A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

by Joan Johnston

  The breeze coming in off the water carried a fresh, salty scent, and below us I could see water hurl itself against the rocks and rise in a misty spray that now and then would split into the colors of a rainbow. My nerves were gradually settling and my mind was clearing. No wonder my sister loved this place. I would be hard-pressed to find such a solitary and peaceful spot in the madness that was L.A.

  I might have been able to appreciate the spot and the view even more if most of my mind hadn’t been preoccupied with trying to figure out who had shot at us. I agreed with Sloan that anyone at the ranch who knew Cameron would have known Sloan would bring me here today. Somehow, we had to find a way to narrow the list of suspects—fast.

  Ahead I saw a large flat rock. When we reached it, Sloan urged me to sit down and then sat next to me. “Cameron always said that she was going to build a house right here on this spot one day. The slope of the cliff isn’t as steep here, and she had plans for building stairs down to the ocean.”

  My throat tightened at his use of the past tense. Somehow, now that I’d convinced him that something might have happened to Cameron, the possibility was becoming more real to me. I reached for his hand. Swallowing hard, I said, “I don’t want her to be…I don’t want something to have happened to her. We don’t know that something has.”

  He gave my hand a squeeze. “You’re right.” Then in what I was sure was an effort to change the subject, he pulled the bottle of Chardonnay, cheese and grapes out of the backpack. As he quickly and efficiently removed the cork, he suggested, “Why don’t we eat while we discuss what we’re going to do when we get back to the ranch.”

  In a matter of moments, I had a plastic glass in my hand, and a small picnic was spread out on the rock. I took a quick sip of the wine to brace myself for the upcoming battle. I was betting that Sloan would want me to stop pretending that I was Cameron, and I didn’t want to. Not yet. Drawing in a deep breath, I said, “You’re going to want to tell James who I really am, and I want to wait.”

  “I think we should wait, too.”

  As I stared at him in surprise, he continued, “Anything we tell him right now will only upset him. And as you just pointed out, we don’t really know anything definite about what might have happened to Cameron yet.”

  It was one of the arguments I’d intended to use on him, and I found it both odd and comforting that our minds would be so in tune. “The first thing we should do is to narrow the list of suspects. Whoever took that shot at us had access to an SUV and would have been absent from the house for at least an hour.”

  “Gus might be able to help with that. He keeps a pretty good eye on the comings and goings of the McKenzies and their houseguests.”

  I took a bite of cheese and glanced around the area again.

  “Whoever shot at us would have to be very good with a gun. Does that eliminate anyone?”

  Sloan thought for a minute. “I’m not sure about the Lintons, but hunting has traditionally been a favorite McKenzie sport. James used to take Cameron, Austin and me with him when we were younger. Doc Carter hunts, too, and I’m pretty sure that Beatrice can handle a gun.”

  “I’ll ask my friend Pepper to check out the Lintons and see if they have any expertise with guns. They do seem to have a motive for wanting Cameron out of the way. Austin might inherit and be more amenable to selling the land.”

  “They’d still have to convince whomever James appointed to his board.”

  “But they might have a better chance of doing that with Austin. He’d probably be on their side. At least that’s the way I’d see it if I were writing it.”

  “If you were writing it?”

  “That’s what I do for a living. I live in L.A. and I write plots for a soap opera, Secrets.”

  “No kidding.” He poured more wine into my glass. “Tell me more about Brooke Ashby.”

  For another quarter of an hour, I did just that. Soon Sloan knew as much about me as anyone did—except for perhaps Pepper and my parents. The man was so easy to talk to, he’d have made a great cop or P.I. Suspects would probably line up to spill their guts to him.

  The man had gotten to me. Not good, I told myself. He wasn’t mine. He couldn’t be mine.

  But when I finished my life story, he said, “You’re full of surprises, Brooke Ashby.” Then he leaned over and took my mouth with his.

  He might not be mine, but I definitely wanted to be his. Not good at all.

