Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) (19 page)

Maybe especially Fletch’s own apartment building.  But would
he really risk being seen hauling a hefty duffel inside, or coming and going
repeatedly?

Daniel found himself shaking his head.  One dead end after
another.

Where was Ian Cline?

“No word,” Elias told his mother, before she could ask. 
Like everyone else in town, she had an idea what Hannah was going through.  He
hadn’t been able to tell her about the bungled ransom drop, but in this town,
news spread like wildfire.  Gail Burton had already heard about the note left
at the daycare center, if not the contents.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked, practical as
always.

“Yeah.  That’s why I called.”  She’d suffered enough losses
in her life, he didn’t want to say any of this to her, but she was a strong
woman.  And maybe she wouldn’t be surprised.  She knew about the ugly rumors;
she knew about Polly Jennberg’s near-fatal car accident, she knew about Amy
Ainslie’s death on the surf-battered rocks.

Elias had to ask himself why he hadn’t connected the dots
the minute Ian was grabbed, given that he’d been set up to be the bad guy.  But
he knew – this crime was so different than anything that came before.  And, of
course, the focus had been entirely on Hannah until Elias stepped in.

He had gone out on Hannah’s front porch so she didn’t have
to listen to the conversation and where he could see whether anyone was within
earshot.

“We think everything that’s happened is an attack on me as
much as on Hannah.  I should have stayed away from her.”  His throat clogged. 
He cleared it.  “I knew somebody didn’t like me.  Those rumors have a source.”

“How anyone could believe—” she exclaimed.

“At least Hannah doesn’t.”  No, she thought he had decided
to settle for a tall, buxom, freckled redhead because he couldn’t have what he
really wanted.  “What matters now is that Daniel Colburn believes, and I agree,
that my…enemy—” that sounded melodramatic, but he couldn’t think of a good
alternative “—didn’t stop there.  If he could convince a woman I was scum, he
was satisfied.  If he failed, they had to be eliminated some other way.”

“Oh, no,” his mother whispered.  “Polly?”

“And probably Amy, too.”  He had introduced both women to
his mother.  “It’s as if he’s making sure anyone who matters to me gets taken
away.”  He paused.  “Except you.”

“I’m your mother,” she said after a minute.  “That’s
different.”

“It has to be somebody I know, and probably well.  Either I
did something to this guy in the first couple years after I moved back to Cape
Trouble…”

She finished his sentence, sounding thoughtful.  “Or this
antagonism dates back to high school.”

“Yes.  I need to figure out who it could be.  I’m hoping you
can help.”

They started with him telling her some of what he’d been
thinking – about the caricature he’d used to skewer Ron Campbell, the car accident
in which two of his friends had been injured, another, more casual friend he’d
bested to become starting quarterback.

“Nash Peterman.”  Mom had known all his friends.  His house
had been a favorite gathering place.  Everyone liked Gail, who was happy to
feed starving teenagers but didn’t go overboard with the mothering.  “He was
competitive enough not to be happy about losing out to you, but I think he was
more focused on baseball anyway.”

“Right.  He played shortstop.”

“He went to Oregon State on a baseball scholarship.”

“I’d actually forgotten.”  He reminded himself how many
years ago that was.  Only the closest high school friendships had a chance of
enduring.  Nash had been an adequate student with a passion for cars.  In fact,
he was now a partner in his father’s automotive repair business, and Elias had
heard he had a sideline in restoring vintage cars.  Aside from high school
reminiscences, Nash and Elias had next to nothing in common.

His mother reminded him of other incidents, none of which
had enough bite to cause this level of hate.  Except…the guy was obviously a
nut job.  He could have magnified something petty into the insult of the
century.

The way I magnified a teenage crush into the great love
of the century?
  His mouth twisted.

A little silence let him know his mother was thinking. 
Waiting, Elias watched a boy pedal hard down the street and, a minute later, a
neighbor wheel his lawnmower out of his garage and then disappear inside again
without firing it up.

Elias glanced at the grass right in front of him.  Hannah’s
lawn was getting shaggy, front and back, as was her elderly neighbor’s, which
made him suspect Hannah mowed for her.  Earlier, he’d heard some yapping from
Mrs. Stanavitch’s fenced back yard.  Maybe it would help Hannah to bring
Jack-Jack home?

