by K. J. Emrick
That’s not what I’m doing, I argued with myself, taking both sides of the debate. I was a woman with needs, and I wanted James to meet those needs.
He’s doing the best he can.
No, he isn’t. He’s making time for everyone except me.
There it was. The thing that was bothering me most. This was supposed to be our time together, and it wasn’t. This was when I needed him most and he knew that, and instead he was off chasing a story.
Of course, that other part of my traitorous brain pointed out, the same could be said of me. I was chasing after my suspect without James. There was a difference though. I wasn’t chasing this mystery for my own ends. For a byline or to be the first to tell a great story before anyone else could, like James was doing. I was chasing ghosts—pun intended—so that no one else died.
Well. Think a lot of yourself, don’t ya Dell?
The unicorn at the end of my necklace felt solid in my hand. I held it tightly, and wished that Jess was here to talk me through this. I needed that kind of friend.
I needed James.
A growl bubbled deep in my throat. I was frustrated at this stupid back-and-forth I was doing. A shower is what I needed. Maybe that would clear my head and ease the heartache I couldn’t quite shake.
Tapping the papers laying out across the bedsheets for James to see, I stripped out of my clothes and headed into the bathroom.
I was dripping wet when I stepped out of the shower again to find James standing there, watching my shadow against the curtain. He handed me a big fluffy white towel with a smile on his face. His eyes were drinking in every part of my exposed body, with a little spark in their liquid blue that told me exactly where his mind was at that moment. “Hey there,” he said.
“Hey yourself.” Taking the towel from him I covered up most of my private bits. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough to consider coming in with ya,” he answered with a wink. “But ya said there was something ya needed to tell me. Sounded important?”
Drying off, I wrapped the towel around me and grabbed another one off the shelf for my hair. “It is important. There’s an envelope of papers out on the bed. I got them from our neighbor.”
His eyebrows popped up. “Our neighbor? You mean the girl from next door? The one that delivers pizza?”
“Yes. Her.” I tied the towel off at the back of my head. “You won’t believe this stuff. Come on, I’ll show—”
“How’d ya get anything from her?”
“Well, I sort of, er, went into her cabin when she wasn’t there.”
The noises he made were almost comical. “You what? You broke into her cabin?”
“Not really. There was no breaking.”
“Dell! You know what I meant!”
“It had to be done, James!” I’m not sure if I meant to holler at him but it sure felt good to do it. It was like the dam on my emotions burst. Everything came pouring out. “That girl is up to something whether you want to believe it or not! I’m not stupid. I know what I’m about. I was living my life long before you came into it and long before my husband got himself murdered and I don’t care if you think I’m helpless because I’m not!”
He stared at me. Then he took a breath and lowered his tone. “I do not think you’re helpless. I do however think you did something completely illegal, not to mention dangerous. If you really think Stevie’s got something to do with the kidnapping then what were you thinking, eh? I just went to Hudson Snow’s motel. Didn’t see me breaking into his place, now did ya?”
“Maybe you should have,” I griped, folding my arms over my chest. “Maybe you’d’ve found something as important as I did.”
“Dell, ya can’t just do these things. What woulda happened if Stevie’d come back and found ya there?”
“She almost did, thank you very much.” My anger was deflating quickly. In its place, I just felt a deep sense of exhaustion. I didn’t want to be angry with James. I didn’t want to be in this argument. “That’s why I came back here and locked everything up. I’m perfectly safe here, James. I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh really? Because these walls will stop bullets?”
My mouth opened, and then closed again. I didn’t want to admit it but he was right. I didn’t think of that. Bullets. Did stalkers shoot people? Of course they did, and I should have thought of that.
“Dell, listen. I’m not trying to run ya down. I know how smart my girl is. I just don’t want ya to get hurt.”
“Then maybe,” I said to him, “you should be here more often. With me.”
“Whoa now, where’s that coming from?”
“From you not being here.”
I brushed past him, making sure that the towel stayed closed so he wouldn’t have a view of my backside walking away. I didn’t want him watching my posterior at the moment. Out in the main room, I reached for the envelope and the papers he needed to see.
They weren’t there.
I moved the covers aside, thinking maybe they’d gotten buried under everything. Still nothing. Holding the towel tightly closed I bent over to check the floor on both sides of the bed. They weren’t there either.
“Did you… when you came in…” I tried to ask. Then it hit me, that if James had seen the papers on the way in then he wouldn’t have been asking me what I wanted to talk about. He’d already know. But I left them right here. If I didn’t move them and James didn’t move them then where…?
A sudden breeze stirred against my wet shoulder, and then across my cheek where my damp hair was still dripping. It was coming from my left. Over by the cabin’s front door.
One of the windows was open. The bottom sash was propped open, just like I’d left the window at Stevie’s cabin.
I turned to James. “Did you lock the door behind you when you came in?”
“What? ‘Course not. Although, if I’d realized you’d been skulking about in our neighbor’s cabin I’d’ve barricaded the bloody thing with the bureau.”
“She was here.” I was sure of it. While James had been spending his quality time watching me naked and soapy in the shower, Stevie had come inside our cabin and taken her envelope of stuff back. She’d left the window propped open to let me know it was her.
