by Julie Leto
A loud chopping noise drew his attention away from the state of his body and clothes. Despite the cat purring in his arms, Damon stalked to the window. He tore aside the heavy drapery, shocked that the view outside was no longer blank canvas. Below, angry waves crashed against a shore of sharp boulders at the base of the castle. Blue skies, devoid of clouds, gleamed all around him. And then swooping in from above him, something hovered in the sky. The sun glanced off the monstrosity, forcing Damon to look away. The cat scrambled out of his arms, arching and hissing, its claws sharp through his sleeves.
Damon froze, enthralled. The metallic bird turned, and through what looked like glass, he saw a woman trapped inside the belly of the beast. He reached out to brace himself on the window, but his hand slipped straight through.
Yet no glass shattered.
Damon jerked away from the window, his breath sapped and his eyes clearly deceiving him.
“Where am I?”
He shouted his question, but just like every other demand he’d made since his entrapment, this one went unanswered.
***
“Did you see that?” Alexa said, her heart clenched in her chest. She almost couldn’t breathe, but she wasn’t sure if her reaction was from the dizzying, bumpy movement of the helicopter or the flash of a face she’d seen in the window of the supposedly abandoned castle—followed by a solid hand materializing, briefly, on the outside of the window and then disappearing from sight.
“See what?” Jacob replied.
Alexa removed her headset, adjusted her sunglasses and looked again. The noise of the helicopter was deafening, but she ignored the pulse against her eardrums. The curtain inside the window had fluttered shut. The glass was old but surprisingly clean of grit and grime—and unbroken.
Her skin crawled with memories. Having Jacob as her stepbrother and Cat as her best friend ensured that Alexa had seen all manner of odd things in her lifetime. Some easily explainable. Others not so much.
And this time, she’d seen a man.
Hadn’t she?
She replaced her headphones. “Can you bring us any closer?”
The pilot responded quickly. “Negative. The wind is picking up. Ms. Chandler, we need to go back.”
“Not yet.”
“Alexa, I’d prefer not to die out here. You’ve seen the castle. The structure looks sound. Let’s go back,” Jacob insisted.
His face had turned a pasty white. And she was the one who hated flying?
“Circle the island one more time,” she ordered the pilot. “There has to be a place to land.”
The pilot complied, just as she knew he would, thanks to the more than generous incentive she’d offered him after takeoff to land safely and allow her to explore the island. Every nerve ending in her body flared and quivered. Imagined man in the window or not, Alexa planned to survey the inside of her castle. Today.
She grabbed the seat as the pilot banked into a turn. Once more, he remained high above the trees, brush and bushes that filled the area between the reputed stone wall and the house. In many places, they couldn’t see any hint that the wall still existed. For all she knew, the salt air had broken down the stones until nothing existed to keep her out of the castle—if only they could find a place to land.
Jacob scooted away from her, flipped aside the microphone hanging near his lips and muttered, his mouth against the glass. She rolled her eyes. Let him pout.
Since she’d ordered the pilot to search for a place to land, circumnavigating the island took a little over five minutes. The pilot’s voice crackled over the headset when a strong wind slammed the helicopter. They dropped ten feet. Alexa screamed. Jacob seemed frozen in his spot until the pilot regained control and lifted the helicopter back to its original altitude.
“Sorry, folks. Man, that gust came out of nowhere. Ms. Chandler, I’d love that bonus, but it isn’t going to be worth much if the chopper goes down permanently. Maybe we can come out earlier tomorrow, get a better look….”
Despite the direct input into her ears, the pilot’s words faded as Alexa stared out the window. A cluster of tall palms bent backward in acquiescence to the blustery air. In the cleared space, she saw something that everyone had told her didn’t exist.
A lagoon.
“Jacob!”
She grabbed his sleeve. He slid over to her side of the seat. She pointed. His eyes widened.
