The Accused

by Jana DeLeon

  Alaina sucked in a breath. “Oh, no! But how? No one is supposed to have access to the house but myself, Amos and William.”

  “Other keys could be floating around,” Carter said. “Those locks are old and probably haven’t ever been changed.”

  “But you’re going to do that, right?” Willa asked.

  “Of course,” Carter assured her, “but it’s an old mansion with secret passageways stuck in the middle of a swamp that’s swallowed it up. We have to assume there are other ways in besides the obvious.”

  Alaina bit her lip, her mind spinning with all the implications of Carter’s finding. “Would Amos know about secret entries?”

  “Maybe. He wasn’t at home when I left the house, but as soon as I get a chance, I plan to quiz him on it.”

  “And in the meantime,” Willa said, “you’re not letting her stay there alone, right?”

  “Absolutely not,” Carter said. “I’ll pack a bag after dinner and take one of the upstairs rooms until we can figure this all out.”

  Willa nodded and rose from her chair. “Then I best get the roast out and get you served. You’ve got a full night ahead of you.”

  Alaina watched as Willa walked into the house, closing the patio door behind her. “Why is this happening?”

  “I don’t know, but when we get to the house, you and I are going to have a serious discussion about potential suspects. I know you’ve been skirting around things since you got here, and I haven’t pushed because we all have things we’d rather not discuss. But we’re now past being polite. This is serious business.”

  “I know.” She stared past him at the sun setting over the swamp. Here, in the cool breeze of the swamp cooler, with a glass of wonderful tea in her hand and a glorious sunset in front of her, she had been able to push the situation back far enough in her mind to slip into a moment of peace.

  That moment was over.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Stay in my truck,” Carter said, “but move over to the driver’s seat. If I’m not back here in five minutes, then leave and go straight to the sheriff’s office for help.”

  Alaina stared at Carter. “You can’t go in there by yourself.”

  “You have the last two nights. It’s actually my job to protect the citizens of this town, and for the time being, that includes you. So wait.”

  He jumped out of the truck, swinging the door shut behind him. Alaina watched as he walked in front of the vehicle, a grim look on his face. She waited until he disappeared inside the house, then slid over to the driver’s seat and clutched the steering wheel.

  She tried counting to one hundred, then singing a song, but finally gave up and looked at her watch. Only two minutes had passed. She blew out a breath of relief. It had seemed like so much longer, and the absolute last thing she wanted to do was drive away and leave Carter inside the house with God knew what or who.

  As the seconds ticked by and the front door remained closed, her anxiety grew. What if he didn’t come out before the five minutes were up? Would she be able to follow orders and drive away? She pulled her cell phone from her purse and cursed when she saw the no-service indicator.

  Taking a deep breath, she looked at her watch again. Five more seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.

  She gave the door one final look before starting the truck and putting it in gear. But before she pressed the accelerator, Carter hurried outside and pulled open the driver’s door.

  “Well?” she asked, her foot still hovering over the accelerator.

  “It appears okay. I’ll make a more thorough inspection once we’re secured inside.”

  Alaina shut off the truck engine and followed Carter inside, mulling over the duplicity of “secured inside.” As things stood, she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel secure inside this house.

  Carter tossed his duffel bag on the floor in the entry as soon as they walked inside, then turned to her. “First thing, I’m changing the door locks on the back door and the patio off the kitchen. The front door hardware is so old we’ll probably have to special-order it.”

  Alaina nodded. “Let’s hope there are only a couple of keys to it. They are these huge iron things. Surely there aren’t that many.”

  “I hope that’s the case. While I’m working on the laundry room exit, I want you to start inspecting all the rooms off the entry. Don’t go down any of the hallways or upstairs. I want you easily within yelling distance.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Any viable way to enter the house from the outside or to move through the house undetected. Servants’ passageways, windows that don’t lock—that sort of thing.”

  She started to head across the entry but paused and dug her pistol out of her purse. “Just in case,” she said.

  Carter gave her a single nod but didn’t seem remotely fazed that she was going to prowl around with a loaded weapon. It gave her a moment of pause that he felt the situation was serious enough to merit it, but she put her purse on the entry table and headed to the first room to begin her search.

  The room was a bit on the small side, and Alaina couldn’t remember what it had been used for when she was a child. Now only two pieces of lonely furniture and a couple of boxes sat inside. She checked the windows, but both were nailed shut, with a thick coat of paint covering the nail heads. No one was coming in that way. The interior walls had peeling wallpaper, which would have easily shown a secret passageway.

  The second room had become a haven for cardboard boxes, most of which had seen better days. She didn’t bother attempting to check behind the wall of boxes on the far side. Even if a passageway was located behind them, no one was coming through it without crashing through a stack of cardboard.

  She moved from that room to the next and then the one after that, repeating the process as she made her way around all the rooms off the first-floor entry. The sound of Carter working on the door lock was reassuring. If something happened, he was only a dash away. But as the minutes passed into an hour and all she came up with was dust and evidence of some small four-legged creatures that she did not want to personally encounter, she began to get more frustrated than nervous.

