Sketchbook in hand, she wandered out to the couch and settled down with her feet up. The new drugs were keeping her orthostatic intolerance symptoms at bay, but she still needed rest after being out two days in a row. To convince Terry she could handle this small contract for the movie and pave the way for future jobs, she couldn’t risk getting overextended and having a crash.
The phone chirped. Rob replied, Long story, tell you later. A photo came, too: him and Michael in front of the gallery on the top floor of the museum. Probably some of the paintings on her list were hanging there right now. She enlarged the image, trying to see what hung on the wall beyond the glass doors, and stopped with her finger beneath the matching chins of Rob and Michael. How had she not noticed the similarity before? As a mental art exercise, she tried to place Tyrone in the frame, too. He had Michael’s nose but not Rob’s. All three had similar chins and infectious smiles, like that British musician, Duncan James, but with a Canadian summer tan. As she settled down for her rest, her mental movie screen added more actors with similar chins and then spun off to similar haircuts and eventually facial hair. Somewhere around Skeet Ulrich’s moustache, she slid away into blissful sleep.
Lacey crossed the bridge over the lazy late-summer Elbow River and cruised up the hill with the parts for Jake’s vandalized cameras. Wayne had offered to show her his rogue’s gallery of hockey players behaving badly around the pool and stables — from before they got wise to the cameras — but she refused. If she knew which trophy wife had been getting off on the weight bench with which defenceman, her lousy poker face wouldn’t suppress an eye roll the next time the same sleek wife walked into one of Jake’s parties on the arm of her aging oil-baron husband.
Passing Dee out walking with Boney and Beau, she waved. Dee hadn’t been up yet when Lacey had left for Calgary at seven. Lacey shouldn’t have been up that early, either, considering how much sleep she’d lost over all the memories stirred up by Chad. She and Dee had sat around the firepit on the back terrace until late, discussing the day, but it hadn’t cleared her mind completely. She’d had nightmares.
“I felt guilty about him for a long time,” she’d told Dee. “If I’d left my phone on when I went to bed after my night shift, I would’ve picked up that distress call and sent the North Van RCMP ahead to the gorge. Looking at Chad today, with his scars and his twitchy eyes and the way his big brother hovers, ready to step in when he can’t cope … that one incident destroyed his life.”
Dee frowned. “And it and Dan together nearly destroyed yours. Don’t go borrowing other people’s trauma when you have plenty of your own.”
Lost in the memory of that dank Vancouver afternoon, with the rain drizzling down and mist winding through the cedars along the rocky gorge, Lacey felt in her gut the moment she’d recognized Chad in that bloody mess on the wet planks. She snapped herself out of it with an effort. “He’s lucky they weren’t closer to the bridge, or he’d have gone over, too.”
“It was his risk to take,” said Dee. “Just like when you were on the Force and ran toward a brawl or a shooting, how many times a week? It’s not your fault he took a beating on the job.”
Lacey poked a log deeper into the flames. “I guess you’re right. It’s just … and I guess I feel even more guilty for thinking this …”
“What?”
“I wish he wasn’t on my job,” Lacey said at last. “I feel really bad that he’s carrying this, but his mental state is a liability, and on my first supervisory job since I left the Force. If anything goes wrong up at Jake’s because he’s screwed up, I’ll be wearing that. I need good current references to show to PI agencies when I get my course finished. I need a job with benefits so I can get my teeth cleaned and stuff.”
Stuff including finding a therapist who could treat her for the lingering effects of that last year with Dan, and all those shitty child abuse cases, and the lack of support from her sergeant. She was at least as scarred in her way as Chad was in his.
“Wayne’ll be your reference, and he won’t blame you for Chad. You’ve got a year of solid job performance with him now.” Dee tipped her head back. “I love the night sky out here, far from Calgary’s lights, when you can see the stars tangled in the spruce.”
Far overhead, a single star winked at Lacey. She wished on it that Chad would prove fit for work and that she’d get lots of hours at the higher rate to pay her lawyer. After the divorce, she’d be able to pay for a therapist. Please, no nightmares tonight.
