by Cassie Miles
She believed the words she was saying. Ty heard the ring of steel in her voice and saw a flash of determination in her eyes. “Have you spoken to your uncle about Dorothy’s death?”
“Not yet, but it’s a conversation we’ll need to have. The editor who is going to publish his book already mentioned that she was interested in more than Simon. She wants details about Dorothy’s tragic death and photos of the Castle.”
He suspected the murder of Bethany would hype interest in the house, and he wondered who would benefit from that publicity. “Why is she interested in the Castle?”
“It makes Simon unique. Instead of the standard backstory about learning how to boil pasta at his grandma’s knee, he can be portrayed as the chef who recovered from losing his adored wife and built a cooking empire from a castle.”
“When you start digging, be prepared for what you might find.”
“I planned to start with court records.”
“That’s why you contacted me.” He would have been willing to help without being offered a dinner at the Castle. Now that he’d met Vanessa, Ty would happily spend hours researching with her. “There are a lot of people with information, starting with Doc Ingram.”
“And Keith was involved in building the franchises. He knew Aunt Dorothy.”
“I could get you an interview with the Search and Rescue teams,” he offered. “I’d like to hear their explanation about why it was so hard to find her remains.”
“I need to be careful about releasing too much information. My contract with Simon has a nondisclosure clause.” After one last stretch, she returned to her seat at the table and pressed the button that signaled she was ready to continue. “Here we go. Send in the clowns.”
“All that yawning. Are you tired?”
“Not really.”
He still had concerns about her safety. “Be careful, Vanessa. When you’re done here, hit my phone number on your speed dial and I’ll walk you to your bedroom.”
“I’ll give you a buzz.”
The door crashed open, and Macy Kirov stalked inside. Her tights sparkled, and her cape swirled behind her. In her left hand, she held a plate of macadamia nut cookies and fudge. “Anybody hungry?”
“You bet.” Ty grabbed one of each as he exited.
* * *
VANESSA FINISHED HER interviews just before midnight. She was exhausted and achy from the tension that tied the muscles across her shoulders into tight little knots. With a prolonged groan, she forced her legs to stand, then she staggered across the room to the long leather sofa under a huge painting of snow-capped peaks and a frozen creek winding through a forest. She collapsed and groaned again. Though she could have fallen asleep in about two minutes, she’d promised Ty that she’d call when she was done. She punched his number on her speed dial.
He answered after the second ring. “Finished with the interviews?”
“I am, and I didn’t learn anything new, other than Macy would happily slaughter any woman who had an affair with her husband. Her exact words were nobody touches my Yuri. Which sounds a little bit dirty.”
He chuckled. “You’re funny.”
“Yeah, I’m a hoot.” Although she appreciated the compliment, Vanessa would have preferred a comment about her lovely smile or gorgeous figure. Why had Keith been impressed by the sexy fit of her skinny jeans while Ty barely noticed she was female? She’d always had admirers when it came to her brainpower. Her sexiness? Not so much. “I also discovered that Gloria Gable bench presses ninety-five pounds and certainly has the upper body strength for blunt force trauma. Simon and Chloe are both furious about a murder happening in their Castle.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Still in the library.”
“I had to go out to my car and pick up a few things. I’m headed back to the house. If you want, you can wait for me in the library. Or you can have the deputy who has been outside your library door all night escort you to your bedroom.”
Or I can walk there all by myself. “I’m tired. I’ll grab the deputy.”
“And I’ll check in with you.”
She stood, straightened her shoulders and opened the library door. Deputy Randall was waiting. Dressed in his black uniform shirt with his badge and utility belt, he looked every inch a cop, but his grin was shy and his attitude friendly. When she thanked him for staying here tonight and asked about his kids, he was happy to chat about his four-year-old daughter.
Down the stairs and across the Grand Hall and up the stairs again, Randall regaled her with one story after another. All Vanessa could think about was getting to her bedroom and sleeping. At the door to her second-floor bedroom, he touched the brim of his cowboy hat and bid her good-night. “Don’t forget to lock up,” he warned.
It took willpower to keep from flopping down on her cozy double bed with the handmade quilt in shades of green and blue. Vanessa peeled off her clothes and changed into a pair of silky black pajamas. As soon as she threw back the quilt and slipped between the sheets, her brain started running at top speed. The faces of the suspects flashed before her. Each looked more guilty than the one before. Then she thought of Bethany.
They hadn’t been close, but Vanessa would miss her cousin. Was she killed because of an affair? What a sad, stupid reason! Or was the motive something else, something associated with the disappearance of Aunt Dorothy?
Eyes wide open, Vanessa stared up at the bedroom ceiling. Moonlight poured through the window, and a sudden gust rattled the glass in the frame. The cry of the wind sounded like a tortured voice in mourning. Then she heard it. “Vanessa, Vanessa, I won’t hurt you, Vanessa.”
She bolted from the bed. The words were the same, but that voice couldn’t be her stalker. She was overtired. Her imagination was getting the best of her.
“Vanessa,” he hissed. “Go to the window. Look to the Hag.”