  Someone had been in the house with her—they knew it for certain—but what if they’d simply used a key and entered through the front or back doors? Maybe all this looking for secret passageways was a waste of time. Certainly, servants’ passages existed in the house as evidenced by the two Carter had already found, but those passages were used to move without being seen within a house, not from outside the house to inside of it and vice versa. If all the windows were locked and with new locks on the doors, surely whoever had managed to get in last night would no longer be able to terrorize her.

  Unless they had a key to the front door.

  No. She shook her head, putting that thought out of her mind, determined to believe that she’d be safe in the house from this point forward. Two weeks was nothing. She could manage two weeks of dust with ease.

  She walked over to a window in the last room she had to check and stared out into the swamp that had swallowed up the massive backyard of the estate. In some ways, it was beautiful—all the layers of color and texture—but in other ways, it was cruel, overrunning everything in its path and swallowing it up until only remnants of the past remained.

  The trailing, grasping vines bothered her more than she was willing to admit—made her feel claustrophobic as they pressed forward to consume the home. They felt alive somehow—not in the traditional way that they were alive—but alive and with a mind, as if they had a purpose and a plan for their progression.

  “How’s it going?”

  Carter’s voice sounded behind her and she whirled around. “Oh!”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said as he stepped into the room.

  “No, it’s my fault for not paying better attention.”

  He glanced out the window, then studied her for a couple of seconds. “You seemed engrossed with whatever you were look
ing at.”

  She glanced out the window and tried to think of something sane to say as the thoughts that had been rolling through her mind did not sound remotely rational. “I was...uh...”

  “It’s mesmerizing in a somewhat sinister way,” he said quietly. “The swamp, that is.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. He’d captured her exact feeling so accurately, but never had she imagined that her fanciful thoughts would be shared by anyone else in Calais, especially Carter.

  “I...I thought I was the only one...”

  “Who felt the pull of the swamp?” Carter stepped next to her and looked out the window. “You’re not.”

  She turned to look outside with him. “I guess I never figured you for the sort of person to believe in strange feelings.” She blew out a breath. “I’m not explaining myself well.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s an uneasiness but with no obvious reason. Take right now, for instance—you should be more worried about what’s going on inside the house, but I’m guessing you’re more comfortable with the thought of sleeping inside tonight than walking across what used to be the back lawn in broad daylight.”

  “Yes, that’s it exactly. But surely, you’re not afraid to walk through the swamp. You grew up here.”

  He nodded. “I think it’s because I grew up here that I’m willing to accept that the swamps of Mystere Parish are not the same as other swamps. There are so many stories about the strange happenings in Mystere that it’s become impossible to separate truth from lore, but I imagine there’s truth in most every story.”

  Despite the heat and humidity, a chill came over Alaina and she crossed her arms. “Voodoo stuff, I guess?” Rationally, she didn’t believe in voodoo as a force of its own—only as something that worked off the power of belief of the supposedly cursed—but whatever she’d seen hovering over her bed that first night was no voodoo curse.

  “I’m done with the locks,” he said.

  His voice broke into her fanciful thoughts, and she suddenly realized how close he stood to her. The bare skin of his arm scarcely brushed against her own bare skin and she could feel the heat coming off him. He was tall, but so was she, so their heads were only inches apart. She turned to look at him and found him looking directly at her. His jawline was covered with the shadow of emerging hair, making his chiseled cheeks and green eyes even more defined.

  A rush of heat that had nothing to do with the humidity came over her, completely eclipsing her earlier chill. It would be so easy to lean in and press her lips to his. Despite his dislike of attorneys and his protests that he was only involved in her inheritance requirements because of his mother, she could tell he was attracted to her. It was in the way he looked at her when he thought she couldn’t see—the way he took care to avoid being near her, as if he didn’t trust himself.

  Until now.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Was he standing so close to her now because she’d been unnerved earlier and he was trying to comfort her, or was he feeling the pull to her the same as she was to him?

  As if reading her mind, he took a step back and turned. “Let’s do a quick check of the upstairs,” he said. “We can do a more thorough search for passageways tomorrow. If he can’t get in, he can’t move around.”

  Alaina nodded and Carter left the room. Had he felt it, as well? Or was she imagining that he felt more for her than he showed? It wouldn’t be the first time she’d thought a guy was interested in her only to find out he had a completely different agenda. Staring out the window again, she blew out a breath.

  None of it mattered. At the end of two weeks, she was leaving Calais. Either way, the end was the same.

  Always the same.

  * * *

  IN THE BEDROOM next to Alaina’s, Carter carefully pulled the dusty sheet from the bed and rolled it up into a ball, trying to avoid scattering more dust all over the room. Being a typical man, it hadn’t occurred to him to bring clean sheets with him, but fortunately, Alaina had gone through them all the day before, selecting the most worn for drop cloths and washing the rest in anticipation of her sisters’ stay.

