The Hiding Place (13 page)

“Worse? What could be worse?”

“Someone out to harm you as well as scare you.”

“Like someone trying to roll a rock on my head?”

He sighed, put his stockinged feet up on the wood-and-glass coffee table and leaned back into the soft leather cushions. Beamer lifted his golden head, then put it down on his paws again.

“Here’s a wild thought for you,” Nick said, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and index finger. “Maybe whoever’s been watching this place from the trees above the house is after me, and the Red Rocks incident was just an accident.”

“Oh, right, someone after you. Maybe some of the Taliban followed you here from—”

“Never mind. You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. Despite the roses, I think it was Getz. Hopefully, he’ll steer clear of you now. Unless Clay swore his brother to some sort of vendetta, Rick’s got other things to keep him occupied, namely a woman who’s a handful and a decent job, evidently with good perks. But it’s obvious this information broker you’ve dealt with is off the wall.”

“I’ve never met him, but the weird vibes come right through the laptop. My life and face have been pretty public during the last few years, so he clearly thought he knew me even before I started using him. He’s one of the best IBs I’ve ever worked with, so it’s too bad I have to cut ties. Too bad about those beautiful roses, too.”

Thank God, she thought, Nick had been here to help her during all of this. After making sure the roses weren’t bugged, he had taken them up to the old hunting cabin. He’d laid the box, note and all, on the moss bed while Tara tried to answer Claire’s questions about why they weren’t keeping the flowers. Tara had e-mailed Seymour that she would not consider “seeing him” or accept any gifts. She also made it clear that she wouldn’t use him for locates anymore.

“Let’s do something nice and calm tomorrow,” Nick said. “I’d like to thank the pastor who did Alex’s funeral service. We could go to church, then visit her grave. You said you and Claire had done that without Claire having bad dreams. That is, if you don’t mind hanging out with the two of us again tomorrow.”

“I’m grateful you’re still including me. I know the two of you might not be in my life much longer.”

“Don’t say it like that,” he said, sitting up and putting his wine goblet on the table. He turned toward her, bending one leg up onto the couch. “This is a good transition period for me and her—and I hope for you, too. I know she’ll do what she has to when the time comes, but it really helps me to see how you handle her. I guess I have some things to learn.”

“It’s not quite like being a dog handler, Nick—sit, heel, stay.”

“Yeah, I hear you. I’d forgotten how women think,” he said with a low, raspy laugh that sent shivers up her spine. He stretched his arm out on the back of the couch and tugged at her hair. It was a light moment, yet tension hung heavy between them. “I’d forgotten,” he went on, speaking slowly, his deep voice rougher than usual, “how a woman feels in my arms, until you let me hold you yesterday.”

Their gazes met. She nodded, and that seemed to unlock something in both of them. He moved first—or else she did. Arms around each other, hips touching, sliding together, they leaned in unison back on the deep, soft couch. And then the kiss.

It had been years for Tara but it felt like eons, and she wanted it to go on forever. His mouth was taut and firm at first, but it softened, coaxing her to relax. Yet every nerve in her body went on alert; she could feel the kiss and caress down into the pit of her belly. It made her curl her toes until her calves almost cramped. They bumped noses as they tilted their heads to deepen the kiss. His arm moved lower to clasp her waist and lift her slightly toward him while she hung on to stop the tilting of the couch, the room, the entire mountain.

Maybe the coma had made her forget how this could feel. Laird must have been a great kisser, because he’d absolutely seduced her, but she couldn’t recall that, and she didn’t want to. This was the first time anything had been this magical and powerful, at least where the power was hers, as well. It was hard to believe that this was only Nick’s third night here, yet this emotional whirlwind with him made everything else seem so muted and distant.

And from somewhere—damn—in some other galaxy, a phone was ringing, ringing.

When Nick pulled slightly away, she realized they had been breathing in unison through their open mouths.

“Won’t that wake Claire up?” he asked.

Tara didn’t care if it woke the dead. “No, once she’s asleep—except for the bad dreams—she’s out. That better not be Marv Seymour,” she added, her voice shaky. “It might be a desperate client or Veronica.”

