“Okay, but I—”
“Just try it.” His voice lowered an octave, practically a growl.
The screen flashed open. My jaw dropped. “I…” I looked back at the page, trying not to show my delirious joy because we broke the code. I’d deal with the shock of Sky using my name as his password later. “I’m sorry, honey.”
He leaned toward the screen. “Never mind. Let’s see what it says.” He took a deep breath and tucked his jealousy away, like the big man I knew him to be. I thanked God silently and handed my Mac to him. “You do it.”
He took it from me without a word and started to look through the Mac’s Finder window to examine the file types and names.
I leaned over to watch. Hundreds of files scrolled past as he slid his two fingers down the track pad.
“There are tons of Word documents, maybe three or four hundred. And there are just as many Excel spreadsheets. Here are some jpeg files and some pdf files. Wow. And look at these massive video files.”
“What are their names? I can’t read them from here.”
“This one’s called ‘Security Warning.’” He clicked on it and read aloud. “‘The material on this flash drive is owned exclusively by Outsourcers, a fully incorporated medical research facility located in Speculator, New York, in partnership with Young Living Essential Oils in Utah.’ Lots of legalese here. It says everything is highly privileged and copyrighted. ‘If you happen to come upon this information by accident, please return it to…’ It goes on from there.”
I urged him to open another file. “What’s so secret about it all?”
He clicked through the files for fifteen minutes while the river murmured and birds chirped overhead. Occasionally, he commented on what he saw and turned to show me some of the images. “We’ve got a hell of an assortment here. Medical reports. Dozens and dozens of those. Summaries of medical trials. Chemical analyses. Personal histories of…looks like a lot of them are leukemia patients.”
“What?”
Quinn looked nervous. “Marcella. These are private medical files. We shouldn’t be looking at them.”
I put on my best smile. “Sweetie. We won’t pry; we don’t even know these people. But we have to figure out how Sky’s involved and what those bastards want. Callie’s life is at stake. And maybe even ours.”
He caved without a battle. “You’re right. I know.” He scrolled farther through the contents of the stick, mumbling under his breath. “My God. I can’t get to the end of it.”
“Try to open one of those video files.”
He clicked on it, but it was a Windows version movie. “Your Mac won’t open it without a downloadable reader.”
“Damn. We’ll have to get to the net,” I said. With a start, I brightened. “Wait! Aunt Roberta’s got wireless at her gift shop café. We can go up there tomorrow. I want to see her, anyway.”
“Good idea.”
He continued to scroll, while Beau rolled on the pine needles and wiggled to scratch his back.
I watched, feeling a headache coming on. “Go back!” I pointed to the screen. “I think I saw Callie’s name.”
He backed up the list and found it. “You’re right. The file name is “To Callie.”
“Whoa.” I crowded closer. “Open it, honey. Open it.”
A letter to Callie stared at us. Heart thumping, I reached for my Mac and started reading aloud.
Dearest Callie,
Time’s running out, and I can’t write all that I want. Suffice it to say that I’m on the run again, but this time, it’s serious. Dead serious. There are bad people after some information that will change the world if they don’t get their hands on it. I can’t name names; I don’t want you to get involved. But you’re the only one in this world I can trust, and I know you’ll hide this stuff until I come for it. And if I don’t show up in the next few months, turn it over to the American Medical Association, with copies to Gary Young at Young Living Incorporated in Utah. You’ll figure out the password, because you know me inside and out.
On a personal note, I wanted to apologize from the bottom of my heart for disappearing on you and the family. I got into something not of my own doing, but through an army buddy who was killed for it. I had to run, or I would’ve been next. But that’s the past, and I think (hope) that part’s over. Keep the emeralds and get them into a safe deposit box. They’re for your retirement.
Whatever you do, don’t forget I luv ya ‘til the end, and say hi to Marcella for me. I still think of her and our lakeside trio, every, single day.
All my love,
Sky
Quinn sat back in his chair. “Great. He still thinks of you every, single day?”