Where are you? He wasn’t in her bedroom, but his voice was close. There must be a recording hidden in here or a remote-activated microphone.
She went to the window. Her bedroom was on the second floor, too high for the stalker to reach her, and she had locked the door.
Peering into the night, she watched the wild dancing of wind-swept tree branches. Across a shallow ravine was a massive rock formation called the Hag Stone because the profile looked like an old witch hunched over her cane. When she was a kid, she had imagined the giant hag coming to life and stalking toward the Castle.
Halfway up the stone on an outthrust ledge, she saw him. A man dressed all in black, wearing a ski mask. Her stalker. He raised his arm and pointed at her.
Chapter Seven
Panic overwhelmed her. Vanessa stopped breathing. She blinked several times...nearly lost consciousness. It felt like the world had stopped spinning. This can’t be happening. When she opened her eyes and looked around, she was all the way across the room from the window, pressed up against the edge of her desk and unable to breathe. It can’t be him. She hadn’t seen any sign of the stalker since she drove away from the Denver cemetery with Dad’s ashes in the passenger seat. Why would he appear now? Oh, God, what if he was the murderer?
She covered her face with her hands. Was she imagining the man in black? Was he her personal bogeyman who appeared when she was scared or angry? She returned to the window and peered into the windy night. Tree branches dipped and waved. Small puffs of clouds scudded across the sky like whitecaps on a blustery sea. The Hag Stone loomed before her. It almost looked like the Hag was moving with the shadows dashing across the rocks.
Her stalker had vanished. She saw no sign that he’d been standing there, pointing at her in a silent threat. She listened to the shrieking wind and didn’t hear anything resembling words. No one called her name or poisoned her mind with false statements about not wanting to hurt her. But she knew he was out there. When he’d appeared at the cemetery, she ran away. N
ot this time.
Vanessa wouldn’t flee from him. Nor would she cower behind a locked door in her bedroom. She had to find this guy and figure out what he was after.
Before she could reconsider, she thrust her feet into sneakers and covered her pajama top with a denim jacket. In the back of her underwear drawer, she found a small flashlight. Her canister of pepper spray was also in there, but she decided she wouldn’t need it. This time, she wouldn’t confront her stalker alone. She had Ty on her side.
He’d promised to check in, but she couldn’t wait for him. She needed to run to the Hag Stone and find that creep before he had time to escape. One of the other deputies stationed in the Castle could accompany her.
She grabbed her phone and keys, and stepped into the dimly lit hallway with lantern-style sconces and framed pictures commemorating the many trips her family had taken. There was a Grand Canyon photo of Vanessa as a gangly eight-year-old with pigtails. She was surrounded by Dad and Mom and Aunt Dorothy. The older generation was gone. This was the end of an era.
Holding her phone to call Ty, she rushed down the corridor. On the landing at the top of the staircase, she saw a tall cop in a black uniform shirt, weathered leather jacket and a cowboy hat. Was he a sheriff? Was he a cowboy? Both! “Ty?”
“I’m here.”
His presence calmed her panic and refreshed her mind. Ty Coleman was the perfect adversary for her bogeyman. He’d kick her stalker’s rump.
Without thinking, she threw her arms around him. His body was as hard and muscular as she had imagined. He smelled like soap, even though she knew he hadn’t had time for a shower. Her hands slid down his torso to the holster on his utility belt. “Oh, good,” she said. “You have a gun.”
“What’s going on, Vanessa?”
“He’s here. The creep who was stalking me in Denver is here.”
“Did you see him?”
She nodded vigorously. “I looked out my window toward the Hag Stone. The wind was blowing, and the tree branches were waving frantically, like fans at a Broncos game. First, I heard his voice, calling my name. Then I saw him standing on a ledge on the Hag. I turned away, and when I looked back, he had disappeared.”
Ty kept one strong arm around her and smoothed the hair off her temple with his other hand. “Let me take care of this.”
“No,” she said emphatically. “I’m not going to hide in my room, and I won’t run away. We—that’s you and me—have to go after the stalker right now. Together.”
“Or I can call Deputy Randall to stay with you. I’ll search outside.”
“How will you know where to look?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
She was skeptical...and insulted. He didn’t seem to be taking her seriously. She pushed away from him, stepped back and studied his expression. “You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He didn’t have to be direct; she’d heard the tinny note of condescension in his voice. He was humoring her. “I’m not hallucinating. This isn’t an anxiety attack or a post-traumatic stress episode. I’m going downstairs and out the door. I’ll find him and bring him back.”
“All by yourself?”
“If necessary.” She stuck out her chin. “I’d prefer having you with me because I don’t know how dangerous this guy is. And you have a gun.”
Ty wasn’t the kind of man who wasted time on discussion. He took off his cowboy hat, ran his hand through his short-cropped hair and replaced the hat. “Let’s go.”
Downstairs, she led him to an exit that went through a mudroom attached to the kitchen. After she inserted a plastic card and pressed five numbers on a keypad, the lock clicked open.
“How does that work?” he asked. “Does the code change every day?”
