Forbidden Ground (18 page)

“What occupation was her dad in? Not a competitor to the mill?”

“Worked in a sporting-goods store halfway to Chillicothe. He was known for getting the biggest bucks during hunting season—always proud of having his picture in the
Chillicothe
Gazette.
Look, it’s obvious this field is empty, and that tiny shed won’t hold more than those goats and chickens, but I want to stop and check the field anyway.”

“You’re looking for, let’s say, relics or artifacts that big horses would have left behind even if they’ve been moved on?”

“You got it.”

He pulled over and got out at the edge of the log-fenced field where it was shaded by a woodlot. In the light swirl of mist, Kate got out and followed him to the fence. Shorter than he was, she climbed on the lower rail and looked over.

“I smell it,” he said. “Horses—and a rat.”

“Me, too. And look, I see the horses’ calling cards in the grass. Someone might have moved the horses, but they could hardly clean this big field.”

“The hill folk call those ‘horse apples.’ So the draft horses were here and they’ve been moved—maybe for their next job hauling off a big tree. Let’s look around behind the outbuildings. My tree would be too big to hide intact, but maybe the thieves are cutting the trunk and limbs up here then moving them. Watch where you step.”

“No kidding.”

They ducked through the fence logs and stuck close to it where the grass seemed to be just grass. “Where’s the farmhouse?” she asked, keeping her voice down, though she wasn’t sure why. “It’s just a few run-down outbuildings?”

“I think it burned years ago, so the goats and chickens we saw may be a cover.”

The minute they walked behind the cluster of ramshackle buildings, they saw Grant was right. The ground was littered with so many wood chips, trails of sawdust and abandoned sawhorses that Grant swore and Kate gasped.

He bent to pick up some of the bigger chips. “Bird’s-eye maple,” he said, giving her one of the pieces with the distinctive pattern. “
My
bird’s-eye maple, damn them.”

“But who is
them?
At least next time someone reports trees taken, you, Gabe and Jace will know where to look for them to be cut up.”

“But I want the bastards now.”

“Believe me, I understand. It’s hard to have patience when you want something so close—want it now and—”

Something pinged past them into the shed. Wood splinters peppered them. A loud crack seemed to echo from afar. Kate squealed as Grant yanked her down and threw himself on the ground beside her. The air slammed out of him; he tasted sawdust. Though it happened so fast, everything seemed to go into slow motion.

“Bullets!” he said, throwing an arm over her and shoving her head down when she lifted it. “Maybe from the woodlot. And it’s not somebody after deer!”

* * *

Kate was as angry as she was scared. Two more bullets whizzed past them, and then one struck so close, wood chips hit them and she got sawdust in her eyes.

“Mist or not, he’s getting the range,” Grant muttered. “We’re going to roll into that shed. Keep your head down. Go!”

She did as she was told with him so close behind that his elbow hit hard into her ribs. The boards were worn with spaces between them, and she feared this ramshackle shed would be no protection.

Grant half shoved, half dragged her behind what must have been an old feed trough. She blinked back tears to get rid of the sawdust burning her eyes.

He hunched down beside her. “I thought there might be a door out the back so we can get into the woodlot and run for the truck. Stay down. This wood’s so old I’m going to make us a way out.”

“The shots have stopped. Maybe he’s gone away.”

“Or is changing positions to get at us better.” He sat on the floor and kicked at some low boards that looked half rotted. He made a hole, then kicked at it to make it larger. “We can’t stay trapped in here. I’ll go out first in case he’s moved around this side, but I think the shots were distant. Hope he doesn’t have a scope. If it’s clear, you come right behind me. Belly-crawl.”

“But if he’s in the woodlot...”

“Trees may be his friends, but they’re ours, too. We can’t run clear to the truck in the open.”

With a grunt, he crawled out on his elbows and stomach. She could see only his feet as he stood, obviously making himself a target. First Paul, she thought, then Todd and now...

She held her breath, every muscle tensed, fearing another shot. Nothing.

