Barefoot in the Dark

by Suzanne Enoch

  “Because it keeps me away from civilization?”

  “Because it’s peaceful and a little slower, and because I do want to catalog what’s in the attic and move some of the pieces to the Rawley Park museum.” He leaned sideways and kissed her. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  It would be weird, but she couldn’t deny that a quieter and slower pace once in a while would probably be good for her. She knew it had to be good for him to relax a little more, as much as he liked making deals, scouting businesses, and being an all-around high-powered bad ass.

  Feeling began returning to her legs, and she straightened. “Are you off to go digging through the ruins for missing treasure maps, as well?” Rick asked, shifting his grip to her hand. “I notice Reg didn’t waste any time heading that way.”

  “Nah. I think I’ll head back to the attic.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Are you giving up, then?”

  Samantha shrugged. “Reggie can do it his way. I’ve got a couple of other ideas.” For some reason Reggie had fixated on the map as being the only way to track down Will Dawkin’s treasure, probably because in the long run he thought it would be easier to follow someone else’s path than make his own. She happened to disagree with the single-minded approach, but she wasn’t about to distract Rick’s cousin from his search.

  Yule met them at the front door. “Miss Sam, a set of boxes arrived for ye by special delivery. I put ‘em in the morning room. “M’laird, ye’ve something waiting for ye in the morning room, as well.”

  “Ooh, my ghost hunting gear.” Her need for it had shifted a little, but an infrared camera could come in really handy if she went looking for likely hollows or caves in any of those ravines she’d spotted.

  “Are we going ghost hunting?” Norway asked from the landing above them. “How exciting!”

  Oh, yay. Any distraction in a storm, though, Samantha supposed. “Well, I figured if there are ghosts anywhere, it would be in a half-collapsed seven-hundred-year-old house. Let me look through the stuff, and maybe we can set something up for tonight. We’ll do a group hunt.”

  Rick sent her a glance that might have been gratitude, then walked into the morning room. Resisting the urge to rub her bottom or do the John Wayne sidle, Samantha followed him to collect her gear.

  As she reached the doorway, Rick reappeared. “I had nothing to do with this,” he stated, putting his hands on her shoulders and walking her backward. “I swear it. I had no idea.”

  “What the frack?” she returned, dodging around him. “You’re starting to scare me, du—”

  She clamped her mouth shut over the rest of the sentence. Halfway back in the room, wearing cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat, stood a six-foot tall dad bod of a Texan. He frowned as he caught sight of her. “You haven’t run off to the big city yet?” he drawled.

  “Tom fuckin’ Donner,” she retorted. “Your lips get chapped from not kissing Rick’s butt every day?”

  “Children,” Rick broke in, moving past her. “What are you doing here, Tom?”

  Donner jabbed his finger toward a briefcase on the couch. “Kigomo won’t give up his majority shares in Himori Gaming.”

  Rick frowned. “That was the entire reason I agreed to his price.”

  “Yep. So no phone, no internet, and forty-eight hours until the deal goes through unless we challenge it. Hence, me here in the Highlands of Scotland.”

  “Bloody… Okay. Let’s go up to my office.” Leaning sideways, Rick kissed Samantha on the temple. “I’m sorry. This can’t wait.”

  Okay, she got that. Millions of dollars and Rick’s control of a very cutting-edge gaming company at stake, plus a looming deadline. That didn’t mean she had to like having the Boy Scout lawyer around. Blowing a raspberry, she hefted the first of three boxes sitting in the corner and hauled it upstairs. Two footmen arrived at her bedchamber a minute later with the other two.

  From the weight and quantity of boxes, Stoney had included an entire ghostbuster, some assembly required. She hoped it was Venkman. Slicing open the first one, she wasn’t surprised to see he’d even sent batteries and plug adaptors to go with the cameras, tripods, and digital recorders.

  She’d always half believed in luck and good and bad fortune, and after she’d found that bad luck diamond in Rick’s stable she considered at least part of the whole paranormal thing proven. The power going out, things falling over for no good reason, the odd sounds and cold spots – it could be age and mice and damp, or it could be something more. Like she’d said, the house was seven hundred years old and settled in the middle of the turbulent Scottish Highlands.

  Plus, the hunt might keep people occupied while she did a little more digging. All she needed was somebody to help coordinate the fun so she’d have a little wiggle room for sneaking.

  Maybe Donner being here had a bright side, after all. It meant Rick had broken the no sidekicks rule. Samantha sat back. Hopefully Stoney still had a warm coat.

  “How the hell did this happen?” Richard slammed the thin stack of papers onto his desk.

  “You may think you slipped away from Palm Beach unnoticed,” Tom returned, holding his phone over his head and pacing every corner of the room, “but even though the tabloids don’t know where you are, they haven’t stopped talking about you. ‘It’s been five days since billionaire Rick Addison and his fiancée vanished. Did they elope?’ Goes on every night.”