“It’s kind of like an ATM. We all have our own code.” This door wasn’t the most direct route to the Hag Stone, but it was an exit she had access to. “Didn’t Simon explain all this when he showed you the feed from the security cameras?”
“We didn’t get that far. Simon wanted to wait for Special Agent Morris before he shared his secrets.”
“That must have ticked you off.”
“Yeah, it did. I assigned one of my deputies to watch the security feeds.”
“And that must have made Simon angry.”
“I’m the law. I make the rules.”
In his uniform, he looked more authoritative than when he was wearing a sports jacket. “Where did you get your outfit?”
“My car,” he said. “I don’t have much hope in finding an intruder on the security cameras. In a house big enough to be called the Castle, there’s no way to monitor every person who enters or exits. An intruder could slip in an open window or a secret passage.”
She stepped outside. Though there was a lull in the wind, she dug into a pocket of her jacket and pulled out a woolen headband with a Norwegian pattern. She wrapped it across her forehead and over her ears. Then she took out her flashlight but didn’t turn it on. There was enough moonlight to see where they were headed.
Through a clearing and beyond a couple of outbuildings, she found the path that ascended the rocky forested hillside. When they were directly above the horse barn, she made a steep right turn and went higher.
“You were right,” he said. “I needed you to show me the way. I never would have found this path by myself.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she said. “Do you hunt? I’m guessing you can track a bunny rabbit on a rainy day.”
“Good guess, except I don’t hunt bunnies. I learned most of my tracking skills with Search and Rescue.”
He was a man with many useful talents. “There are several ways to get to the Hag Stone, but this is the most direct. No caves, but many good hiding places.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve had time to climb around on the rocks. Ever since I got here, I’ve been looking for the perfect place to scatter Dad’s ashes.”
“The urn in the library?”
“Yes.” She hadn’t meant to get sidetracked by mentioning her father’s death and rapidly changed the subject. “We need to be prepared for the stalker. He could be hiding anywhere.”
Ty drew his Glock and pulled a high-power Maglite from one of the compartments on his utility belt. On the dark side of the cliff, he aimed the flashlight to show obstacles along the narrow uneven trail. In the dark, it was hard not to stumble. She wanted to dash up the hillside. Her anxiety urged her to move faster. But she didn’t want to fall.
“Up there,” she said as she pointed to the outcropping of rock. From this angle, the shape didn’t resemble an old witch bent over her cane. “Do you see that ledge? That’s where he was standing. He took a threatening pose, exactly the way he did in Denver.”
Ty hunkered down beside a clump of chokecherry bushes, most of which hadn’t lost their leaves. “Access to the ledge looks tricky. I’ll go first. When I signal, you follow.”
“Signal?”
“I’ll flash the Maglite,” he said. “Then, while you’re climbing, I’ll provide cover for you. Until then, stay out of sight.”
She looked over her shoulder. If the stalker meant to attack, the best time would be when they were separated. “Do you think he’s still here?”
“I never took the class on how to handle a stalker, but I’d guess he gets his kicks from peeping around corners and spying on people. Be careful.”
She ducked behind a rock and watched as he hiked to the edge of the Hag, found the narrow ridge and inched his way around to the wider ledge on the front. In the view from her bedroom window, that outcropping represented the Hag’s gnarled hand gripping a cane. Though Ty wasn’t dressed for rock climbing in his cowboy hat, clumsy belt and boots, he covered the expanse of rock with ease. On the ledge, he lay flat on his belly and flashed his lig
ht.
The wind gusted and rattled the tree branches. Her turn. Shadows shifted and changed shapes. As she scampered toward the Hag Stone, the skin on her back prickled, anticipating a bullet or some other object. Every glimmer of light through the trees looked like a demon racing toward her.
“You can do it,” Ty called to her. “Do you need some light?”
“I can see.”
In case the stalker was watching, she didn’t want to be spotlighted. At the Hag, she clung to the rough granite, broke a fingernail, scraped her knuckles. She didn’t really need to hold on; the ridge was wide enough if she walked carefully. Ty had made the climb in cowboy boots, for goodness’ sake. But she was disoriented on the path with the wind rattling the branches and the shadows chasing her. If she fell from here, how far would she fall? She looked down. Big mistake! Her head was spinning, and her legs were weak. Losing her balance, she faced the rock and held on tight.
He caught her hand and pulled her the rest of the way to the ledge, where she crawled onto the surface of the rock and curled up beside him. Eyes closed, she gasped for breath.
“Vertigo?” he asked.
“I’ve never had it before. And I’m not afraid of heights.” She peeled open one eyelid and then the other. She gazed at his face, hoping she could erase the memory of the stalker with a ski mask and replace it with a mental photo of the handsome sheriff—her handsome sheriff. “Maybe I was a little bit scared.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“I don’t like feeling helpless. So many things in life are out of my control. What if the stalker has a gun? What if he opens fire?”
Ty placed his hand on her shoulder. “Life is uncertain, and that’s scary as hell. All we can do is muddle through.”
He’d taken off his hat, and the moonlight glinted in his short hair. She imagined it would be bristly and was tempted to run her hand across his head. “Do you ever get scared?”