“Now!” His voice came to her, and she crawled out, somehow snagging the back of her belt on one of the broken boards. Grant reached down and hauled her out, then to her feet. “Go!” he told her. “I’m right behind you. Run zigzag.”

They ducked through the old log fence and sprinted into the woodlot. Grant pressed her against the trunk of a big tree away from the direction of the shots. Her cheek and breasts pressed against the rough bark with his big body as strong as the tree tight against her back and butt.

The woods seemed quiet now but for the breeze rustling the branches, bird calls and their hard, rhythmic breathing. Damp foliage sputtered drops on them, but it wasn’t misting in here. Strange, but held so close by Grant like this, she almost forgot to be afraid.

“What’s your best guess?” she whispered.

“For the shooter or his position?”

“Both.”

“I think he was far enough to the north that he can’t have worked his way behind us yet. Remember those old cowboy movies where they darted from tree to tree?”

“Cowboy movies? I was hooked on
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
”

“I don’t want to hear the word
doom.
I’m going first. You follow—if you don’t hear another shot. If so, get flat on the ground again.”

Still in a zigzag pattern, he went tree to tree with her right behind him. No noise but crows cawing. They worked their way toward the road and made a dash for his truck. He gunned the engine to pull away up the hill.

“Can we turn around somewhere and go back down?” she asked. They hadn’t even taken time to fasten their seat belts, and the warning buzzer kept sounding.

“Hate to say it, but I’m going to stop at Lacey’s folks’ place so we can call Jace. Pretty soon he’ll stop taking our calls at all.”

“I think we should turn around at their place, go back down, get out of here then call Jace.”

“You’re not in charge right now, sweetheart!”

“You mean our cell phones won’t work up here? But we’re so high.”

“Lacey’s folks have one of the few landlines up here, which will surprise you when you see their small place.”

“But if they’re not there, you aren’t going to break in, are you?”

“Nope. Then we’ll go to plan B. As you know, I don’t approve of people breaking in—and that’s not a reference to Paul’s place.”

She knew he meant the mound, and it upset her even more that he thought a careful archaeological excavation was like breaking in.

Still wiping sawdust from the corners of her eyes, she saw where they were going, maybe a half mile ahead. The light rain had almost stopped, but the pavement was still wet. A small log cabin stood on a rise with trees behind but not in front. It must have a stunning view of the valley far below, maybe clear to Cold Creek from the steep drop-off across the narrow road. As they got closer, she saw an old pickup parked there and, next to it, the car Lacey had driven earlier today. So both Lacey’s father and Brad had been within shooting range. At least, she thought, if Lacey’s parents were here, too, they weren’t going to barge in on Brad and Lacey in bed together.

Grant muttered something she couldn’t decipher, so maybe he was thinking the same thing. She was going to suggest he turn back again, but the back window shattered. Kate screamed. A second shot evidently struck a tire, because as Grant hit the brakes, the truck started to spin wildly toward where the road met nothing but gray sky.

18

T
he last person on earth Kate wanted to see when she opened her eyes was bent over her, dabbing at her forehead with a damp cloth. Lacey Fencer. A cloud of clove scent hit her. Oh, the woman was chewing reddish gum.

Suddenly, she remembered. Grant’s truck had spun out on the road. Had they gone over the cliff? No, she was obviously in the Fencer cabin and wasn’t in pain except for her head. But as she gazed above Lacey, a horrible animal face with horns glared down at her. Was she hallucinating again, like when she’d seen—or thought she’d seen—the Beastmaster?

No, it was a stag head mounted on the wall over the narrow couch where she lay, one like in Todd’s living room. Did everyone decorate this way around here?

“Where’s Grant?” she managed to ask.

“He’s here,” Lacey said. “Both of your air bags deployed. He’s washing up in the bathroom. You lost consciousness, but he didn’t.”

“But is he okay?”

“He is. The truck isn’t. He chose to put it against a tree instead of taking flight. He says you weren’t tailing Brad and me.”

Kate put a hand to her head. Yeah, it hurt. She was a little dizzy. “We were looking for his stolen maple tree and found where it was cut up. Got shot at,” she said.

