Deep Freeze (39 page)

Carter stepped on the gas and pulled a quick one-eighty on the bridge. “Put Jenna on.”

“She’s all right.”

“Put her on!” He gunned the engine and his tires spun.

“Hello?” Her voice was steady and touched him in a way he didn’t think possible. The Blazer straightened.

“Are you all right?”

“All right? What do you think?” she said, and despite the angry tenor in her voice, there was more—an underlying current of panic.

“Stay with Turnquist.” He drove off the bridge, his wipers fighting the ice accumulating on his windshield.

“Don’t worry.”

Something deep inside of him cracked. “I do.”

There was a second’s hesitation, then she said, “Carter?”

“Yeah?”

“Get the hell over here.”

“Hang in there, Jenna.” His voice felt suddenly rough. “I’m on my way.”

The seconds scraped by on the clock in the den, and Jenna was going quietly out of her mind. She, Cassie, Turnquist, and even Critter were sequestered in the small room. Every curtain and blind in the house was drawn tight and the lights and television flickered as winds, keening down the gorge, buffeted the house. The girls huddled together under a sleeping bag on the couch, and Jenna tried to keep her cool.

Impossible.

Get here, Carter
, she silently thought, every muscle in her body tense.

Turnquist, too, was on edge, his weapon at his side.

Every ten minutes, he walked through the house, weapon in hand, eyes darting everywhere, stopping at the windows and opening the blinds a bit to catch a glimpse of the storm. Jenna listened to his footsteps creak on the stairs or pad lightly on the floors overhead.

She sat in a rocker, eyes fixed on the clock, one hand falling over the arm to scratch Critter behind his ears.

Finally, about the time Jenna was certain she was coming completely unhinged, the dog lifted his head and growled. Turnquist, who was just descending from the second story, walked into the darkened kitchen and squinted through the night. “It’s Carter’s Blazer,” he said, and punched in the code to allow the sheriff to roll through the gates. But the gates didn’t so much as budge. “Damned things. I’m going out,” he called over his shoulder. “The gate’s iced up.” He threw on a down jacket and left the house, closing and locking the door behind him.

Allie was dozing, Cassie’s eyes at half-mast. “Can you trust him, Mom?”

“Who? Jake Turnquist?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like he does much. Not if the guy still gets in. Maybe it’s him.”

“I checked him out.”

“By talking to Mr. Brennan. Oh, wow.”

“I called names on the list of references he gave me.”

“Like he couldn’t have set that up.”

“Sheriff Carter recommended him.”

“Maybe he’s in on it, too.”

“No.”

“No?” Cassie lifted an eyebrow. “How do you
know
, Mom? This whole place could be some kind of weird community, everyone like an alien. They’ve got really odd stuff up here, Mom. Half the people believe in Bigfoot, and that Charley Perry, the man who found the body at Catwalk Point, he claims he was abducted by aliens for a while. What’s freaky about that is that everyone in town just accepts it. He’s ‘a little eccentric.’ Are they kidding? The guy’s a full-blown nutcase and should be locked up. Just like half the townspeople. Don’t you think it’s strange that two of the men you’ve been seeing, Harrison Brennan and Travis Settler, have secret pasts—that they were involved in some kind of elite special forces military group or the CIA or something they can’t talk about? And what about Rinda, your friend. Her brother and son are creeeeeepy. Something genetically wrong there, if you ask me.”

“But Josh is normal.”

“No. I didn’t say that. His whole family is off! I’m starting to think that we—you, me, and Allie—are the normal ones. And that’s crazy, too, cuz you’re a Hollywood star, or were one, the family’s divorced, Dad’s remarried…but we still seem more sane than most of the people around here.”

“You think?” Jenna asked as Cassie turned back to the television. Normal? With her distaste for winter? She doubted it as she peered through the slats at the white-out.

White Out
. The unfinished movie. Where Jill had died.

Instead of you. You were supposed to be up on the mountain, not Jill.