“I wonder,” his mother said tentatively, “whether this man
isn’t determined to take away every woman you ever cared about because you took
away a girl he loved.”

That made a painful kind of sense.  Except…  “I don’t know
if I ever did.”

“Your memory lapses are convenient.”  Mom did tart well.

“Who?”

“Noemi Smith.  I seem to recall a fight.”

Oh, yeah.  Noemi had dumped Mark Rankin, who decided it was
Elias’s fault.  A couple of black eyes later, they were both hauled to the
principal’s office.

Incredulous, he said, “What were we?  Sophomores?  I don’t
even know if Mark lives around here anymore.”

“And you know Fletch liked Laurel.  He thought she went for
you because you starred on the football field while he had to sit on the bench
in a cast.”

Because of an injury that had been Elias’s fault.

“I guess I did vaguely know that,” he admitted.  “But Fletch
hadn’t even made a try for her.”  Self-absorbed teenager he’d been, he hadn’t
worried about hurting a friend.  “They hooked up after she and I split,
anyway.”

“But he might have felt…”

Second best
.  The realization hit Elias like a hammer
blow.  And then…Fletch hadn’t even made a try for Laurel.  Unless he’d slipped
an anonymous gift or two into her locker?  Elias shook his head.  Laurel would
have told everyone.

“Did he ever say anything to you?” he asked.

It was Mom who’d thought they ought to take Fletch in his
senior year rather than let him go to a foster home.  Elias, a loner even then,
had been a little less enthusiastic.  As it turned out, that year had been
really good for a boy whose home life had sucked even before his remaining
parent abandoned him altogether.

“He was always careful not to criticize you.”

Movement caught Elias’s attention.  The neighbor finally
reappeared carrying a gas can.  Two minutes later, he started up his lawn
mower.  The noise drove Elias to his feet and back into the house.

“Seems like we never reconnected after college,” he said,
closing the door behind him.

Despite the warmth of the day, Hannah curled up at one end
of the sofa, wrapped in a fleece throw.

“You have quite different personalities,” his mother pointed
out.

Despite the seriousness of the subject, the corner of his
mouth lifted.  “You don’t think I could be a charming salesman if I wanted to?”

If Hannah was listening, he couldn’t tell.

“I think it’s an enormous effort for you.”

“You’re right, it is.”  He had to show his face at gallery
openings, attend banquets when he won awards, and on occasion make nice to
people who’d spent a lot of money on one of his paintings.  He did his best,
but knew he came across as unapproachable anyway.

“Fletch,” his mother said suddenly, as if the concept had
finally sunk in.  “I just can’t imagine.  The two of you were good friends for
so long.”

They were, but in retrospect, Elias realized they had mostly
run in a crowd the way boys did.  Two guys that age didn’t talk to each other,
not the way two girls would.  He didn’t remember them ever discussing Laurel
beyond agreeing she was hot.

The idea that someone he had called a friend had held a
grudge like this for twenty years, even killing so he could see Elias suffer…it
just didn’t track.

Not Fletch.

Yeah?  Then who? 

He could maybe understand a reaction this extreme if he’d
gotten drunk and killed a man’s wife in a car accident.  Or make that his wife
and child.  After losing her husband and child to a drunken, speeding driver,
Emily Holbeck had virtually withdrawn from life for years, from what Elias had
heard.  She’d had reason to hate.

Everything Elias had come up with so far was high school
bullshit.  He kept thinking there had to be something more.

After Mom agreed to keep thinking, they ended the call and
he sat down on the coffee table, his knees almost touching Hannah.  She didn’t
ask if he’d had any new ideas.  She’d been looking at him the same way she
might a stranger who took the chair beside hers in the waiting room at the
dentist’s office.  Right now, her eyes stayed trained on the two cell phones.

“He’ll call soon.”

She nodded.

“You want to lie down?”

Vehement shake of her head.

Hating her withdrawal, he stayed close as the day drew on,
occasionally bringing her a drink, or just talking whether she listened or
not.  Emily Holbeck showed up with several bags of groceries and stayed for a
few minutes, the understanding in her eyes making Hannah shrink back.  Elias
persuaded her to eat half a sandwich for lunch.

