Forbidden Ground (17 page)

“Let’s take these three home to their grandparents and get a report on how Todd’s doing today. I also want to find out if Jace has learned anything after getting the climbing harness back from the hospital. It could have been faulty somehow. The man climbs enough that it could have frayed.”

Damn, he hoped that was the case, Grant admitted to himself. Because despite Brad’s novice climbing abilities and the fact he was shaken to be left hanging in the tree alone, he had a big motive for hurting Todd. And Todd’s shout from the tree ordered Brad not to grab at him....

“Grant, I’m glad you told me about Ada. Of course, her fears could have been linked to the tragedy that befell her own ancestor. I’m so sorry she felt haunted and paid a big price for that. In a way—a more sane way—they haunt me, too,” she admitted.

Kate carried Andy while Grant corralled the other two boys, and they headed back to his car. He wasn’t sure Kate had gotten the message not to get too involved with Mason Mound, but Kate was Kate and always managed to turn things back on him. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but damned if he’d tell her how the mound obsessed him, too, but in a different way. He couldn’t let her in there, however much she was working her way into his life and heart.

Even more sobering than that, if an outsider knew the four of them had stolen priceless artifacts from the ancient dead, Grant feared he might be next on someone’s hit list.

17

“H
i, darling,” Carson said the moment Kate answered her phone. “I got your message and sent a grad assistant over to the library archives to comb old records for any mention of Mason Mound, but no go.”

Disappointed, she exhaled hard. It seemed so long ago she’d been his grad assistant, doing his bidding. At least now, he was doing hers—or was it still the other way around?

It was Sunday afternoon, and she’d been changing clothes after church when Carson called. Wearing only her bra and panties, she paced in the bedroom as Carson went on and on about his ideas for a speech he’d been asked to give in California. Now and then, she interjected with pleasantries but her thoughts were elsewhere.

Only she and Grant were in the house, and he’d said he was going to fix them a quick lunch. Brad had attended church, sitting in the back with Lacey and her parents, then had driven off somewhere with her. She’d even picked him up at the house and honked for him to come out like some teenager.

When Carson called, Kate had been staring at the photo of Grant’s grandparents, Hiram and Ada Mason, wishing she could crawl into that picture and go back in time to talk to them. Poor Ada. Kate really empathized with her seeing visions. Her memory of the Beastmaster she thought she’d seen out that smeared garage window was still vivid. Sometimes in the middle of the night, it came at her like flashbacks lit by a flickering strobe. Like Ada, Kate felt haunted.

She cleared her throat and told Carson her search-the-archives idea was just another stab in the dark. “It’s how I feel I’m operating around here. I’d love to have a crew tackling the Mason Mound entrance right now.”

“Kate, for heaven’s sake, you’re living with the man who owns and controls it. When he’s not around, walk out there, check it out. Especially if it was entered in the last century, and you found the side facing an old water source, you can figure out where the entrance is. Even a little excavation could tell you if it’s a horizontal entry shaft, which will make things much easier for us. Meanwhile, if someone made a solo entrance years ago and covered it up, you could, too. If it was dug out once, another entry should be a piece of cake.”

“Carson, no way! Grant trusts me. He’s helped me, taken me in.”

“Evidently, taken you in in more ways than one. We’re talking the universal knowledge and preservation of human experience here.”

He began to talk about his work again, saying he’d send her a copy of an article he’d published about Etruscan tombs in Italy, that she should read it and “take it to heart.”

She sighed as her thoughts drifted again. Carson...Italy...everything but Grant and Cold Creek seemed so far away. She was pretty sure the Mason Mound entry lay behind those hawthorn bushes, which looked either old or ill. They seemed to be dying, so she wouldn’t feel too bad about cutting them back some. Since she hadn’t noted any others of those spiny trees in the area, could Hiram Mason have planted them there, either to assure poor Ada the mound was sealed—or to make sure no one else entered it after he did? But if she cut her way through them, or asked to dig them out, Grant could tell her to keep away for sure.

Either he was just plain ignorant of the fact his grandfather had entered the mound—and he was not an ignorant man—or he was lying to her, trying anything to keep her from getting into what must be a burial chamber. But she’d been so certain he cared for her. Was that just an act to sway and control her? And was it only because he’d promised his father or grandfather that the dead should stay dead, or was he hiding something else?

“So what are your plans today?” Carson finally asked something that brought her back to reality.

“We just got back from church. With Paul Kettering’s funeral this week, I feel like I’ve been living there.”

“Church again. Really? Am I talking to the cosmopolitan, world-traveler, hard-driving, work-on-Sunday Professor Kathryn Lockwood?”

