COPYRIGHT
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This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction, distribution, or transmitted in whole or part in any form or means, or stored in any electronic, mechanical, database or retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
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LAUREL HEIGHTS
The Haunted Hearts Series: Book One
Copyright © 2014 by Denise Moncrief
Electronic Edition
Paranormal Romantic Suspense
Editor: Linda Pitts
Cover Design: Keri Neal
Cover is copyright and trademark of the author, used under license owned.
LAUREL HEIGHTS
A dark cloud of deceit hovers over her family tree...
Left an estate by an aunt she’s never met, Laurel Standridge takes possession of Laurel Heights, hoping it will be the safe haven she needs to recuperate from her ill-fated relationship with Rand Peterson. Secrets long buried rise to the surface when her cousin James is murdered and dumped on the highway just outside the gates of Laurel Heights.
Her past trails her to the mountains of Arkansas...
Caught in an obligation Chase feels he cannot ignore, he agrees to help his brother take back the property Rand believes Laurel stole from him, but he remains at Laurel Heights after he discovers Laurel took nothing of Rand’s away with her except nightmares, fading bruises, and a broken rib.
Unexplained disturbances shatter her hopes of a normal life...
Are the strange bumps, thumps, and bangs reverberating through the night caused by the murderer of Laurel’s cousin James, someone Rand has sent to exact his revenge, or a disturbed soul existing in another dimension, trying to communicate with the living? Drawn together by the intrigue surrounding Laurel Heights, Chase and Laurel become hopelessly entangled in a relationship that goes deeper than mere physical attraction.
Can their love survive the haunting of Laurel Heights?
DEDICATION
For Larry, who has encouraged me in this twisted journey through publication.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to my long-suffering family, Larry, Katy, and Eric, who put up with my many writing moods and encourage me to pursue my publishing dreams anyway. I would like to also thank the fabulously talented Keri Neal for the beautiful book cover she designed for Laurel Heights. Keri took my vague ideas and brought the concept for the cover to life. This book wouldn’t be what it is without the wonderful feedback and suggestions from my friend and fellow author, Chantel Rhondeau.
FOREWORD
For those of you who know and love the state of Arkansas, I apologize for mangling the geography. Hill County and the town of Fairview are fictional places and loosely based on multiple locations, a conglomeration of locales woven together to create a setting especially designed for The Haunted Hearts Series.
Each book in the series is written to stand alone, but together they tell the story of one man’s corrupt influence over an entire county and how one bad decision can affect so many lives. I hope you, the reader, enjoy Laurel Heights as much as I enjoyed writing it.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
About the Author
Other Books By Denise Moncrief
Bonus Material: Excerpt From Victoria House
LAUREL HEIGHTS
Chapter One
San Diego, California
January 2013
Rand stood between Laurel and the open door. She had been in the exact situation once before and remembered in vivid, horrifying detail the consequences of such a stupid blunder. The last time he trapped her in the garage, she’d managed to escape, but not without a hard fight.
His eyes glowed gray-white in the moonlight filtering through the doorway. She couldn’t see his expression in the semi-dark, but she imagined his mouth stretched into a sneer, his lips curled, exposing his teeth like a wild animal on the scent of its prey.
Sweat beaded on her forehead and rolled down her backbone. The muscles in her stomach quivered. She shoved a trembling hand in front of her and then dropped her arm quickly, knowing she shouldn’t appear vulnerable. Rand was proficient in using any sign of weakness against his victim.
“What do you want?” Her voice quavered, and she bit her bottom lip, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
When he slammed the garage door behind him, the windows rattled in protest. The closed door blocked out all but the faintest light. She groped with one hand for the light switch, but to her dismay couldn’t find it in the dark.
“You know what I want.” His voice dripped with unmasked scorn.
“Like I told you the last time, I didn’t take your money or your drugs.”
Some idiot had raided the hidden floor safe beneath Rand’s desk, and for some strange, inexplicable reason he thought she had stolen his stash. She had never been in his office without him, but she was well aware he kept both in the safe. In a fit of rage, he’d trapped her in the garage of the house they shared and had nearly beaten her to death trying to get her to tell him what she’d done with the drugs. After she had managed to escape from him, she had dared to have him arrested, but his sleazy lawyer had gotten him out on bail.
Surviving his assault was dangerous. She’d been in hiding ever since.