Reluctantly, she took the cell from Nick when he picked it up from the end table. With one hand in the small of her back, he steadied her as she sat up. It wasn’t unusual for the mother of a snatched child desperate for news or a new client still in shock at her loss to phone at odd hours. Sometimes Tara still used her social work counseling skills and was glad to do it. Now, she tried to clear her mind, so she could make sense.

She cleared her throat. “Tara Kinsale here.”

“Ms. Kinsale? Formerly Mrs. Lohan, right?” A young woman’s voice, slightly nervous.

“Yes, formerly Mrs. Kinsale-Lohan. May I help you?”

“This is Elin Johansen from the Mountain Manor Clinic. I’m the music therapist there. I don’t suppose you know me.”

“No, but Veronica Lohan has spoken fondly of you.”

“Oh, that’s just it. Do you know she was readmitted yesterday?”

“But—I just talked to her yesterday morning, and she seemed fine.”

Nick ran his fingers through his hair and took the empty wineglasses into the kitchen to give her some privacy. Or maybe he was just relieved that it wasn’t Marv Seymour.

“You mean she had a relapse?” Tara asked. “I appreciate your calling me, Elin.” Especially, Tara thought, since Jordan Lohan had obviously stonewalled her. What Jordan Lohan wanted around the clinic, he got, despite the fact he was a financier and not a medical mind. “Have you seen her?”

“Briefly. I wasn’t really supposed to, but she asked me to tell you something, not that it made sense. She’s heavily medicated right now.”

Tara kept nodding. Yes, she knew how that felt. Even when she was finally being weaned from the coma, she was sometimes sedated. “What did she say?” she prompted the woman.

“Okay, here it is, word for word. She said, ‘Tell Tara Kinsale, Jim’s not lost, Angel.’ She nicknamed me Angel, you know, because she said I looked like an angel painted on some Baroque organ she’d seen in Belgium.”

“So her message to me was ‘Jim’s not lost’? That’s what she wanted you to tell me?”

“I said she wasn’t making much sense, but I would have felt terrible if I hadn’t told you. I’m sure the powers-that-be around here would think I’m meddling, but Veronica is a musical genius, and I think the world of her.”

“You know, Elin, despite all I’ve been through with the Lohans, I do, too, and I thank you for telling me where she is and what she said. Do you think she’s referring to Jim Manning, the clinic groundskeeper? He’s the only Jim I can think of that both of us know.”

“She could have meant him, I guess. He’s always joking that he’ll get lost on that huge acreage he tends. You know,” she went on, lowering her voice as if someone could be listening, “I heard Mr. Lohan has him working on their land in Kerr Gulch off and on, too. Veronica always appreciated Jim’s sense of humor. She told me once no one else but him around the clinic had any.”

“He was kind to me, too, brought me wildflowers more than once when I was in rehab….” Tara’s voice faded. How different she’d felt about receiving scarlet mallow from that kind man compared to those stunning roses from Marv Seymour.

“So, are you feeling all right these days, Ms. Kinsale?”

“Better and better, physically. For the rest of me, I’m a work in progress. And please, call me Tara.”

“We’re all always a work in progress, Tara.”

“Thanks again.”

“Sure. I—I don’t know if they’ll let me work with Mrs. Lohan again, but if they do, I’ll let you know how she is. With the wonderful music she made on the pipe organ in the chapel, especially my favorites from
Phantom of the Opera,
she was as much help to me as I was to her.”

When they said goodbye, Tara’s heart was thudding, harder than the rain that pounded on the windows as if some monstrous mountain beast wanted in. Staring at her knees, she sat still a moment, feeling so sad for Veronica and puzzling over the strange message. Well, Veronica was doped up, so her mind might have been wandering. Yet, even if she were out of it, could the message have meant more than it said on the surface?

But besides all that, Tara was desperately trying to recall how she knew Veronica had played on the chapel pipe organ late at night—even that very
Phantom of the Opera
music—when Veronica had left the clinic months before Tara came out of her coma.

Tara was walking through the thick, dark fog in her heart and head. It crept down from Shadow Mountain and coiled around the house, crawled into her bed and her brain. Was she still hidden away in a coma? Voices, bright lights! Someone shone a bright light in each eye. “Is she alive?” someone shouted.

Was Alex dead? Where was Claire?