I blanched, ready for an onslaught. But this time, it didn’t come.
He stood and leaned on the rough trunk of a balsam tree, looking upstream. “Poor bastard. The memories of you were probably all that kept him going.” He shook his head as if to rid himself of the idea. “Damn.”
I re-read the note three times before he sat back down. “Want to keep going?”
He took the laptop from me, closed the file, and frowned. “Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“Why is this note to Callie so big? It’s almost a gig.”
I glanced down at the bottom of the screen. “Whoa. There are five hundred and fifty pages.”
He scrolled down the file, finding blank page after blank page. “There’s nothing here.”
“There has to be. Try ‘Go to’. Go to the end.” My eyes widened. “Wait a minute. That’s it. Whenever Sky would tell Callie he loved her, he’d say, ‘luv ya ‘til the cows come home.’ It was an inside joke, since she was really crazy about cows. He never said, ‘luv ya ‘til the end.’ And look,” I pointed to the note again. “He italicized ‘the end.’”
Quinn hit the go to shortcut keys and punched in the last page. A colorful, detailed map filled the screen. “Whoa.” He backed up ten pages, and found the beginning of the section where the blank pages ended and the maps began. “It looks like it covers Speculator and tons of surrounding towns. It’s very detailed, with lots of handwritten notes. Mostly situated around lakes, though.”
“He must have scanned the maps in and pasted them at the end of this note for safekeeping,” I said.
Quinn picked one map and studied it. He pointed to the screen, turning it toward me. “Look, there are numbers written in all over the lakes—they start with S and are all ten digits long.”
“What does it mean?” My head was starting to pound now. “Okay, Quinn. What the heck was he doing up here?”
“I don’t know, babe. But I think it’s big. And we’d better take steps to duplicate and then hide this stuff.”
We copied the memory stick on my Mac, hidden many layers down under food/recipes/old recipes/cakes/Mom’s cakes. I named the folder “Angel Food,” and waited while the stick flashed and my Mac whirred. My machine was new and fast, fitted with the latest technology available, but it took twenty minutes of grinding for it to copy it all. I removed the memory stick and brought it inside to hide it.
Quinn followed me with the computer, deep in thought. “We used up most of your free space.”
“That’s okay.” I tapped the little plastic stick against my lower lip, searching for a good hiding spot. “Now I’m glad I sprung for the memory upgrade.”
“I can’t believe how much stuff was on it. I barely looked at five percent of those files.”
I started up the stairs. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.” At the top of the stairs was the wooden armoire Quinn had built last fall for our guests’ clothes. We also stored extra blankets inside. I opened the wooden plank door and felt around.
Twisting my body sideways, I struggled to reach way up inside. There. A spot where the frame’s two-by-four and the top plank met but weren’t quite flush. I slid the stick into the gap and dusted my hands off. Nobody would find it now.
“I’m trying that number again,” I announced after bound
ing down the stairs, rubbing my temples where the ache had turned to a throb. “You got anything in that magic bag of yours for headaches, baby?”
He looked up, his eyes full of promise. “You bet I do. I used it this morning when I woke up. Took my headache away in seconds.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.” He grabbed the green peppermint bottle from the case. “Come here.”
I sat beside him while he rubbed a generous amount on the back of my neck. “Be careful. It’s so concentrated; it can sting your eyes a little if you get it too close to them. Now relax and let it work.”
I sat back and closed my eyes, feeling an ice-cold sensation on my skin. The peppermint smell was intoxicating, and I wondered if I could fill my whole house with it when we got home.
Beside me, Quinn had been paging through the local phone book. “How many people do you think live in this area?”
I frowned, my eyes still closed. “I don’t know. Not many. Less than five hundred, I guess.”
“Right.” He flipped through the phone book. “If Willow was killed for this information, and Callie’s been taken, and Sky’s still hiding out or maybe died for it…” He lifted the book to his lap and sat on the couch. “Then we’d better not put that poor old guy you talked to earlier at risk. If someone knows we’re trying to contact him, if they know his son might be related to Sky, or know Sky…”
I opened my eyes and finished his sentence for him. “Then they might hurt him.”