Laurel would have no better success pleading for her life a second time. Rand was merciless, a man who made up his mind quickly and never backed down from his decisions. Ever. But he had been wrong. She didn’t have anything that belonged to him. If she had his drugs or his money, would she be living in poverty? No. Would she still be in California? Absolutely not. If she had the means, she would be somewhere, anywhere, as long as her new locale was as far away from Rand Peterson as she could hide.
After staying away from the house for months, she’d finally gotten the nerve to go home, but Rand had obviously been watching for her return. She had risked coming back, not because she’d hidden his drugs in the garage, but because she’d hidden something else far more valuable there...at least to her. She had kept memories of her mother—pictures, letters, a bit of her hair. Sentimental stuff. Rand had insisted she throw her mother’s things away when she moved in with him. He’d dumped them in the trash, but Laurel had retrieved the mementos in the middle of the night and tucked them away in an old suitcase she
had found in the garage.
She sucked in a deep breath to keep from sobbing at the memory. Rand had no respect for those he presumed were weaker than him. She would have to present him with a heavy dose of bravado if she had any chance of escaping another attack.
She stretched to her full height and pointed toward the door. “Didn’t Foster warn you not to come near me again? You’d better leave.” She blustered her frantic demand—her tone sarcastic and dripping with condescension and disrespect.
She didn’t have to pretend her attitude. Rand was the scum of the earth. She regretted the lost years she’d spent with him, wishing she’d never met the fool.
He took another step closer, his fists clenching and unclenching, his menace towering over her by at least eight or nine inches. “I’m not leaving without what belongs to me.”
“I didn’t take the drugs—”
“I don’t care about the drugs. Where are the codes?”
“What codes? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rand was a master of ratcheting the pressure in an already intense situation, skilled in the art of coercion and intimidation. She’d observed how he worked his enemies as well as his so-called friends. He would string the confrontation along until he had stretched the tension to the limit, and then he’d release his fury suddenly and violently.
“I know you know.”
Her false bravado disappeared. Those four words had the power to defeat her. She backed as far away from him as possible and bumped into the wall behind her, the rough texture of the raw wood scraping her elbows.
“Do you think I’d still be here if I stole anything from you?”
Malice glittered in his dark eyes, glowing through the thinned slits of his eyelids, visible even in the darkened garage.
Her hand shot forward to ward off the coming assault. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
He took another step closer, his menace threatening to drive her into the ground beneath her feet. Rand was at his deadliest when he ran out of words.
She hissed at him like a cat backed into a corner. “The cops have been following me. They know you’re here. How smart would it be to beat me up with them watching, Rand?”
Did the police know he had trapped her in the garage again? She hoped so. She desperately hoped whoever had been assigned to follow her wasn’t on a donut break. Plainclothes police had been following her for weeks, no doubt waiting for her to lead them to Rand...or more accurately, they had been waiting for Rand to find her. She’d spotted them on several occasions, in plain sight as if the San Diego PD wanted her to know she was being tailed.
Rand’s calm demeanor vanished. “Never take that tone with me, Laurel.” He yelled his rebuke inches from her face.
She knew what his angry words meant and tried to back away, but the wall blocked her retreat.
“I don’t care about the money or the drugs. I want the codes, and you’re going to give them to me.”
He grabbed for her hair, a maneuver she had been anticipating. She sidestepped, and he missed, but she tripped and planted face first on the floor. Pain shot through her cheekbone from the impact. She rolled over and scrambled to get away, but Rand was too quick for her. He grabbed her shirt and dragged her into the middle of the garage.
Then he stood over her with his fist upraised, one foot on each side of her. She squirmed beneath him, trying desperately to escape the inevitable beating, turning her head and twisting just enough his fist missed her face. His knuckles cracked as he hit the hard-packed floor beside her head.
“You stupid bitch.” He slung his hand as if to shake out the pain.
Blood dripped from the scrapes on his knuckles and left bright red spots against the lighter color of her t-shirt. Cold-blooded murder flashed in his dark eyes.
She screamed, announcing her peril to whoever might be listening, but her jaw throbbed from falling face first on the ground, and the pain reduced the volume of her cry for help. No crashing in of the garage door followed. Where was her rescue hero?
Rand’s derisive laughter rang throughout the garage. She considered the uselessness of fighting him and almost gave up. He was so much bigger than she was. The injury to his hand would not stop his relentless assault. She slid from between his feet and scooted across the cold, hard pack floor, refusing to give in passively to whatever he was about to do to her. He closed the gap between them and raised his fist once again.
The door between the house and the garage banged open, and the room flooded with light.
