Cape Refuge

by Terri Blackstock

  “The window,” Sadie said. Her voice was weak. Her body felt as if she had strapped weights to her limbs.

  “It’s locked,” Nancy assured her. “Now you just rest here. I’ll get the police.”

  Sadie lay down and pulled her knees to her chest, pressing the towel to her face. She was still wet and so cold but too tired to pull the blanket over her. . . . She thought of little Caleb, screaming out his pain and anguish with no one there to help him. Where was he? What had Jack done with Caleb?

  The rain’s patter against the panes of glass soothed her, lulling her mercifully into sleep. She felt as though she had fallen into a deep pool, her limbs moving slowly around her. She floated that way as her fear lifted and her body warmed. . . .

  The door to the room opened so hard that it banged against the wall, shocking her out of that warm pool. She sat up, her body still heavy, her eyes trying to focus.

  Jack stood in the doorway. “I told you you can’t hide from me.”

  She opened her mouth to scream, but he slapped his hand across it. She tried to fight as he lifted her, but she was so tired. Nancy would stop him, she thought, the police would come. . . . But no one was there as he carried her through the house.

  He got her out into the closed garage, and she saw that his car was sitting there, sheltered from the view of neighbors. He threw her in and got in behind her, forcing her down to the floorboard. She tried to get up, but the debilitating fatigue kept her down. Somehow, he had gotten the remote that opened the garage, and the door slid open.

  He pulled out of the garage, and Sadie wondered where Nancy and the judge were and why they weren’t helping . . . how Jack had gotten into their garage and their house . . . whether they were all right . . .

  Something hard whacked across her skull . . .

  . . . and everything went black.

  C H A P T E R

  78

  Nancy was waiting when Cade and Caldwell arrived. Randy rushed home as well, with his baseball cap on backwards and a Dr Pepper in his hand.

  “Where is she?” Cade asked as Nancy let them in.

  “Asleep in the back. She was hysterical, so I gave her some codeine to calm her and help with the pain.” She started leading them up the hall.

  “She all right?”

  “She’s got a cut on her cheek. Bruised and limping. And he may have rebroken her arm.” She got to the guest room and knocked lightly.

  “Sadie,” she said as she opened the door.

  The room was empty.

  “She’s not here,” Cade said. He met Nancy’s eyes.

  Nancy rushed out and went up the hall. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”

  Cade followed her but Sadie wasn’t there. “Cade, she was right here. I cleaned her cut myself. She was panicked and dripping wet.”

  Randy stood at the end of the hall, looking irritated, as if they were making him late for soccer practice.

  There was a scuff mark on the wall, like a foot might have kicked it. “Randy, was this here before?”

  He gave it a cursory glance. “Before what?”

  “Before Sadie got here.”

  He studied the scuff mark, shrugged. “I couldn’t really say.”

  Cade knew better than that. He had been in this house before for some of the parties that Nancy and Randy threw, and he knew that it was always immaculate and perfectly decorated. Nancy was known for being obsessive about her home, even though her office was cluttered beyond reason. Once he had been at a Christmas party here when a candle had caught a wall hanging on fire. Nancy had put it out and repainted the wall while the party went on around her.

  “She probably just took off again,” Randy said. “Who can understand a teenager?”

  “Have you both been here the whole time?” Cade asked.

  “No,” Randy said. “I was at the office late. She was already here when I got home.”

  “Did you leave the house at any time?”

  “We were sitting on the covered patio, watching the rain,” Nancy said.

  Cade gaped at him. “While you were supposed to be guarding Sadie? Why would you leave her alone when she told you someone was trying to kill her?”

  “Well, we didn’t think he knew where she was,” Nancy said. “We thought—”

  Cade threw the door open and headed outside. “I’m going to talk to the neighbors.”

  It didn’t take him long to find a witness who had seen Jack’s car pull into the judge’s garage. It didn’t make sense, he thought. The judge had the best security system money could buy. Why hadn’t it kept Jack from getting to Sadie, and why hadn’t Nancy and Randy heard her fighting?