  “And?” Richard prompted. For God’s sake, there had to be more important things going on in the world.

  “I think Kigomo saw all the coverage and figured he’d slip in a clause or two just before the sale deadline. You could cancel your purchase, but only if you file in the next…” He checked the time on his phone, “forty-three hours. Or it goes through as is.”

  “There’s internet down in the village. Let’s see what we can get done here, and then drive down to the pub to send some emails and make some damned calls.”

  “Doing big business in the pub. Not even the good old days were like this.”

  Richard drew a breath. This was all supremely aggravating, but it could have been much worse. “These are the good old days. Neither of us is old enough to spend our time looking backward yet.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have a kid in college. I’m nearly forty, for crying out loud.” Finally, Tom gave up on finding a square foot of cellular service and dropped into a chair. “What was in Jellicoe’s boxes? Her wilderness survival supplies?”

  “Ghost hunting gear.”

  Tom snorted. “What? Oh, this is better than I even imagined.”

  “No, it’s worse. It’s a distraction. She and my cousin are both after a treasure I told them doesn’t exist, and she’s trying to slow Reg down. Her with spy equipment gives me the shakes on a good day, whatever she claims it’s for.”

  “Well, I need more information now.”

  “Nope. If I’m not saying anything to Samantha, you can be damned certain I’m not talking to you about it.” With a growl he flipped open the folder in front of him and pulled his seat forward. “Let’s take care of this, shall we?”

  Wincing, Samantha shed her jeans to rub some aloe lotion on the insides of her thighs. She did enough lifts and squats that her leg muscles were only a little tired, but man did that sitting in the saddle thing chafe. Maybe that was why Norway preferred to ride side saddle. Samantha might have listened to an explanation about that, for crying out loud.

  Giant band-aids were out of the question, so she settled for a loose pair of sweats. Across the room someone thudded into the closed door, then knocked. “Samantha?”

  “Just a sec.” Flapping the insides of the legs to encourage the lotion to dry, she waddled over and unlocked the door.

  Rick looked her up and down. “Did I miss the good part?”

  “Now I know why John Wayne walked the way he did.”

  He brushed a finger down her cheek. “I’ve heard that wearing Spanx beneath your jeans helps with chafing.”
/>   “I could have used that bit of information a few hours ago, bucko.”

  “Sorry. Tom and I are going down to The Bonny Lass to borrow their wi-fi. I will send him back to Florida as soon as I can.”

  “I know.” She smiled, going up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I get it. I was there for the two months you guys worked on the Himori deal.”

  “Thank you for understanding.”

  Yeah, he might want to hold off on thanking her. “I’ll give you a million dollars if you bring me back some Spanx from that dress shop in the village. If they carry Vera Wang, I’m pretty damn sure they have shit to hold in your flab.”

  “Done.” He kissed her back. “We’ll be away a few hours. You and your chafed thighs stay out of trouble.” He started away, then turned around again. “I put my uncle in charge of the front drive excavation, so he’s dealt with. My aunt’s in the library, and you know where Reg and Norway are.”

  She liked that he’d taken up her nickname for the gloriously Scandinavian Eerika Nyland. “Roger that. I’m going through my spook gear before I do more rummaging in the attic.”

  Once he headed back downstairs she shut the door again. A couple of hours could be really useful. Damn her chafed thighs. Scowling, she hefted the infrared camera. That gorge she’d spied was a good mile away. She could run it, but the ouch factor made her hesitate.

  She was accustomed to weighing the whole risk versus reward thing. Here she knew the risk, but the reward was iffy at best. Rick claimed it didn’t exist. She wouldn’t even have known about it if Reggie hadn’t started bitching.

  The Spanx thing did give her an idea, at least. Shedding the sweats, she pulled out the skin-hugging pair of jogging shorts she’d brought along. It took a couple of curse words to get them on, and once she’d managed it she tried a few steps. They rubbed a little, but not nearly as much as the sweats had. She pulled the baggy black sweats on over the shorts because Scotland, then grabbed the infrared camera and went up into the attic.

  Before she snagged her handmade maps she carefully opened the door that overlooked a big part of the west wing. Reggie should have realized that Rick wouldn’t permit him to search there if that was where the map was, but hey, not everyone could be a criminal mastermind.

  She could hear Reggie below, arguing with Norway about something, though their voices were low enough that she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. But they weren’t happy, so they definitely hadn’t found anything. Good. Because while she was honestly trying to like them, or at least Reggie, the more she heard and saw the less enthusiastic she was about this part of the Rick familia. And coming from her background, she was pretty lenient.

