Reckless Hours: a Romantic Suspense novel (Heroes of Providence Book 3) (3 page)

The woman blinked at his hostility. Normally Dylan wouldn’t have been so harsh with a stranger, much less a woman, lest he suffer the wrath of his sister, Sonny. But he’d been unsuccessful in getting a meeting with Serena Davco the entire time he’d been in the small Massachusetts town of Eastmeadow. If demanding answers in the middle of the main street running through the center of town was the only chance he had to get information about his missing brother, then so be it. He was done waiting.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not that hard a question. My brother. Where did he
go?”

She blinked again, her mouth agape. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

Anger like hot coals surged through Dylan and he laughed. He’d already spent too much time in this hick town getting the runaround from everyone he talked to. But Cash had been clear about one thing. And Serena Davco was it.

“The hell you don’t. I know you had a relationship with my brother. Cash started talking all crazy about coming here to rescue you, because you were in danger. That was nearly three months ago and no one has heard from him since.”

Dylan fisted his hands in frustration and then took a deep breath and looked at the open meadows on both sides of the road, and then released tension in his fingers.

“Well, here you are. You don’t look like you’re in danger from anything but a stray cow, and even then I’m pretty sure you could hold your own, by the looks of you. Meanwhile, my brother seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.”

“You’re clearly upset,” she said.

“Damn right I am! When you brush me off for nearly a month, what do you expect?”

She squinted her eyes and looked at him as if he was crazy. “Look, I’m just trying to find a hotel to stay in while I’m in town.”

A fingernail of irritation raked up Dylan’s spine, sending what little patience he had left blowing out the top of his head. He raked his hand over his head just to make sure it was still there.

“Hotel? Now there’s a real twist.”

“What?”

“Lady, you live in the biggest mansion this side of the Mississippi.” He pointed back down the street to the intersection where he’d traveled many times over the last few weeks. “That house on the other side of town is practically a hotel all by itself and it has your name on it.”

The woman clamped her mouth shut and started rolling up her window as she put the car into drive.

“Hey, wait, wait—you’re not going anywhere.” Before he knew what he was doing, Dylan’s hand was inside the window, trying to keep the glass from closing. But she was quicker than him, and the window shut, squeezing his palm.

Desperate to keep his only lead from vanishing, Dylan pulled his hand out and ran in front of the car, effectively stopping her escape. That is, unless she was inclined to run him over, which by the look of her was definitely a possibility. Dylan didn’t care. Let her run him over. His brother was missing and Serena Davco seemed to be the only woman who knew why. He wasn’t letting her get away without finding out what happened to Cash.

*
* *

Tammie stared in total disbelief at the crazy man glaring back at her from beyond her windshield.

“This guy is a lunatic,” she muttered to herself as she contemplated her next move. She could run him over. But then she’d have to stay and talk to the police. She could back up and try to outrun him. But seeing how she’d opted for an economy rental car, he’d probably outrun a four-cylinder engine before she got up enough speed to get away from him.
Her gaze was fixed on his glare and for the first time in her life she wished she’d chosen the Mustang with the fast engine that would get her from zero to seventy in two seconds flat.

Giving herself a moment to decide whether she wanted to tick this madman off any more than he already was, she leaned on the horn. It didn’t seem to faze him at all. He just placed his wide palms on the hood of the car and continued to glower at her. She saw his dark blue eyes narrow as a gust of wind blew the curls of his chocolate-brown hair up and into his face. His black T-shirt did little to hide the muscles underneath and she knew without a doubt this wasn’t a man she wanted to get into a physical altercation with.

“I’m not going anywhere!” he yelled.

“Well,
I
am,” she called back. Inside the car, with the windows rolled up, her voice boomed around her. Her fingers white-knuckled the steering wheel as she licked her lips, contemplating her escape.

“Where is Cash? What did you do to
him
?”

Tammie shook her head, her eyes darting from one side of the road to the other in search of someone who might bear witness. She’d seen a truck filled with furniture pass by before she stopped, but it was long gone now. The only souls around her were the cows and a few horses grazing in a field, seemingly unconcerned with the disturbance happening in the street.

She braved a glance in her rearview mirror. “Little four-cylinder, don’t fail me now!” Punching the transmission into reverse, she hit the gas and the car sped backward, the tires leaving tread on the road. As she gained speed, she cut the wheel and did a one-eighty degree turn. Heart pounding, Tammie glanced once again in her rearview mirror to see the psychotic man waving his arms at her as he ran. But to her relief, the little rental was faster.

Even when the man was out of sight, her pulse kept pounding. With the back of her hand, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and tried to steady her breathing. Her heart was pounding so hard she could almost hear blood rushing through her veins. Though it was June, the temperature outside had shot up well into the eighties and with the window rolled up, it hadn’t taken long for the inside of the car to get hot.

She pressed the A/C button on the console and opened the vents and waited for the cool air to fill the car. She’d passed a small, run-down-looking efficiency motel on the edge of town, but she still opted to go further in hopes of being able to stay in a nicer place to stay in the center of Eastmeadow. But if the local folk were anything like this guy, maybe she’d be better off in a dive she could escape to the interstate easy enough. At this point, as long as it had a kitchenette where she could brew some coffee, who cared?

Her heart had slowed only marginally when she pulled into the parking lot of the Yankee Motel. There were only a few cars, but the sign said there were no vacancies.

Heaving a sigh, Tammie bit her lip and stifled a curse. “When did that happen?” Tammie couldn’t recall the sign being there earlier when she’d driven past it. But then, she’d quickly dismissed the idea of staying here, so she’d probably just overlooked it the first time.

