Terror Mansion (Decorah Security Series, Book #12): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella (5 page)

Wyatt saw the blood drain from Kate’s face.

“I guess that means there’s a connection,” he clipped out.

She answered with a small nod.

“What?”

“You’re saying you dreamed about a fun house?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the dream,” she said, and he saw she wasn’t going to give up anything until he told her what
he
knew.

“You think it’s something that’s going to happen? Not something that did happen?” she asked.

“I
know
it’s something that’s going to happen,” he corrected. “I don’t dream about past events. Well, I mean I might dream about something that happened to me. But if it’s about someone else, it’s one of my prescient dreams.”

He kept his gaze on her, wanted to take in every nuance of her reaction. “I was in a fun house,” he said again. “Only it wasn’t something that was set up for fun. Someone had made it into a . . .” He fumbled for the right word and came up with, “Torture chamber.”

“My God, what do you mean by that?”

“I mean it was full of seriously scary images—and traps. Things that could hurt you. A floor that might fall away under your feet. Something flying across the room that could cut you. Walls that were hot to the touch.”

“And I was in it?” she whispered.

“No. It was an older man.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was short, well maybe about five eight with thinning gray hair and a lined face. He was wearing pants with suspenders, a bow tie that was askew, and a white shirt that was wrinkled, like he’d slept in it.”

She drew in a quick breath. “That sounds like my father.”

Jumping up, she crossed the room to where she’d left a cell phone on the kitchen counter. He watched her dial, then clutch the instrument as she waited for someone to pick up. Instead, he could hear an answering machine message.

“This is Jerry Caldwell. I’m not here to take your call, please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

“Dad, it’s Kate. If you’re there, please pick up.”

When no one did, she hung up, then stood frozen in place, probably waiting for him to call her back. But the phone stayed silent.

She raised her eyes to Wyatt’s.

“He’s not home. I have to go check on him. Now.”

When he saw her spin around and pick up her purse, he crossed the room and put his hand on her arm. “You’re not going by yourself.”

She’d protested when he’d tried to help her before. Now she said, “Yes, okay.”

“This time you believe my dream is going to happen?” he pressed.

“I don’t know,” she shouted. “I don’t want to,” she added, looking like she was struggling for calm.

He’d told himself that touching her again was a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop from pulling her close and folding her into his arms, rocking her gently. He wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but he knew that was a lie. He’d known something was seriously wrong since the moment he’d awakened from the dream about her the day before.

Was it only that long ago? It felt like he’d been in St. Stephens forever. Or perhaps only for minutes because everything was happening so fast now.

She raised pleading eyes to him. “I have to leave.”

“I’ll drive you. Where does he live?”

“Easton.”

“Okay. Not that far. My car is at the B&B.”

“Right.” She looked around. “I hate to leave after the fire. But I have to see about Dad.”

After they exited the building, she locked the door, and they walked along the harbor and across the bridge to his car. Then he headed for Easton, which was ten miles away.

“Tell me what the fun house means to you,” he said when they were on the outskirts of St. Stephens, and he figured she wasn’t going to demand he let her out so she could walk back.

He saw her swallow hard.

“I told you Dad owned a carnival.”

“Yeah, with charlatan psychics. Didn’t
any
of them have any talent?”

She shuddered. “Maybe a few did. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I don’t like the idea of telling someone their future.” She shot him a quick look, then stared out the windshield.

“Would you believe I don’t like it either?” he answered.

“Why not?”

“It’s too much responsibility.”

“But it helps you in your work.”

“Yeah.” He tightened his hands on the wheel. “This is getting off track. What about the fun house?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Talking will keep your mind off your dad.”

“Okay. Yes. It was a regular feature of the carnival. The crew would set it up at every location where we stopped.” She paused, and he thought she might not go on. Then she began to speak again. “A guy named Dave Treeman joined the carnival. He owned a couple of the midway booths. Like where you toss a quarter into a glass dish, and you win it if the quarter stays, but it almost always pops out again. Or the game where you have to toss a ring around a milk bottle. That one’s a little easier to do.”

“Yes.”

“He had a son, Billy. I was sixteen and he was a year older. I guess he liked me. He gave me the creeps, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept pestering me.”

When she didn’t go on, he prompted, “Like how?”

“He kept pawing me and trying to kiss me. I told him to quit it, but he wouldn’t stop. And one day Dad had asked me to go into the fun house after hours to change a broken light bulb. Billy followed me inside, and I guess he figured this was his chance to get me off alone.” She stopped again, and Wyatt waited, hoping he wasn’t going to hear what he thought was coming.