“Who was here?” James was asking me.
“Stevie. She was here.”
I went to lock the door, and the window too.
Chapter 5
All things considered, I was suddenly happy to have Alistair’s help.
He showed up at the cabin a little while after I got myself dressed again. True to his word, this one. He gave us the time alone together that we needed. Even brought us sandwiches from a place down the road. I took the turkey and bacon for myself.
I’m beginning to see why James likes the man so much.
“So you’re saying,” he asked me after we’d all eaten a bite of lunch, “that your next door neighbor could be the kidnapper?”
“That’s what she thinks,” James said, indicating me with a flick of his thumb. “Says there was some papers she had with me name on them.”
“It was more than that!” I exclaimed. “She had written logs of everything you’ve been doing for the past week. Now you tell me why she’d do that unless she wasn’t looking to make you a target.”
“Maybe she finds me too charismatic to resist.”
If he was trying to be cute, I wasn’t in the mood.
“No,” Alistair said, rubbing his angular chin while he pursed his lips. “Dell’s right. This woman seems like she’s up to no good. Plain as shag on a rock.”
We were sitting on the beds, me and James on one and Alistair on the other. Beers in hand, we’d been discussing the whole situation. Alistair had another one of his black shirts on, although this one had silver buttons that softened the impression of him being the prince of darkness. Again, maybe I was exaggerating, but I wasn’t ready to give up feeling put out by the fact James had a new friend. Not just yet.
>
“You said you called your son?” Alistair was asking me. “The senior sergeant in your home town, is he?”
I nodded. “Yes. He’s going to get back to me as soon as he’s spoken to his old buddies in the Federal Police. I expect it’ll be later this afternoon, although he’s got his hands pretty full, what with that escaped convict running loose.”
“Oh, right,” James said, standing up and stretching. “Reminds me. I have to call me editor and see if he needs any help with that story. Should pass me right by, considering how far away from Hobart we are, but ya never know.”
He took his mobile out and pressed a few buttons on the screen to speed dial his paper. Then he kissed me on the top of my head before going to the bathroom to make the call. Normally he would’ve stepped outside but no matter what he said, he understood that going outside would be a bad idea. Staying inside meant staying away from Stevie. Whether he believed me or not, he was playing it safe.
Him going to the bathroom and closing the door meant that Alistair and I were left alone, though. I stared at my shoes and did my best to pretend he wasn’t even in the room, but it’s hard to ignore a man when he starts talking to you.
“James is lucky to have a girlfriend like you.”
I held my breath for a count of five. At least he wasn’t calling me a sheila again. I might’ve had to claw his eyes out if he did. “Thank you, Alistair. You know this was supposed to be a getaway weekend for me and him.”
“I figured. Funny how life throws things in your path, don’t you think?”
Things like a man called Alistair Grotton, I thought to myself. What was this man all about? “So, um, tell me. Why are you so keen on helping two complete strangers on something that could be so dangerous?”
“Simple enough,” he said. “You two are the only ones who seem interested in finding out what happened.”
I suppose that made sense. “Where are you from, exactly?”
He chuckled. “Exactly is a relative term in my case. I was born here in Port Arthur, but I was raised in Darwin, up North. For a time, I was a member of the Royal Australian Navy and lived, oh, everywhere really. My schooling came from Queen Mary University in London. It was my mother’s family that hailed from Port Arthur. That’s why I come back here so much. I’m trying to stay connected to my roots.”
Wow. That certainly put him in a different light, didn’t it? He served in the military. He cared about family and where he came from. That didn’t fit in with the image I’d made for him to be sure.
Guess I’d have to change my opinion. When I was ready. Which was not going to be right now.
“Did you find anything at all today?” I asked him, trying to be civil but still detached. “Anything at all? Other than Hudson Snow’s name?”
He drank from his beer. “We did not. Perhaps if the man had been at his motel we could have been able to ask him some questions. As it is, we may have to wait for the police to do their job.”
“You think Hudson’s the kidnapper, too.” I wasn’t really asking a question. It was clear what he and James thought.
He nodded. “I do. I’ve no doubts in my mind.”
“What about Stevie?”
“That’s a bit of a mystery, isn’t it?” He scratched in the curls behind his left ear. “She’s up to something. I suppose we’ll haveta add her to our list of people we need to talk to.”
“I was thinking. What about the kids Rory Hunter came to the prison tour with? The two university kids.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Do you think the police talked to them?”
“I do. The Federal Police are quite good at what they do.” After a moment he gave me a very slow shrug. “I suppose they should go on our list of suspects too. I can use my contacts to track them down easily enough. I believe together, we’ll find who did this.”
I actually managed a laugh. “Is there anyone in town who isn’t a suspect?”
“Certainly,” he said, with a smile that actually lightened the deep brown of his eyes. “You and James and me. Right?”
As if he’d heard his name James came out of the bathroom and tossed his mobile aside on the bed next to me. “All right. I updated the paper. All set there. What’s our next move, d’ya think?”
“Stevie,” I said.