“Stop right there, Peterson.”
Detective Foster’s booming voice captured Rand’s attention, and he turned toward the cop. Laurel exhaled with relief. Foster was the detective who had listened to her complaint after Rand beat her up the last time. The animosity between Rand and Foster flared and filled the room.
The garage door lifted, and another officer aimed his weapon at Rand’s chest while Foster sheathed his gun.
“Don’t move, Peterson.” Foster rushed forward, yanked a pair of handcuffs from his belt, and shoved Rand face down on the floor.
“What are you hassling me for, Foster?” Rand screamed, resisting efforts to restrain him.
“I warned you to leave her alone.”
Laurel plastered herself against the wall as Foster planted his knee in Rand’s back and slapped the handcuffs on him.
The cop yanked him off the floor by the cuffs with such force Rand’s shoulder cracked, sounding as if it had almost separated in the socket. The detective tugged at Rand’s injured arm, causing him to scream with pain, and then glanced at Laurel. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
“You need a hospital?” The concern in Foster’s eyes surprised her. He’d never treated her with much respect.
“No.”
He nodded to a uniformed officer. “Take her outside and put her in my car. I’ll take care of this—”
Rand twisted, struggling against the hold Foster had on him.
The detective chopped Rand in the small of his back with his elbow. “Be still or I’ll punch your kidneys out the other side.”
She allowed the officer to lead her out of the garage, and she left without her mother’s things. The garage door slid down, blocking her view of what was going on inside. Another police car arrived with lights flashing and tires squealing. Once she was safely inside Foster’s typical dark blue unmarked cop car, she kept her eyes glued to the closed garage door.
When Foster finally emerged, he dragged Rand across the drive. There was more blood on Rand than when she had last seen him. What had Foster done? It didn’t matter. Rand deserved whatever the detective did to him.
Foster shoved Rand into the back of another police car.
Rand’s red face worked as if he couldn’t contain a smidgen of his rage toward her. “I’ll find you, Laurel. Wherever you go, I’ll find you.”
Rand’s threat hammered her as the cop slammed the door. He meant what he said, and if he ever found her, he meant to finish what he had started, but she didn’t think he could make good on his threats. Rand was going away for a very long time, if not forever. Her testimony would make sure he went down for murder. She’d been holding back, not telling the cops everything she knew about him, but maybe it was time to ask for immunity and talk.
She smiled grimly, refusing to allow guilt over betraying him to bother her conscience, but her firm decision to help Foster send Rand to prison didn’t keep his angry, threatening words from settling into her soul. He would be dangerous, even behind bars. She had to get away from California, far, far away.
Chapter Two
Hill County, Arkansas
April 2014
Chase Peterson gulped the last ounce from a Bud longneck and placed the empty bottle on the worn bar next to a pile of peanut shells. He rubbed his index finger along a deep groove cut into the surface of the mahogany. Such a beautiful piece of wood to have r
eceived such ill treatment, no doubt scarred through the years by keys, cell phones, bracelets, watchbands, and nicked shot glasses.
He rubbed his eyes and reached for his wallet. The night had already progressed into the early morning. He should be going back to his motel room to get his beauty sleep, but without work, getting a full night’s rest hardly mattered. If he remained unemployed, he wouldn’t be able to hang around Fairview much longer without inciting suspicion.
“Another round?”
He glanced at the bartender and shook his head. “No. I’ve had my limit.”
“Heard you were looking for construction work.” The bartender’s comment sounded more like a question laced with disapproval than a simple statement.
“I am.”
The bartender smiled without any hint of friendliness. “All the crews around Fairview hire locally. You might as well move on.”
Chase smiled back at the man. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You know...”
The pause carried the weight of significance, and Chase got the impression the bartender was about to say what he had intended to say all along.
“You might go out to the old Standridge place and talk to Celeste’s niece. She thinks she’s going to turn that old dump into one of those bed and breakfast places that the tourists love so much. She hasn’t been able to find a handyman to help her.”
“Where is the Standridge place?” Chase asked even though he already knew the answer.
Finding out Laurel Standridge was looking for a handyman seemed like a huge stroke of luck. His plan had been to find employment so his presence would seem legitimate and then only stick around long enough to keep his promise to Rand. Being able to move freely around the Standridge property would make his task a lot easier. Once he retrieved the travel drive with Rand’s passcodes on it from Laurel, he could follow Rand’s instructions for getting rid of it and end his obligation to his brother.
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