Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  There was a loud thud as the crowbar he had used to gain entrance hit the floor.

  Instinctively she looked to the side to avoid being temporarily blinded. She fumbled with the cell phone. It slipped from her fingers and clattered on the wooden floorboards. The narrow ray of light angled uselessly across them.

  There was no time to retreat to the bedroom and lock the door. Her only chance was to make a run for the kitchen door. But even as that realization hit she knew the odds of escaping into the night were nonexistent. The dining counter that marked the border between the living room and the kitchen was in the way. It might as well have been a brick wall.

  Lightning flashed again in the night. She watched in shock as the intruder yanked a long knife out of a sheath.

  “I told you not to run from me, Winter,” Kendall Moseley said. “Now I’m going to have to punish you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “What the heck are you doing out here in this storm?” Arizona asked.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Jack said. “I went to your place first to see if you were home. When you didn’t answer the door, I figured you were probably still out on patrol.”

  He had intercepted Arizona just as she was in the process of checking the lock on the front door of a vacant cottage. They were now standing in the limited shelter provided by the porch roof of the small house. Arizona was attired in full storm gear—a voluminous military-style poncho, a billed cap and sturdy, waterproof boots.

  Jack was wearing his heaviest rainproof jacket with the hood pulled up to partially shield his face. His glasses were safely stowed in a pocket. There was no point trying to wear them. The rain would have sheeted off the lenses, effectively blinding him.

  “Can’t let a little wind and rain keep me from making my rounds,” Arizona said. “But I vary the patrol route every night, so how did you know where to look for me?”

  “Everyone develops patterns,” Jack said. “I’ve been in town long enough to pick up on some of yours.”

  Arizona nodded appreciatively. “You’re pretty sharp, you know that?”

  “Sometimes,” Jack said.

  “Sometimes is as good as it gets. Nobody gets it right every time. Well, thanks for checking up on me but as you can see, I’m fine. We get storms like this one all the time. I’m used to ’em.”

  “It’s bad out here, AZ. Why don’t you go home?”

  “I told you, I don’t sleep much, leastways not at night. You run along now. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  There was not much point arguing with her, Jack decided. Arizona was tough and she was stubborn. She was also an adult who had every right to make her own decisions.

  “All right,” he said. “If you’re sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  He went down the porch steps, stopped and looked back at her. “You said you usually remember things best late at night, AZ. Have you figured out what it was that made you think that Winter might be in trouble?”

  “Been thinkin’ about that a lot tonight. Pretty sure it had something to do with a vehicle.”

  Jack did not move. “What kind of vehicle?”

  “One that didn’t belong here in town. It came through a couple of days ago while you were away on that last cold case job.”

  “A lot of cars come through town,” Jack said. “What was different about this one? Out-of-state plates?”

  “Nope, Oregon plates. I took a photo and checked. Car was a rental.”

  He realized he was fascinated. “You photographed the license plate on a tourist’s vehicle that was just passing through town?”

  “I photographed that one.”

  “Why? The most logical explanation is that the driver was just a visitor who got curious and left the main road to check out Eclipse Bay.”

  “Yeah, that would be the usual story,” Arizona said. “But the thing is, tourists who end up here in Eclipse Bay usually head for the beach. It’s pretty much our only scenic attraction.”

  “At this time of year?”

  “We get some real spectacular sunsets in the fall. And then there are the folks who come to dig for clams or just to walk on the beach. No one with a lick of sense tries to swim in that surf at any time of year. Got a real mean riptide just offshore.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Once the tourists get bored with the beach they usually head for a coffee shop or a gas station or a gift shop. But that’s about it. This guy didn’t bother to check out any of those things. He didn’t go to the beach. Didn’t get coffee or gas.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Stopped at the real estate office.”

  “Well, there you go, then,” Jack said. “He was interested in property. Maybe looking for a place to rent.”

  “We don’t get a lot of year-round renters here.”

  “What about Winter and me?”

  “You two are different. You’re locals.”

  He and Winter were not locals but there was no point trying to convince Arizona of that. It was not important, not at the moment. He felt compelled to inject some logic into Arizona’s story, however, because he needed to figure out what had alarmed her.

  And, okay, maybe it gave him some comfort to offer up a few bits and pieces of reality in an otherwise very strange conversation. As long as he was capable of injecting some logic into a discussion, he could always tell himself that he was still on the right side of normal.

  “I had a little chat with Marge McDonald,” Arizona continued, her tone darkening.

  “The real estate broker?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did she have anything interesting to tell you?”

  “She said the driver of the vehicle asked her for a list of rental properties.”

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “Yep. Marge gave him the list. He got back in his car and left town.”

  This was going nowhere.

  “What made you connect the driver of the vehicle to Winter?”