“You’re right, Captain,” Alexa said, nearly unable to contain the bubbles of excitement popping inside her. “Let’s head back to the airport. I think this challenge is best attacked by sea.”
***
The minute Alexa stepped onto the tarmac, she cursed herself for sending Catalina to Texas in pursuit of the documentation on Valoren. If her friend had been in the chopper, she could have verified what Alexa had thought she’d seen. Or, perhaps, what she actually had seen, but was having trouble wrapping her mind around.
A man. A flash of a man.
A man whose hand had solidified on the other side of an unbroken window, and then, just as shockingly, disappeared.
A man…or a ghost?
She swallowed hard. She’d wanted a haunted castle, hadn’t she? She had no business getting all freaked out and scared now.
Behind her, Jacob was in deep conversation with the pilot. She scurried through the executive airport and into the waiting limousine. Using her satellite phone, she dialed her private plane and was immediately patched in to Cat.
“We haven’t landed in Texas yet,” Catalina announced, sounding amused by Alexa’s eagerness.
“Not why I’m calling,” Alexa replied, fully aware she was about to knock the humor out of Cat’s attitude. “We made it close enough to the castle to see into a window. And I think”—she took a deep breath—”I saw someone.”
“Someone?”
“A man.”
“Inside?” Cat asked.
He’d worn white. The image suddenly flashed in her mind. A white shirt. Long sleeves. “The place is supposed to be deserted. I only caught a glimpse, but I swear, there was a man inside my castle. And his hand…”
She recounted what she’d seen. The thrill tripping through Alexa’s bloodstream caused her to shiver deliciously. Driven by excitement, curiosity and fear, her emotions skimmed just beneath the surface of her skin. Her body zipped with an electric current she didn’t think she’d ever felt before.
The connection crackled. “No one pays much attention to that island,” Cat reasoned. “You could just have a squatter.”
“And the hand?”
“The sun is bright. It could have been an optical illusion or your overactive imagination.”
Alexa smirked. “Or a ghost.”
Realizing she wasn’t entirely alone in the car with the driver at his post in the front seat, Alexa raised the glass partition.
“That’s your first guess?” Cat asked. “You’re starting to sound like your brother, always jumping to the occult to explain a simple anomaly.”
Alexa whistled out a breath. She couldn’t argue. Cat was right. “Explain the disembodied hand.”
Cat remained silent.
Alexa cleared her throat. “I know I sound crazy, but I’ve had the oddest feelings about this place since Jacob brought me the deed. And what with all the legends and rumors…maybe I’m caught up in the hype, but could you imagine? A real ghost?”
Cat still didn’t respond, and Alexa realized she’d probably scared her best friend half to death. Cat had seen many people slip over the sharp edge that separated reality from fantasy. She wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Cat ordered Alexa’s pilot to turn the plane around immediately so she could return to Florida and slap some sense into her.
“Yeah, I can more than imagine,” Cat said. “However, I can’t help but kick around a few more earthly scenarios that include a serial killer hiding out in your castle, not some soul who hasn’t crossed over.”
“Well, I’ll find out soon enough.”
“I though
t the island was inaccessible,” Cat reminded her.
“During our flyover, we found a small lagoon. All I need is a boat, and I’m on my way.”
“Take someone with you,” Cat warned.
Alexa glanced out the car window and spotted Jacob moving toward the limo. “Jacob’s with me.”
“Take someone else.”
Alexa rolled her eyes. Four years and these two still couldn’t shut off the antagonism. “Right now, he’s all I’ve got. Besides, I can take care of myself. And oddly enough, I’m not afraid.”
“That’s what scares me most, mija. That’s what scares me most.”
***
Cat disconnected the call, sat back in the plush seat of Alexa’s corporate jet and considered canceling her research trip to Texas. But by the time she landed in Florida again, Alexa would have already stormed willingly into a potentially dangerous situation. Though Cat didn’t trust Jacob as far as she could throw him, she had to admit that to date, he’d been very protective of his stepsister, as if his narcissistic brain somehow registered that Alexa was the only family he had left.