  And how had Jack figured out where Sadie was? Here he was, new to the island, not knowing anybody, and yet he was able to find the house where Sadie just happened to be hiding?

  When he got back to the squad car, he called in an all-points bulletin for Jack and Sadie. When he got back to the station, he called Blair to warn her that Sadie was missing and the man was still at large. He told her about the scuff on the wall and the judge’s nonchalance.

  “This guy Jack’s dangerous,” he said. “He’s about six feet tall, has long red hair, a goatee . . .”

  “Cade!” she cut in. “I saw him yesterday. I was walking around the island, and he was sitting in the judge’s backyard, talking to him and Nancy!”

  Cade just stared at a spot on his desk as the words sank in. “If Randy Simmons has been in contact with Jack. . . .” His voice trailed off as he tried to process the thoughts whirling through his mind.

  “Why?” she asked. “How would he know about Jack, and what would he have to gain?”

  Cade closed his eyes. “I told him about Jack, when I asked him to do the paperwork for Sadie. I also told him that Sadie was one of the reasons you wouldn’t let go of Hanover House.”

  His heart ticked off milliseconds as Blair sat silent. “Cade, you don’t think he’s the one who—?”

  “I’ll call you back, Blair,” he said, and cut her off.

  His mind reeled with the disconnected facts, the fragmented hunches, the threads that ran through every part of these crimes. He needed more to go on, something substantial, before he could pick up the judge. And if he was involved, what about Nancy?

  What would have motivated them?

  He bolted out of his office. McCormick was on the phone, a look of disbelief on his face. At the sight of Cade, he put his hand over the phone. “You’ll never believe what just washed up on the shore over by the South Beach Pier.”

  Cade braced himself. “Tell me.”

  “Rick Dugan,” he said.

  C H A P T E R

  79

  Morgan mothered Sadie’s room, smearing her tears with trembling hands. “When’s it going to end?” she muttered. “So much violence.”

  Jonathan tried to calm her with a hug, but she slipped away and straightened the comforter on the girl’s bed. “She’ll be okay, honey. They’ll find her.”

  “Like they found Rick?” Her voice choked off, and she went to the mirror, where Sadie had a picture of Caleb wedged in the wood frame. What would become of the baby?

  Blair stood dry-eyed in the doorway. Morgan could tell her wheels were turning, working through scenarios, solving the crime. “I know the judge is involved,” she said.

  Morgan took Sadie’s pillow off the bed and pulled the loose sham over it. Her gaze drifted out the window, and she searched the street, silently praying that it wasn’t too late. . . .

  “That article came out in the paper,” Blair went on, “full of lies, yet Nancy wouldn’t print a retraction, then Rick disappeared, making him look doubly guilty, only to show up dead. Meanwhile, Jack shows up out of nowhere after Cade told Randy about him, and he comes straight to where Sadie’s staying, finds her where she’s hiding—”

  Morgan turned from the window. “Why haven’t they found her yet? It’s a tiny island. How hard could it be?”

  Jonathan put his hands on
her shoulders. “Maybe they’re not on the island,” he said. “Maybe they got out before anyone knew to start looking.”

  Blair slid her fingers through the roots of her hair. “And that delay is, once again, traced back to our judge.”

  “Then what’re they waiting for? Why don’t they arrest him and force him to tell them where she is?”

  “Cade’s working on it. I’m sure he’ll get him soon. But he’s also trying to catch up with Jack and Sadie and figure out what happened to Rick.” Blair walked to the window, and she too looked out. It was still raining. Dark clouds hovered over the water.

  She imagined Sadie, soaked and beaten up, terrorized by the man she feared the most. She wished she believed in prayer. Instead, she believed in the gun she had in her pocket.

