Читать книгу Endless Night - Dana Mentink - Страница 12

She couldn’t get over the fear that had enveloped her when she’d dropped the thumb drive. And Roman—what had he thought when he retrieved it for her? She could still feel his big hands on her waist, trying to catch her as she fell. Those hands had comforted her through her entire youth, it seemed. For a split second she wished with every pore of her body that things had been different.

She made her way to her room with a tray of food provided by June and shot an uneasy glance at the sky, a brilliant blue that seemed to shimmer with intensity. She’d heard one of the kitchen staff mention that a blizzard was in the forecast, but she hoped it wasn’t true. Skip was counting on a successful snow-sculpture weekend, and she prayed he would get it.

Cresting the small ridge to her cabin, she was startled to see two people making their way in the deep snow off the path. The snowshoes strapped to their feet gave them a comical gait. It was Byron Lloyd and a smaller figure who it took her a moment to identify. Fallon. They both waved.

Jackie watched Fallon for a moment. The girl’s face was thrown back in laughter. She was a young woman, no longer a child, but there was still plenty of the girl showing through. Jackie’s heart squeezed, thinking about how much Danny’s death must have hurt Fallon. Jackie had been so wrapped in her own grief and anger, she hadn’t given much thought to Fallon’s.

Shaking her head to clear it, she unlocked the door to her cabin. Her stomach clenched as she stuck the key in and found the door already unlocked. As it swung open, all of her plans were forgotten. She screamed.

Skip made it to her cabin first, still holding a half-eaten sandwich in his hand, but Roman was close behind. Jackie stood immobile in the center of the room, surveying the damage around her. The contents of her bag were scattered over the bed, shirts, socks and pants draping the coverlet. The bathroom medicine cabinet was open and her few toiletries in disarray.

Skip swallowed the bite he’d been chewing. “What in the world?”

Roman moved closer and spoke softly. “Someone was looking for something. Anything taken that you can tell?”

Her eyes darted to the computer, the only real thing of value besides the satellite phone she’d had in her backpack. Both were still there, but the computer was on. She breathed a quick prayer of thanks that she’d deleted the message Asia had sent. But what if Asia had forwarded more while she was helping pile snow? What had the intruder seen? Her skin prickled, and she itched to scan her inbox but with Roman and Skip there, she didn’t dare.

“No, nothing taken.” She felt a shudder sweep through her, and she wrapped her arms around herself to hold it in.

Skip shook his head. “Never in the years I’ve owned this place has something like this happened. Whoever it was must have picked the lock or gotten the spare from the lodge office.” He sighed. “We’ll have to go to the police when we’re in town. See what they make of it.”

Jackie jumped. Was she ready to explain to the cops? How could she tell them about the break-in without revealing the whole sordid mess? “No, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Skip stared at her. “Why not?”

She forced a laugh. “It’s probably just a prank. There was no harm done, nothing stolen, no one hurt.” But it wasn’t a prank. The person who’d been snooping on her laptop hadn’t found what they were after, so they’d come back and searched more thoroughly.

Roman raised an eyebrow, but didn’t speak. He cocked his head and his long bangs shadowed his face. Jackie wished she could read his thoughts.

Skip looked unconvinced. “Well, if you’re sure, I certainly have other things to focus on today. I’d put you in another cabin, but we’re full up. In any case, I’ve got one of those latch locks we can add. I can try to get Dax to install it.”

“I’ll do it.”

Roman’s voice was so low she almost didn’t hear it.

Skip shot a glance at him and then at Jackie. “I’d sure appreciate it, Roman. I’d never ask, but I’m just plain swamped.”

“I’ll do it after my last flight this afternoon.”

Skip nodded and headed for the door. “I’m awful sorry about this, Jackie. I hope it doesn’t ruin your vacation. I can’t imagine who would do such a thing and why.” He plodded out into the snow.

At that moment her phone rang. She moved to a corner to answer, hands shaking.

“Ms. Swann?” The voice was muffled.

“Who is calling?”

“Officer Smith, S.F.P.D. We’ve been looking for you. We have some questions about the situation at your employer’s.”

Something in the stilted tone made her uneasy. “Okay, but first tell me the name of your supervising officer and your badge number.”

There was a long moment of silence. “You are the one being questioned here.”

“Not until you give me the information.”

The tone of the voice changed. “Look, honey. We know where you live and the make and model of your car. We even know where your father lives. All we want is that thumb drive. You hand that over and you get your life back.”

Her stomach spasmed. “Don’t threaten me,” she snapped.