“I tried to get out of there, but he pushed me into a corner, and then he pulled me down on the floor.” Her voice sounded detached now, as though she were talking about some other girl. “He was on top of me, trying to pull my pants down. He said he was going to teach me what was good for me.

“I screamed, but he knew nobody was going to hear. That’s why he’d followed me in there. I kept fighting, and I was able to knee him in the balls and get out from under him. I scrambled across the floor to the emergency exit. He was right behind me. He grabbed my hair, but I jerked away.” She kept talking fast, her voice flat, as she repeated a scene that must have run through her mind a million times. Or maybe she’d pushed it away, and he’d forced her to bring it back.

“I got the door open and ran down the stairs, with him right behind me. But one of the steps was starting to crack. Although I got past it and reached the ground, I must have weakened it. It broke, and he fell down the long flight. When he hit the bottom, he broke his neck.”

That was the last thing Wyatt had expected to hear. Reaching over, he put his hand on Kate’s shoulder, stroking her.

“I’m sorry. I mean that must have been terrible for you. The whole thing.”

“It took me a long time to get over it. Mr. Treeman was angry. He said it was our fault that his son had died. I tried to tell him why I had run down the steps, but he didn’t want to hear anything bad about Billy.”

Wyatt wanted to pull the car off the road and fold Kate into his arms, but he understood now why she wanted to get to her dad’s place as quickly as possible.

“What happened after that?”

“My mom decided to leave the carnival with me. She and Dad didn’t get divorced, but they didn’t see each other all that often either. Mom and I settled down outside Pittsburgh. I took art classes, and I found I was good at silversmithing.”

He nodded.

“I lived there with her until she was killed—in a fall down a flight of steps.”

Wyatt winced. “You saw it?”

“I heard her scream. When I ran out, she was alone at the bottom of the stairs.”

He had to ask the next question. “Do you think that was a coincidence?”

“I don’t know. But I didn’t want to take a chance on having the same thing happen to me.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Dad sold the carnival, and he gave me enough money from the sale so that I could travel around before I decided where to settle down.”

“That’s when you changed your name?”

Her head shot toward him. “How do you know that?”

“Well, your dad is Jerry Caldwell, and I did a computer search. The name Kate Kingston doesn’t show up until five years ago.”

She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Right. Dad has a number of contacts who make their living in unconventional ways. One of them provided me with the Kate Kingston identity. After I got it, I took off.”

She’d solved the mystery of the name change, and he totally understood.

“What was your name?”

“Well, I kept the Kate part. My dad’s last name is Kaiser.”

“Kate Kaiser. So it’s a variation of King. And he changed it to Caldwell?”

“Yes. I was Kate back then. I figured Kate sounded more mature.”

“Did you see your dad much?” he asked, trying to keep her talking. It was the longest conversation they’d had so far.

“We e-mail each other a couple of times a week, but he thought it was better if we didn’t get together too often.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Treeman had dropped out of sight.”

“So your dad was worried about that?”

“Yes.”

“What about you?” Wyatt asked, working to keep the edge out of his voice.

“I changed my name. I figured he wouldn’t know who I was.”

Wyatt nodded, not as confident, although he understood her logic.

“You and your mom used the name Kaiser until you left?”

“Yes.”

So the man from her past could have tracked her to Pittsburgh and kept her in his sights after that. When Wyatt had first heard about her stalker, he’d thought it had to do with bad feelings among the silversmiths in town. But it could just as easily have been Treeman.

They were almost to Easton, and he asked Kate for her father’s address. The small towns in the area were expanding with new shopping centers and residential developments. Kate directed him to an upscale community on the edge of town where traditional style houses had been built on large lots. Apparently the sale of the carnival had netted her dad a very tidy profit.

No cars were in the driveway, but when Wyatt looked in a garage window, he saw a sedan and a pickup truck.

In his peripheral vision he saw Kate was already rushing toward the front door.

Damn. He would have called out for her to wait, but he didn’t want to make any noise. He caught up just as she turned the knob. The door was unlocked, and when it opened, she started to rush in.

He caught her arm. “Stay here.”

She turned toward him, her expression fierce. “Why?”

“There could be a trap inside. Or someone . . . dangerous could be in there. Wait here.”

She gave him a pleading look. “I have to go in.”

“Let me make sure it’s safe.”

She answered with a tight nod, and he stepped through the door, gun held out as he swung left and right through the house, ready to encounter an intruder or a dead body as he checked all the rooms and closets. He even took a quick trip to the basement and found nothing. Everything seemed to be in order until he arrived in the master bedroom, where he found the covers thrown back, the small rug askew, and a bathrobe lying in the middle of the floor.

