The Perfect Kiss (25 page)

It had grown cold in the room, he noticed absently. Almost as cold as his heart. Almost as chilled as the blood coursing through his veins.

“Anya,” he whispered.
My poor Anya.
What had he done to her? What had the man she called Gershom done to her to make her believe such a preposterous lie?

And she did believe it. Zach had no doubt about that. It mattered very little whether he believed her or not, because Anya’s conviction was complete. She believed herself to be a…a…

Dammit, he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word. It was all too insane. And what the hell could he do about it? Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined something so totally beyond the realm of possibility, something so completely incomprehensible as Anya’s story.

There was only one explanation he could think of. She had to have been brainwashed. She had to have been so mentally and physically abused and manipulated that that bastard’s lies became the only truth in her life. Because of a maniac, she had totally cut herself off from society. She had given up everything because of him.

And now she was giving up Zach.

What was he like, this monster? There was something prodding at the memories in the back of Zach’s mind,
something niggling at one of the dark corners. A nightmare…glowing red eyes…

A soft knock at the door dispelled the image. Zach crossed the room and drew open the door, hoping to see Anya, but it was Freida who stood in the shadowy hallway. Zach stepped back and allowed the stern little housekeeper to enter his room.

He had a few questions he wanted to ask her, and he intended to get some answers. Like how she and her husband fitted into this whole weird scenario. Like why they hadn’t gotten Anya help before now. Like exactly what their relationship was to Gershom. A thousand other questions buzzed in his head, but when Freida spoke, Zach forgot them all.

“Something’s happened,” she announced, her blue eyes bright with worry and something that Zach had come to recognize as fear.

His stomach knotted with dread. “Anya—”

“Not Anya,” Freida said. “It’s one of your men. He’s gone missing.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
he search for Roland Sutton continued all that day. It seemed no one had seen him since just after Roland, Julian and Evan had returned to the inn following dinner at Anya’s the previous evening.

“I saw him go out,” Julian had told Zach earlier, when Zach had first arrived at the inn. Karl had driven Zach to the garage, and he’d picked up his car, still dented but drivable, and gone straight to the inn. “It was just a little after midnight. Everyone else had gone straight to their rooms, but I felt too restless, keyed up about the shoot, so I decided to take a walk and try to work out some of the lighting problems we talked about. When I got back to the inn, I saw Sutton leaving his room. He muttered something I couldn’t hear. I thought he was talking to me at first because there was no one else about. But when I called to him, he didn’t respond. Whether he didn’t hear me or whether he chose to ignore me, I don’t know. He got into his car and drove off,” Julian finished.

There was something in the photographer’s voice, something that Zach couldn’t exactly put his finger on, but it worried him all the same. “What direction did he take?”

“The direction we’d just come from,” Julian said, a shadow moving in his eyes. “Back toward
her
house.”

Uneasiness gripped Zach. A deadly suspicion that wouldn’t let go. What if—Don’t be a fool, he told himself firmly. There was probably a perfectly logical explanation for Sutton’s absence. But still, as his gaze met Julian’s, the
photographer looked away, as though he were thinking the same thing himself.

“How’d you know he was missing?” Zach asked. “You called Anya’s house barely after sunrise.”

Julian met his gaze. “Your father’s been calling every half hour. When he couldn’t get Sutton, the front desk put the call through to me. Sutton didn’t check in with him last night. William’s in a real state, Zach. Mad as hell.”

What else was new? Zach thought. There were more pressing worries on his mind at the moment, worries that at least momentarily took his mind off his father and, more important, off what Anya had told him last night.

As the day wore on, Zach grew more and more concerned. Just where the hell was Sutton and what was he up to? If he’d found a way to stir up trouble for the campaign, it wasn’t like him not to show up gloating about it by now.

But though Zach kept telling himself that, something Anya had said last evening kept playing over and over in his mind.

Until he feeds.