There were a few quiet moments when she really looked at
him, questions in her eyes but not condemnation.  It was enough to give him
hope, although he felt like a jerk even thinking that, when Ian was what
mattered right now.

Her phone rang half a dozen times, mostly friends, once her
ex-husband who had looked into borrowing money and thought he could come up
with another thirty thousand.  She thanked him without saying, too little, too
late.

For dinner, Elias made macaroni and cheese from a box, and
persuaded Hannah to come to the table.

The stricken way she stared at the serving he put in front
of her had him wondering if he’d had the bad luck to offer Ian’s favorite
food.  The choice might have been subconscious; mac cheese had been his
favorite as a kid.  Didn’t most people think of it as comfort food?  He’d told
himself it would be mild enough for her stomach to accept.  After a minute,
Hannah picked up her fork.  While they ate, he’d have sworn there was a ghost
with them at the table – Ian chattering in between bites.

 “Why would he let an entire day go by?” she said aloud.

“To unnerve you until you’re willing to do anything at all,”
Elias said.

She didn’t look at him.  “I already am.”

And then the other phone rang.

*****

White-knuckled, Elias rocketed up the Pacific Coast Highway
toward his house.  His headlights stabbed the darkness ahead.  If a state
patrol officer clocked him, he’d get a ticket.  Except not even flashing lights
coming up behind him would compel him to pull over.

In a new twist, the phone call had been for
him
.

“Left something special for you at your house.”  The malice
in that voice raised the hair on Elias’s neck.  “But don’t worry.  I’ll keep an
eye on it until you get here.”  And then he’d said, “Hannah stays home.  Just
you, if you care about her kid.”

Hannah hadn’t liked it, but Elias had called Daniel anyway. 
Sean Holbeck would meet Elias at his house.  He didn’t think for a minute that
the kidnapper was lurking in the woods to watch his reaction, not when he
wanted his money.  The greater likelihood was that the asshole had his eye on
Hannah’s house, waiting until she was alone.

He’d left her preparing to go out the door.  They’d been
separated for a reason.  The idea of Hannah going to meet this monster in the
dark terrified Elias.

No radar gun recorded his speed.  He turned off the highway
and tore up the road leading to his house, fishtailing when it turned to
gravel.

That was the moment when he thought he smelled wood smoke.

He reached for his phone without diminishing speed.

*****

Orange flames roared into the sky.  Elias slammed to a stop
by his garage and leaped out.  He could already hear sirens, far off, but knew
firefighters wouldn’t be in time to save anything.

Then a horrifying thought struck.  What if Ian was here? 
What if he was in the house?  What if
he
was the ‘something special’?

Elias ran around the house, searching for any sign of the
boy’s presence.  Nothing.

The circuit complete, he tried to think.  The front of the
house wasn’t yet engaged.  He knew what that meant.  The son-of-a-bitch had
targeted his studio on the back.  Elias wouldn’t allow himself to think what
that meant.  If he could get inside, he could at least grab the metal lockbox
where he stored important papers.  What else?  Nothing came to him.  The
completed paintings, a lifetime of sketches, those were his only possessions
that mattered, and they were already destroyed.

A car raced into his driveway and flung to a stop.  Caught
in the headlights, he wheeled around.

“Elias?” a man called.  “Thank God.  I saw the flames and
was afraid you’d be inside.”  His next-door neighbor, a forest service employee
named Jed Whittaker, ran toward him.  “Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m going in,” Elias said.  “See what I can grab.”  He
didn’t really believe Ian could be inside.  The boy was still a pawn, useful
only as long as he was alive.  But that didn’t mean Elias wouldn’t search as
long as he could.

“It’s burning hot.  Don’t take the chance.”

“Just a look.”  He bounded up the steps, unlocked and
stepped cautiously inside.  The living room was hazy with smoke. 
Fuck
. 
Should have thought of that.  Even so, he took a last, deep breath of fresh
air, covered his nose and mouth with his arm, and plunged deeper inside.

He took a pass through the as-yet undamaged part of the
house.  No Ian.  The lockbox was in a cabinet that was part of the divider
between living room and dining room.  Elias grabbed the box and tucked it under
his arm, able to see flames crawling up the kitchen wall.  Lungs straining, he
knew he had to get out of here.