  “He didn’t ask Marge to show him any of the vacant rentals,” Arizona said. “Most folks who are interested in summer places want to take a look at a few. This guy just drove straight out of town.”

  “That concerns you?”

  “Yep. See, that list that Marge gave the guy?”

  “What about it?”

  “Marge told me that he wanted to know which of the properties was currently rented. Not a lot of cottages are this time of year.”

  “Damn,” Jack said. He said it very softly. “If you happen to be searching for someone in a small town like this and if you have a list of rentals with the currently occupied cottages marked on it, you’d have a very good idea of where the person was living.”

  “Yep, you wouldn’t have to take the risk of asking questions at the local grocery store or gas station,” Arizona said.

  “Winter and I are both recent arrivals here in Eclipse Bay and we’re both renting cottages from you.”

  “Right, but you’ve been here nearly three months now,” Arizona pointed out. “She’s only been here about a month.”

  “You think that someone might have come here looking for her?”

  “People move here for one of two reasons. They’re either looking for something or—”

  “Or they’re hiding from someone,” Jack finished.

  “I like the way you think,” Arizona said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Winnie-the-Pooh,” Winter said.

  She spoke in a cool, calm, authoritative voice.

  Kendall Moseley froze.

  He was still in the doorway, knife in one hand, a flashlight in the other. The rain and wind continued to sweep into the room. But Moseley was now oblivious.

  Winter reached down and grabbed her cell
phone. Straightening, she managed to drag in a ragged breath. She was shivering with adrenaline and fear but for the moment she was safe. The hypnotic command that she had implanted weeks ago had stopped Moseley as surely as a bullet. He had gone straight into a trance.

  The problem was that, unlike a bullet, the command was not a permanent solution.

  “You should not be here,” she said. “Following me was a dangerous mistake. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Following you was a dangerous mistake.”

  The words were uttered in a monotone.

  “The knife is very heavy,” she said. “You cannot hold it any longer. You must let go of it.”

  Moseley unclenched the hand that gripped the knife. Winter was still partially blinded by the beam of his flashlight but she heard the weapon clatter onto the floor.

  “The flashlight is also very heavy,” she said. “It is a great weight that you can no longer hold. You must let go of it.”

  The flashlight dropped to the floor and rolled a short distance. When it came to a stop, the beam angled across the small living room, splashing across one leg of the heavy coffee table.

  She directed the light of her cell phone directly into Moseley’s eyes.

  “You cannot look away from the light,” she said.

  She pinned Moseley with the beam and cautiously closed the distance between them. She had to get the knife. She could not afford to take the chance that he would emerge from the trance. If he did, he would pick up right where he had left off.

  She used the toe of one slipper to send the blade skittering across the floor. Retreating quickly out of range, she reached down and scooped up the heavy weapon. It felt both lethal and unnatural in her hand, as if some malevolent force was infused into the metal. She gripped it very tightly.

  Kendall Moseley was a lot bigger and stronger than she was. If something shattered the hypnotic trance, the knife was all she had to protect herself. It was clear she could no longer rely on the power of hypnotic suggestion. She had to find out why the one she had given Moseley had failed.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, struggling to hold on to the calm, firm tone.

  “My chat room friend told me where you were hiding,” Moseley said without inflection.

  She was dumbfounded. That was the very last thing she had expected to hear. She had been prepared to learn that Moseley had tracked her down online but not that someone had helped him locate her.

  Questioning someone in a hypnotic trance was more complicated than most people assumed. A person in a trance answered questions in a very literal manner. She groped for a line of inquiry that might lead to some useful information.

  “Who is your friend?” she asked.

  A bolt of lightning shattered the storm-filled darkness behind Moseley. He gave a violent start.

  “You bitch,” he snarled. “Did you really think that I’d let you fuck with my mind? You’re dead. You hear me? I’m gonna gut you and then I’ll kill the guy you’re fucking, too.”

  He lunged at her, big hands outstretched.

  The lightning strike had broken the trance.

  Winter dropped her phone and fell back, instinctively wrapping both hands around the hilt of the knife. She brought the blade up in front of her in a warding-off gesture, not a conscious act of self-defense.

  Between the cell phone and Moseley’s flashlight there was enough ambient light in the small space to reveal the blade in her hands. Moseley was enraged but he was not suicidal.

  He scrambled to a halt a short distance away from her.

  “Mind-fucking bitch,” he screamed again. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun. “One way or another, you’re going to die tonight.”

  Footsteps thudded on the front porch steps.

  “Winter,” Jack shouted.

  He swept through the doorway, a violent force of nature that seemed to have been generated by the heart of the storm.

  Moseley started to turn to meet the new threat but Jack slammed into him. The two crashed against the dining counter. The impact sent a bowl of sea-washed stones to the floor. Glass exploded somewhere in the darkness. Winter thought she heard the gun fall.