She shuddered, remembered hearing the explosion, snow pluming hundreds of feet into the air, and then the horrendous rumbling, as if the earth itself was being painfully wrenched apart. From her spot on the Sno-cat, she’d watched in horror as a wall of snow and ice roared down the mountainside, to the very spot where the next scene was to be shot, where Jill was innocently waiting. Jenna had screamed and thrown herself off the vehicle, but was restrained by some of the crew.

They hadn’t found Jill’s body for hours, but Jenna had known the minute she’d died.

All because of you. You’d talked her into following your footsteps. You’d suggested to Robert that he hire her.

And look what happened.

The aftermath of the disaster had far-reaching repercussions. Investigators surmised that explosives intended to be used later in the filming had accidently been discharged early, causing the avalanche, that it had destroyed the set where they were to film. An unfortunate tragedy. No one at fault. Everyone associated with the film to blame. Jenna had been emotionally devastated, Robert nearly ruined financially. They had blamed each other, and Jenna had given up acting, refusing to finish a project that had cost Jill her life.

The press had gone nuts. Pictures of Jenna and her family splashed on newspapers across the country. The tabloids had promoted a conspiracy theory, promoting the idea that the financially troubled endeavor was so far over budget that the film had been sabotaged by one of the backers who wanted to get out and escape with the insurance money.

That time of her life had been an excruciating blur. She’d tried to hold herself together for the kids, but her career was a shambles, her already-strained marriage crumbling, her guilt eating her alive. Everyone she knew was angry and pointing fingers. One of the major backers, Paulo Roblez, had been particularly upset, as had Monty Fenderson, Jenna’s agent, who, when she’d announced she was giving up acting, had lost his only star-caliber client. He’d threatened to sue her and Robert and anyone he could think of.

And so she’d ended up hating winter and Christmas.

So why did you move up here to the land of cold winters with the largest mountain in the state almost in your back yard? Why do you still take the girls skiing? To punish yourself, or to overcome your fears and grief?

A good question, one not answered in the year of counseling.

To this day, Jenna felt the guilt and pain at the loss of her sister. It had been Jenna who had gotten Jill into acting. Jenna, who by taking the role of Katrina in
Innocence Lost,
a part not unlike Brooke Shields’s in
Pretty Baby,
had propelled herself to fame at an early age. From that point, she’d taken on roles of gritty, hard-as-nails heroines and had found some respect in a business that had little. Jill had willingly followed in Jenna’s golden footsteps, only to lose her life.

It had been so pointless, and now, staring into the stormy night, she felt that same little niggle of doubt that had eaten at her since the accident. Not that it made any sense, but Jenna had always wondered if the tragedy was planned, if the accident on the set of
White Out
had somehow been cruelly orchestrated. Could someone have deliberately caused the avalanche? But why? A police probe into the accident had proved nothing, not even negligence, in her sister’s death, and the entire catastrophe had been ruled accidental. But the rumors had abounded, and secretly there had been allegations that the movie had been sabotaged deliberately when explosives that were to be used in another scene had gone off prematurely, thereby putting an end to a movie that had already been hopelessly over budget. There had even been talk that the “accident” was a way of creating some buzz about the film, a macabre enticement to moviegoers.

But Jenna had pulled the plug on any expectation of profits made from her sister’s death by quitting and letting the lawyers fight it out.

She watched as Jake managed to force the gates open and Carter drove his SUV through the drifts to the garage. A surge of relief swept through her, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of him, a tall, rangy lawman to whom she was now affixing the unwanted role of personal hero. Which was ludicrous. Yet she couldn’t stop herself from rushing into the kitchen and throwing open the door at his arrival. Silly as it was, she threw herself at him and his big arms crushed her to his body. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, perilously close to tears as the rush of bitter wind forced its way inside.