Undaunted, she pulled into a parking space. Killing the engine, she reasoned that at least the motel clerk would know of other places in the area she could stay, which was more than she knew now. A town as quaint as Eastmeadow probably had a few bed-and-breakfasts that were worth checking out. She preferred something comfortable and homey to being locked up in a small room.

As she walked toward the side door up the concrete path with grass poking out of the many cracks, she began to think that perhaps Bill had been right. Maybe all she was doing by coming here was chasing something that couldn’t bring her happiness. Couldn’t bring her parents back.

She’d fought that battle long ago, after her parents’ deaths. She’d been angry. Who wouldn’t be? Grieving made people do funny things. She’d questioned everything about that day from why her parents’ insisted they take that boat to every detail of the harbor master’s report on the explosion. Since she’d received those DNA results, she was questioning her parents.

She had to know the truth.

The cool air in the foyer bathed her face as she stepped inside the lobby. An older man sat behind the counter reading a newspaper. The TV at the end of the counter was tuned to a sports channel, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention to the game. At her approach, the man dipped the newspaper only slightly, so that she could see his face fully, and he quickly nodded toward the front window.

“Sign says no vacancies, ma’am,” he grunted, and then stuck his nose back in the paper without so much as a glance in her direction.

“I see that,” she said, pointing outside the window. “I was hoping that you knew of another hotel in town or even a bed-and-breakfast that might have a room.”

“You must not be from around here,” he said, just his gaze rising to meet her face. It was enough to reveal his amused grin. Then he slowly dropped the paper and laid it on the counter.

“Hey, aren’t you...?” He stared for a moment, as if he were waiting for her to say something.

“Ah... I just got into town this morning.”

The clerk nodded. “This morning? Huh. Well, there aren’t any vacancies anywhere in the area, with the auction coming up this week. Most reservations are booked as early as the year before. I had to kick two people out of the motel just this morning to make room for guests who’d booked their rooms last year.”

“Last year?”

“All those antique people want to make sure they’re close by their stuff while they’re here in town. It only takes one or two people to walk through the fairgrounds during the night to wipe ‘em out.”

Tammie forced herself to keep her disappointment from showing.

“The antique auction is serious business around here. But you know that.”

“Actually no. Like I said, I’m not from around here.”

His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “Yeah…whatever.”

His focus was back in the newspaper. She didn’t have a clue what the man was talking about. But given she’d seen a truck overflowing with furniture just before she saw the crazy man, she decided to play along and get any information she could about the town. It would help her decide where to start asking questions about her parents.

After an uncomfortable moment, she said, “Since I’m here, I thought I’d check things out. When do the auctions start? Maybe I’ll wander in.”

He laughed, placing his hand on top of the paper. “Little lady, this isn’t a place people just
wander
into during auction week. This small town of three thousand is going to grow to about a hundred thousand in a day or two, and it will stay that way until the auctions are over. People come from all over the country to this event. You can’t walk down Main Street without fighting your way through a crowd of people. And forget the parking. They’ll rob you blind just because they can. The traffic on these roads will be horrendous, and only the locals know how to navigate their way around it. If you want to wander. I’d wander right out of town and come back next week when things are quiet again.”

The clerk pulled a map out of a container filled with pamphlets from area businesses and started circling spots in town. Motioning her closer to the counter, he stuck his finger on a map.

“But if you insist on staying, at least get a feel for the layout. Now, here’s Jackson’s—they’re the biggest auction house, but they don’t open until three days into the week. Auction Acres is the first on the row, but these days Trudie Burdett is showing her goods with Jackson’s. She gets better exposure that way. Then these open fields are vendors in tents. Those fields go for about a quarter mile on both sides of the road. They’ve got everything from furniture to jewelry to antique lunch boxes for sale.”

Tammie viewed the map with amazement. “Wow. This is huge.”

The elderly clerk laughed and thrust the paper out to her. “No one ever gets through the whole thing in a day. I’m not even sure it’s easy to get through it all in a week. It’s best to plan ahead. Make sure you take this map with you.”

“But what about hotels?” Tammie asked.

The man shrugged. “If you don’t have a reservation locked in somewhere within a twenty-mile radius, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. About the only place around here with room is the campground. You might be able to rent a trailer there, if they aren’t all spoken for by now. Julius usually has a few on loan for people like yourself.”

Tammie stifled a sigh, refusing to allow herself to be discouraged. Twenty miles wasn’t all that far to drive, if it meant getting information about her parents.

The letter she’d found in her mother’s hatbox from someone named Dutch was the only thing she had to go on. It was dated a few months after she was born. The little scribbled note simply read that Dutch had taken care of everything—not to worry and to stay safe.

Stay safe.
What on earth would her parents have to stay safe from? She had never heard her parents mention a person named Dutch. But that was the only thing she had to go on here in Eastmeadow.

She’d avoided looking at the hatbox and its contents after her parents died. But when she discovered she wasn’t their biological daughter, she’d gone looking for something that could prove the DNA evidence wrong. That small piece of mail with an Eastmeadow, Massachusetts, postmark had made her cross the country in search of answers.

“Thank you for your help,” she said, turning toward the door.

“Good luck finding a place to stay. And hang on to your wallet.”

His comment made her stop and turn back. “Why is that?”

“If the fever for some good antiques don’t make you spend your life savings, thieves of another kind will take it from you. We get a lot of vagrants in town during auction week, trying to score, if you know what I mean. An event like this doesn’t always bring out the cream of the crop.”