  “I need to go home,” she said. “I need to use the computer at the library. I was getting to the bottom of this dummy corporation thing, all these businesses that owned East Coast Properties, Incorporated. Maybe with a little more searching, I can find out who owns what.”

  “What difference does it make now?” Morgan asked her. “I don’t really care who owns East Coast Properties.”

  “But it could tie in,” Blair said. “I have a hunch.”

  “You can’t go alone,” Jonathan said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Then come with me,” she said. “Please. It’s something I really need to do. Maybe it’ll shed some light on all of this.”

  “All right,” Morgan said. “But we have to tell Cade where we’re going in case he finds Sadie.”

  Within half an hour after getting to the library, Blair had found what she was looking for—the owners of each of the dummy corporations.

  “Just what I thought,” she said. “Randall and Nancy Simmons . . . and look—Fred Hutchins.”

  “The mayor?” Jonathan asked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “So this is why he was so gung ho about closing us down. Between him and Nancy, they got the whole city council inflamed against us.”

  “Boy, this smells bad,” Blair said. “The mayor convincing the City Council to close us down, the judge casting doubt on Gus and Jonathan by keeping them locked up. Rick Dugan dead after Nancy publishes a bunch of lies about him, Sadie kidnapped from their very house—”

  “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Morgan said through tight lips. “To think that Mama and Pop might have been—murdered over money.”

  “I bet they knew about all these dummy corporations,” Blair whispered. She turned around in her chair. “Morgan, remember that day—how confident they were about the City Council meeting? When I talked to Pop that afternoon, he told me not to worry, that there had been some new developments. Maybe they’d discovered who was behind East Coast Properties and that the city’s threat to close them down was only to force them into selling, so the mayor and the judge could get their hands on the property and turn it into some kind of tourist trap. Maybe the judge knew it and wanted to shut them up.”

  “But what about Jack? Where does he fit into the whole thing?”

  “Maybe he’s just a pawn.”

  Jonathan grabbed his keys. “Come on. We’re going to find Cade and tell him what we know.”

  C H A P T E R

  80

  They found Cade at the South Beach Pier, where Rick’s body had washed up. The rain hammered down as they approached the yellow crime scene tape and asked for Bruce, the police sergeant, to get the chief. Rick’s body wasn’t visible from where they stood, for a crowd of police blocked the view. If it had been, Blair would have had to turn away. She couldn’t bear the sight of another dead body.

  Cade’s eyes were alive with fire and fury as he crossed the sand toward them.

  “What happened to him?” Blair asked.

  “He was murdered,” Cade whispered. “Neck was broken. He was probably dead before he hit the water.”

  “Cade, we need to talk,” Blair whispered. “I just finished tracing the companies that own East Coast Properties. You’ll never guess who’s on the list of owners.”

  “Who?”

  “Judge Randy Simmons, his wife, Nancy—and the dear mayor of our town.”

  “My uncle?” Cade asked. He took a step back, turned around to the crowd of cops working the scene, then settled his eyes back on Blair. “It’s not possible,” he whispered. “My uncle’s not a killer.”

  “They were trying to force the sale through,” Blair said. “He was in on it, Cade. I think our parents knew. I think they’d found out and were going to expose them. That’s why they wound up dead.”

  “Blair, it’s one thing to carry out a shady business deal, but to kill over it . . . ?”

  “Think about it. If it came out that Randy and Nancy Simmons and Fred Hutchins were part owners in the company, people all over the island would put two and two together. They own dozens of places around town, and a lot of them were sold when the owners were at the end of their ropes financially, sometimes due to hassles from the city council. East Coast Properties happens to extend an offer at the right time, and people are so fed up they sell. The judge would lose his bench and be disbarred, no one would ever trust Nancy’s paper again, and the mayor would be forced to resign. Not to mention the fact that they’d probably be in trouble with the IRS once all their holdings were exposed.”

  Cade looked back to the place where Rick’s body lay. “So the article about Rick and his subsequent death . . . were just to make Hanover House look even more dangerous. . . .” He closed his eyes. “And I told Randy about Sadie hiding from Jack. I even mentioned that she was one of the reasons you probably wouldn’t let go of Hanover House.”

