words. “I think I should stay with you, on your couch, at least for a while.”

  “I just got new locks—”

  “Look,” he said, turning to face her, “your couch has to be better than sleeping in the front of this truck every night.”

  She smiled at him. “You’ve been watching my apartment?”

  “You didn’t give me much choice,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “So you wouldn’t get killed.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean why do you feel you have to protect me? What makes it your job?”

  “After the other night…”

  She started laughing. “Do you protect every woman you sleep with?”

  “Of course not,” he said, wishing he hadn’t told her about the night vigils.

  She raised a brow. “Then why me?”

  “You know the answer to that. I made love with Trevor Forester’s fiancée while he was being murdered just before he was going to hire me to find his killer.”

  She shook her head. “Nice try. But that isn’t it.”

  He swore under his breath. “Are you going to let me stay on your couch or not?”

  “Of course. I appreciate your wanting to protect me, although I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.” He started the truck and drove back to where they’d left her van earlier. “I’ll follow you to your apartment.”

  THE MOON FLIRTED with the clouds as Jill drove her van back to her apartment. She rolled down the windows in the van and let the warm, pine-scented night air blow in. She turned up the radio. She couldn’t remember ever being this happy. Not even the day Trevor asked her to marry him.

  When she parked, she saw that she had company. Brenna was waiting anxiously on her doorstep.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Brenna said. “I have to tell you—” She stopped abruptly when she saw Mac pull up behind the van and get out of his truck.

  Jill figured whatever her friend had found out must be about him.

  “Mac, this is my friend Brenna Margaret Boyd. Brenna, Mackenzie Cooper.”

  Mac’s smile had an edge to it. “Mac. But we’ve met. Last night at the Beach Bar.” He shot Jill a look that said he had only suspected he’d been set up the night before—but was well aware of it now. He shook Brenna’s hand, then glanced at Jill. “Let’s go up to your apartment, and then I’ll have a look around.”

  Brenna looked as if she was bursting to tell Jill something, but asked first, when Mac left the room, “What happened last night on the boat?”

  Jill filled her in, skipping the part about the skull. Nor did she tell Brenna about the ring Trevor had given her. Both stories were too big for a reporter to sit on, and Jill didn’t want to put her friend in that position. When Mac found out from his friend whether or not the skull was that of one of the missing teenaged girls, then Jill would tell Brenna and let her go after the story.

  “He was your mystery lover?” Brenna cried.

  Jill shushed her. “I’ve never felt like this.”

  “You do look flushed and a little wild-eyed,” her friend said. “Jill, you know nothing about this man!”

  “I know everything I need to know.” Jill saw Brenna look uncomfortable. “Don’t I?”

  Mac rejoined them. “I’ve checked all the locks and windows in both the apartment and bakery�
��”

  His cell phone rang. He held Jill’s gaze for a moment, then answered it.

  “Uncle Mac?”

  “Shane.” Mac took a relieved breath, fighting the urge to yell at his nephew. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  As if Mac didn’t know that.

  “I need your help.” The fear he heard in Shane’s voice scared him. “I think someone’s trying to kill me.” Shane sounded close to tears.

  “Tell me where you are,” Mac ordered. He looked up to see Jill watching him, looking concerned.

  “I’m at the gas station phone booth at Yellow Bay, but I can’t stay here,” Shane said.

  “All right. Just tell me where to meet you.”

  “Do you know where that abandoned cherry-packing plant is near Finley Point?”

  Mac remembered passing it earlier that day on the way out to Marvin Dodd’s. “Yes. I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Shane?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  He hung up and looked at Jill.

  “Go,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll stay with her,” Brenna said.

  Mac couldn’t take his eyes off Jill. He didn’t want to leave her, but she was much safer here than where he was headed. “Lock up behind me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She nodded and followed him down the stairs.

  “She seems like a good friend,” he said, knowing Brenna was waiting for Jill upstairs and, from the looks of her, dying to talk to Jill alone.

  “She is a good friend.”

  He nodded, wanting to pull Jill into his arms, wanting to kiss her. “You have a good life here.” Kissing her would mess up that life.

  She looked as if she might cry. “Be careful?”

  He touched her cheek, then turned and left before he said something he couldn’t take back. Something that could change his life. Forever.

  JILL WATCHED Mac leave. He’d looked worried. About his nephew? Or was he worried about what Brenna might tell her? She wanted to believe it was because he cared more than he wanted to admit.