Midnight Sacrifice (9 page)

“Eight.”

“Terrific.” Mrs. Stone nodded. “You’re nearly full. I was worried that ugliness over the winter would affect business.”

“Me, too.” The bookings had been a big sigh of relief to Mandy, and the guests actually showing up had been even better. It was hard enough to make ends meet with a ten-room inn. Winter was slow because Huntsville wasn’t convenient to any of the major ski resorts. Three seasons of decent bookings barely generated enough income to keep the inn afloat. Luckily, tourists didn’t have many options in this area. Last winter’s killings had been written off as a bizarre, random event. But if Nathan turned up again, tourists might decide to try their hunting or fishing luck elsewhere.

And the Black Bear Inn would be in deep trouble.

“I’d hate to lose the supplementary income. Social Security just doesn’t cut it these days.” Mrs. Stone grabbed her bucket of cleaning supplies and headed upstairs.

Mandy wiped down the counters. Masculine voices drew her gaze to the window. Danny’s convertible was parked next to Jed’s truck. Jed was still on the ladder trimming branches. Danny stood at the base of the trunk, looking up at Jed.

What were they talking about? Would Danny’s questions bring back awful memories for Jed? He didn’t appear to be upset,
but Jed excelled at concealing his reactions with a blank face. His lack of expression was one of the reasons most people discounted him as less than intelligent. But Mandy knew that behind Jed’s poker face was a sharp mind, and that he’d had plenty of practice hiding his emotions. When Jed was growing up, his home life had been the main reason he’d spent so much time in the wilderness.

Opening a notebook on the counter, Mandy scanned her meal plan for the week. She went to the pantry and started taking inventory. Fifteen pounds of flour went on the grocery list. Everything that came out of the inn’s kitchen was made from scratch. As she counted ingredient staples, she tried to summon up some anger for Danny but couldn’t. Whatever irritation his persistence caused was canceled out by the excited flurry in her belly. Why was she glad to see him? He was a threat to her family. Danny and his questions were dangerous.

Hadn’t she had enough risk?

Danny approached the ladder and stared up at the thin man pruning Mandy’s tree. Next to the ladder, pieces of brush littered the lawn. “Hey, Jed.”

Jed glanced down. Surprise, but not shock, flashed in his eyes. Mandy must have had told him about the previous day’s visit. “I’ll be done in a second.” He trimmed the remaining two branches that extended over the inn’s gutter. Thin tree limbs fell to the ground. Jed climbed down, wiped his hand on his jeans, and held it out.

Danny accepted the shake. “It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah. You, too. Thanks again for what you did. I wasn’t exactly awake when you came by the ICU.”

“Hey, I know what that’s like.” Danny stared at his arm for a few seconds. Images of his own hospital stay, full of pain and fear, intruded on the beautiful day, and a needlelike sensation worked its way down his forearm. “I’m just glad I was there.”

“I hate to think of what would’ve happened if you weren’t,” Jed said.

For a minute, the only noise in the yard was the squawk of an angry jay. Danny glanced at the back of the house. Would Mandy be alive if he hadn’t been in that alley, totally by chance, looking for his sister? He doubted Jed would’ve made it. From the look on Jed’s face, he knew that, too.

“Mandy says something’s up with the case?” Irritation edged Jed’s tone. He nodded at the inn. “The detective didn’t call either of us.”

“I imagine he only called us as a cop-to-former-cop courtesy thing,” Danny said. His sister’s fiancé, Reed, had once been a homicide detective. “Reed’s been really edgy lately. I think the pressure of having Nathan still on the loose is getting to him. He doesn’t let my sister out of his sight.”

“I can appreciate that.” Jed glanced at Mandy. “I worry about Nathan coming after Mandy. I’ve offered to stay at the inn, but she’s too stubborn to let me.”

And why was that?

“What about you?” Danny asked. “How do you feel about the cops not catching Nathan?”

“Pissed.” Jed’s jaw sawed back and forth. “If I run into him, I’m greeting him with a bullet to the head.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.” Danny didn’t have much patience for killers either, insane or not. “If I see him first, I’ll give him the message.”

“Appreciate that.” Jed grinned. He stooped down and gathered an armful of branches. Danny did the same. He followed
the hunter to the rear of the property. They piled the small debris behind the garage and made a couple more trips. Then Danny helped him drag the larger limbs to the rear of the yard. By the time they’d finished, his entire left arm was shaking.

Jed leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees. His face had lost color and sagged with lack of air, pain, and disappointment. “I’ll have to come back tomorrow and cut them up. Just can’t seem to get back up to speed.” He wheezed and pressed a hand to his belly.

Danny massaged his forearm. Fire shot from his fingertips to his elbow. “I’m done in, too.”

Jed looked up. A wry smile crossed his face. “Not exactly prime specimens, are we?”

“Nope.” Danny snorted. “We suck.”

Jed barked out a laugh and straightened. “I need something to drink. Come on. Let’s see what Mandy has in the kitchen, and you can tell us what the detective had to say.”

Danny hesitated. He’d come planning on confronting her, but now that he was here, guilt poked him like a sharp stick. “She doesn’t want to see me. She wants to forget the whole thing.”

Jed shot him a hard look. Hard enough that Danny had no doubt there was some bad shit in Jed’s background. “Well, she needs to face facts. It did happen, and pretending it didn’t is stupid and dangerous.”

OK then. Jed was a straight shooter, and Danny couldn’t help but like him. Even if he was jealous as hell that Jed had Mandy and he didn’t.