  The kiss might have turned into something else, if we hadn’t been interrupted by the sound of a truck rattling up the road. A second later, it broke through the woods and rolled toward us.

  “Our ride.” Sloan rose from the rock and walked toward it while I started packing up the picnic. By the time I finished, Gus had climbed out of the truck and was deep in conversation with Sloan. They started walking along the cliff to take a closer look at the plane. A few moments later, a state trooper’s car appeared, and two officers joined Gus and Sloan at the plane.

  I took a moment to move closer to the edge of the cliff. The breeze was steady and sweet. I’d always loved to be near the water. Going to the beach—even when it was one of the crowded ones on Lake Michigan or near L.A.—had always had a calming effect on me. I could see why my sister loved this place and why she’d planned to build a house here one day.

  And this side of her, the part that would want to use this place as a retreat, seemed to contradict the spoiled and headstrong socialite that others had described to me. Oddly enough, I could relate to both sides of her. I might not be a socialite, but I’d left the Midwest and taken a job in Tinseltown. And we shared the need to get away from it all. When I was younger, it was riding that had helped me do that. Now I tried to hike on the weekends.

  I felt as though I was gradually coming to know Cameron, and I was even starting to miss her. I wanted her to be alive. A little band tightened around my heart. Then I moved to the edge of the cliff, and my mind began to weave a story. If she’d come here on the day she disappeared, she might have been standing right where I was standing now. Sloan had said that she’d threatened to call the wedding off—a threat he hadn’t taken too seriously. But I couldn’t help wondering if Cameron had indeed had second thoughts about settling for a marriage that was primarily a business arrangement.

  I could see why she might be torn. Her father had had a heart attack, and he was refusing to leave her everything outright. Looking around, I wondered what I might be willing to sacrifice to keep the land and to ensure that a place like this would remain as pristine as it was today.

  I could picture the scene in my mind as if it were one I had written for Secrets. Cameron had come here alone to think it through. The sound of the surf was louder here, the wind stronger. If someone had come up behind her, would she have heard them?

  Another thought occurred to me. If someone from the ranch had followed her, they wouldn’t have had to sneak up, would they? If she hadn’t been expecting it, it wouldn’t have taken much in the way of force to make her lose her balance….

  I couldn’t help myself. I risked a quick look down. Just before my head began to spin and I had to raise my eyes, I thought I saw the glint of something. Directly in front of me, a seagull circled lazily on a current of air.

  “Show-off,” I muttered. Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath. Then I dropped to my knees, took a firm grip on the rocks that formed the cliff’s edge and looked down again. There was definitely something on a ledge about twenty feet down, something that was reflecting sunlight.

  I glanced back over my shoulder and I saw that Sloan and Gus were still in conference with the police at the plane. I dropped my gaze to the ledge, willing my eyes not to stray to the ocean below. There were all sorts of rocks and crevices to provide a handhold or foothold. And there was more of a slope to the cliff face than what I’d seen when Sloan had been flying alongside it. A talented engineer could probably find a way of attaching a set of stairs that would allow access to the beach below.

&nb
sp; Once again, I measured the distance to the ledge and gauged the risk. I’d had to climb some pretty steep hills when I was hiking in the Hollywood Hills. This wouldn’t be too much different.

  Yeah, right, said a little voice in my head. I frowned, finding it interesting that my saner voice was piping up again now that Sloan Campbell wasn’t around. But my inner Alice hadn’t deserted me. I could make it down there, she was assuring me. I just shouldn’t look down.

  Without another thought, I turned, swung my legs over the edge of the cliff and felt for the first crevice with my foot. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I just kept my eyes straight ahead, reminded myself that I was doing this for my long-lost twin, and climbed slowly down. Once I was on the ledge, it was a bit trickier. To minimize the problem if I had a dizzy spell, I dropped to my hands and knees.