“So’s we hear,” came a male voice as a grizzled face appeared behind and above Lacey’s to block out the stag head. Lacey’s father, Kate thought. She might not think much of the woman, but at least she must have a good relationship with her father. Kate recalled he had blamed Grant for his daughter’s divorce and, Grant said, was likely to shoot out his picture window. At least her head was clear, even if every muscle in her body ached, and the skin on her face felt sunburned, evidently from the air bag.

Kate heard Brad’s voice. “Grant, I can’t believe you found where the tree-house maple was cut up or that it was up here. Clemmet, you have an idea on who could have done that over there?”

“Or who could have fired at us?” Grant asked. “Someone who’s either not that good a shot or just wanted to scare us off—except for that bullet in the tire.”

“Don’t you go lookin’ at me, boy,” Clemmet Fencer said. “If’n I was the one shooting, I’d of hit you. Folks here ’bouts can tell you I been on these grounds, not a runnin’ through some woodlot. And know nothing about someone takin’ or cuttin’ up some tree neither—though some skunk cut our phone wires.”

“Yeah, the phone’s dead, all right,” Brad said. “At least Grant and Kate aren’t, but you two have got to quit getting into trouble.”

“Yeah, and you should talk,” she heard Grant mutter.

For a man of few words, as Grant had described Lacey’s father, he’d given quite a speech, Kate thought. She leaned on her elbows and sat up. A wave of dizziness hit her as the cabin seemed to tilt, then righted itself.

This small living room had no ceiling; she could see clear to the rafters. There appeared to be a sleeping area partitioned off as well as a small bathroom and, across the way, a small galley kitchen by the back door. It was bright—lots of windows to take advantage of the view.

Grant came over and leaned down close to her. Lacey almost jumped off the edge of the couch and moved over by Brad at the small table where her parents now sat. Kate saw Grant’s clothes were dirty and torn; hers must be, too. No wonder Lacey was washing her face. She was probably a mess.

“Like they said, someone cut their phone line here, so we can’t call Jace yet,” Grant told her. “I’ll drive you to the doctor’s in Cold Creek for a checkup. I don’t like it that it’s the second time you’ve hit your head. I’ll have to call the doc to come into his office since it’s late.”

“I’m all right,” she insisted. “But is your truck okay?”

“Except for a shot-out tire, a blasted window and a scraped, dented driver’s side. We’ll call Jace when we get down the mountain. Brad’s going to help me change the flat tire so I can drive. You just rest here, and I’ll be back soon.”

“I told you Lacey and I can drive you down, Grant,” Brad said.

Grant ignored that. He squeezed her shoulder and stroked the backs of his fingers gently against her cheek before standing. She felt he was leaving her in the lion’s den. She’d rather help change the tire, but maybe she could get something out of the Fencers about who might have shot at them—and taken Grant’s tree.

* * *

“Just sit down and rest if you’re woozy,” Brad told Grant as he dug the jack and other tools out of the box from the bed of Grant’s truck. “I can handle this.”

“I’m just shook up. I’ll help.”

“My sentiments exactly—I’ll help. Here and at the mill. Look, Grant, I swear I’ll just try to support you and hold Todd’s position for him until—if—he gets better.”

They squatted by the back driver’s-side tire, jacked up the truck, and then Brad pried the dented hubcap off. “Don’t talk about
if,
” Grant insisted. “Can you imagine Todd in a wheelchair or partially paralyzed? Operations and rehab have to bring him back, even if he never climbs again. But yeah, I can use your help at the mill. Here, I’ll help you unscrew the lug nuts. And Keith can help you oversee the mill floor when I’m not available.”

“You going somewhere?”

“Hope not. But doesn’t the fact that Paul, then Todd had tragedies, then I almost did, make you nervous?”

“You mean like we’re targets? Like there’s some curse on us for taking stuff from the tomb?”