“Hey, calm down.” His breath fanned her hair as he kicked the door shut, but Carter didn’t let go of her, held her tight and hard against him. And she, damn it, was grateful for his strong body. His firm male presence. The feel of bone, gristle, flesh, and raw determination all wrapped in waterproofed down. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

Her knees nearly buckled and she clung to him. “Thank you.” Her face was upturned, her lips touching the rim of his ear.

His jaw hardened. “Don’t thank me yet. We’ve got a lunatic to locate.”

“That we do.” Reluctantly, she extracted herself from those oh-so-safe arms and blinked back tears that had no right to sting her eyes.

“By the way, have you ever met a poet named Leo Ruskin?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“He lived in Southern California a few years back and it was his line, ‘Today…Tomorrow…Endlessly,’ that was going to be used in the promotion of
White Out
.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said earnestly, “but there was a lot I didn’t know back then, as Robert and I were barely speaking. I spent my days on the set, my evenings with the kids, and I left all of the financial matters—the promotion, development, all of it—with him. Have you talked to Ruskin?”

“Can’t find him. Not yet. But we will.” He paused. “I think we should ask your ex about him, the promo line, and whoever was contracted to do the makeup for the movie.”

“The makeup?”

“Yeah. I assume a makeup artist or some company handled all the changes to your face.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You think whoever did that could have had something to do with the finger we found.”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to think, and I don’t remember the name of the company, but I’ll call Robert. He must have records.”

“You’d think.”

The back door opened again and Turnquist, stomping his boots and blowing on his gloved hands, strode in with another gust of frigid winter air. He glanced at the remains of Jenna and Carter’s embrace and his thin mouth pulled down at the corners. “Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll search the place.”

“I thought you did that already, when you first hired on.”

“I mean I’m gonna rip up the floorboards. Somehow that son of a bitch knows what’s happening in this house.”

“Wait for the OSP. I called them on the way over.”

Turnquist’s already flushed face grew redder. “I can handle it.”

“Can you? I haven’t seen much evidence of that so far,” Carter snapped. “I don’t want any evidence compromised. Tell me exactly what went on here, then wait for the state guys.”

“That could be hours.”

“All we’ve got is time.” Carter’s cell phone beeped and he answered it as they all filed into the den. Critter yawned, stretched his legs, then walked stiffly over to sniff Carter’s boots, but Allie’s eyes didn’t so much as flutter.

Cassie was slumped on the opposite end of the couch from her sister and she, too, had finally let exhaustion take its toll. Head cradled in one arm, she was snoring softly, dead to the world.

Jenna’s heart twisted when she remembered her horrid dream. How had she and Cassie drifted so far apart? As a child, Cassie had been so effervescent, so happy, delighted with all new things from puppies to ice cream to airplanes, and then, as she’d headed into pubescence and her parents’ marriage was falling apart, she’d lost that beautiful, whimsical
joie de vivre
that had been her essence as a child. Had it been a natural progression into adulthood or the slow erosion of happiness caused by her parents’ inability to work through their problems after the accident?

Back to the tragedy.

Always the tragedy.

Carter clicked his phone off. “Larry Sparks is on his way,” he said, “but the State Police are knocked flat with this storm. We’ll all have to be patient. Looks like it’s gonna be a long night.”

“Already has been,” Turnquist grumbled.

“Okay, so let’s go into the kitchen there,” Carter nodded to the open doorway, “and you two can tell me everything that went on here tonight.”

The next few hours seemed to go on forever. Larry Sparks and a detective from the Oregon State Police arrived and, with Turnquist, searched the house and grounds. Meanwhile, Jenna explained what happened in the last few days, naming everyone who had been on the grounds, when she had last noticed the jewelry box had been opened, when anyone could have possibly been in the house, what enemies she might have made who would want to do harm to her. The police searched her room again, dusted for prints again, removed the fake finger and were going to test its composition against alginate, the substance that had been found at the site where they discovered Mavis Gette’s body. Sparks had already called Reverend Swaggert about the rings and would have the preacher verify if they had belonged to Lynnetta.

“So you think the person who’s doing this killed that Gette woman and abducted the others,” Jenna said, once the police were packing up to leave.