  It was then that I saw a larger crevice formed where the ledge met the cliff wall. It was large enough that I could have fit right into it. Instead, I crawled to the far end of the ledge where I’d seen the shiny object. It was a gold locket, and I thought I recognized it. I’d seen Elizabeth McKenzie wearing it in her portrait—and in the photo that Pepper had given me of Cameron.

  Fear crept into me and settled in a cold, hard ball in my stomach as two scenarios played themselves out in my mind like little film clips. In one, the locket was ripped off as Cameron struggled with her attacker. In the next, she was standing at the edge of the cliff, fingering the locket as she tried to figure out what to do, and she’d torn the locket away herself when she’d been pushed. In both images, I could picture Cameron falling and striking the rocks below.

  A wave of dizziness struck me with such force that my stomach pitched, and I nearly lost the little picnic lunch that I’d just enjoyed. I flattened myself on the ledge and ordered myself to breathe. I gripped the locket tightly in my hand as if by doing so I could hold on to my sister, and gradually the images faded.

  The instant the dizziness eased, I knew that I had to get off the ledge. And I couldn’t afford to think about it. After tucking the locket into my pocket, I inched my way back to where I’d landed. Then I drew in a deep breath and, using the crevices in the cliff wall for support, I rose to my feet and began the climb upward.

  It wasn’t as easy as the trip down. The wind seemed to have picked up a bit. I thought that I could hear someone calling my name. One handhold, one foothold at a time, I told myself. It was one thing not to look down, but it was another much harder thing not to picture the distance to the rock ledge in my mind. My heart was beating fast when my hand finally clamped down on the rocks that bordered the cliff.

  I felt one swift wave of relief followed by a spurt of pure panic when the rock beneath my left foot crumbled. As I dug the fingers of both hands into the cliff, I pictured rocks plummeting through the air and smacking into the foamy sea below. All the weight of my body was on my weak ankle. A wave of dizziness hit me, and for a moment I felt myself teeter. I was going to fall.

  A hand grabbed my wrist. A second later another hand joined the first and I felt myself being hauled upward. The moment that my feet were on solid ground, Sloan’s hands gripped my shoulders and he gave me a hard shake.

  I opened my eyes to see fear in his.

  “Are you all right? What happened? Did you fall?”

  “No. I climbed down because I saw something.”

  He gave me another shake and fury joined the fear in his eyes.

  “I found something.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the locket. “It was on the ledge. It’s hers, isn’t it?”

  Sloan took the locket. “Yes. She wore this every day.”

  “Someone pushed her. It must have torn off in the struggle. I—”

  I couldn’t go on. There was something in my throat that stopped me. A sob. I didn’t realize it, but I must have been crying because Sloan pulled me abruptly against his chest and just held me close. I might have been able to pull myself together if he hadn’t done that. I’d been so certain that Cameron was alive—I still wanted to believe that she was. I wanted to be able to get to know her, to love her. And then I thought of Sloan and I held on to him even tighter and wept for both our loss.

  It was more than an hour later before we got back to the ranch. The troopers had found some tire tracks and they’d remained at the scene to make plaster casts.

  Sloan was angry with me. On the ride back to the hacienda, he barely said a word to me. At least Gus hadn’t overheard my outburst about Cameron. He’d still been inspecting the damage to the plane when Sloan had realized I was missing and the older man had stayed with the troopers.

  Once I’d recovered from my weep-athon, I’d tried to convince myself that the two scenes I’d pictured so vividly in my mind could be worst-case scenarios. Finding the locket on the cliff didn’t necessarily mean that Cameron had fallen over. There could be other explanations.

  Along with my inner Alice, I also had an inner Little Mary Sunshine. I didn’t want to give up on Cameron yet.

  But it wasn’t looking good.

  Now that I’d gotten a bit of a grip on myself, I was willing to concede that Sloan might have a reason to be upset with me. I’d taken a risk climbing down to the ledge. But I’d found Cameron’s locket. That had to count for something. We now had proof that Cameron had been to the cliff, and that something had happened to make her drop it.