“Mr. Caldwell?” he called.

There was no answer, but a noise behind Wyatt made the hairs in the back of his neck prickle. He’d thought he was alone in the house. Prepared to fire, he whirled.

Kate was standing where he’d been seconds earlier, her eyes wide as she stared at the gun in his hand.

As he lowered the weapon, she transferred her gaze to the disorder in the room.

“I told you to stay outside,” Wyatt said.

“I couldn’t just stand there—doing nothing. I had to come in.” She took in the details of the room, then walked toward the bed. “I think someone came in here when Dad was sleeping. He woke up and fought with them and tried to get away. The way I did in the fun house,” she added in a whisper.

“Yeah. I think they’re gone, but let me check the bathroom.”

He looked inside, then shook his head. “He’s not in there.”

“He could be hiding. He could be hurt. We can’t just leave it at that.” She dashed to the closet, opened the door and pushed clothing aside, revealing only her father’s belongings. Before Wyatt could stop her she ran out of the room and down the hall, frantically checking closets, under beds, repeating his own search.

He followed with the gun, still on guard but pretty sure from his previous exploration that they weren’t going to find anything or anyone.

He wanted to call her back, but he understood that she had to satisfy herself.

She ran downstairs, looked behind the sofa, in the pantry and behind the drapes in the dining room before pounding down the uncarpeted basement steps, her footfalls ringing throughout the house. He followed more slowly, his heart squeezing as he watched her throw boxes around in the storage areas and reach behind the furnace before turning away, walking like a forty-pound weight was on her shoulders. She was breathing hard as she sank onto the couch.

“He’s not here.”

“If he was surprised in his sleep, he’s only been gone a few hours. That’s an advantage for us. And if anyone can find him, Decorah Security can.”

Kate lowered her head and pressed her face into her hands. “This is my fault,” she said in a muffled voice.

“No. How could it be your fault?”

“First, I let it happen because I didn’t think Dad was in danger.”

“Why would you?”

Ignoring him, she continued, “And second, because I wouldn’t admit that something bad was going on. It could have been Treeman stalking me in St. Stephens. But I wouldn’t believe it. I should have warned Dad. When you showed up, Treeman figured it was too hard to do anything to me, and he went after Dad.”

“You don’t know any of that’s true,” he said again, but he understood that she was beyond logical arguments.

She looked up, tears glistening in her eyes. “I was stupid not to listen to you.”

“No.”

He sat down beside her and lifted her onto his lap, turning her to the side and cradling her close as he tried to comfort her. She’d been so stubborn and strong, but now she broke down, pouring out her misery. He rocked her and stroked her, wishing he could offer real comfort, but he couldn’t lie to her. This couldn’t be good—particularly after his dream.

Her shoulders shook as she sobbed, but finally the tears subsided. Her purse was still hanging over her shoulder, and she reached inside, found a tissue and blew her nose.

“What do we do now?” she asked. She had said, “We,” like she knew he was going to stick by her. And of course he would.

“We find out if the neighbors saw anything.”

“Right.”

They started with the house across the street. Wyatt thought they’d struck pay dirt when the woman who answered the door said she’d looked out the front window just before turning in and seen an SUV pull into the driveway sometime after midnight. But she hadn’t stuck around to see anything else. Two other neighbors weren’t home. And two more had been aware of nothing unusual.

When they were finished with the interviews, Kate looked like she was going to cry again. Wyatt watched her struggle to rein in her emotions before she said, “Come back in the house.”

Inside, she walked to one of the living room end tables and opened a drawer. “You came to St. Stephens because you dreamed about my being in danger.”

“Yes.”

“And this morning, you woke up out of a nightmare about an older man running through a fun house. Is this him?”

She turned a picture around, and he saw a younger Kate standing with a man who had similar features. In the dream his hair had been gray. The picture had been taken several years earlier, when the hair had been browner.

But there was no mistaking the man. Wyatt felt his throat clog so that he had to force out the word, “Yes.”

Once again, he saw Kate struggling not to cry, and he was pretty sure she hated that she’d allowed herself to break down earlier.

“You saw somebody making him run for his life through a fun house,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“But he could still be alive,” she said in a voice that willed it to be true. And who was Wyatt Granger to snatch away hope in the absence of any hard evidence.

“Yes. It . . . hadn’t happened yet when I dreamed it.”

“And we could stop it.”