That annoyed her. In the church service, Pastor Snell had led a lovely prayer for Todd’s full recovery, which they now knew would take months, maybe longer with casts, a wheelchair, pain and rehab, but at least he was alive and his brain hadn’t been damaged. And Kate felt good that she’d helped Amber by calling a friend who lived near campus in Columbus and would let Amber stay with her while Todd was hospitalized nearby so she didn’t have to drive back and forth or pay for a place to live there. More of Todd and Amber’s relatives had come in to help with the boys, though Kate was surprised to find herself missing Jason, Aaron and Andy. But if she tried to explain that to Carson—or even to herself...

Carson’s words cut through her agonizing. “Look, back to business. I’d love to have you excavating that mound, too, but it will happen one way or the other.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’ll find the right senator to get a bill passed to allow the betterment of human knowledge over private-property rights—something to bring pressure to bear on Grant Mason. The Adenas have slept there for centuries, so they can wait for us a little while longer, but I’m relying on you to get us in ASAP. Get Grant to let you at least do a solo entry, if not with all the crew and equipment. Toward that goal, how’s it going?”

“Complicated.”

“By feelings? His, I hope, and not yours.”

She couldn’t figure out what to say. What
did
she feel for Grant, for this town, for her new friends here, for those darling McCollum boys? Carson plunged on. “Oh, by the way, I have your faux Beastmaster mask to return to you, now that my best grad assistant’s made a copy, so I’ll drive down this evening. Dinner? Maybe with you and Grant to chat about the mound?”

She hesitated. “I want the mask back, but—”

“Don’t want me back?”

“I didn’t say that. Grant and I are helping out with the kids of a friend of his who took a bad fall from a high tree.”

“When the mill’s loggers were cutting it down? Or something like that old tree of Grant’s you mentioned that was taken?”

“Oh, did I tell you about that? No, this guy climbs for a hobby and was up high giving Brad Mason a climbing lesson. He fell—Todd, not Brad—was gravely injured and is now in OSU Hospital, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s terrible. So you’re babysitting kids? Ha, that’s a good one.”

“It isn’t, not the way you mean. I helped raise my younger sisters, you know. But yes, it is a good thing to do.”

“All right, if I’m persona non grata there for now, I’ll send my grad student Kaitlyn Blake down with it late tomorrow—and with a copy of my latest article. But I hope you can find a space soon on your backwoods calendar for your mentor—who wants to be much more to you. But, Kate, I’m trusting you to get us into that mound, get
yourself
into that mound at the very least. If it’s complicated, you’re good at finding your way through the maze. Call me for an update when you can see the—sorry for putting it this way—the forest for the trees.”

“I hear you, Professor.”

But the truth was, for the first time in the twelve years she’d known Carson Cantrell, she was going to do things—though things he wanted—her way.

* * *

The minute Kate joined Grant in the kitchen for lunch, he had news for her. “I think I’ve got a lead on how you can check on Grace Lockwood and what she might have meant by drawing a star on her chest when you saw her in Bright Star’s inner sanctum.”

Despite the fact the weather was gloomy and threatened rain, they were planning a ride up Shadow Mountain to search for the team of draft horses there—and who owned them and why in such a rocky, gravelly area. But her stomach flip-flopped to hear he had a lead on how to get to Grace.

“Tell me. Can we go today?”

“Not so fast. On the Sabbath, you just try to talk to a Hear Ye convert about anything but what Bright Star’s preaching. No, Keith Simons, who works for me at the mill, may be our missing link.”

“The big guy who also doubles as your bodyguard when needed?”

“The same. He’s become a friend.” He put the plate of bread, cold cuts and cheese on the table where the two of them sat across from each other. “I remembered he told me last week he’s having a fence repaired on his property, and your cousin Lee’s doing the work. So if you dropped in around lunchtime tomorrow—with me—at the Simons place, maybe you could talk to Lee at least, find out about what Grace was trying to say.”

“Great, though I’d rather talk to Grace. Lee seems to be really closed up, whereas she— I don’t know. Is he working there without another Hear Ye member? I’d want to talk to him alone. Can you set it up for tomorrow?”

“Whoa! We’ll have to play it partly by ear, but I’ll call Keith, and we’ll see.”

“And please tell his wife I’ll bring lunch from somewhere uptown. She shouldn’t have to feed us over this. Isn’t Keith the brother of the police dispatcher Gabe used to date? Tess told me Gabe arrested one of their brothers, a guy who worked for you.”