“So you thought of that, too? Nadine told me you asked her if you could help her go through Paul’s stuff. You’re wondering where his eagle pendant’s hidden, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, aren’t you? The guy was having financial problems and then with Nadine’s medical treatment on the horizon... What if he sold it to a middleman, a fence, or whoever he consulted, and that guy came back to see if he had more?”

“Yeah. I know.” Grant knew that Paul wasn’t the only one having financial problems. Brad was desperate to bail out his business, but the conversation just couldn’t go there. He couldn’t get his mind around the idea that Brad would hurt Paul or Todd to get his hands on their artifacts to sell. Brad was his little brother. Surely, he would never deceive him like that? Grant decided he had to make sure Brad’s big arrowhead was where he must have hidden it, under that pile of stones Kate had spotted. The grave of his nonexistent pet dog.

“Okay, let’s lift the wheel off together,” Brad said as they pulled the flat tire away from the axle. “Speaking of together, you and the professor have a thing going?”

“No, don’t roll that tire over the side!” Grant told him, grabbing his arm. “I want Jace to check it for bullets.”

“Even if it matches a shotgun or hunting rifle—even if it matches the one Lacey’s dad has—he might hate your guts, but he wasn’t out of the cabin shooting at anything, including you. Or cutting his own phone lines. I can vouch for that.”

“And he and Lacey can vouch for you. Speaking of together...” Grant said as he reached for the spare tire. “You and Lacey?”

“You think she’d stay in Cold Creek for anyone? Though ultimately my goal is to get out of here, too. And I suppose Professor Kate Lockwood wouldn’t be happy living here, either, right?”

“Right,” Grant admitted, but he wished he could say
wrong.

* * *

That evening Kate had dinner for Grant pretty well under control, which was a good thing because she felt exhausted, as if she’d run for miles. They’d made it back down the mountain—slowly—in Grant’s beat-up truck.

The local doctor had come into his office and checked her over. No concussion this time, he said. She’d just blacked out. Then they’d driven directly to see Jace, even though they’d looked as if they’d rolled down the mountain.

Jace, spending Sunday afternoon at his office, had said he’d send the two bullets from the tire to BCI for ballistics analysis, but that could take a while. He promised he’d also try to retrieve other bullets on-site. But it was a tense exchange between Grant and Jace that had really bothered Kate:

Grant had told Jace not to waste time interviewing Clemmet Fencer or Brad. They’d just alibi each other—as would the women. “Besides, I believe Brad.”

“Maybe that’s a bad move,” Jace had said, sounding more uptight than Kate had felt. “Your little brother keeps turning up at the site of crimes, Grant, or at least could have been there. If I hear his name tied to one more thing, I— Listen, I don’t mean to jump the gun here, but are you sure he’s on your side?”

And he’d said something else that had really shaken her up: “You don’t see a trend here, do you, Grant? I mean, could the shooter have been aiming for your head? After Paul’s skull was crushed, then the E.R. doc kept saying that Todd was the first patient he’d seen who had fallen more than twenty feet who didn’t go headfirst and crush his skull, I mean...”

“No,” Grant had said and reached out to hold her upper arm as if to steady her. “Kate’s the one who’s hit her head, but she’s all right.”

Now Kate raked her fingers through her hair, which she’d finally gotten clear of sawdust, leaf litter and dirt. She’d taken a long, hot shower and washed her hair after they’d left Grant’s truck at the local body shop and Jace had driven them home. She jumped when the doorbell rang. Brad wouldn’t ring it, and Grant was taking a shower. Jace back again with something new?

In her cutoffs and T-shirt, she went to the door and looked out through the peephole. She was surprised to see almost a mirror image of herself—her younger self, anyway—standing on the front porch with a big box in her arms. The woman looked more like she could be her sister than either Tess or Char. She wore skinny jeans and an Ohio State scarlet-and-gray sweatshirt. Oh, must be Carson’s graduate assistant returning her Beastmaster mask, but hadn’t he said she’d come late tomorrow?

