Under the Boardwalk (16 page)

"Come on, relax." Hallie put her hand on Kyle's back. He straightened up and turned to face Tom.

Hallie stepped in front of him. "Kyle, stop. These last few days have got everybody on edge. You know this isn't what's really bothering you."

He looked down at her. "I'm not so sure."

"What are you implying?" Tom asked, his fists clenched on a spreadsheet.

"Nothing." He glared at Tom.

Tom's eyes widened in surprise. "Come on, Kyle. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but how could you even think I had anything to do with the kids' disappearance? And hurting Hallie? How could you think that, man? We're family. My God, even if we weren't family, why would I want to hurt Windy, or Zac—or any of you? What would I have to gain?"

"I don't know," Kyle said pointedly. "Did the kids?"

"What exactly does that mean?"

"What are you talking about, Kyle?" Hallie asked. "You do think the kids were involved in something? But what? Something here at the park?"

"'Involved with something'?" Tom sputtered. "What are you talking about? Look, Kyle, I know you're upset about this whole thing, but you can't start making up conspiracy theories. There's gotta be some simple explanation."

Kyle glared at him. "Such as?"

Tom stood up from the desk. He backed away from them. "How would I know? My God, Kyle, how can you think I know?" Tom turned to Hallie. "You know I'm not the one who jumped you in the haunted house. Tell him he's nuts."

She hesitated. "I don't know who attacked me," she finally said. "I don't know anything anymore."

"It would explain how someone got in the haunted house undetected," Kyle said.

"Someone was hiding inside," Tom said desperately. "They slipped out of one of the cars when no one was looking and hid in there. That girl working the front admitted she wasn't paying attention and didn't notice if the same number of customers came out as went in. Joe told me so this morning."

"Maybe," Kyle said. "But someone could get in through the side entrance by the service road."

"But that entrance is kept locked," Tom said. "It's an emergency exit—anyone can get out, but no one can get in."

"Didn't Joe tell you he found it unlocked after Hallie was attacked?"

"I guess he did." Tom put his head in his hands. "But don't you see, Kyle? That means anyone could have gotten in that way."

"Convenient. But how did it get unlocked?" Kyle glared at Tom.

"I... I don't know," Tom said. He looked at Hallie, and there was a plea in his eyes. "I didn't do anything to you, I swear I didn't."

Hallie looked from Tom to Kyle. It seemed so hard to believe that Tom could be the man who choked her, but then again.... She thought of the way he'd yelled at her when he found her going through the timecards.

Tom watched her with that hurt expression on his face, and she just didn't know. She was a lousy judge of character—her ex-husband was proof of that. If she'd learned anything from her mistakes it was that cruel men didn't always look the part. She leaned wearily against the file cabinet. She'd already experienced enough violence to last her a lifetime.

She noticed both men were looking at her. "Why would someone attack me?" she finally said. "There's gotta be a reason for all this."

"I don't know," Tom said quickly. "I really don't know, Hallie." He looked hurt at the accusation, but Dave had looked hurt when she accused him of driving away her friends and isolating her. He'd sworn up and down that she was paranoid, and it was too late when she realized the truth. She touched the bruises on her neck. Would it be too late this time, too?

Kyle saw her rubbing her sore neck. He pulled her close and held her in his arms. "No one's going to hurt you anymore," he said. Tom started to say something, but Kyle interrupted him. "I'll make sure of it."

The deep murmur of Kyle's voice was seductive. She could let him take care of everything. He'd keep her safe.

She pulled away from him, out of arm's reach. She had vowed never to be vulnerable again. She rubbed her neck some more. This was something she'd have to handle by herself. And if Tom was behind it, she'd just have to deal with that, too.

"Better find that ladder," she said gruffly.

Kyle looked confused at her reaction, but he turned away and dug through the pile of junk some more.

Tom shuffled the papers on his desk as if his life depended on it.

Kyle straightened up. "Here it is." He pulled a folded aluminum ladder out from its resting place under a couple of inner tubes. The ladder was one of those that that folded down into a compact bundle. He handed it to her, and she was able to lift it, even with her hands.

He faced Tom again. "If I'm wrong, I'm sorry, Tom. I'm out of my skull worrying."

It wasn't much of an apology.

"But if you have even the slightest involvement in hurting anyone I care about, I'll kill you," Kyle finished.

No, it definitely wasn't an apology. But maybe he had his own reasons for doubting Tom. There was definitely some old anger between them—but why?

"Kyle," There was a plea in Tom's voice.

Tom looked so hurt. Were they crazy to suspect him?

"We're family," Tom muttered, turning away.

Outside Tom's office, Hallie turned to Kyle. "Are you ready to explain that? I don't understand what just happened in there. What makes you suspect Tom?"

"Hey—it was your idea in the first place," Kyle said.

"I just asked if it was possible he was hiding something, and you said it was my overactive imagination."

"I don't know," Kyle said. "Oh," he said, noticing she was carrying the ladder. He took it from her and then went down the stairs ahead of her.

Hallie felt a brief sense of disorientation when they walked out of the building and found themselves bathed with sunshine amid the bright colors of the promenade. A fresh, salt-tinged breeze blew in from the bay, and it was hard to believe anything more serious than a case of sunburn could be going on in Pajaro Bay today. They made their way through the tourist crowd to the haunted house.

Hallie had to walk fast to try to stay beside Kyle. He finally slowed down for her and she caught up. "Still thinking about conspiracy theories?" she asked him.