“We’ll get to you. It’s a matter of time. You’d better keep your mouth shut.”

She hung up, head spinning. Reynolds’s men knew she was here. Had they paid someone at the lodge to search her room? Or sent one of their own men? She thought of Byron Lloyd.

Her knees began to tremble with a sudden violence. Before she sank to the floor, Roman caught her and helped her to a chair. She sat there clinging to his hand, terror threatening to sweep her away.

He knelt next to her, eyes searching, and gently stroked her hand.

“What is it?” he whispered. “What is wrong, Jackie?”

She clutched his fingers, trying to will his strength into her body. It was too much. She’d gotten herself into a place she could not get out of. They would find her. She shivered. They already had. “I don’t know what to do.”

He frowned. “About what?” He leaned closer. “Tell me, Jackie. Let me help you.”

His face shone with concern. If she could just lean on him, trust him as she had for so many years. Her father’s words came back to her. Roman killed your brother. Don’t ever forget that. Though she wanted more than anything to lay her burden on his wide shoulders, she could not. Not with Roman. Allowing him into her life again would reopen wounds that were still ragged with agony. With a painful effort, she pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Nothing. A delayed reaction to all this. I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay.”

She forced herself to breath normally, to still the shaking of her hands. “Really, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. If you don’t want to share your problem with me, I guess I can understand that.” His eyes clouded. “I know that all ended a long time ago, but maybe you’d better confide in someone who can help you.” He gestured around the room. “This looks like more than you can handle on your own.”

Her whirl of emotion exploded into a fiery rage. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. I’ve handled it all, including laying my brother to rest. And where were you, Roman? You were nowhere. Did you call? Write? Did you even think about how I was handling things without my brother and my father, sick with grief?” She found herself sobbing.

Roman looked as if he’d been punched. “I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t hurt you more. I wrote, but I never mailed the letters.”

“You just didn’t want to face up to what you did.”

He shook his head. “I’ve had to face up to that every day, every minute of my life.” He started toward the door and continued, his voice almost a whisper. “Just so you know, I visit the spot where you scattered Danny’s ashes all the time. And I was there that day, at the funeral, watching from the bluff.”

She almost didn’t hear his last words. “I think I died that day, too.”

“I…I didn’t know. You should have come to me at the funeral.”

His eyes glittered. “Come to you? Would you have wanted the person who killed your brother there? Would your father?”

She couldn’t answer.

He sighed. “That’s what I thought. I’ve got to go now.”

After he’d left she tried to still the trembling that swept through her. He’d been there, on that terrible day, enduring the grief and shouldering his own deep sense of guilt. She had never known that he’d shared the blackest moment of her life.

The idea was too much, too dark.

Desperately she tried to direct her mind to something else.

With shaking hands, she nudged the computer to life, praying a new message from Asia hadn’t arrived when the intruder was in the cabin. It seemed an eternity before the inbox swam into view. No new messages.

The relief took her breath away. She pulled up a search engine and input Adventure Roads Magazine.

“Let’s see if you’re telling the truth, Mr. Lloyd.” The Web site was slick and colorful. Part of her felt disappointed. She’d been half expecting to find there was no such magazine, but here it was in bold, splashy color. An online archive made it easy to search all prior issues.

This time when the search was finished, Jackie felt not disappointment, but sick dread. There wasn’t one single article by anyone named Byron Lloyd.

Roman had a hard time keeping his mind on his work as he checked over the plane.

Jackie was terrified of someone, perhaps the same someone who had broken into her room. He fought a strong desire to return to check on her, call her, drop everything and find her that very moment.

Jackie felt like he’d abandoned her, killed her brother and left her to handle the grief alone. He slammed the toolbox shut. The past couldn’t be changed, but what about the present situation? Who was after her? And why? Even the thrum of the plane’s engines when he fired them to life a half hour later did not calm his thoughts. He noted the increasing cloud cover. Possible blizzard approaching.

It would be devastating for Skip and the snow-sculpture competition. With each competitor forking over several hundred dollars to participate, Skip would get to keep a nice chunk of the entry fee to cover costs. He’d also make a hefty bit of change selling food—if the weather didn’t interfere. Roman hoped the blizzard held off. Skip seemed stressed and distracted lately. He didn’t need anything else on his plate. Skip was like a father to him. He couldn’t bear to see him so pained. Roman’s own father was only a distant memory, a man who’d left when he was just a kid.

He was surprised to see Jackie with Skip as they approached the cleared landing strip.