  The shower in the bathroom a couple of doors down came on, the spray clinking against the porcelain tub. Immediately, a vision of Alaina standing naked under that stream of water flashed in front of him, as vivid as a movie and much more stimulating than any Hollywood actress he’d ever seen.

  He unfolded the clean sheet and flipped it over the bed, trying to distract his mind from dangerous thoughts. Alaina was beautiful and sexy, but she was also an attorney and an outsider. When her time in Calais was done, she’d move on to conquer the legal world, and he’d still be right here, standing in her dust.

  So have a fling. It’s not like you haven’t done it before.

  A valid argument, albeit likely spurred along by parts of his body other than his mind, but this time it was different. Alaina was at a crossroads with her personal life and her career when she’d come to Calais. Now her life was in danger. To make a move on her right now would be grossly unfair, given that she couldn’t possibly be thinking completely rationally.

  A fling was fine as long as both parties were on the same page before getting started. But given the current situation, he was afraid that Alaina wasn’t capable of being on the same page. The last thing he wanted to do was add more negatives about Calais to the long list she already carted around with her.

  He finished making the bed, then headed to Alaina’s bedroom to do a thorough search. The patio doors were secure and all the windows were locked. He ran his hands along all the walls, inspecting every inch, but didn’t see any place where an opening could exist. The closet was stacked high with boxes, so even if there was a passageway that led into the tiny space, it wasn’t accessible.

  The room was secure, but he still wasn’t happy about it. If he could get away with it, he’d drag his mattress in here and sleep in the same room, but he knew Alaina would balk at the suggestion. And it was just as well because the risk to their emotions might be higher than danger to Alaina’s person.

  As he closed the closet door, his cell phone rang. Rob. He frowned as he answered the call, already knowing that the attorney hadn’t called him at 11:00 p.m. just to chat, especially given their last conversation.

  “What’s up, Rob?” Carter answered.

  “Got—information—need to know—important.”

  The static on the line cut into the conversation. “Hold on, Rob. You’re cutting out.” But the gist of Rob’s conversation had been clear. Carter needed to get a better signal.

  He pushed open the patio doors and stepped out onto the balcony. The signal bar went up one notch. “Can you hear me, Rob?”

  “Yeah. That’s better. Our conversation the other night kept nagging at me, so I called in a favor with a local cop I play poker with and had him check on the principals.”

  “I take it you didn’t like what he found.”

  “No. Steven Adams, the father of the girl who accused Warren of molesting her, hasn’t been to work for a week. His wife says he’s in and out of the house, but she’s sketchy on the times and dates that he’s home.”

  “Is she covering for him?”

  “My buddy says she looks scared, but it’s hard to know if that’s because she’s covering or because she doesn’t know what he’s up to.”

  “Either way, that’s not good.”

  “It gets worse. The father of the girl who was murdered after Warren was found not guilty, Larry Colbert, is a pharmaceutical sales rep. He was supposed to be at a convention in New Orleans for a week, but he never showed. His wife filed a missing-person report a couple of days ago.”

  Carter gripped the cell phone and tried to think. Two major players in the same tragedy—one missing and one with a sketchy alibi.

  “Carter? You still there?”

  “Yeah...just thinking.”

  “This looks really bad, man.”

  “I know.”

  “My buddy’s name
is Aaron Baker. I told him who you were and why I wanted the information. If you need anything, he said to tell you to call him directly. I’ll text you his information.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Watch your back, Trahan. I want to collect on that drink you owe me.”

  “You got it.”

  He stepped back into the bedroom and secured the patio doors. As he turned around, Alaina walked into the room. She wore pink cotton shorts and a matching T-shirt. Her damp hair trailed down her back and she wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup. Flip-flops separated her bare feet from the dirty floor, and it almost made him smile when he saw her toenails were painted the same color pink as her clothes.

  Without a single bit of effort, Alaina LeBeau was the most attractive woman he’d ever known.

  She was drying the end of her long tresses with a towel, but when she caught sight of him standing there, she froze. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He didn’t want to scare her, but the time for hiding stuff was over. “I just got off the phone with an attorney friend of mine from Baton Rouge.”

  Her eyes flashed with anger. “You were checking up on me?”

  “I suppose you can look at it that way, but I choose to think I was following up on anything that might follow you to Calais.”

  “You had no right!”

  “I had every right. I have a responsibility to the citizens of Calais. If trouble followed you here, then it’s my job to find it and eliminate the threat.”

  She glared at him for several seconds, but he’d seen the shift in her eyes. The anger was still there, but she knew he was right.

  “Fine,” she finally said. “Then I guess you already know about the Warren case.”

  “I found the particulars on the internet and asked my buddy about it from an attorney’s perspective. After we talked, he contacted a friend of his with the Baton Rouge Police Department about the vandalism to your ex-boss’s car.”

  He relayed the information he’d gotten from Rob.

  The last remnant of anger dissolved from her expression and worry replaced it. “Both of them have disappeared? How can that be? What are the police doing?” Her voice rose as she talked.