Though the air was thick with grief, she slogged on. Her feet were cold, so cold. The rain made the tree limbs slump and brush together, washing her with icy water. But she had to know. She had to find Alex and Claire, find Veronica, too. Mostly, she had to find herself, find what it was she had lost. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

“Jim is not lost,” someone whispered.

But she was lost, not sure which way to turn in the trees. In this darkness, she might slide off the edge of the cliff, and then the pain would break her in two, into two Taras, two people…She wanted to hide from the pain.

The sound of sharp barking. She was lost, but Beamer would find her. Barking, barking…deep barking, like thunder…

Tara sat straight up in bed. Oh—she’d been dreaming, but Beamer’s barking was real. A storm with lightning and thunder! The alarm clock read 5:04 a.m. She and Nick had talked more after Tara’s phone call last night, then gone to their beds about midnight.

Tara jumped up and pulled on a robe as she ran down the hall. Claire’s door was still closed; when she slept, she slept, but Tara peeked in to be sure she was all right. Yes, sprawled across her bed, breathing deeply. When she heard Nick’s voice, telling Beamer to be quiet and to sit, Tara closed the door and went to the top of the stairs.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is it the storm?”

“He never used to bark at storms,” he said, his voice low. “It’s still thick as pea soup out there. But I think I heard footsteps on the deck and Beamer sure heard or smelled something.”

“Maybe a big, human rat,” she said. “Hit the outside lights.”

She ran down the stairs as the exterior lights came on. She supposed they should leave them on all the time now, but what good did it do in rain and fog? There had never been a need to have lights on all night anywhere near Conifer.

Nick, in sweatpants and a T-shirt, was barefoot. He pulled the curtain open farther and they peered out. The lights only pierced about three feet into the gray, swirling mist. But that was enough for them to see a dozen roses had been beheaded and their bloodred petals strewn across the deck. Twelve stems had been stuck upright between the deck boards as if to make a thorny barrier for anyone who stepped outside.

“He must have just been here,” Nick muttered, and unlocked the sliding glass door as thunder echoed from the mountains. “Seymour, Getz, the boogeyman or whoever. I’m going out after him.”

“No,” Tara cried, and grabbed his arm. “Whoever it is, he could have more than a trap of thorns waiting, maybe even a gun. Nick, I’m so sorry about all this. Please, don’t go out there.”

He nodded once and locked on the door again, yanked the curtain closed, then pulled her to him. They stood, holding each other tight, in the dark house while something infinitely darker ruled the night.

Although the sermon was a good one, Nick had to fight nodding off. He’d hardly slept last night, too keyed up after kissing Tara, then too angry about someone tormenting her. He hadn’t even gotten over jet lag yet, which was throwing his internal clock off.

“‘If a man has a hundred sheep,’” the pastor read from the Bible, “‘and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountain to find the one that is straying?’”

He should have run out onto the mountain after the trespasser last night, Nick told himself. But Tara might have been right. It could have been a trap. If it was meant to lure him out, he didn’t want to leave her and Claire alone. He was starting to think that if he took the Fort Bragg job, he should insist that Tara come, too. She could run Finders Keepers from there, though he knew she wouldn’t go. Not unless she was going
to
something instead of running
from
something. She was scared here, but then, so was he. The truth was, he’d been running scared and guilt-ridden ever since the day they’d lost Tony and Superman.

Superman’s name was really Clark Brent, so he’d always lived with being teased with cornball questions like, “Hey, Clark Kent, where’s Lois Lane?” or “When do you dart into a phone booth to change into your tights?” But Clark, who was from a little Ohio town called Sunbury, took it all with good humor and had some clever comebacks. “Just hope those Taliban SOBs don’t have Kryptonite in those caves,” he joked the day he and Tony were lost…the day they died. The new dog had taken them the wrong way and then the rocket-propelled grenade hit the two men…

“And from the book of Luke, the same message of our Lord seeking straying sinners, with a different illus tration,” the pastor was saying as Nick gave a sharp sniff. “‘What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?’”

They’d found their bodies, or what was left of them. Ironically, the dog had lived and was still working, searching caves in the mountains…maybe finding the head mullahs like Hezbi Islami or other remnants of the Taliban.