He opened the passenger-side door for her. “You going along?”

She nodded, her face screened by a curtain of coppery hair and showing no signs of her earlier outburst. “I’ve got to do some business at the bank.”

He wondered, but didn’t question as they flew toward the airport. “Skip and I have to get the supplies loaded, then I can drive us into town. Okay by you, Skip?”

The man looked up from a piece of paper he’d been perusing. “What?”

Roman repeated the plan.

“Sure, sure. That’s fine.” He returned his attention to the paper.

Jackie turned. “Everything okay, Skip? You seem worried about something.”

Skip started. “Who me? Nah. Just all the fuss about Winterfest. I’m fine.”

Jackie faced front again but Roman saw her looking at Skip in the side mirror. She too felt there was something not quite right. Roman tried to keep his mind fixed firmly on the approaching airport, though the scent of Jackie’s newly washed hair triggered a cascade of memories. He remembered how it had looked at the funeral; smooth, twisted into a coil of fire that glimmered in the sunlight.

Not now, Roman. Not ever.

They landed and jogged through the frigid air into the loading area. Crates of fresh vegetables, flour and sugar and frozen meats were ready and waiting. Skip arranged for signatures, and Roman waved to Al as the heavyset man climbed onto a forklift. After he finished the paperwork, Skip climbed up a ladder to a landing ten feet above them, and began sorting the crates into efficient stacks.

Roman turned to Jackie to tell her there was coffee in the terminal but found her busily scanning a message board that flashed the incoming and outgoing flights. Her face was drawn in a look of such concentration, he started over to see exactly what had caught her interest so completely. He’d made it only a few steps when a cry made him turn.

The forklift lurched unexpectedly backward and toppled, sending the machine over. The violent jerk made Skip lose his balance. He yelled, holding desperately onto the edge of the landing, dangling in the air.

Al struggled to free himself from the overturned equipment. Roman ran to cut the engine on the forklift while he yelled to Skip, “Hang on.”

Skip would not be able to maintain his grip for long. A ten-foot fall onto a stack of wooden crates might just break the man’s back.

“I’ll go to the ladder,” Jackie yelled, running across the lot to a ladder fixed to the far side of the loading dock.

“No time.” Roman climbed on the tipped forklift and eased his way onto the nearest stack of boxes. They shifted ominously under his feet. Pulse pounding, he leaped onto a stack of crates a second before the one he was standing on gave way with a lurch. Boxes toppled down underneath him but Roman’s eyes were fixed on the man who desperately gripped the landing ledge a few feet above him.

Continuing up as quickly as he could, Roman crawled across the stacked boxes and with the biggest leap he could manage, hurled himself onto the platform. He made it, barely. Muscles straining, he hoisted a leg over the ledge, then the other and scrambled over to the spot where Skip struggled to hang on.

Grasping Skip by both wrists, Roman kept his own body as close to the landing as possible to keep from being pulled over the edge. With every bit of strength left, he hauled Skip back onto the platform. They both lay there for a moment, sweating and panting. Jackie made it up the ladder and ran over to them.

Jackie’s face was white as she knelt next to Roman and Skip, trying to assess both men at once. “Are you hurt?”

Roman closed his eyes against the dizziness that made his head swim, not from the exertion, but from the nearness of her, the small hand on his arm, the brush of her hair on his face. “Not hurt,” he managed.

Skip also groaned a reassurance and managed to sit up. When he turned to look at Roman, a strange wash of emotion flowed over his face. “You, you saved me.”

Roman cleared his throat. “You would have been fine.”

Skip continued to stare, his eyes fixed in terrible concentration. “No, I wouldn’t. You shouldn’t have done it, Roman, not for me.”

Roman thought for a horrifying moment the man was going to cry until Jackie knelt by him. She had noticed Skip’s strange reaction too. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Skip shook his head and nodded, wiping a hand across his forehead. He hauled himself up and headed for the ladder. Jackie stared after him, a puzzled look on her face, then she turned to Roman and stroked his shoulder. “Are you sure you aren’t hurt?”

He wanted to hold her hand there forever. “Not hurt.”

“That was crazy. What were you thinking?”

The words came out before he had a chance to strip out the emotion. “I was thinking I could save him.”

She must have heard it in his tone, the thought that rose to the surface like a needle-toothed barracuda. Like I tried to save your brother.

The pain flashed in the amber depths of her eyes. She jerked her hand away and stood. The moment was gone, Jackie was gone, and he felt only a heavy fatigue, weightier than the snow that had buried them on that terrible night.