“Looks that way.”

“But how? Why?” She shook her head and bit her lower lip in frustration and fear. “I don’t understand why this is happening to me.”

“Neither do I. You’ve got someone obsessed with you,” Carter said. He was seated on the raised hearth of the fireplace, warming his back, his clasped hands hanging between his knees.

“A lunatic.”

“Close enough.” His eyes held hers. “A lunatic who’s possessive. He thinks he owns you, that you’re his. Remember the line ‘My woman’ in the poem?”

“Hard to forget.” She rubbed one arm. “Damned hard.”

“The FBI is working on a profile.”

“And that will automatically point to whoever this monster is?”

“Unfortunately, no.” He shook his head, stretched his back. “But we will get him, Jenna. We’re closing in.”

“God, I hope so.” She sat next to Carter on the hearth, felt the heat of the crackling flames, felt a little stronger being close to him. “It seems like he’s trying to force me to leave. Like he’s trying to scare me out of my house. Why would he want that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you have any ideas?”

She shook her head, searched for answers she didn’t have.

Lieutenant Sparks had squared his hat on his head and was pulling on thick gloves. “You staying?” he asked Carter.

“Yeah.”

“And the bodyguard?”

“He’ll be outside. He’s out there already, got a bird’s-eye view of the place and won’t sleep until daylight. I’ll be inside.”

Sparks nodded, flashed his smile. “Good luck. I’ll call you in the morning, let you know what the lab comes up with on the finger and if we’ve got a match on the rings.”

“Thanks.” Carter stood and shook the bigger man’s hand. “And I want you to check on something for me.”

“What?”

“Wes Allen. See what kind of an alibi he has for the nights the women were abducted.”

“You think he’s involved?”

“Wes?” Jenna asked, stunned. She shot to her feet. “Wait a minute. He’s a friend of mine.”

Carter ignored her. Held Sparks’s stare. “Double-check, would you?”

“You got it.”

“I said ‘he’s a friend of mine,’” she protested.

“Then he’ll have nothing to hide.”

As Sparks closed the door behind him, Carter locked it, turned on the alarm system, then watched through the curtain of snow as the state vehicle left and Turnquist forced the gate shut. It was nearly two in the morning.

“Why do you suspect Wes?”

“I suspect everyone.”

“But you didn’t have everyone’s alibi checked.”

He ran a tired hand around the back of his neck. “Jenna, there are things I can’t discuss.”

“This is
my life
, Carter.
My girls’
lives! You damned well better tell me what’s going on.”

“I will. Soon.”

She wasn’t about to be mollified. Stood toe-to-toe with the tall sheriff. “I have the right to know. What is it that makes you think Wes is involved? Wes is Rinda’s brother!”

“And I’ve known him all my life. I’m just eliminating people.”

“By what means?”

His lips tightened and his eyes glittered darkly. “I’ll explain it all soon, okay? But I can’t tell you anything that might compromise the investigation.”

“Now, wait a minute, Carter—you can’t just drop this kind of bomb and then ask me to be patient. Not after what’s been going on. Why Wes?”

He hesitated, bit at the fringe of his moustache, and finally swore. “Oh, hell. You deserve to know.”

“Damned straight!”

“But I can’t tell you everything. I’m not going to compromise this investigation.”

“Of course not, but give me a clue here.”

A muscle worked overtime in his jaw. “For one thing, he’s the person who has rented and bought more of your videos and DVDs than anyone in town.”

“So?” she said, shaken nonetheless. The thought of Wes Allen viewing her in the privacy of his home over and over again made her uncomfortable, but it would with anyone she knew. Though she considered her roles on film, her career, work she was certainly not ashamed of, her art could easily be twisted into someone’s particular form of depravity.

“And he visits all your fan sites. Often.”

“A lot of people do.” Again she had a sense of unease and remembered all the times Wes had tried to get close to her in the theater. “I would think since I moved here there’s been a lot of interest in my work. Lots of copies rented and bought.”

