Find Me (7 page)

"Sarah."

That he called her by her first name startled her, he'd already drawn his line as well. That he shifted that boundary now warned that he wanted her full attention. Sarah ignored him. "There seems to be this overriding assumption that the killer isn't anyone from your community."

All the uncertainty and apprehension vanished. Deputy Brighton leveled a stare on Sarah that could only be called categorically cold and unyielding. "That's because the perpetrator responsible for this
is not
one of us. There isn't an officer of the law in this department who doesn't know every single citizen in this village and most of those in the nearby communities. When this case is solved, and it will be, you'll see that we were right to stand by that conclusion."

"So you're sticking with the curse theory."

Brighton's expression turned to stone as she pushed back from her desk and stood. "I believe you'll need to address the rest of your questions to the chief."

"I'll do that." Sarah draped the strap of her bag over her shoulder. She started to turn away but she hesitated one last time. "You know," she said to the deputy, "considering the first girl went missing a week ago and you basically have nothing, it looks very much like we won't ever know the truth. I guess history's going to repeat itself."

Deputy Brighton didn't say good-bye or come again or even kiss my ass. Conner couldn't get Sarah out of the building fast enough.

He didn't say a word to her until they were in his Jeep.

He was pissed.

So much for the easygoing guy.

"Was that necessary?" He twisted the key in the ignition and jerked into reverse. After a jarring three-point turn he rolled onto the street. "You couldn't have been more diplomatic?"

"There's a time for diplomacy, Conner. And this isn't it." Sarah snapped her seat belt into place.

He moved his head side to side as if he couldn't decide what to say next and maybe if he were lucky that maneuver could shake something loose.

No point in dragging out his misery. "I don't like being lied to." Why not put her cards on the table and get it over with? He would hate her soon enough, just like everyone else in this too-happy little town would before she was finished.

"There's something called protocol, Newton," he roared. "Karen can't tell you something she isn't authorized to tell. Bullying her, or anyone else for that matter, isn't going to get you what you want."

"In my experience," Sarah countered, her tone calm and even enough to piss him off all the more, "it does exactly that. When you put someone on the defensive they speak before they think. That's how you learn secrets."

He fumed. Silently, but he couldn't have proclaimed his fury any more loudly.

Any second she actually expected to see steam rolling from his ears. "If you plan to follow me around, Conner, you should know that I don't play nice. It's not my style."

"Maybe it should be."

"Been there, tried that. It doesn't get the job done."

He whipped into the parking lot of the municipal offices and shoved the gearshift into park. When he'd drawn in a deep breath and let it go real slow he looked at her. "I'll follow you to the inn and see that you get settled." His voice was lower now but still taut with frustration.

Not necessary, but whatever. "Suit yourself." She released the seat belt and reached for the door.

"It doesn't have to be like this," he argued, waylaying her. "Just because a tactic has worked in the past doesn't make it the best strategy in every situation."

Wow. A guy with a conscience. She considered this anomaly of the male species. Particularly odd reaction from a handsome specimen. Could he really be such a nice guy? One who genuinely cared about his community, wanted to do the right thing? A guy who actually didn't want to part with anyone, even the enemy, on bad terms? Could he be as good inside as he was to look at on the outside? No way. All she had to do was hang around him long enough and she would find the flaw. There was always a flaw.

Since he waited, his gaze glued to hers, for an answer, she gave him one. "Of course it has to be this way." He had the darkest eyes. Completely brown. The kind where the color was so dense and rich that it didn't even reflect light. "This is what I do, Conner. I find the truth. The sooner the powers that be in this town admit there's no curse or passerby who murdered that girl, the sooner they'll start looking for the person who did. The person who is
one of you
."

He stared at her another quarter of a minute more. She should have gotten out. Should have left it at that, but somehow she couldn't walk away without ensuring he fully understood her position.

"You won't save Alicia Appleton this way," she warned. The words would only add insult to injury, but it was true. That was the saddest part. "You and all these God-fearing, compassionate people"—she gestured toward the heart of the village—"can't pray that girl to safety. If someone doesn't figure out why a person she knew, a citizen of Youngstown or a nearby community, wants her dead, she's going to die."

He looked away then. Just sat there and waited for Sarah to get out.

Whatever.

She opened the door, got out and strode to her car.

He was wrong.

They were all wrong.

The Overlook

The innkeeper thrust the key at Sarah.

Not a key card. The old-fashioned kind. She accepted it. "Thank you." Room 13. Ha-ha.

The innkeeper, Barton Harvey, glanced expectantly at the man who'd followed Sarah from the municipal offices. "I'll show her to her room," Conner offered.