But they had come, anyway: faces of the dead and the traumatized, and Dan laughing as he choked her until she woke up gasping.
Today, with the bright sunshine reflecting everywhere and heat already radiating off the dusty road, Lacey had a plan: watch Chad today, and if she still doubted him tonight, she’d ask Wayne to replace him. At least then her ass was covered if he did screw up. She’d feel guilty, sure. But Dee was right; she had her own trauma to deal with, and Chad had to handle his.
She pulled up to Jake’s gate, now kept closed as it should have been all week, and clicked her radio.
“Travis, Chad, can one of you buzz me in the front gate, please?” Nothing happened. She radioed again and then saw Travis trotting from the helicopter pad. He hit the gate control and stepped aside as she drove through.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I was doing a perimeter check.”
“Where’s Chad?”
Travis frowned. “He should be watching the monitors. Must have gone to the can.”
One strike, Chad. “I’ll be at the stables, fixing that camera mounting.”
“I’ll give you a hand. All quiet today, anyway. The boy and his dad went off in the helicopter a while ago.”
“Thanks. Can you bring me a folding stepladder? The equipment shed is —”
“I found it already.” He jogged off and arrived back at the stables in time to hold the door as she carried in the box of gear. He was good for handing stuff up while she swapped out the damaged mounting, and she tried not to wonder if he was watching her ass, which was pretty much at his eye level the whole time she was on the ladder.
As she was coming down, her boot slipped. His hands were there right away, one each side of her waist, not clutching but supporting until she found her footing. Even that workaday touch from a man made her skin crawl. Apart from the odd hug from Rob, and cheek pecks from Terry on special occasions, no man had touched her since her arrival in Bragg Creek fourteen months ago. None had been inside her personal space at all since last Christmas, when she’d finally faced up to the memory of Dan’s assault. She suppressed a shudder and put the damaged mounting into the box with her screwdriver.
“Chad,” she said into her radio. “Can you please test the range of movement for the interior stable camera?” In a moment, the camera began moving. It rotated through its full lateral and vertical range.
The radio crackled. “Where do you want it centred?”
“Travis,” she said over her shoulder, anxious to put some distance between them, “can you go stand between the paddock door and the hay bales, please? Chad? Focus on Travis and widen the angle so it covers the door and the hay. From the waist up is fine.” The camera moved.
The steward came in and placed a stack of green polo shirts neatly in the glass-fronted cupboard. “Putting a damper on the hanky-panky, are we?”
Travis’s eyebrows flew up.
“Jake’s hockey guests,” Lacey explained, “like to angle the cameras away from potential hook-up spots. Wayne has to repair and replace some equipment every summer. Mind carrying that ladder to the pool?”
She picked up her tools. The steward followed along, regaling Travis with tales of wild guest exploits the staff had witnessed or heard about. As they reached the garage, he veered inside the first open bay with his remaining shirts for the mechanic. Out of habit, Lacey counted vehicles. Jake’s SUV and one of the guest convertibles were out. She paused at the pool gate. Kitrin was once more floating near the waterfall. Lacey
would have to come back later to replace the rain-damaged camera. Meanwhile, Travis could leave the ladder and go patrol. She’d make a second trip up the terrace stairs to fetch it quietly. If Kitrin woke up, well, at least Lacey was a familiar, friendly, and female face rather than a strange man.
The honk of a car horn turned them both around. The third of Jake’s orange convertibles sat outside the gate, with an unfamiliar SUV pulled over behind it. The horn sounded again.
“Leave the ladder and check that vehicle in,” she told Travis. “Thanks for your help.”
As she was making her second trip down the terrace stairs, angling the ladder carefully around the bend, she saw Chad. Or rather, Chad’s foot … coming out the French door from the guest suite.
“Chad?”
The foot vanished.
She hurried down. “What are you doing in there? That’s a private area.”
“Fetching sunscreen.” He came out into the sunshine and held out one hand. In it was a plain white tube with small black lettering. “She asked me to.”
