Читать книгу Necessary Action - Julie Miller - Страница 9

Chapter One

July

“Who cleans up a scuttled boat?”

Frowning at the smell of bleach filling her nose, Melanie Fiske waded barefoot into the ankle-deep water that filled the wreck of her late father’s fishing boat each time it rained and opened the second aft live well, or rear storage compartment where fish and bait had once been stored. She expected to find water, rust, algae or even some sort of wildlife that had taken up residence over the past fourteen years, like the nest of slithering black water moccasins she’d found hidden inside three years ago.

Poisonous snakes had been reason enough to stop her weekly sojourn to the last place her father had been alive. But too many things had happened over the past few months in this idyllic acreage where she’d grown up—the rolling Ozark hills southeast of Kansas City—for her not to explore every available opportunity to find out what had happened to her father that night he’d allegedly drowned in the depths of Lake Hanover and was never seen again.

Now she was back, risking snakes, sunburn and the wrath of the uncle who’d raised her, to investigate the wreck, tipped over on the shoreline of Lake Hanover next to the old boat ramp that hadn’t been used since the boat had been towed ashore to rot.

All these years, she’d accepted the story of a tragic accident. She’d been so young then, motherless since birth, and then fatherless, as well, that she’d never thought to question the account of that late-night fishing expedition. After an explosion in the engine, he’d fallen overboard, and the eddies near the dammed-up Wheat River power plant had dragged him down to the bottom. It had been a horrible, unfathomable tragedy.

But she’d caught her aunt and uncle in too many lies lately. She’d seen things she couldn’t explain—arguments that hushed when she entered a room, trucks that arrived in the middle of the night to take handcrafts or baked goods to Kansas City, fishing excursions where no one caught a thing from the well-stocked lake. And maybe most importantly, her uncle’s control was tightening like a noose around her life. There were rules for living on the farm now that hadn’t been there when she’d been a teenager, and consequences for breaking them that bordered on abuse.

Yes, there were bound to be flaring tempers as they transitioned from a simple working farm to a stopping place for tourists from the city seeking outdoor fun at the lake’s recreational area or a simple taste of country life without driving farther south to Branson and Table Rock Lake. There were reasons to celebrate, too. The farm had grown from a few family members running a mom-and-pop business to a small community with enough people living on the 500-acre property to be listed as an unincorporated township. But Uncle Henry still ran it as though they were all part of the same family. Their homes and small businesses were grouped like a suburban neighborhood nestled among the trees and hills. Instead of any warm, fuzzy sense of security, though, Melanie felt trapped. There were secrets lurking behind the hardworking facades of the family and friends who lived on the Fiske Family Farm.

Secrets could hurt her. Secrets could be dangerous.

When she’d hiked out to the cove to look for fourteen-year-old bloodstains or evidence of a heroic struggle to stay afloat after the engine had blown a softball-sized hole in the hull of the boat, Melanie hadn’t expected to find new waterproof seals beneath the tattered seat cushions that closed off the storage wells. The first fiberglass live well she’d checked had been wiped clean. Blessedly free of snakes, this second storage compartment also smelled like bleach.

Only this one wasn’t completely empty.

Curiosity had always been a trait of hers. Her father had encouraged her to read and explore and ask questions. But her uncle didn’t seem to share the same reverence for learning. The last time she’d been caught poking around for answers up in her uncle’s attic, she’d been accused of stirring up painful memories of a lost brother, and not being grateful for the sacrifices her aunt Abby and uncle Henry had made, taking in an eleven-year-old orphan and raising her alongside their own daughter. Melanie had moved out of the main house that very night and things had been strained between them ever since. And though she wasn’t sure how much was her imagination and how much was real, Melanie got the sense that she had more eyes on her now than any bookish, plain-Jane country girl like her ever had.

Squinting into the thick forest of pines and pin oaks and out to the glare of the waves that glistened like sequins on the surface of the wind-tossed lake, Melanie ensured she was alone before she twisted her long auburn hair into a tail and stuffed it inside the back of her shirt. Then she knelt beside the opening and stuck her arm inside the tilted boat’s storage well. The water soaking into the knees of her blue jeans was warm as she stretched to retrieve the round metal object. Her fingers touched cold steel and she slipped one tip inside the ring to hook it onto her finger and pull it out.

But seeing the black ring out in the sunlight didn’t solve the mystery for her. Melanie closed the live well and sat on the broken-down cushion to study the object on her index finger. About the circumference of a quarter and shaped like a thick washer with a tiny protrusion off one edge, the round piece of steel had some surprising weight to it. Unravaged by nature and the passage of time, the ring couldn’t be part of the original shipwreck. But what was it and how had it gotten there?

With a frustrated sigh, she shoved the black steel ring into her jeans. Her fingers brushed against a softer piece of metal inside her pocket and she smiled. Melanie jumped down onto the hard-packed ground that had once been a sandy beach and tugged the second object from her pocket as she retrieved her boots and socks.