Kate opened the door, and before she could ask, the girl blurted out a greeting. “Hi, I’m Kaitlyn Blake, Professor Cantrell’s GA. I have your Celtic mask and I tried to copy it exactly for him to use in his Indigenous Native Americans class, but I think you did a great job with it and I’ve read all your Adena-Celtic articles. Very convincing!”

“Kaitlyn, won’t you step in? I got confused, thought you were coming tomorrow.”

“I was, but I have to help grade exams then, and I was eager to meet you. Actually, I mean—I hope helping the professor will get me started on my own great career, just like you. I’ve been researching Etruscan tombs but I’d love to get inside an Adena one.”

Kate’s mind raced. Kaitlyn even had a similar first name and echoed Kate’s primary goal. She took the box from her, put it on the entry-hall table and opened the lid carefully. The Beastmaster mask she’d made so long ago glared up at her despite its empty eye sockets. Its stag antlers she’d worked so hard to find were intact. The mica-chip skin glittered despite the dimness of the hall. As glad as she was to have it back, the thing unsettled her, and she put the lid back on quickly.

“I know you’re busy,” Kaitlyn said, “but I was just wondering if I could see the Adena mound that Professor Cantrell said is on this property, maybe just the entrance to it, even.”

Right,
Kate thought. Carson must have told her to say that. Or did he? When she was Kaitlyn’s age, she was so eager to make discoveries, to prove things, to take steps to make a name for herself in the well-trodden field of archaeology—just like now.

“You can see it really well from this picture window back here, but I can’t take you out closer. When I get the chance to excavate it, I’ll remember to ask for you on the dig crew, if you’re available,” Kate said as they stared in silence, almost a mutual reverence, at the mound.

Kaitlyn sighed and gazed through the glass. Even if this woman had been sent here as Carson’s spy—or if she was a new-tread replacement for the eager ingenue Kate had once been—she understood this girl’s aspirations and ambitions.

They spoke awhile longer. Kate offered her a glass of iced tea, which she turned down, and then she showed her out. And when Kate returned to the living room with the box in her arms, she gasped to see Grant, leaning in the hallway, arms crossed over his chest, frowning at her. Somehow, instantly, she knew he’d been there for a long time, had seen and heard her with Kaitlyn.

“She looks like—acts like—your clone, doesn’t she?” he asked, his voice hard.

“You should have said something. I would have introduced you.” She felt like a kid who had been caught with someone else’s property in her hands.

“I’ll leave her to Professor Carson Cantrell, who obviously likes auburn-haired, green-eyed beauties as his assistants. Since you told her you’ll have her back on a dig crew and that’s not likely to happen, I’ll probably never get to meet her. But it’s interesting to hear you have plans for a dig here.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I wanted to encourage her. She just brought back the Beastmaster mask I made. Carson had her copy mine so he’d have hers to show his classes.”

If it was possible, Grant looked even angrier. His square jaw set hard. The furrow between his brows deepened.

“Would you like to see the mask?” she asked.

“The drawing you had was bad enough. That nightmare I had, remember? If you have to keep it around here, hide it from me—I mean, just keep it in your room. I don’t see why you needed it here.”

He strode past her and went into the kitchen, where she heard him slam a cupboard, then pull back his chair and sit down hard. She went into her bedroom and put the box under her bed, then went into the kitchen and started to ladle out the three-cheese macaroni she’d made from scratch because he’d mentioned that he’d loved it as a kid. She put his plate down next to the tossed salad and the zucchini bread, put her own plate down a bit too hard.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she said, grabbing her fork in her right hand, ready to stab it into the salad.

How many meals had she seen in her childhood that had started like this between her parents before Dad left them? Hostile silence at the meal, unspoken bad feelings, banging tableware, stomping out. But her father hadn’t loved her mother then, she was sure of that, or he would have broken the dreadful silence, reached out to her.

Tears sprang to her eyes as Grant reached across the table, loosened her fingers from her fork. He held her hand, silent for a while. Even if their meal was getting cold, she knew something important was coming. He was probably going to ask her to leave. To go back to Tess’s house, get far away from his mound and stay away. He was going to desert her.