* * *

Later that morning, someone spotted Sutton’s dark blue BMW abandoned on a remote trail that led into the woods near Anya’s house. Traces of blood were found on the window and door on the driver’s side, but there was no sign of Sutton anywhere.

Zach joined the police in the search. They combed the woods for hours, thinking perhaps Sutton had wandered off from the car, then gotten lost. Zach remembered the dog that had attacked him last night, and the images that ran through his mind made him grimace. Anya had been right. The woods weren’t safe.

Several hours later he drove back into town to check in with Hawthorne, who had agreed to man the phones at the
inn, in case Sutton called in. When Evan opened the door to Zach, he looked uneasy, and Zach soon discovered why. William Christopher was seated across the room, glowering at Zach as he came through the door.

“What are you doing here?” Zach asked, frowning.

“I came to get some answers,” William said, rising to his feet with the aid of his cane, “since you didn’t see fit to come to me with this latest disaster.”

Hawthorne said, “I’ll just be outside. Give you two some privacy.”

Zach threw him a sour look as the young advertising manager slipped past him.

“What the hell is going on?” Even in his state of agitation, William Christopher cut an imposing figure with his meticulous dark suit, snowy white shirt and conservative silk tie. Zach knew that his own faded jeans and muddy boots made a less than spectacular impression.

He shrugged. “It seems your spy’s up and disappeared.” Zach crossed the room and poured himself a drink from the bottle of whiskey someone, probably Julian, had left on the dresser. “When was the last time you heard from Sutton?”

“I haven’t heard from Roland since he left the office yesterday,” William said. “He was supposed to call in last night. That’s why I’m here. When I heard he was missing…when Evan told me about his car this morning…the blood. Look, what’s going on, Zach?” he asked again, and the note of anxiety in his father’s voice gave Zach yet another surprise. He looked up to find his father studying him intently.

He looked older than Zach remembered. In spite of his blustering attitude, there was something a little faded about William Christopher. Shopworn. Zach felt the pang of an emotion he didn’t quite recognize. Or didn’t want to.

“It’s probably nothing to be concerned about,” Zach said carefully.

“Nothing to be concerned about? His car was found with blood on it. That’s reason enough for concern, I’d say.”

“It was a small amount of blood,” Zach clarified. “And there was no sign of a struggle. Sutton probably just wandered off. He’ll turn up, and the shoot will go on according to schedule, so don’t worry.”

“That wasn’t what I was worried about,” William Christopher said gruffly. He paused, then said in a strangely subdued tone, “I’ve had a bad feeling all day.”

Zach was even more shocked, but he managed a dry laugh as he set his drink aside. “I’ve never known you to be given to premonitions.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” William snapped. “And I don’t know anything about you.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“I’m the first to admit I’ve made mistakes. We both have.”

It was an odd conversation, Zach thought. A really strange feeling to be standing face-to-face in a shabby motel room having a heart-to-heart with a father who had never shown the slightest bit of interest—other than contempt—in him in his life.

“I hardly think this is the right time to be discussing our past differences,” Zach said.

“Yes, well, that’s always been one of the problems between us, hasn’t it?” William said quietly. “There’s never been a right time. In all these years, you and I have never once spoken about Matthew.”

The name shattered the illusion of control. Zach’s tired thoughts fractured, then fell like bits of glass on a cold, distant night from his past. Even if he lived to be a hundred,
he would always hear the noises of that crash, the terrible sound of his brother screaming….

He passed a hand across his eyes as if to wipe away the image. “What is there to talk about? You blame me for my brother’s death. You hated me after the accident.”

“I didn’t blame you for Matt’s death,” William denied. He tried to pull himself up straighter, but his shoulders sagged, weighted by his years. “That was a stupid, irresponsible prank you pulled that night, storming out of the house like that. But I didn’t blame you for what happened to Matthew. I blamed you because…because you never came to me, dammit. You never needed me. Not like Matt. You never had the least amount of pride in anything I ever accomplished. You never showed anything but contempt for me or the way I lived my life.” William hesitated, as though getting himself under control once again, then said very quietly, “But I’ve never hated you.”