“Precisely.”
“So what do we do?”
He pointed to the phone book. “We search for the number and see what name and address match it. There are hardly any names in here, honey. It won’t take but a few hours. We can stake it out. And when the son shows up, we follow him. And find a safe place to approach him. Some place where nobody’s watching.”
I plopped down beside him and slung my arm around his shoulders. “You’re a genius, you know that, sweetie?”
“Yeah. I know.” He grinned and bent his head over the phone book. His shiny black hair hung over his cheeks. Hiding his expression. “How’s the headache?”
My eyes widened and my lips parted. “My God.” I stared at my husband, at the bottle of peppermint, and back at him again. “It’s gone.”
Chapter 13
After a quick dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches, we sat in the living area taking turns searching the phone book. We only received three television channels at Tall Pines, and Quinn had picked a rerun of “Andy of Mayberry.” While Opie got into trouble—nothing like the kind of trouble kids of today got into—we took turns looking through the phone book. Finally, when Andy was lecturing Opie and his friends about honor and duty, I stood up and shouted, “I found it.”
“Let me see.” Quinn took the book and smiled. “Good job, bright eyes.” He grabbed the pad of paper and wrote down the address. “Dr. Lewis Trebangle. Twenty-three Pumpkin Hollow Road.”
“I’ve seen that road. It’s just north of here, on the way to Wells.”
Quinn thought for a minute. “I’ve seen it, too. When can we go?”
“Let’s get our act together and go tomorrow. It’s late, and I want to go through more of those files, anyway. Maybe we can learn more without staking out some poor old man.”
When I stood to hug him, the hemp necklace’s vial dug into my chest. I backed up, took it off, and studied the innocuous seeming little bottle of liquid. “Wait a minute. Callie thought this thing might be important. Shouldn’t we hide it?” I handed it to him.
Quinn turned the vial in the golden light of early evening. “We were going to get it analyzed, weren’t we?”
“I ran out of time at home. That’ll have to come later. Let me think.” I paced around the house, trying to think of places nobody would look. “The necklace is too big to hide. The house isn’t gonna work.”
Quinn walked out to the porch, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun. “What about down by the Jacuzzi?”
I clapped my hands together. “Perfect. You can’t even see it from here.”
We followed the narrow dirt path along the river, stepping over roots and deer droppings, and headed south to our swimming hole. Although it was after six, the sun still warmed the air, glinting off the river in thousands of pinpricks of white light. The previous owners had built a set of steps down to the rocky basin, where a small dam made a deep, protected swimming hole. It also swirled in its cove like a whirlpool, thus the affectionate name, Jacuzzi.
To the left of the steps, the earth crumbled, revealing rocks and roots. “What about in there?” I knelt down just over the ridge.
“No! Be careful.” He pulled me back. “That section could give way any time. You’d lose the vial forever.”
He studied the wooden pegboard nailed to a nearby tree for hanging wet towels, then shook his head and climbed halfway down the steps. Bending over, he searched them for a good spot. “Give it to me.”
I followed him down the stairs and handed him the necklace. “Watch out. It’s breakable.”
“I will.” After a few tries, his head bobbed back up, and he brushed his hands together. “Done. I snagged it around a few long screws, and then wound it up so it doesn’t hang down.”
I counted down to his step. “Seven. Remember. Seven from the top.”
“Right.”
The late afternoon sun beat down on my hair and shoulders, suddenly unbearable. I looked up and down the stream. “Honey?”
He must have read my mind, for in seconds he’d stripped and jumped into the water. I followed, double-checking the river for unexpected visitors. We’d never once seen a human being on the property, for the river was too rocky and shallow for boats, and there were no roads across the river for miles. Regardless, I sure as hell didn’t want to get caught skinny-dipping.
“Come on! It’s warm.”