And Alexa wasn’t exaggerating when she said she could take care of herself. Cat had sparred with her enough times at the dojang to know her friend could fight. Maybe not with a crazed serial killer, but Cat had learned long ago that despite her intrinsic abilities to catch visions of the future, she couldn’t alter the destiny of her friends, her family.
Or, most especially, herself.
Once fate cast its lot, nothing and no one could change the outcome, even when the outcome meant tragedy.
Three
“There’s no one here, ma’am.”
Alexa glanced over her shoulder, her lips pursed and her jaw tight, as the Coast Guard seaman shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable with breaking the news. The discovery wasn’t unexpected. The minute she’d squeezed through a crack in the wall, broken through the sixty-year-old padlock on the front door and witnessed six decades’ worth of dust and sand on the cracked stone floors of the castle, Alexa had known no one had been inside.
No one corporeal, at least.
At Jacob’s insistence, she’d allowed the crew of the closest Coast Guard UTB to escort the boat they’d chartered to the island and search for possible trespassers. Now that they’d completed their mission, she wanted them gone. She had exploring of her own to do, starting with the lone furnishing—a painting hanging alone on the landing above the grand staircase.
A painting that had captured her interest as if the man in the portrait had reached out from the canvas and was even now curling his fingers in a silent, rhythmic beckoning.
She gave the seaman a curt nod and returned her gaze to the portrait. Despite the dust and the cobwebs, the man in the oil on canvas was nothing short of magnificent. Piercing eyes the color of a storm-tossed ocean—a swirling mix of green and gray—stared straight into her. His hair, long, deep chocolate brown, seemed to have caught an unexplainable wind in a drawing room decorated with candle and torchlight. As if wet, his stark white shirt and scarlet waistcoat molded to his skin. A single droplet of water slid down his square jaw, threatening to splash down at any moment.
The artist’s realism stunned her. The plush face of the cat on his lap. The velvety folds of the cloak tossed carelessly across the back of an ornate chair. Even the fired tips of the candles in the sconces blurred as if photographed rather than painted. The fact that the portrait was the only furnishing in the castle further piqued her interest. Had the mysterious builder in the forties reconstructed the abandoned German castle simply to house a single piece of artwork that no one would see?
“Time to go, Alexa,” Jacob announced after the rest of the Coast Guard contingent had congregated in the foyer.
“No,” she said.
“What?”
He marched up the stairs. She could hear his loafers crackling across the layer of sand encrusted on the floor.
“I’m not leaving,” she said. “Not just yet.”
“The place is deserted, Alexa. And thanks to our seafaring friends, we know the structure is relatively sound. Let’s get back to the mainland, call in our structural engineers and our designers and—”
She turned and faced her stepbrother squarely. “I said no, Jacob. I want some time to look around. I…”
She faltered. She what? Wanted lo know if the figure of the man she’d seen in the window had been a figment of her imagination or, as she suspected, a ghost? Could he be the man portrayed in the painting?
Despite the sudden difficulty she had moving her legs, she took a few steps away from the canvas. “I want to get a feel for the place.”
With perfect timing, Jacob’s cell phone trilled loudly, the noise jarring. There was nothing to soften the sound. No carpets. No furniture. No draperies. Even the room upstairs where she’d been so sure she’d seen a man yank a curtain closed just after she spotted him from the helicopter had ended up having an entirely bare window.
While Jacob was distracted with the call, she thanked the Coast Guard seamen for their time. After assuring them that she and her brother would return to the mainland on their chartered boat and would exercise the utmost caution while on the island, they left.
“Finally,” she said.
“Yes, she’s here with me,” Jacob replied to the caller. He moved to hand the phone to her, but she waved him away, her gaze captured again by the portrait. His nose was as interesting as the rest of him, the nostrils flared ever so slightly and his lips, she noticed, were curved almost imperceptibly upward. As if he was on the verge of a sneer.