"Thank you, Kale," Harvey said, making no attempt to conceal his relief that he would be in Sarah's presence no longer than absolutely necessary.

Funny. Sarah was the one paying for the room and he hadn't thanked her.

More of that compassion Conner spoke of so ardently. Sarah followed him up the stairs to the second floor. When Connor hadn't driven away after seeing her to the inn, she'd been surprised. Evidently he'd decided to ensure she didn't go off nosing around town without him. Once she'd gotten out of her rental car, she'd expected him to speed away then. Instead, he'd insisted on carrying her suitcase but the show of chivalry hadn't been necessary. She'd wagged that damned thing all over the country by herself plenty of times.

She gave the inn's high ceilings and intricate architectural details a cursory survey. Nice place. As long as there was hot water and a comfortable bed, she would be happy.

At the door marked 13, he moved aside for her to unlock it. She hadn't used a hotel room key like this since Charlotte, North Carolina. Once the door was open, he took two steps inside and set her bag on the floor. He was ready to split. As it was, he'd lasted longer than she'd estimated.

"Call me…"—he looked anywhere but at her—"in the morning."

"I don't have your number."

"I'll give you my cell number."

Monotone, uninspired. Yep, still ticked off. She dug out her phone and entered the number he recited.

"If you need anything, you can… let me know."

He turned to the open door.

She should say something. It wasn't like she'd wanted his company today. She hadn't asked for it. But she couldn't deny that he'd made things marginally more interesting. Even if the way in which he'd made them interesting wasn't in her best interest.

Say the words. "Thank you."

He hesitated but didn't turn around.

What now? She glanced around the room, didn't find the answer. Fuck it. "Good night."

"Good night."

He walked out, closed the door behind him.

For one long moment she stood there staring at the closed door. "That was weird."

Why?

She had no reason to feel guilty about disappointing this guy. She'd done pretty well today. She'd only pissed off two people. Not counting the innkeeper. In all fairness, the mere fact that she'd shown up appeared to have pissed him off.

Whatever.

Sarah picked up her bag and tossed it on the bed. Then did the same with her shoulder bag. She set her hands on her hips and turned all the way around to view her room. She hadn't been surprised that she'd been given room 13. What did surprise her, however, was that it turned out to be quite nice. Generally, when she met with the kind of hostility she'd sensed in the innkeeper she wound up with the worst room in the place. Bad plumbing, drafty windows, no air-conditioning, she'd had it all. If this was the worst, then it was no wonder the inn was the most popular one in the county.

Four-poster bed with a lace canopy. Lots of big fluffy pillows and lush bedding. Antique furnishings. Cable television. High-speed Internet service. Her own private bath and a nice big bowl of fruit.

She sat on the mattress and bounced.

"Not too bad."

'Course, a good mattress didn't guarantee she would sleep.

She pushed up and wandered over to the massive window. Kale Conner strode down the front steps and across the parking area to his Jeep. Long, confident strides. She felt a prick of disappointment that he didn't spare a glance back at the inn as he got into the vehicle.

There it was. The most fundamental reason she should avoid him at all costs.

Attraction.

He really did have nice eyes. She didn't usually pay attention to eyes other than for assessing intent and emotion. As good-looking as Kale Conner was his best assets were definitely his eyes. Looking at him from a purely physical perspective, she had to confess that he fell into the hot category. He had a good voice, too. Low and deep, and he was obviously intelligent.

As his Jeep moved down the twisted road leading back to town she wondered if he really believed that sales pitch he'd given her about the citizens of Youngstown. Was he really that naive?

Then again, his life didn't revolve around murder.

Whatever he thought, the fact was that a murderer could crop up anywhere. Their reason for becoming a killer could be environmental, could be genetic.

Yet this whole village appeared to be convinced that their troubles were not related to a local. At least not one from this century. Give them a curse or a stranger, but not one of their own.

When Conner's taillights disappeared, she shifted her attention to the village and harbor. It was dark now but the collage of lights around the waterfront twinkled in the clear night. The sailboats drifted like ghosts with their white covers shimmering in the moonlight. Squares of light glowed from the homes that clung to the hillside flanking the inlet. She could only assume that the lack of sun in the winter prompted the owners to forgo curtains or blinds on their windows. She couldn't imagine, even on the fourth floor, leaving her windows naked for anyone's viewing pleasure.

Though it had melted on the pavement and had been scraped from the parking lots and driveways, snowbanks loitered beneath trees and against the corners of buildings and rooftops. The winding street up to the inn's hilltop station had reiterated Conner's point about four-wheel drive. The first icy or snowy morning she would regret not having gone with a fully equipped SUV.