  She bent down and waved the cell phone light in a frantic arc, searching for the gun. In the glare of another burst of lightning she caught dazzling, black-and-white images of the two men locked in mortal combat. The sickening thuds of fists striking human flesh seemed unreal.

  The cell phone light finally glinted on metal. She put the knife down on the floor and grabbed the pistol. When she straightened, she saw Moseley struggling to get to his feet. He appeared wild-eyed and desperate, intent only on escape.

  Jack, still on the floor, grabbed one of Moseley’s ankles and yanked hard. Moseley cried out and toppled backward. He managed to stagger a few feet and then went down hard.

  There was a terrible crunch when his head struck the edge of the big wooden coffee table.

  Moseley collapsed on the area rug. He did not move.

  An unnatural stillness gripped the interior of the cottage for a few heartbeats. The surreal silence was broken only by the sound of Jack’s rasping breaths. Winter knew that there would be blood—probably a lot of it.

  She aimed the flashlight at the very still form. There was, indeed, blood. It came from Kendall Moseley’s head and it was soaking into the old rug.

  Jack got to his feet and came to stand beside her. She was vaguely aware of him peeling her fingers off the gun. When she looked at him, she saw that he was not wearing his glasses. He had probably lost them in the course of the savage hand-to-hand combat.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The heat of battle radiated from him.

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded thin and fragile. Crystalline. She took a deep breath, centering herself. It had been a while since she’d had to deal with violence but some skills you didn’t forget. “Yes,” she said again, infusing strength into the word. “You?”

  “I’m okay.” Jack took the flashlight from her. He shone the beam squarely on Moseley’s unconscious face. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “His name is Kendall Moseley. Former-client-turned-stalker. But he should not be here.”

  “No shit,” Jack said.

  “I don’t understand what happened. I thought . . .” She broke off and took another centering breath. “I thought I had the situation under control.”

  “Evidently not,” Jack said.

  She watched him reach down and use two fingers to check Moseley for a pulse.

  “Is he—?” she whispered.

  “He’s not dead.” Jack straightened. “Not yet, at any rate. He’s bleeding fairly heavily from the head wound, though.”

  “I’ll get a towel to use as a bandage.”

  Jack took out his phone. “I’ll call the police. They’ll need an ambulance for Moseley.”

  Winter grabbed a clean bath towel out of the linen cupboard and returned to the living room. She crouched beside Moseley and pressed the thick towel to his bleeding head. He did not stir. His eyes did not flutter.

  She listened as Jack spoke to the local emergency operator. She was adjusting the makeshift bandage on Moseley’s head when she heard another set of footsteps on the front porch. A few seconds later a powerful flashlight lit up the living room.

  Arizona spoke from the shadows.

  “Had a feeling this was gonna be a bad night,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I should have figured it out sooner,” Arizona said. “In the old days I would have put it together a lot faster. Are you okay, Winter?”

  “Yes,” Winter said. “A little rattled, but okay. Jack’s the one who got beaten up.”

  Jack ended his call to the emergency operator and clipped his phone to his belt. He took an eyeglass case out o
f the pocket of his windbreaker and opened it.

  “I’m all right,” he said. He slipped on the glasses and dropped the case back into his pocket. “The cops and an aid car are on the way.”

  He and Arizona moved to stand looking down at Moseley.

  “How long has he been stalking you?” Jack said to Winter.

  “It started a few months ago when I was still working at the spa,” Winter said. “Moseley booked an appointment with me. I could see right away that he was going to be a problem. After that first meditation session I made excuses not to take any more appointments with him. He complained to my boss, who got mad at me. Moseley was a valuable client, you see. He spent a fortune on massages and various treatments. Then Moseley started showing up in places where he knew I would be.”

  “That sort never quits,” Arizona announced, grimly authoritative. “Only one way to deal with ’em.”

  “AZ is right,” Jack said. “Obsessive stalkers don’t stop. They tend to escalate.”

  “I thought about trying to get a restraining order,” Winter continued. “But Moseley was very careful not to give me any solid evidence. Nothing I could take to the police or a judge.”

  “Can’t depend on a restraining order, anyway,” Jack said.

  “Just a piece of paper,” Arizona said.

  “In the end, I realized I had to disappear,” Winter said. “I knew Moseley might try to search for me but I thought I had come up with a way to deal with that problem. Obviously I was wrong. I’m so sorry the two of you got dragged into this mess. I never meant for that to happen.”

  Jack looked at her. “Just to be very clear, I’ve been involved since the day you and I met.”

  “Same here,” Arizona said. “You’re a neighbor and a tenant. ’Course I’m involved.”

  Winter looked at each of them in turn. Their faces were set in hard, determined lines. The atmosphere around them shivered with a very strong vibe.

  These people are my friends, she thought. I’m not going to have to deal with this on my own.