Tymber Dalton (26 page)

“I’m here.”

“I didn’t expect to see you.”

“We’ll discuss that later. Right now, let’s get you healed and out of here.” She forced a smile, and he smiled back.

“Okay.”

She walked to his side, leaned over, and kissed his forehead. “You need sleep, it’s late. We’re going home and figure out how to get Pog past the kitchen.” Steve looked confused but didn’t question her, just nodded.

“Matt, thank you for being here for her,” Steve said.

Matt patted him on the shoulder. “Get some rest, buddy. You’ll be home before you know it.”

Matt drove them home in silence. He knew better than to talk. She needed time to digest things. When she was ready to talk, she’d let him—

“Goddamn son of a
bitch!
” she screamed, punching and kicking at the dash, startling him.

“Jeez, Sam, give a guy a little fricking warning!” He’d nearly swerved in front of an oncoming car.

At least she was talking.

* * * *

Pog let her lead him through the front door in the living room, but refused to cross the threshold between the kitchen and the living room.

Matt shook his head. “Huh. Go figure.”

“I’m done trying to figure out anything today.” She walked past Pog and set his water dish inside the living room. “There you go, boy.” He splashed around in it a little, playing more than drinking. He looked around the room, sniffed at the furniture. Then he claimed the window seat, curling up on it.

She thought it odd he wasn’t investigating his new surroundings, but at least he was in the house.

Sami retrieved two wine coolers from the fridge and handed them both to Matt to open. “I’m sorry it’s not more. I’d expected to have all three of us sitting down to a nice dinner tonight, but I think I need this right now. Feel free to help yourself to leftovers.”

He opened hers and handed it back. “I understand.” They sat at the kitchen table. “I think the best thing you can do is go to bed, sweetie. You’ve had a rough day.”

She drained half her bottle in three long swallows. “I don’t know if I’ll get any sleep.” She looked at him. “Give me a reason to go back to the hospital tomorrow.”

“You love him, and he’s sick. It doesn’t mean you have to spend the next twenty years with him, but I don’t see any harm in waiting until he’s home and healed and the two of you have a chance to talk with his psychologist. You don’t want to make any rash decisions, do something you’ll regret. I know you, you’ve got a soft heart and you’d feel bad if you left him before you were sure he was back on his feet.”

A humorless smile curled her lips. “You almost sounded like you meant that, Matt.” She drained the rest of her bottle. “Are you going to bed?”

He shook his head. “I thought I’d go through that material you have about the house first.”

“I haven’t even finished going through the folder yet. I’ve just skimmed through some of it.” She remembered something. “Oh, did you tell Steve to use a password on his computer?”

He nodded. “I told him he needed it to keep his files more secure. Why?”

“I wanted to find out if he was lying or not. Not that it matters now.” Tears threatened again, and she forced them back. She was tired of crying. She’d cried more in the past week than she had in the past couple of years.

“Where is his computer?”

“On his desk.” She led the way and opened the lid. The laptop, in hibernate mode, came to life.

Matt sat down and looked at the file Steve was working on when he passed out. “What the hell is this?”

She shook her head, absently resting her good hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know. The screen was dark when I found him. I figured it was off or in standby. I closed the lid to keep the dust out of it.”

Matt’s brow furrowed. “This is really strange.” He scrolled through the document, reading and rereading the only legible section.

“What is it?”

He stood up and pointed. “Read it.”

She sat and read through the file, her blood running cold. “What does this mean? Is this why he dropped the bomb on me tonight? What’s all this other stuff?”

“I don’t know. I think there’s more to it. It’s time you tell me everything that’s been going on, from when you got here until I got here. I mean everything.”

She retrieved the other two wine coolers from the fridge, and they returned to the couch. Sami started with their arrival, finding out information on the house, Steve’s nocturnal walks, the discrepancy in the file times proving he was working later than he thought, what she thought she saw in the woods that night. Seeing the woman’s ghost and then fainting and the dream. What she knew she heard in the woods on her ride, her talks with the ranger. The image of the body hanging from her banister. Julie and the house cleansing and her insistence that there was another room in the basement.

The shower incident.

“Dammit, Sam, why didn’t you tell me about that when it happened?”

“Tell you what? ‘Hey Matt, I thought a drunk guy got into the shower with me, but there was no one there.’ Yeah, that makes sense.” She took a swallow of her wine cooler and fingered the black onyx around her neck. Except for when she took a shower, she’d been wearing it. It brought her comfort.

He closed his eyes. “Is it possible you imagined seeing the guy hanging from the banister?”

“Sure. It’s also possible I’ll hit the lottery, and that Santa will deliver the money to me with Rudolph pulling the sleigh. Matt, I didn’t
know
somebody was hung in the house until after I saw…whatever you want to call it.
After
. If I’d read the article before, I’d attribute it to an overactive imagination. And there’s this.”

She rooted through the articles in the folder. “How do you explain this?” She held up the picture of George Simpson. “That man looks just like Steve. That is the same man I saw in my vision, dream, whatever you want to call it. Jane McCartyle is the one who noticed the likeness and pointed it out. The voice I heard in the shower sounded like Steve’s voice. A little different, but it sounded like Steve.”

* * * *

Matt studied the picture. It did look like Steve.

Pog growled, startling them. The Lab’s gaze focused on a point halfway up the stairs.

“Pog, what’s wrong?”

He ignored her and kept his eyes fixed on the stairs.