“But Wes Allen seems to be your biggest customer—number one fan. We’re just ruling him out.”

She thought about all the times she’d been around Wes Allen. How close he’d stood. How often he’d touched her shoulder, or arm. Friendly? Interested? Or obsessed? “I can’t believe it,” she whispered, but a part of her readily accepted what Carter had suggested, the part that caused the taste of bile to rise in the back of her throat.

“There’s nothing to believe. Not yet. I’m just being cautious,” he said, but she noticed the set of his jaw, the determined glint in his eyes. He was convinced that Wes was somehow involved. “You’d better sleep,” Carter said, as if he’d noticed Jenna’s weariness for the first time.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Sure.” She reached up and ran a finger down the beard-stubble on his cheek. “You already look dead on your feet.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Yeah. You should,” she mocked.

Jenna knew she’d never sleep upstairs. She couldn’t go back to her room with its fingerprint dust and haunting memories, so she shut the doors to all the rooms upstairs and after stopping at the closet, returned to the den with pillows and quilts. She tossed a pillow and hand-stitched coverlet to Carter. “Just in case.” Then she walked through the French doors that led to the living room and settled onto the couch. Carter searched the house one last time—she heard his footsteps as he walked into every room and closet—then finally joined her, taking a seat in an overstuffed chair and resting a boot heel on an ottoman.

“Rest,” he suggested.

Yawning, she said, “You should, too.”

His mouth slashed into that irreverent smile she’d grown to love. White teeth showed beneath his moustache. “You know what they say about rest and the wicked.”

“I thought it was ‘the weary.’”

“Close enough,” he said. “Tonight, believe me, I’m both.”

“Me, too,” she said, closing her eyes and refusing to think of Wes Allen. “Me, too.”

In stocking feet, Carter walked through the house one last time. He’d been awake for over twenty-four hours. His nerves were jangled and he was rummy, but they were safe. At least for this night. The sun would be up in a couple of hours and the storm seemed to be winding down. It was still cold as all hell, but the wind had lessened and the snow had stopped falling. He sat at the kitchen table, where he could see into the den where the kids were dead to the world and had a peek-a-boo view of the living room couch, through to the fireplace, to watch Jenna as she slept.

Drinking coffee that had started to bother his stomach, he thought about the day to come and what he intended to do, starting with going over the evidence possibly linking the crimes, Wes Allen’s alibis, his motives and getting the search warrant to go through his house and barns. Those huge buildings that had stood empty for years. Maybe there was more to be found than the shrine/video room tucked in the basement.

From the living room, he heard a moan.

Carter shot to his feet and hurried to the couch where Jenna thrashed, her features pinched in distress. “No!” she said, though her eyes didn’t open. “No, please.”

“Jenna,” he whispered and noticed she was shaking. “Jenna. Wake up. It’s okay. I’m with you.”

“Don’t. Oh, don’t.”

“Jenna,” he said a little more loudly, his hands gently holding onto her trembling shoulders. “Wake up. You’re dreaming.”

Her eyes flew open.

Startled, she nearly screamed.

“Shh. Hush, darlin’. You’re all right,” he said, placing his face close to hers so that, in the half light from the fire, she would recognize him.

“Oh. Oh.” She blinked and tears fell from her eyes. Her face was pale as death, and she was shivering as if cold to the bone.

“Everything’s fine.”

She sniffed and shook her head. He sat next to her on the couch, still holding her, and she burrowed her head into his shoulder. “It was Cassie again. He had her…that faceless bastard had her!”

“She’s okay. Asleep in the den.”

Jenna was inconsolable. Wrapped in a quilt, she walked to the den and peered inside where both her daughters were sleeping. Even the dog didn’t move. Pushing her hair from her eyes, she seemed to calm a bit. “What time is it?”

“Too early.”

“And?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary has happened since you dropped off.”

“Thank God.” She stretched, pulling the quilt up. It gaped open and her sweater slid up the flat wall of her abdomen. He felt his groin tighten. “I should get up.”