James didn’t quite roll his eyes this time. “Let’s run down the kidnapping first. We can puzzle through whatever the girl next door wants with me after.”
“I still think she is the kidnapper,” I tell him. “Or at the very least, she’s involved in it somehow.”
We were beginning to argue in circles—again—and I hated it, but I didn’t see any way to work past it. James wanted to wait and take another go at Hudson Snow. Alistair wanted to let the Federal Police do their job. I wanted to act, right now, and do… something. Anything. There was a girl’s life at stake.
Not to mention the ghost of another girl who was depending on me.
Should I tell them about that? Should I say, James there was another kidnapping before Rory Hunter and there must be a pattern? I thought that through, and decided against it. That information came from a ghost, after all. A scream in the Lady’s Room and then a ghastly image in the car park of that restaurant. I couldn’t explain any of that.
James stared at me, and I stared at him, and an image flashed in my mind of those two Zax characters from Doctor Seuss, neither one of them willing to move one way or the other.
“Excuse me,” we heard Alistair say, patiently waiting until we both turned our attention to him. “If it’s all right, I think I may have another suggestion.”
I’d just about forgotten Alistair was still here. I didn’t want his suggestions. I didn’t want anyone’s suggestions. I wanted them to understand I was right here and Stevie was right next door—probably—and we needed to talk to her sooner rather than later. That’s what I needed.
I was silent for so long that Alistair must have taken it as me wanting him to continue. “What I propose,” he said, “is that instead of trying to find the kidnapper, we try to find the poor girl who was taken.”
That caught me up short. The way he said it made it sound so… simple. “So, just traipse off on walkabout and stumble over her?”
Alistair chuckled as he shook his head. “Hardly. You’ve a very dry sense of humor, don’t you, Adelle?”
It was James who answered. “Yeah she does. Takes a bit of getting used to.”
I glowered at him, but I doubt he even saw it.
“What I meant,” Alistair explained, “was to find where the bad guy is hiding the victim.”
“Or bad girl, you mean.” I crossed my arms, my beer bottle dangling from one hand. “And I already had a squizz through Stevie’s cabin. There’s nobody else there.”
He cocked one eyebrow in a truly arrogant way. “Perhaps there was no one there to find because the real victim is being held by Hudson Snow?”
“Or,” James chimed in, “she’s already dead in Snow’s motel room.”
“Her name is Rory Hunter,” I said between clenched teeth. “And she’s still alive. I’m… sure of it.”
Alistair raised a hand to say he didn’t mean any offense. “Too right. We have to assume that the…er, that Rory Hunter is still alive. All James and I meant was that it’s more likely now than ever that Hudson Snow has her.”
I didn’t agree, but I really didn’t want to keep having the same useless argument either. “Fine. Then maybe you and James can just explain to me where we’re supposed to find a kidnap victim if we can’t prove who her kidnapper is?”
“Well it isn’t James’ idea, really.” Alistair shifted on the bed opposite us, looking momentarily uncomfortable. “This one’s all mine. Port Arthur’s built on the seashore, as you know. The ocean does some funny things to the rocks along the water. Ever hear of the Remarkable Cave?”
“Of course,” James said, nodding his head. “Tourist attraction south of the prison site. Big long cave cut through the rock by the wate
r.”
“Exactly,” Alistair agreed. “Just one long tunnel, really. Real exciting, if you’ve never seen it before. That’s just the cave all the out-of-towners know about. There’s others not far from here. They’re very well hidden. Lots of passages. Lots of dead ends. The kids who grow up here hang out in them all the time.”
Caves? I tried to picture that. “You think the kidnapper stashed Rory Hunter there?”
“Yes. I’ve been in those caves lots of times. They’re closed to tourists because they’re, well, a bit dodgy. Easy to get lost in there. Easy to hide, too. Had a friend who ran away from his parents and was in those caves for a week before he found his way out again.”
“Well,” I said, as much to myself as to Alistair. I had to admit, what he was saying made sense. It sounded like the perfect place to hide someone who had been kidnapped. “Let’s go find out.”
“Excellent!” he said, relieved to hear me say yes. “I’ll show you where the caves are. Er, you’ve got torches, right?”
James laughed. “Can’t say that we do. We’re here for holidays, not some sorta secret ninja heist.”
“And you think,” I asked him, “that my humor is dry?”
He smiled at me, with that special smile that he saved for just me, and it made me remember why I loved him. When he reached over to take my hand, I didn’t stop him. I was still so incredibly mad at him, but it wasn’t just anger I was feeling. My emotions had reached that same rapid boil as before and all I knew for sure was that I needed James in my life to be my rock. I needed him to love me as desperately as I loved him.
How did I get back to where that was the story of us?
Maybe, I told myself, I could start by trusting his instincts and following him to these caves.
“Tell you what,” Alistair said, slapping his hands against his knees and getting up from the bed. “I’ll go back to my place and get us some supplies. Torches and some other gear. Snacks, I think. The first aid kit from my bathroom, too, in case we find Rory Hunter and she needs medical help. Then I’ll meet you back here to pick you up. Sound good?”