Danny followed Jed to the back of the house, and Jed used his key to open the door marked P
RIVATE
. They walked into the dated but clean and spacious kitchen. Notebook and pen in hand, Mandy turned away from the open pantry. Her eyes locked onto him and filled with regret. Danny could imagine what it would
be like to be greeted by a smile on her beautiful face, and the fact that it would never happen was a big empty space in the center of his chest.

He fought the urge to apologize and back out of the room. Jed was right. Ignoring the possibility that Nathan was still around could be deadly.

“Hey, Mandy.” Jed went to the fridge He walked right past Mandy and did not stop to kiss her. Strange. That’s the first thing Danny would have done. In fact, he wanted to do it right now, and she wasn’t even his girlfriend. His gaze dropped to her lips. What would they taste like? Jed selected an orange sports drink and offered one to Danny.

“Thanks.” Danny took it.

Jed twisted off his cap. “Danny stopped by to tell us about his meeting with the state cop.”

Mandy gave Jed a what-the-hell look, but behind the laser glare was a whole lot of scared she couldn’t conceal. So why was she so against digging the case up again? Danny had seen her courage. She had plenty to spare. Was she really unable to deal with the strain, or was there another reason she refused to acknowledge the possibility that Nathan was still a threat?

Mandy said, “I told you both that I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“You did,” Danny answered, “but I thought you still might like to know what Detective Rossi said. Do you?”

“Not really,” she said.

“Well, I sure as hell do.” Jed pointed to Mandy with the bottle. “You’re not the only one at risk here. Nathan gutted me like a brook trout. I won’t rest easy until he’s in the ground.”

Mandy paled. She clutched her notebook to her chest for a few seconds. She focused on Danny, as if she was turning away from Jed and the memory of Nathan’s attack. “Detective Rossi already told us he thinks Nathan is dead.”

“That’s just the official line he’s toeing.” Danny told them about the waterlogged SUV and the missing girlfriend, then summed up the rest of his meeting with Rossi.

Jed whistled softly. “Nathan ditched his wheels awfully close to home.”

“That’s because every police agency in the state was looking for his truck.” Mandy shook her head. “He’s not stupid. He knew his best chance was going out on foot. There’s still no reason to think he stayed around here,” Mandy reasoned. “Why wouldn’t he have gone as far as possible from Huntsville?”

“Because he’s nuts,” Jed answered.

“And hung up on you.” Danny remembered Nathan pointing at Mandy. The crazy man’s words echoed in his head.

You’re mine.

Jed chugged his drink. “So, who the hell was sleeping with him?”

Ignoring Jed’s question, Mandy moved back to the pantry and pretended to count things, but she doubted Danny was fooled. Anything to avoid hypnotic contact with those sea-colored eyes. They made her want to confess everything. Her secret was a breath-robbing pressure in her chest, ready to burst free.

“There’s more.” Danny set his empty bottle on the counter. “Some fisherman and his kid disappeared this morning just a few miles upriver from where Nathan’s SUV was found.”

“Oh, no.” Sadness curled in her belly. She swallowed the clog in her throat. “Do the police think foul play was involved?”

Danny’s jaw tightened until it looked like it was going to pop. “No. They think the kid fell in the water and the dad went in after him.”

Mandy fought to keep her voice steady. The pantry contents blurred in front of her. “It’s horrible, but it happens every year.” But it didn’t make the loss of a child less terrible.

Danny looked to Jed.

The hunter shrugged. “Hard to say. Water’s high right now from all the rain. The current is a lot stronger than usual, and the water’s damned cold. But I don’t like it. Not one bit. The last time two campers went missing and were considered lost, it turned out Nathan and his uncle killed one and imprisoned the other.”

Mandy pointed her pen at Jed. “You can’t blame everything bad that happens around here on Nathan.”

“You better get your head on straight,” Jed shot back. “As far as I’m concerned, until I see a dead body, Nathan is out there.”

“What if they never find him?” Mandy asked.

“Then you’d better be prepared to take precautions for the next year. Now that the spring thaw is here, there’s not much to keep Nathan from coming and going as he pleases.”

Mandy’s belly tightened. Jed’s statement was uncomfortably accurate.

Jed rinsed his bottle and dropped it into a recycling container. “I have to go. Let me know if you come to your senses and want me to stay here. See ya, Danny.” He shut the door harder than necessary. Mandy jumped. Plates rattled on the sideboard.

She turned around. Bumping into Danny’s chest, she startled again. The muscles of his torso were as unforgiving as his persistence. She leaned back so their bodies weren’t touching.

“Mandy, I’m not asking for much. Just tell me what you know about Nathan. Like who were his friends? Who should I talk to? Was he having an affair?”

“There’s nothing to tell.” She took a step back but bumped into the doorframe. The kitchen closed in around her. She was trapped by so many different things. Nathan. Her family. Jed.
Danny. The first three she was powerless to change. But Danny’s mission conflicted with the well-being of those she loved.

But when he inched closer, eating up the space she’d so painstakingly put between them, the desire to lean on him overwhelmed her senses.

“Surely he must have some friends or family.”

“No friends that I know of.” She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. “And his only relatives are his uncle and son.” Nathan’s uncle had killed himself. Mandy assumed Nathan had taken his son, Evan, with him when he fled.

“Business associates?”

“I really wouldn’t know.” The funny thing was, other than the fact that she’d slept with Nathan, she really didn’t know much about his personal life. Much of what Nathan had told her was lies. He’d played her. She’d been naive and lonely, swayed by a handsome face and the maturity behind it. At his insistence, she’d kept their affair a secret even though she’d wanted it out in the open. After a couple of months, the sneaking around bothered her enough to end it. Plus, she’d realized she didn’t love him. It wasn’t right to sleep with a man just because she didn’t want to be alone.