“I’ll make sure Alexa is accurately informed,” Jacob insisted, his volume increasing.
She stepped farther away from Jacob and closer to the painting. She had no interest in the obvious crisis at the office. The urge to get rid of Jacob, too, and experience the castle while alone overwhelmed her. She raised her hand and realized her fingers were shaking.
Touch him.
Touch me.
“She’s asked me to handle it,” Jacob said.
He laid his hand on her shoulder. Alexa nearly jumped out of her skin.
She caught her breath and acknowledged his assumption with a quick wave.
Jacob walked down the stairs and toward the main entrance, but Alexa’s heartbeat didn’t slow. She removed the backpack she’d filled prior to leaving the marina and double-checked her stash. Bottled water. Energy bars. Dried fruit and nuts. A very large knife. Two emergency flares and a flare gun. A portable GPS and her satellite phone.
Enough to keep her safe and sound for a few hours, right?
She glanced up at the painting. Had that tiny sneer eased into a smile?
Below, Jacob’s voice grew increasingly perturbed. She was the CEO of Chandler Enterprises, not an operations manager like him. If she didn’t have the quality staff to handle a problem without her intervention for a few hours, then how could the company remain successful?
She’d just zipped up her backpack when Jacob returned the phone to his waist and marched back up the stairs.
“I lost the signal, but I got an earful. There’s a storm blowing through Boston,” he explained.
“And I control the weather, how?” she asked.
Jacob frowned. “We’re hosting that big convention this weekend.”
She took a few steps closer to the painting. Away from Jacob. Away from the Crown Chandler crisis. Away from her everyday life. Just for a moment. Just for one, brief moment.
“And?” she asked reluctantly. The sooner the situation was explained, the sooner she could order Jacob to handle the solution.
“The hotel lost power.”
“That happens in storms,” she pointed out, even as a dip in the pit of her stomach warned her there was more to the story.
“The hotel is booked to capacity and there isn’t even enough light to run the bar.”
She took a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly, tempted to find a stone pill
ar to hide behind. “What does the city say?”
“They can’t send out crews until the storm passes, and this apparent pseudo hurricane isn’t showing any meteorological signs of moving one inch. We need to send in buses and move the guests to other properties in the area or we need to get the generators up and running.”
“Why aren’t they?”
“It’s bad, Alexa.” Jacob said, his mouth drawn in a tight line. “Looks like sabotage.”
Her chest tightened. “Sabotage?”
Jacob leaned in close, his voice hushed as if they were in the office with a half dozen prying ears rather than in an abandoned castle with only a haunting portrait to intrude on their privacy. “The generators have sustained severe damage. The police have been notified. They don’t want maintenance to touch anything because they’ll be destroying evidence and—”
“Stop!”
This couldn’t be happening.
Not again.
He arched a brow.
“Go back to the mainland,” she ordered. “Organize a conference call with all the managers of our properties in the area. We can’t bus the guests anywhere until the storm dies down, but we need transportation in place. At the hotel, move the guests to the grand ballroom, where there aren’t any windows or exterior doors. Have the kitchen break out all the ice cream and desserts we’ll lose anyway and serve it gratis, as well as all the booze they can pour. And then…” Her mind swam. God, didn’t she pay her staff huge salaries to handle this type of crisis?
But sabotage? Again?
She leaned back against the wall, the portrait’s frame skimming her shoulder. “Jacob, you know what to do as well as I do. Handle this, okay?”
She closed her eyes. The stone against her back, so cold only moments before, suddenly warmed. The heat eased through the thin layer of her clothes and ignited her skin. She could feel the gray eyes of the man in the portrait staring down at her, into her.
Jacob stepped nearer, his gaze darting with annoyance to the portrait as if the man were intruding on their conversation. “Are you crazy? You want me to leave you here alone?”