Squinting against the glare off the white plastic, Lacey made out a couple of Ms and a smaller line that read SPF 30. “The woman in the pool sent you for it?”
He nodded. So he’d been out by the pool when he should have been monitoring the cameras to buzz her in the gate? A second mental check mark against Chad. It wasn’t even noon, and he was already on his last throw.
“All right, get on with it. And in future stay away from any area where there’s a house resident or guest. Okay?”
“Uh-huh.” He hurried up the stairs, leaving her to wrangle the ladder down to the third terrace while she mentally wrestled with the wording of her replacement request. Travis wouldn’t be happy about that, but he’d just have to deal.
CHAPTER FIVE
A little after ten on Saturday morning, Jan stopped at Jake’s gate. Closed, for the second day in a row? Usually it was left open during daytimes because of all the social comings and goings. A green SUV was parked nearby. She stared at its heavily tinted windows. Was anyone in there? A security guard, perhaps, who could let her in? Or maybe not. A man came out through the people-gate in the wall, wearing the kind of blue T-shirt Lacey sometimes wore for work. He stooped a bit to look in her van window.
“Good morning, ma’am. Your name and business, please?”
“Jan Brenner. I’m here to see Mrs. Matheson.”
“You brought the boy home yesterday?” He pushed a remote, and the gate opened wide.
Jan kept her foot on the brake. “When I leave, how do I signal you to come open the gate?”
He handed her a business card. “I’m Travis. That’s my cell number. If you’d care to text me just before you’re ready to leave, I’ll come, or send Chad.”
“Chad?” Jan reviewed her glimpse of the man who’d watched Michael and Georgie yesterday. Something clicked in her visual memory. She stared at Travis. “Is Chad from Vancouver?”
Travis slanted a look at her. “Yes, ma’am, he was. Did you know him there?”
Jan gave her head a smack. “Oh my God. That’s Chad, Kitrin’s ex-boyfriend. That’s why he’s been watching Michael.” Travis gaped. She said, “I was roommates with Mrs. Matheson in university, in Vancouver, while she was seeing him.”
The surprise faded from his face. “Thanks for telling me.” His lips tight, he waved her through the gate.
Her nerves twitching from the implications, Jan drove up to the house. Chad had kept silent about guarding Kitrin. After she dumped him for Mylo without warning, he’d spent a month moping around their parking lot with flowers, gifts, pleadings … until Kitrin left for California and never came back. Did she know he was here?
The wheeled armchair waited on the front steps. Jan drove it inside, determined to find Kitrin and make sure she knew about Chad. She steered through the main floor, didn’t see Kitrin anywhere, took the elevator down to the second level, and knocked at the guest suite without result. Then she went to the kitchen to ask the staff if they knew. The steward said Kitrin had been wearing a swimsuit when he delivered her breakfast.
“I hope she’s not in that swim machine again,” said Jan. “She got in a lot of trouble down there the other day.”
“I’ll go right down and check.” The steward hurried out.
“I’ll check the outdoor pool,” said Jan and sped toward the west end of the house. As she reached the dim corridor toward the pool doors, she swung wide around the security office’s open door, only to clip the half-open garage-access door in the other wall. It bounced off the trailing leg of a staffer in a green polo shirt. “Sorry,” she yelled as she stopped at the automatic door-opener button the staff used when they were serving out by the pool.
Outside, blinking in the bright sunlight, she groped for her sunglasses as she surveyed the area. The first thing she saw was an empty floating chaise. The second was a body in the pool, floating face down near the waterfall.
“Kitrin!” she yelled.
The woman in the pool didn’t stir. Dark hair eddied around her head like weeds in a stream.
Jan raced around the pool’s edge, the chair wobbling madly as she cornered, and climbed off where the bridge beneath the waterfall began. Kneeling, she reached out as far as she could. Kitrin floated just beyond her fingertips, motionless except where the current tugged at her slack limbs. A faint trace of red coiled up around her head and thinned to vanishing point in the turquoise water.
“Kitrin!” Jan screamed again and jumped into the pool.