His glum expression softened. "I dunno. Maybe my imagination is getting the better of me—just like yours. I just can't believe all this weird stuff is coincidental—it's all part of some bigger picture and we just don't have all the pieces put together yet. And Tom has been acting squirrelly since I've been coming around here, so I've gotta wonder if it's connected to all this." He smiled faintly. "I don't know. He and I aren't the best friends in the world."

"I noticed. Why is that?"

He shook his head and didn't answer the question. "He was here the night my parents died. I always wondered if he was drunk—it seems like he's been constantly drunk ever since that night. But everybody in town knows that. It's hardly a secret."

They stopped in front of the haunted house. A metal gate blocked the front of the building, with a hastily lettered sign reading
Closed until further notice
hung on it.

"And it's not reopening until we get some answers," Kyle said.

The little cars sat on their track, and the place looked just as it had the last time she'd seen it. The dorky little ride was harmless. Why would someone attack her there? The cops had been all over this park, so it was impossible for Windy and Zac to be hidden around here. The place was crawling with cops, crawling with employees. It was crawling with tourists. There was no way to hide two kidnapped teenagers here. Hallie was determined to think of them as kidnapped. She was not going to think about the logistics of hiding bodies. She wouldn't go there. They were alive, and her brain held some key to finding them. Somewhere in that missing hour of her life was the key. There had to be an answer.

She took a step back to look up at the building. "How many floors are there?" she asked, counting four, no, five, gables pointing up toward an arch in the roller coaster's track overhead, maybe forty feet above the promenade.

"Just two. The fancy roofline is only on the outside. Inside it's just one big attic above the main floor."

"And what's in the attic?"

"Bats?" Kyle said with a small smile. She must have looked less than amused, because he added, "just junk, really. It's organized along the Tom Robles management plan. Joe said it took them hours to search the place."

She looked up at the gables, which seemed to glare back at her like menacing eyes. "I'd rather not meet any bats."

He kissed her on the forehead. "No bats. And nobody's hidden there, alive or dead," added, echoing her own thoughts.

"They're alive, Kyle." She grabbed his hand. "They are."

He nodded. "Of course they are," he said firmly, his voice sounding rough. "We're just double-checking everything the police have done. We're going to keep going over the same territory until we get some answers."

"It'll all work out," she said, trying to believe it.

"Right." He didn't sound any more convinced than she did.

He fished some keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the gate. They pushed the unlocked gate up toward the ceiling, and slipped under.

Kyle punched a button on the control panel next to the entrance. "Let's see, displays off—I'd rather not listen to that inane headless horseman giggling for an hour. But let's shed a little light on the subject," he said, flipping one switch to on. "I don't want any dark corners in there." He grabbed a flashlight from a niche under the control panel. "I don't think there are lights in the attic."

Hallie felt a surge of adrenaline—the old fight or flight mechanism, as they'd called it in Intro to Biology last term. She definitely didn't want to go back in there. But she knew she had to face her fear. "Time to get back on the horse," she muttered.

They followed the track on its winding path through the haunted house. With all the lights on, the interior looked like what it was: a warehouse partitioned by flimsy wooden walls painted flat black. They passed each of the displays, which looked even cheesier with industrial-strength fluorescent lights glaring overhead.

"I'd forgotten something," Hallie said as they walked along. "The cigarettes on the floor."

"You noticed that?" he said. "Yeah, Charlie denied it at first, but when Joe showed her the spot she admitted it was her. He thought it was a clue at first." He shook his head. "She said we were paranoid about fires." He looked around at the wooden walls. "She doesn't know what these old rides look like after a fire." He shuddered. "I don't ever want to see that sight again." He changed the subject: "You said the creep set off some of the displays. That ought to give us a clue about which direction he came from."

"Yeah," she said. "It was the axe murderer first, then the bus crash, and then—" she shuddered.

Kyle put his arm around her shoulders. "It's okay. I'm right here."

She moved away to walk on the other side of the track, out of arm's reach. "I'm fine. He's not going to get another shot at me. I just let my guard down before. I won't make that mistake again."

He raised an eyebrow. "No, you definitely don't like to let your guard down."

"Every time I do, somebody tries to hurt me. I'm a slow learner, but I catch on eventually."

He didn't seem to have a response to that.

They examined the axe murderer display. Hallie glared at the menacing murderer. "He could have been hiding behind this guy," Hallie said. "He's big enough for a man to hide behind."

Kyle nodded. "The emergency exit's back this way." He set down the ladder, and walked back along the track a ways, then stopped. "So this would be about where he attacked you?" He stood next to the vampire.

"Yeah, right about there." Hallie stood on the track in front of the vampire's victim. She looked down. "In fact, exactly here. But where's my flashlight?"

"The police found it. It had apparently rolled under the lady's negligee." Kyle pointed at the vampire's victim.

"The track twists and turns all through here," she said. "It's full of hiding places."

"Yeah," he said. "He could have been hiding behind any of the displays along here."

She looked up. The ceiling, like the walls, was painted flat black. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, as if something could come hurtling down on top of her from above at any moment. "So, how do you get to the attic?" she said.

"It's back closer to the car crash, if I remember right," Kyle said. He picked up the ladder and they went back toward the earlier part of the ride. He stopped in front of the school bus and looked up. "There it is," he said.

"That's a long way from the emergency exit," she said. Hallie looked up, too, and saw the outline of a large trap door. "You could put a moose through that door," she said.

"Wait'll you see what's up there. There's a block-and-tackle up there for hauling up stuff for storage. We could probably fit King Kong up there."

"You know," she said. "It seems pretty unlikely that someone would find this in the dark. I sure never noticed it. I never even thought to look."