“True, but despite his siblings’ hating Gabe’s guts and evidently blaming me, too, Keith’s been my right-hand man after Todd. Keith stuck with me loyally when Jonas was sent to prison and Ned, another brother, quit the mill. Keith may seem like a man of few words, but the guy’s ambitious and sees everything. If I have Brad fill in for Todd—and it looks like I’ll have to do that—Keith will be a big help to him. As for his wife, Velma, in true Appalachian style, I’m sure she won’t take to guests bringing their own vittles, so you’d better just take her a present afterward—not right then if we go there for lunch. Speaking of which, eat up right now. So much has happened I haven’t been able to track my tree any more than you’ve been able to get to Grace alone, so let’s hustle here.”

He winked at her, which made her spirits soar. Despite all he and they had been through, Grant had a solid core of strength that emanated from him. Like a tall tree with deep roots, one, hopefully, that could not be cut down as two of his best friends had been.

* * *

On the half-hour drive up Shadow Mountain, Grant and Kate discussed Todd’s accident again. As upsetting as that was, Grant thought, it was better than the topic of his wanting to keep Mason Mound untouched.

Jace Miller had retrieved Todd’s harness from the hospital and checked it over. He’d said a thorough examination didn’t reveal if the snags, two large tears and several cuts had occurred before or during his fall. To complicate things, the emergency-room team didn’t recall how many of those they had made when they’d cut it off Todd. According to Brad, Todd had seen some problem and had tried to shift himself onto another rope, but
something just
gave way.
That something had been Todd’s harness, not the rope, as Jace had first suspected. Though Todd had regained consciousness in the hospital after his surgery, he couldn’t recall any details about the climb or his fall. His last memory was walking up to the tree with everyone.

Considering how skilled Todd was at climbing, Grant was afraid someone could have tampered with his harness. Jace had interrogated Brad, but Brad had no access to Todd’s gear and basically didn’t know what he was doing. Despite having a motive to get rid of Todd, Jace had ruled the accident just that, and Grant agreed. However much Brad wanted the foreman job at the mill, he would not have hurt their old friend to get it, nor would he have chanced leaving himself dangling high in a tree.

Since Jace was busy with an investigation into Paul’s death and Todd’s accident, Grant hadn’t even mentioned that he was going to follow a possible lead about draft horses in a field up on this mountain.

“You might know,” Kate said, “this place is called Shadow Mountain, like someone’s hiding in the shadows who could have taken your tree. Even though the rain’s letting up, this place reminds me of something from the Brothers Grimm, where there’s a witch in the forest and an ogre under the bridge.”

Grant shook his head. “That sure cheers me up, Kate. Gabe said arresting the local timber thieves would be his top priority when he’s back. But it won’t be now since so much has happened. I can’t believe it’s been nine days since my maple was butchered, so the trail may have gone cold. Still, the idea of a team of draft horses up here, where the ground can’t be tilled, is worth a look.”

“Have you been driving around anywhere else, looking for traces or clues of other tree thefts, or leaving it up to Gabe?”

“All of the above, but we’ve found nothing. So far, that is, but I’m not giving up, especially now with what I see as a direct challenge to me—revenge, even. I don’t know. But there are so many old barns, wild woodlots and deserted places in these foothills and the Appalachians beyond that it’s needle-in-a-haystack time.”

As Grant drove them upward in his truck, the wet, twisting road became a single lane with sporadic pulloffs so vehicles could pass. He could tell Kate tried not to look over the steep sides when the view was straight down. “Plateau coming up here,” he told her. “I’d give you a hug, but need both hands on the wheel.”

“I’m fine.”

“That you are.”

The lay of the land slanted less steeply with a log-fenced, grassy field near the area Amber had mentioned. As they drove past a small farm with chickens and goats in ramshackle pens, Grant recalled who lived around the next bend in the road.

Lacey’s parents had a summer home—actually, a fairly crude log cabin—up here. Could that mean anything? But Lacey was into protecting trees.

“It didn’t hit me at first,” he said. “A little farther on, Lacey’s folks have a small retreat—not much of one, probably, by your standards. Kind of a hunting cabin. It’s just through that stretch of trees.”

She sat up straighter, turned toward him. “Can there be some link to them and the horses? I saw her folks in church. They’re not that old-looking, like they could handle large horses and chain saws. Do they hold a grudge against you for divorcing her?”

“
She
divorced
me,
and that was for the best for me, too. Her mother kept her mouth shut, but I heard she took my side and said Lacey was flighty and the two of them quarreled. Her father—she was a Daddy’s girl—reacted just the opposite, so he blamed me. I used to think he might come down and take potshots at my picture window.”