“Yes.” He gave her the answer he knew she wanted to hear, although he secretly wondered if it could be true. While he hadn’t seen the end of the dream, he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to end well. The question was—could Decorah Security find Caldwell in time?

“Did you ever stop something bad after you dreamed it?”

“Yes, working with Decorah. We’ve found several kidnapped women and children before they were killed.”

“Thank God.”

He didn’t say there had been cases where they’d been too late to save the victim—but that his dreams had led to the capture of the perp.

He dialed the office number and gave Teddy a quick report on what had happened—with a request that he begin looking for Kate’s father, although he and Teddy both knew that at this point, it was hard to know where to start.

When Kate gave him a grateful look, he forced himself not to spell out the odds of success.

As they had climbed into his car and closed the doors, she suddenly asked, “Do you think my mother’s death was connected?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned to him, her expression angry. “You’re supposed to have psychic powers. Why don’t you know?”

He clenched and unclenched his fists on the steering wheel, knowing that her demand came from fear for her father’s life.

Speaking in an even voice, he said, “Because whatever I have doesn’t work that way. I didn’t dream about your mother’s death before it happened. It started for me when I dreamed of your being in danger.”

As she folded her arms and turned away from him, he started the engine and backed out of the driveway, heading toward St. Stephens. He had the feeling she had made the remark about his powers for another reason, too. She was afraid the two of them were getting too close, and she wanted to distance herself from him.

When he sighed, she jerked her head toward him. “What?”

“Unfortunately, my abilities are limited. I can’t go into a trance and call up the past. I can’t pretend—like the ladies at your dad’s carnival. I only have dreams about something in the immediate future. And I can’t make the dreams come to me. Either they’re going to happen or they’re not.”

“That’s pretty inconvenient.”

“That’s the way it is. I wish I could tell you about your mother—but I have nothing to work with except the facts you’ve told me.”

She gave a little nod and looked down at her hands. He didn’t want to leave her alone with her thoughts, and he also needed more information.

When he cleared his throat, she looked at him questioningly.

“What did Treeman do after the accident?”

She dragged in a breath and let it out before saying, “He sued my father, but we had good insurance. It paid a claim on Billy.”

“How much?”

“I was just a kid. I didn’t ask, but it was probably substantial.” She tipped her head toward him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m trying to get as many facts as I can. What insurance company?”

She thought for a moment, then named a firm.

“I’ll contact them and get some information.”

“How is that going to help us?” she asked in a weary voice.

“I don’t know.”

“We should call the police,” she said suddenly.

He gave her a quick glance before looking back at the road. “I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Why not?”

“Because if Treeman thinks the cops are closing in on him, he’ll kill your father.”

“If he’s even still alive.”

“Let’s hope he is,” he answered, arguing against his own previous conclusions. “Our best bet is to use the resources of Decorah Security. But I need as much background as you can give me. Where was the carnival located when Billy pulled you into the fun house?”

“Howard County. It was in a field near Columbia.”

He nodded.

“And what year was it, exactly?”

When she told him, he pulled off the highway, hauled out his phone and sent a text message to Teddy with the additional facts.

Kate watched him, then made a low sound.

“What?”

“I told you my father thought it would be safer for both of us if we didn’t see each other often.”

“Uh huh.”

“It made me sad to have to stay away from him, and in the end, it didn’t do us much good.”

He reached over and put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry.”

“I guess I did a lot of things wrong.”

“Don’t beat yourself up.”

She reached and covered his hand with hers, and he felt the mix of emotions that seemed to mark their relationship. He was elated that she was finally letting him get closer to her, but at the same time he was still worried about her safety.

Just as he pulled into the parking space beside the Crow’s Nest B&B, his phone rang.

It was Teddy Granada.

“It’s Decorah,” Wyatt said to Kate as he looked at the caller ID.

“Put it on speaker.”

He pressed the button and said, “Teddy, you’re on speaker. I’m with Kate Kingston.”

“Well, Treeman is like Kate. He’s dropped off the face of the earth. The last mention I have of him is after he got the settlement from the insurance company. The case was mentioned in an article in
The Baltimore Sun
. After that—nada. He collected the money and disappeared. Either he was killed or he took another name.”

“I think he’s alive and well—and that he scooped up Jerry Caldwell this morning.”

Wyatt talked to Teddy for a few minutes longer, giving him suggestions for how to proceed, then hung up.

“What are we going to do now?” Kate asked.

“That depends on you.”

“Like how?”

“Do you trust me? I mean, are you going to kick me out or let me protect you?”