  “He called him,” Morgan said, her face twisting at the danger they had brought upon Sadie. “Randy helped Jack get to her. So help me, if anything happens to her—”

  “Can’t you just go and arrest Randy?” Jonathan asked. “Right now. Handcuff him and parade him out like you did me?”

  “The problem,” Cade said, “is he’s the one who issues the arrest warrants.”

  “But there must be somebody you can go to.”

  “There is,” Cade said. “The supervising judge in the county. I can get a warrant from him. But I have to be able to convince him, and right now all we’ve got is circumstantial evidence and hunches. It’s going to take some heavy persuading . . . and some time.”

  “We may not have time,” Morgan cried. “Cade, you’ve got to hurry before they kill again.”

  Cade swallowed and looked back toward the body. When he turned back to them, that fire in his eyes burned brighter. “Okay, you’ve got to keep this quiet,” he said. “If word gets out, it could all slip through our fingers.”

  “Not a word from us,” Blair said. “Just please hurry. Randy may know where Jack went with Sadie. If you can get him to talk, it could save Sadie’s life.”

  C H A P T E R

  81

  As Blair, Morgan, and Jonathan drove back toward Hanover House, Blair scanned the woods through one car window and the water through the other. They drove past the Crab Shack tourist trap, carefully hidden in the woods on the north side of the island, where the boats made their way up and down the Bull River. They drove past Chutney Creek, where Toothless Joe started his dolphin tours. And they drove past the gate to their own boathouse.

  It was open and there were tire tracks in the mud. Blair caught her breath.

  “Jonathan, were you at the boathouse today?”

  “Not in this rain.”

  “Then why’s the gate open?”

  Jonathan met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “You don’t think . . .”

  “Turn the car around!” Morgan cried.

  He made a U-turn on the road, then pulled into the muddy driveway. The boathouse couldn’t be seen from the entrance. He stopped the car. “There are clear tracks going in, but it doesn’t look like they came back out.”

  Morgan’s face lost all color, and she grabbed her husband’s arm. “Jonathan, we’ve g
ot to get to a phone. We have to call Cade.”

  “How would Jack know about the boathouse?” Jonathan asked. “Sadie wouldn’t tell him.”

  Blair clutched the gun in her pocket and opened the car door. “Maybe Randy did, as a way to help him stay low until he could get out of town. I’m going down there to find out. Cade said he’s driving an old gray Malibu. If it’s his car, I’ll signal you, and you can go call the police.”

  “No, Blair!” Jonathan said. “If anybody’s going, I am. Get back in the car.”

  But Blair’s mind was made up. She jumped out of the car and took off into the trees before anyone could stop her.

  C H A P T E R

  82

  Blair’s feet slipped on the mud. She fell to her knees, got up, and steadied herself on a tree. She searched for footholds, rocks or tree roots or grass. . . . The storm roared overhead, dripping through the trees.

  She trudged on, stepping carefully, her feet sliding and sucking. She pushed through the brush, stepping over decayed logs and straining to see the boathouse through the trees. As the small structure came into view, she saw the Malibu parked in front.

  Just as she started to turn back and tell Jonathan and Morgan, a scream ripped through the air—

  Sadie!

  Something erupted inside her, hot and volcanic. Another murder was taking place, and she was close enough to stop it.

  She launched forward, tripping and skidding in the mud. She reached the door and threw it open. Jack stood over Sadie, who was crumpled in a heap at his feet.

  He swung around, training his rifle on Blair. She raised her .22.

  Sadie raised herself up behind him and flung her body at him as his gun went off. The bullet missed as Blair hit the floor. She kept the gun aimed at him, but she knew she couldn’t fire. Sadie was too close . . .

  Suddenly, Jack dove for Blair, knocking the breath out of her and grabbing her pistol.