  When Gus finally pulled his truck to a stop at the stables, Sloan told me to go up to the main house. He’d be up as soon as he and Gus made arrangements for the plane. Then they disappeared into Sloan’s office. I didn’t much like being dismissed as if I were a disobedient child. Still, I started to do just what he’d said—partly because I’d been raised to be a “good girl.” One of the reasons I was growing to like Cameron was because I sensed that she had a little more of the “bad girl” in her than I did.

  Then there was the fact that the day had been an eventful one. I’d had mind-blowing sex, nearly lost my life in a plane crash, faced my biggest fear by climbing down to that ledge, and then indulged in a crying jag.

  Okay, so it was only twenty feet to the cliff. I’d still done it. And I’d found Cameron’s locket. Going up to the hacienda would give me some time to figure out what it meant.

  Or I could battle Hannibal over who the bed really belonged to and take a nap.

  Both of those options disappeared the instant I saw Marcie, Austin and Hal coming out of one of the stable doors.

  “There you are,” Marcie called. “I told Austin you hadn’t forgotten we were going riding.”

  Truth be told, I had. Completely. I tried to glance at my watch unobtrusively, and found that it was a little after three. Time flies when you’re being shot down out of the sky.

  “We had your horse saddled for you,” Marcie added.

  I thought of the promise I’d made to Sloan that I wouldn’t go off with any one of them alone. But this was a group. Surely, there was safety in numbers. Besides, time was of the essence, and if I went with them, I might be able to find out more about Cameron’s disappearance.

  Hal and Austin each led a saddled horse, and Marcie was leading two. Doc Carter and Beatrice brought up the rear of the little parade, sans horses.

  “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” Marcie asked.

  I hesitated for one more instant. But when the horse neighed softly and pushed her nose into my shoulder, I was immediately won over. Hadn’t I been longing for a ride ever since I’d first stood on that bluff and seen the horses?

  “Of course, I haven’t changed my mind.” I smiled at Marcie and took the reins she held out to me. Then I turned to Beatrice and Doc Carter. “Will you be joining us?”

  Doc Carter chuckled. “Not today. Austin and Marcie wanted us to see the horses that the Radcliffs are turning over to us. You young ones go off and enjoy yourselves.” He took my hand and patted it. “Perhaps we can get together when you get back.”

  “Sure.”

  “See you then.”<
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  Hal and Austin were already seated by the time I put my foot in the stirrup and mounted my horse. She was a beauty and as I leaned over to pat her neck, I asked Marcie, “What’s her name?”

  “Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting about the amnesia. Her name is Lace Ribbons. You call her Lacey.”

  I patted her neck. “You’re a beauty, Lacey.” And she was. She was black as pitch with not a brown hair on her. And she had a dainty air about her. I thought of Saturn and felt that they might make a perfect match.

  “You’ve had her since she was a two-year-old. You never ride any other mount,” Marcie said.

  Austin and Hal were leading the way out of the stable yard, and we fell in behind them.

  “Why don’t I ride any other horse?” I asked.

  Marcie glanced at me. “I never thought much about it. But you confessed to me once that you’d been thrown off a horse as a child, and you’d been careful about your mounts ever since. Lace Ribbons has perfect manners.”

  I didn’t doubt that she did. But I was thinking of Saturn.

  I saw that Austin and Hal were leading us toward the area of the ranch behind the hacienda and its gardens. I searched the map I’d made in my mind on the bluff the day before and recalled that a stream, bordered by woods, wound its way through this part of the property.

  Sure enough, Austin urged his horse into a trot and started toward the stream. It had been so long since I’d ridden that I was yearning for a fast run. I was about to say so to Marcie when she moved her horse forward and Austin fell back.

  I bit back a sigh and managed a smile for my “cousin.” I had a hunch that the Lintons and Austin had an agenda that didn’t include the gallop I was longing for.

  “I want to apologize for my behavior last night,” he said as soon as he drew alongside me.