“You should sleep.”

“What about you?” she asked around a yawn, as she dropped her arms to her side.

“I’m fine.”

“A man of steel?”

He laughed. “Maybe that’s a little too strong. I’m probably more like a man of aluminum foil.”

She smiled, and the hint of teeth he saw against her lips was tantalizing, made his thoughts run in unwanted, dangerous directions. “Steel or tinfoil, I don’t really care,” she admitted and stepped up to him, “I’m just glad you’re here.” Her green eyes found his. “Thanks, Carter. I guess I needed you last night.” She said it as if it were a fact and he didn’t argue.

Instead, though he knew he was being the worst kind of fool possible, he slipped his hands beneath the quilt, drew her close to him, and kissed her. Softly at first, feeling her warm, pliant lips respond, and then, not thinking of the consequences, his arms around her tightened, his mouth pressed harder against hers.

Parting her lips, she sighed into his open mouth and he was undone.

Lust fired his blood.

He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d kissed a woman, but it was too damned long. And he’d been wanting this one ever since he’d pulled her over on the snowy highway. She wanted him, too. He felt it in the way she fit up against him, her breasts flattened against his chest, her arms circling his neck, holding him firmly to her, her legs parted as she stood on tiptoe. He pushed one leg between those legs, felt the zipper of her jeans rub against his thigh, heard a wanton groan escape her lips.

His hands splayed against her back, fingers rubbing her sweater, feeling the firm flesh beneath the soft angora, and he drowned in the scent and feel of her. His body screamed for release, muscles tight, mind weary, sex an easy and welcome antidote to all that was wrong in the world. She was so beautiful, so erotic, so damned sexy, and every nerve ending itched for the relief she could give.

Don’t do this, Carter. Use your head. She’s a victim, a woman you’re supposed to protect, a Hollywood princess who has been wanted by every man she’s ever met. Don’t do this
.

But her body was rubbing against him and her mouth opened so easily to his. He felt her nipples through her sweater and bra, hard buttons that he ached to touch, to kiss, to pull on with his teeth.

His heart was pounding crazily, his blood thundering through his brain, his erection at full mast. His lungs were so tight, he was breathing shallowly, his mind running in reckless circles. He imagined what it would feel like to make love to her, to feel her warm, moist body sheathing his, to look down upon her beneath him, black hair splayed around her face, her breasts full, her nipples dark and hard with want, a sheen of sweat glistening on her skin as he pushed into her and began to move. All night…it would take all night and more.

But he couldn’t. Not here. Not like this.

He lifted his head and was nearly lost again when he stared into the slumberous, erotic eyes of Jenna Hughes. “I can’t,” he said, though his body was screaming that he was making the biggest mistake of his life.

“I know.”

“The kids,” he lifted a hand in the direction of the den.

“I know.”

She was tugging on him, walking backward, leading him through the living room and down two steps to a guest room. Empty. Cold. Dark.

“We shouldn’t,” she said, but threw her arms around his neck again and kissed him feverishly.

His willpower fled and he shut the door behind her and twisted the dead bolt without lifting his head. He peeled off her sweater, his hands anxious for the weight of her breasts against his palms. She was gasping as the sweater hit the floor and he yanked a bra strap over her shoulder to expose her breast. Her fingers were fumbling with the hem of his shirt and he pulled it off, then lifted her onto his hips and took her breast in his mouth, anxiously. Hungrily. She moaned and held on with one arm, letting her head loll backwards as he suckled.

This is a mistake
, his mind hammered at him, but he ignored it.
You’ll mess everything up. If you do her, Carter, your career, your life, everything that you’ve worked for will be gone
.

He pulled off her bra as her fingers fumbled for his fly. He stripped her of her jeans and panties, and kicked his own away, then pulled her onto him, watched her gasp as he placed her over his erection. Sweet. Hot. Wet. He began to move, his tired muscles suddenly energized.