With one last nervous look, I stepped out of my underwear and hung my bra on the railing. Hurrying now, I slid forward on the slippery round rocks and dunked under as fast as I could.
When my head popped up, Quinn grabbed my waist and swirled me around. Feeling sixteen again, I floated on my back in the water with his hands under my arms, and let him move me in counterclockwise circles. The amber liquid flowed over me, running in rivulets over my thighs and arms, and forming a shimmering pool over my navel.
A circus of water bugs skittered around us, waltzing on the surface. Massive oaks towered overhead, and one in particular looked close to falling in the water. “When do you think that one will topple?”
Quinn looked thoughtfully at its exposed roots and the area where the soil had eroded beneath it. “Good question. Could be next year. Could be in a hundred years. Depends how deep those other roots go.”
A lone silver sea gull flapped its way downstream. I still marveled at how odd it seemed to spot sea birds so far inland. We had plenty of them on Honeoye Lake, and the local experts said they worked their way down from the Thousand Islands, all the way to the Finger Lakes. I often saw them feasting on bugs and worms in freshly turned farmers’ fields.
I twisted the mood ring on my finger and squinted toward the stairs. “You did a good job. I can’t even see the necklace from down here.”
“Thanks.”
We swirled in silence for a while. I fixated on the smooth round rocks that lined the shore, climbing only ten feet or so toward the bluff. The land was much closer to the water down here, and I could see why it had been chosen for the swimming hole so many years ago. “How old do you think those rocks are? They’re all so smooth and rounded. The water did that. Didn’t it?”
“Hmm?”
“I said—”
“I know what you said. I was just admiring my wife.”
I noticed with a start how my breasts poked out of the water, and how the dark patch between my legs glistened. I stood up suddenly and splashed Quinn. “Geez, Quinn. Don’t you ever give it a rest?”
He reached for me under the water. “Nope
.”
I laughed and backed away from him. “Stop it.”
He caught me, and pulled me close to him. “Nothing wrong with me admiring my gal, is there?”
I blushed and kissed him quickly on the lips. “No.” Warmth spread through me. “You don’t look so shabby, yourself.” I traced my fingers across his strong pecs, around his navel, and then let my fingers trail beneath the water to one of my favorite parts of his body. “But we can’t do it here, big guy.”
He ushered me toward the stairs, a sparkle in his eyes. “Ready to go back? I know a place we can be alone.”
I laughed and followed him up the steps like a teenager. We dried off with our shirts, running in our wet underwear back toward the cabin, where Beau waited for us with both feet on the windowsill. I threw on a sweatshirt over my damp underwear, and took Beau for a quick walk. Quinn watched from the porch steps, his long-lashed eyes following my every move. I tried not to stare, but his amorous intents grew more apparent by the moment, making my heartbeat quicken.
After I refilled Beau’s water and settled him on the quilt on the couch, we fell onto the bed just as the sun dipped below the mountains, darkening the woods. But I didn’t really notice, because Quinn’s soft mouth and gentle hands took me away from time and place. I didn’t return to reality until after midnight.
Chapter 14
I woke at 6:00 A.M., with delicious tingling from our night of passion still coursing through me. On one hand, I felt horribly guilty for enjoying myself, knowing Callie was likely somewhere in hell. On the other, my husband had never been so attentive.
I smiled, and idly wondered if it had something to do with the essential oils. He’d been slathering them on both of us all day. Wintergreen. Lavender. And a mix called “stress away” that offered the unusual combination of lime and vanilla, plus other exotic sounding substances. It smelled so heavenly, I spilled droplets over my pillow and let the heady scent lull me to sleep when Quinn rolled over and my brain wouldn’t stop chattering.
The slim roll-on bottle was different from the other bottles, and I figured when all this was over, I’d keep stress away in my purse. I could wear it like a perfume, and secretly calm myself down when life started to drive me nuts.
Tall Pines Mysteries: A Mystery/Suspense Boxed Set Page 31