Kale Conner. She unzipped and shed her coat. Her research indicated he was thirty, the eldest of three children. After his father became disabled ten years ago, the full responsibility of the family's fishing business had fallen upon his shoulders. He'd left his university studies behind and returned home. She wondered if he regretted that choice.

His younger brother was twenty-three and in his final year at the University of Massachusetts. His sister was eighteen and a senior at Youngstown High School. The matriarch of the family attended to the disabled father and took care of things at home, leaving the business to her eldest son.

The four other village council members were much older than Conner, married with grown children and, of course, pillars of the community. Sarah hadn't been able to find any dirt on the four. Typical small-town politicians with their fingers in every pie.

Chief of Police Benjamin Willard, sixty, was, from all reports, born with steel blue in his veins. A wife and two grown children. Mayor Fritz Patterson was the former principal of Youngstown High School and a widower. No dirt on the chief or the mayor, either.

Squeaky clean.

The whole village population appeared to be just what Conner said, good, God-fearing, compassionate folks.

But that was impossible.

Good, God-fearing, compassionate folks didn't mutilate and murder young women.

Nope.

Someone here had a secret. A dirty, disgusting secret, and she was going to find it.

Sarah dragged off the ski cap. She threaded her fingers through her hair and braced her elbows on the window. Randall Enfinger, the bicoastal developer who'd purchased the Young estate, was clean. As clean as a guy that rich and with that many connections could be. He'd bought the extensive property for the purpose of building a resort. He didn't care that the village's founding father, Thomas Young, had been born there. The greedy heirs didn't appear to care, either, since they had sold to the highest bidder with no thought as to what happened after the sale.

As soon as the deconstruction had started, so had the village's trouble. At first there were protests from the residents. Local media aired the controversy. Then Mother Nature stepped in. Hurricane-force winds had struck in the middle of the night. No lives had been lost but the property damage had been significant. Sarah had seen the trees along Calderwood Lane and Chapel Trail that had been snapped by the out-of-season storm. As an encore, full-on winter arrived early in the form of heavy snows in December and January. All construction work had stopped for a couple of weeks.

When even the forces of nature didn't stop Enfinger completely, Valerie Gerard went missing. A few days later her body had been found and a faction of the village residents had jumped on the curse bandwagon. Enfinger's temporary office at the development site had burned.

"Just like twenty years ago" the headlines had read. The accidental unearthing of a historic, and previously undiscovered, family cemetery had set off the chain of events back then. A hurricane had struck, doing substantial damage and killing four Youngstown residents. Almost immediately afterward, two women, one eighteen and one nineteen, had been murdered in a very similar manner as Valerie Gerard; their bodies discovered at the chapel. As if that wasn't punishment enough, according to those who clung to the curse theory, the winter that followed was the worst in Youngstown history.

Until now.

Though Conner and Brighton hadn't mentioned it, the tale went that the devil himself had been commissioned with punishing the villagers for any infractions of this nature.

"Bullshit." Sarah pushed away from the window and scoped out the minibar. Wine. Bottled water. She frowned. No liquor?

Frustrated and tired, she opened a personal serving bottle of white wine that had been grown, bottled, and aged right here in a Youngstown vineyard.

"Probably poisoned."

She took a long, deep swallow anyway.

Not bad. She drifted back to the bed, plunked the bottle on the antique side table, and opened her suitcase. She shoved her stuff into a couple of drawers and tucked the bag under the bed. Cosmetic bag in hand, she shuffled to the bathroom and tossed it onto the counter. "Cosmetic bag" was a misnomer in her case. She didn't wear unnecessary cosmetics. Deodorant, Chapstick, toothbrush and paste, and hairbrush were all she packed.

Finishing her wine, she kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed. It was early still but she was tired. She needed to think, to review the research she'd done before she crashed for the night.

Tomorrow she would get started with the interviews. That was when she would really make friends. She would be watching for that compassion Conner spoke of.

The buzz of her cell phone vibrating reminded her that she hadn't called her editor. Tae Green would be pissed. She rolled off the bed and dug for her phone in her coat pocket.

"Newton," she answered without checking the number first as she usually did.

"Sarah, you missed your appointment today."

Big mistake.

"Sorry about that, Doc. I had an unexpected assignment. I completely forgot the appointment." Shit. Dr. Ballantine. Her shrink. She would never get off the phone without answering endless, probing questions.

"You know our deal, Sarah. You can miss one appointment but if you miss two, we have the session by phone. Is now good for you?"