She surfaced and found her footing, floundering toward the drifting body. She grabbed Kitrin and turned her over, clearing the strands of wet hair away from her mouth and nose, trying to remember how to do CPR on a person still in the water. Pinch, breathe, release, listen. Repeat. After five rounds with no result, she raised her head and screamed as loud as she could toward the house.
“Help, help, Kitrin needs help!”
She started the breathing routine again.
CHAPTER SIX
The first, faint cry came from above, and might have been a bird call. Lacey lowered her screwdriver and listened. The second cry was unmistakable. “Help!”
She hustled down the ladder, her workboots ringing the metal rungs, and ran for the terrace stairs. Taking them three at a time, she reached the outdoor pool and scanned the sun-dazzled water.
One floating chaise, empty.
One decorative waterfall, tumbling off a rocky ledge into the pool.
Two women being churned by the waters, their dark hair twining like eels over their limbs.
As she dropped her tool belt, preparing to rescue them, Lacey realized only one of them was struggling: Jan Brenner, her dark curls plastered over her face. She clung to Kitrin Devine, trying in vain to drag them both away from the cascade.
Lacey scanned for options. The pole hanging on the wall was too short by far. There was nothing handy to throw and no guarantee Jan would be strong enough to grab it. She pressed the Call All button on her radio and yelled, “SOS, outdoor pool, SOS.” Then, dropping the delicate device heedlessly onto the paving, she went off the edge in a racing dive.
Surfacing halfway across the pool, she slid smoothly into the speedy crawl she’d perfected as a teenage lifeguard. She snagged the floating chaise as she passed. Reaching into the waterfall, she grabbed an arm and pulled. Jan floated toward her, pulling Kitrin.
“I tried,” Jan sobbed. “I tried to give her CPR, but I don’t know how long she was down. The current sucked us under the waterfall.”
“I’ll take care of her. Can you get onto the chaise by yourself?”
“No. But I can hold on. Please, help her!”
As Lacey pulled Kitrin’s unresisting body closer, a huge splash sounded. Waves churned across the pool as Chad floundered toward them. She pointed him at Jan and flipped Kitrin into a tow position. Although it was almost certainly pointless, she said, from old lifeguard habit, “I’ve got you, Kitrin. Just float and I’ll get yo
u out.”
She walked backward until the bottom step touched her heels. Chad was waiting there to gather up Kitrin. Her lank hair trailed over his arm as he carried her up the steps. Lacey hurried around him to lay a chaise flat, issuing orders: “Put her here. Call 911. Bring the defibrillator from the security office.”
As she bent over the inert body, she was conscious of Travis wrapping Jan in towels. Then all her concentration narrowed to Kitrin, blue lipped and motionless on the brightly striped cushion. She began to check for vital signs.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Trembling to her bones, Jan huddled on a deck chair while the horrific scene unfurled, soundless to her like a movie on mute. Lacey was doing chest compressions on Kitrin. Wasn’t she supposed to breathe into Kitrin’s mouth sometimes?
Travis returned with a yellow first aid box and took over chest compressions while Lacey slumped into the puddle of water seeping from her jeans. Jan yearned to bring her a towel, but standing up was too much effort. The steward brought one instead, temporarily blocking Kitrin’s limp body. Staff gathered, shocked and silent, on the far edge of the pool.
Chad returned with paramedics, his face ghostly in the morning sun. Their thudding feet shook Jan’s chair. The waterfall’s noise roared into her ears, ten times louder than before. She clapped her hands to her head as RCMP boots pounded the tiles. Full sensory overload, and she’d lost her dark glasses somewhere. As the running stopped, someone brought her a mug of hot tea. She took it in both hands, watching Kitrin’s pale face beyond the paramedic’s shoulder, willing her to cough, to twitch. Anything to show she wasn’t … wasn’t …
Lacey slouched into the next chair. She’d acquired a second towel to drape across her thighs and bent to laboriously unknot her soaked workboots. How had she swum in those?
Why the Rock Falls Page 6