It was Zach’s turn to fall silent. He was torn, all of a sudden, between wanting to hang on to those old bitter memories that had served him in good stead over the years, and wanting to hear more of what his father had to say. He said slowly, “But I heard you. I heard you that night in my hospital room. You said, ‘Why did it have to be Matthew? Why couldn’t it have been—”’

“Me,”
William said. “Why couldn’t it have been me. I was the one who drove you out of the house that night. I was the reason he went after you. If anyone was to blame for Matthew’s death, it was me.”

Zach thought there could be nothing left to shock him, to shake up any more emotions inside him, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. He stared at his father, thinking about all the years that had been lost between them because neither of them had ever understood.

“If you never hated me, why did you so bitterly oppose my appointment to CEO?” Zach asked.

William made an impatient sound, as though the question hardly needed explaining. He shifted his cane. “You never wanted to work for the company while I was in charge. You were only willing to go there after I’d left. How do you think that made me feel?”

“I…just thought…” But he hadn’t thought. Zach realized that he’d never really stopped to think what his father might be thinking or feeling—about anything. He’d only
assumed
because of what he’d overheard that night in the hospital after the accident. “Why are you telling me all this now?” he asked quietly. “Why did you really drive all the way up here?”

“Because I’ve lost one son,” William said, deep regret cracking his worn voice. His shoulders seemed to droop even lower. “I don’t want to lose another…if it’s not too late.”

Zach thought for a moment about Anya. Was it too late for them? “It’s never too late,” he said with conviction. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it be. “We’ll talk about this when we get back home. Right now, I have to get back to the search. It’ll be dark soon.”

Anya’s words came back to haunt him once again.
Until he feeds.
Zach shuddered, trying to hide a sudden foreboding as he started toward the door.

As though sensing his presentiment, William called him back. “Zach?” There was a panicky edge to his father’s voice.

Zach turned. “What is it?”

“I’ve only had this feeling one other time in my life—the night I drove you out of the house. Something bad is going to happen. Don’t ask me how I know, but just take care…son.”

Zach’s hands were shaking as he left the room.

* * *

It was almost dusk. As the sun dropped into the sea, Zach stared at the glistening water. He thought about his conversation with Anya last night, the one he’d had with his father a few minutes ago, and Sutton’s disappearance. Somehow all three events were linked into an unending chain, but Zach couldn’t figure out how. Or why.

Everything he thought he knew about life seemed to be dissolving as rapidly as mist in a morning light. Everything he thought he understood about himself had been totally blown away. He’d been cast adrift, not knowing what to think or how to feel. For the first time in his life, he was lost.

Was that how Anya felt? he wondered. Lost. Adrift. And so totally alone. But not anymore, he thought. She wasn’t alone anymore. And neither was he.

Below him, like his tumultuous thoughts, waves crashed into the rocky shoreline. In contrast, a rainbow, as delicate and elusive as a dream, hovered on the horizon. It seemed a beacon, somehow. A sign. The fragile beauty of the fading day made him think of Anya once again. Her haunted eyes. Her tormented soul.

And it came to him suddenly how very much he loved her. In spite of everything. Maybe even because of everything, he loved her as he’d never loved another person before.

Like his father, Zach had made a lot of mistakes in his life. But Anya wasn’t going to be one of them. Somehow, he would make her see that she needed him—as much as he needed her.

So strong was her presence in his mind that Zach could have sworn he heard her calling out to him as though she
did
need him. He stood perfectly still, listening. But there was no sound. Just a mild breeze rippling through the trees.

Zach!

“Anya?”

How could he be hearing her when there was no sound? But he
had
heard her, as clearly as though she had been standing beside him. And he knew, just as clearly, that she was in trouble. She needed him.

“Anya!” he called to her again. His voice echoed eerily in the growing dusk. The panic in his tone repeated itself over and over. “Anya!”

Here. I’m here.