It was her father’s gold pocket watch. She traced her finger around the cursive E and L that had been engraved into the casing. A gift from her mother, Edwina, to her father, Leroy Fiske had never been without it. From the time she was a toddler, Melanie could remember seeing the shiny gold chain hooked to a belt loop on his jeans, and the prized watch he’d take out in the evenings to share with his daughter.

But the happy memory quickly clouded with suspicion. The workings of the watch had rusted with time, and the small photograph of her mother inside had been reduced to a smudge of ink. Melanie closed the watch inside her fist and fumed. If her father’s body had never been found, and he always had the watch with him, then how had it shown up, hidden away in a box of Christmas ornaments in her uncle’s attic?

Had this watch been recovered from the boat that fateful night? Why wouldn’t Leroy Fiske have been wearing it? Had it gone into the lake with him? Who would save the watch, but not the man?

The whine of several small engines dragged Melanie from her thoughts.

Company. She dropped down behind the boat to hide. Someone had borrowed two or three of the farm’s all-terrain vehicles and was winding along the main gravel road through the trees around the lake. Maybe it was one of the resident fishing guides, leading a group of tourists to the big aluminum fishing dock past the next bend of the lake, about a mile from her location. It could be her cousin Deanna, taking advantage of her position as the resident princess by stealing away from her job at the farm’s bakery and going out joyriding with one of the young farmhands working on the property this summer.

“Mel?” A man’s voice boomed over the roar of the engines. “You out here? Mel Fiske, you hear me?”

“Great,” she muttered. It was option C. The riders were out looking for her. As the farm’s resident EMT-paramedic, she knew there could be a legitimate medical reason for the men to be searching for her. Minor accidents were fairly common with farm work. And some folks neglected their water intake and tried to do too much, easily overheating in Missouri’s summer heat. But she really didn’t want to be discovered. Not here at her father’s boat. Not when her aunt had asked her to leave the past alone, since stirring up memories of Henry’s brother’s drowning upset her uncle when he needed to be focusing on important business matters. Finding her here would certainly upset someone.

Like a swarm of bees buzzing toward a fragrant bed of flowers, the ATVs were making their way down through the trees, coming closer. Melanie glanced up at the crystal blue sky and realized the sun had shifted to the west. She’d been gone for more than two hours. No wonder Henry had sent his number-one guard dog to search for her.

It wasn’t as if she could outrun a motorized four-wheeler. She glanced around at the dirt and rocks leading down to the shoulder-high reeds and grasses growing along the shoreline. She couldn’t outswim the men searching for her, either. Her gaze landed on the sun-bleached wood dock jutting into the water several feet beyond the reeds. Or could she?

Melanie unzipped her jeans and crawled out of them. After tucking the watch safely inside the pocket with the mysterious steel ring, she stripped down to her white cotton panties and support bra and sprang to her feet. With a little bit of acting and a whole lot of bravado, she raced onto the listing dock and dove into the lake.

The surface water was warm with the summer’s blistering heat, but she purposely swam down to the murky haze of deeper water to cool her skin and soak her hair so that it would seem she’d been out in the water for some time, oblivious to ATVs, shouting voices and family who wanted her to account for all her time.

She didn’t have to outswim anybody. She just had to make up a good cover story to explain why she’d gone for a dip in her underwear instead of her sensible one-piece suit. Melanie was several yards out by the time she kicked to the surface.

As she’d suspected, she saw two men idling their ATVs on the shore near the footing of the dock. The bigger man, the farm’s foreman and security chief, who thought shaving his head hid his receding hairline, glared at her with dark eyes. He waved aside the other man, telling him to move on. “Radio in that she’s okay. Then get on over to the fishing dock to make sure it’s ready for that group from Chicago tomorrow.”

The other man nodded. He pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and called into the main house to report, “We found her, boss,” before revving the engine and riding away. Meanwhile, Melanie pushed her heavy wet hair off her face and began a leisurely breast stroke to the end of the dock.

Silas Danvers watched her approach. “What are you doing out here?”

It wasn’t a friendly question. As usual, Silas was on edge about something or someone. But, then, when wasn’t the short-tempered brute ticked off about something?

Melanie opted for a bimbo-esque response he seemed to find so attractive in her cousin. She treaded water at the edge of the dock, even though she could probably stretch up on her tiptoes and stand with her head above the water. “It’s a hundred degrees out here. What do you think I’m doing?”

She was getting good at lying. Maybe it was a family trait she’d inherited from her uncle.

“Why can’t you just take a bath like a normal woman? Get your ass out of the water,” he ordered. “You’re out of cell range here.”

Melanie stopped moving and curled her toes into the mud beneath her, feeling a twinge of guilt. “Is there an emergency?”

“No, but Daryl’s been trying to get a hold of you. He’s got a question about those medical supplies you asked him to pick up in town. No sense him making two trips just because you decided to go skinny-dipping.”