“That’s crazy,” Matt said. He stood and walked to the stairs, trying to see what the dog saw. He mounted the stairs. Halfway up, a curtain of dread settled over him, a wave of nausea threatening. He stumbled back two steps, and the feeling disappeared.

“Matt, what is it?” Sami didn’t move from the dog’s side.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked up the stairs again. He saw nothing that might set the dog off, nothing to cause the feeling.

The dog stopped growling and turned to Sami, thumping his tail as if nothing happened.

Matt and Sami exchanged looks, and he ascended the steps again. This time, all was normal. He sat at the top of the steps. “Come here, Pog, here, boy!”

The dog leapt from the window seat and bounded up the stairs without hesitation. Matt praised him. Pog followed him down the stairs to the living room, where he returned to the window seat.

“They say animals are more sensitive than people to things.”

They returned to Steve’s office, and Matt sat at the computer and looked through Steve’s other files based on the date stamp. There were three more files of total garbage, nonsensical typing, without any legible text at all. Then they opened “dante2.”

Matt scanned it from the beginning. At over fifty thousand words, it looked like a good, solid manuscript, even though it wasn’t finished. Halfway through, Matt noticed a change in the writing. Nonsensical lines randomly scattered through the text.

come here lisa

gonna let that boy hang for it

i knew that well would come in handy

what the hell is that

puta

And others. Many others.

He closed the file.

“What are you doing? We need to read that!”

Matt turned. “Not tonight. Not now. I want to deal with this in the light of day with a clear head. We’re both tired, I’ve got a buzz, and frankly, I just want to go to bed. It’s late. It will still be here in the morning. Besides, I want to print it and I’m not going to sit here and do it tonight.”

She finally agreed. “Okay.” She stepped backward out of his way and tripped over the shoulder strap of Steve’s laptop case. “Goddammit!” She grabbed it with her good hand and flung the case inside the closet.

They heard a hollow crack as it hit the wall.

Matt and Sami exchanged looks.

The heavy Targus case rested at an angle against the far wall, the one closest to the closet in Sami’s office. The force of the bag’s reinforced corner hitting the wall cracked the veneer, creasing it like a piece of cardboard.

Except it was supposed to be a solid plank wall.

Matt pushed past her and handed the bag out. “Got a flashlight?”

She retrieved it and handed it in. She heard more wood creaking, and then a sliding noise. Matt didn’t say anything.

“Well, what is it?”

The wall muffled his voice. “I found the whiskey.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Matt warned as Sami pushed into the closet to examine his discovery. The secret room was a little larger than the closet, and it explained the dimensional difference she’d felt when looking at the closet in her office.

There were twelve full whiskey cases stacked to one side, with several empties behind them.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “He has been drinking.”

A thick patina of dust and cobwebs covered everything.

“I’m not so sure, Sam. It looks like no one’s been in here in decades. That panel was damn hard to open.”

“But this explains everything!” Rage enveloped her. “He’s been getting drunk while he’s in here, and that most likely is what brought on the gallbladder attack, right? It explains why his blood alcohol level was whacked, and his weird behavior.”

Matt pushed her out ahead of him and grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me, no one has been in that room for years. The dust is thick. If he’d been in there, you’d see it. Look for yourself.”

She snatched the flashlight from him and returned to the closet.

The only footprints were hers and Matt’s. The dust obviously hadn’t been disturbed in ages.

She finally turned to him. “This would have explained it all.”

He took the flashlight from her. “No honey, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t explain what you saw, the woman, the guy hanging from the banister, the shower incident. It wouldn’t explain what you heard in the woods. It wouldn’t explain why Pog is terrified of that doorway. Or what he growled at, or what I felt on the stairs. It wouldn’t explain any of it.”

Shell-shocked, Sami said nothing. He put his arm around her and led her from the room. “C’mon. You need to go to bed.” He guided her up the stairs, calling for Pog. The Lab padded up the steps behind them without hesitation.

He helped her to bed, wondering if she needed a sedative. He pulled the covers down for her and tucked her in. He patted the bed, and Pog jumped up next to his mistress, snuggling close to her side.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered, kissing her on the cheek. “We’ll talk in the morning. It’ll make more sense then.”

She nodded and rolled over, throwing her arm around the dog.

Matt turned off the light, leaving the door slightly ajar. He wanted to hear if she woke in the night.

He’d never seen her like this, so close to breaking. Not even before Steve’s intervention.

Steve was his friend, but Matt allowed his jealousy and anger to boil to the surface without trying to push them back any longer.

He lay in bed for quite a while, not sure anything would make sense. She was obviously in emotional shock. Steve’s drinking had been hard on her the first time. Matt knew she took personal pride in his sobriety. If he was drinking again and she didn’t know it, it would be a huge blow to her self-esteem. Not only because she didn’t catch it sooner, but because she would partly blame herself, right or wrong.

Whining, Pog nosed him awake a little after two in the morning. At first Matt felt disoriented. Then realized where he was. The Lab whined again.

“What’s the matter, boy?”

Pog looked over his shoulder at the bedroom door and growled.

That’s when Matt heard the floor creak near the top of the stairs.

He turned on the bedside lamp. “Sam?” He threw the covers back. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

Another creak, followed by silence.

Pog stared at the door and growled again.

Matt looked into the hall. His room was on the other side of Sam’s, separated by the bathrooms. He peeked in her door and saw she was still asleep.