Melanie nodded and paddled to the tarnished copper ladder at the edge of the dock. “Okay. I’ll get out as soon as you leave.”

“You got nothin’ I ain’t seen before.” Well, he hadn’t seen hers, and she wasn’t about to show him. Still, she had a feeling that Silas’s reluctance to turn the ATV around and ride away had less to do with her being nearly naked and more to do with his egoistic need to make sure his orders were followed. “Don’t keep Daryl waiting.”

Melanie held on to the ladder until he had gunned the engine and disappeared through the line of trees at the top of the hill. Victory. Albeit a small one. Once his shiny bald head had vanished over the rise, Melanie wasted no time climbing out of the water and hurrying back to her pile of clothes and newly acquired treasure. She was dressed from T-shirt to toes and wringing out her hair in a matter of minutes. Despite the humidity, the air was hot enough that her clothes would dry off soon enough, although her hair would kink up into the kind of snarling mess that only Raggedy Ann fans could appreciate. Funny how she’d grown up without being noticed—she’d always been a little too plump, a little too freckled, a little too into her books to turn heads. Now she was counting on that same anonymity to allow her to return to the farm without drawing any more attention to herself.

Pulling her phone from her lace-up work boot, she verified that she was, indeed, far enough out in the hills, away from the cell tower on the farm, that she had no service. So Silas hadn’t lied about his reason for tracking her down. She’d give Daryl a call as soon as she was in range, and then, even though an internet connection was spottier than cell reception in this part of the state, she’d try to get online and research some images to see if she could identify the object she’d found inside her father’s boat.

Putting off her amateur sleuthing for the time being, Melanie cut across to one of the many paths she and her father had explored when he’d been alive. She followed a dry creek bed around the base of the next hill and climbed toward the county road that bordered the north edge of the property.

As she’d hoped, she was able to get cell reception there, and she contacted her friend Daryl to go over the list of items she needed to restock her medical supplies. But it was taking so long to connect to the internet that she reached the main homestead and had to slip her phone into her hip pocket so that no one would see her trying to contact the outside world.

As the trees gave way to land cleared for farming, buildings, gravel roads and a parking lot, Melanie headed to the two-bedroom cottage she called home. But, instead of finding everyone going about their work for the day, she saw that a crowd had gathered near the front porch of her uncle’s two-story white house. She could hear the tones of an argument, although she couldn’t make out the words. Suddenly the crowd oohed and gasped as if cheering a hit in a softball game, and Melanie stopped. “What the heck?”

She changed course and headed to the main house, looking for a gap where she could get a clear view of whatever they were watching.

She spotted Silas near the bottom of the porch steps, slowly circling to his left, eyeing his unlucky target. What a surprise, discovering him in the vicinity of angry words. It was a fight, another stupid fight because somebody had ticked off Silas. More than likely, her cousin had turned him down for another date, and his opponent was merely the outlet for his wrath. Typically, her uncle didn’t allow the tourists visiting the bakery and craft shop to see any kind of dissension in the ranks of the people who lived and worked on the farm. But the hot day made it easy for tempers to rile, so maybe Henry was letting one of the hands or Silas himself blow off a little steam.

Shaking her head at the testosterone simmering in the air, Melanie turned to leave behind what was sure to be a short brawl. If it even came to fists. The men around here were smart enough to end any argument with Silas with words and walk away before it escalated into something they’d regret. If these folks had gathered for some kind of boxing match, they were going to be disappointed.

Melanie halted in her tracks when Silas’s opponent shifted into view.

He was new.

Her stomach tied itself into a knot of apprehension as she took in the unfortunate soul who’d been foolish enough to stand up to the farm foreman. Only it was pretty hard to think of the narrow-eyed stranger mirroring Silas’s movements step for step as any kind of unfortunate.

The stranger was almost as tall as Silas. The faded army logo T-shirt he wore fit like a second skin over shoulders and biceps that were well muscled and broadly built. With military-short hair and beard stubble the color of tree bark shading his square jaw, he certainly looked tough enough to take on the resident bully, and she felt herself wanting to cheer for him. She caught a glimpse of a navy blue bandanna in his back jeans pocket, and her gaze lingered there long enough to realize she was gawking like a hungry woman eyeing a new batch of cupcakes in the bakery window.

Feeling suddenly warmer than the summer weather could account for, she forced herself to move away from the circle. She didn’t want to watch a fight and she didn’t want to be interested in any man who’d shown up here, especially since her goal was to find out about her father and then get away from this pastoral prison.

“This is how you welcome somebody to your place, Fiske?”

Melanie stopped at the stranger’s deep, growly voice. Welcome? The apprehension left her stomach and siphoned into her veins. But she wasn’t feeling pity over a pending beat down—this trepidation was all about her. If Henry had hired this guy to work on the farm, then he’d be one more Silas-sized obstacle she’d have to outmaneuver in order to keep digging for answers about her father.