  Quietly she shut the door again. Her maps lay across an eighteenth-century gaming table, to which she’d pulled up a Regency-era spindle-backed dining chair. All she needed was a Tiffany lamp or two, and this could be her cozy little office. It had a lot more character than Rick’s office space downstairs did.

  Working from memory she sketched in the road and pathways she hadn’t been able to see from the roof in the dark. Hillsides, a couple of streams, the steep-edged gorge Rick had avoided, thick clumps of trees, rocks, every topographical feature she could recall. Okay. It wasn’t perfect, and she didn’t have all the tales of Will Dawkin, or his supposed treasure map, to go by, but she did know a lot about the politics of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland. She also damned well knew how thieves thought. Even oldie moldy ones.

  Working through the Beautiful Villages book she made a note of which places Will Dawkin had reportedly been seen, or had a drink, or held up a coach, plus who his more famous victims were – or at least the ones the book’s author had found interesting enough to mention. When she plotted them out, they centered around Orrisey. He must have been a local, but he’d struck there as often as anywhere else. A local without loyalty, then.

  Finally, she stretched and sat back. With some more detailed info about Will Dawkin she would definitely have been able to narrow things down a little more, but unless she could turn up the books Rick had hidden from her, she would have to make do. Going through the history of the area and a couple of limited tourist maps in the village book, she had discovered one thing, anyway: That gorge Rick had skirted, even if it had roused her interest at the time, was a red herring. Several robbers and one other highwayman had been caught there, because it was only accessible from one end. A local highwayman, and one clever enough to vanish into thin air, would not venture in there. Not even to hide something. A good thief always had at least two ways to exit any given location.

  Samantha leaned forward again, looking at the half dozen spots she’d circled as being possible locations for hidden treasure. Each one left a fairly large area to search, but once she saw them in person she’d be able to narrow things down. The—

  Something metallic clanked against wood in the near corner of the attic. She picked up the flashlight she’d set beside the camp lantern and flicked it on. Nothing moved. It could have been a mouse or a rat, of course, or the house shifting thanks to the earth being bulldozed out from under it. Or…

  Standing, she picked her way over to the corner. Whatever it was had hit the floor and had sounded small. In a tiny clear space, she spied it – a hammered copper bracelet. She had no idea where it had come from, but she retrieved a walking cane and hooked it, lifting it until she could get a hand on it.

  It was pretty, but not particularly old, and it really needed a good cleaning. Sighing, she checked her phone for the time, the only thing the magnificent specimen of technology was good for right now. Nearly four o’clock. She put away her maps, pocketed the bracelet, and headed downstairs. The next trick would be finding the time and space to go outside and do some close-up investigating. She supposed she could just tell Rick what she was doing, but that was so against the thief code that just the thought almost made her break out in a rash. Plus, there was no way she was going to let Reggie know anything.

  “There you are,” Rick said, from the bottom of the attic stairs. “I don’t suppose you’ve uncovered a Rembrandt or a da Vinci.”

  “Not yet. Just this. It bounced to the floor on its own.” She pulled the bracelet from her pocket and held it out. “Something an ancestor wanted you to find?”

  He snorted. “More likely something my ancestors were trying to vomit out of the house. It’s Patricia’s. Or it was.”

  As soon as Rick mentioned his ex-wife, Samantha grimaced. According to him, he and Patricia had been young and stupid and good in theory, and he’d figured her ease in high society would only help him in his business dealings. That didn’t change the fact Rick had married someone else, had asked for someone else to share his life before he’d asked her. Then again, everything had ended badly and Patricia was a complete wreck these days, so points to Rick for having the guts to try it again. And she was not Patricia. For one damn thing, she would never cheat on him. Ever. Even when she wanted to knock him around until he told her what he knew about some local legend of treasure.

  “What do you want to do with the bracelet?” she asked, shaking herself out of those useless cobwebs.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Cool.” Taking a step backward, she opened the attic door and tossed the bracelet inside. “It’s a regular found and lost up there.”

  “Mm hm. How’s your…bottom?”

  “It’s not my bottom. It’s my thighs and girl parts. I put on my jogging shorts, so it’s a little better.”

  “Good. I bought you three pair of Spanx. The salesgirl nearly fainted when I walked into the shop.”

  “Thanks. Speaking of pains in my ass, though, where’s Donner?”

  “Unpacking. I’ll need him for at least another day, I’m afraid.”

  “Which room?”

  “The one with the blue wallpaper. Why?”

  “Because I’ve determined that the blue room is the most haunted location in the entire house. We’ll be starting our investigation there toni
ght.”

  He threw his arm around her shoulders and tugged her against his side. “Don’t be too hard on him, please. By showing up when he did, he’s likely saved me a couple million dollars and a lot of embarrassment.”

  She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Okay. I won’t tell him his room is haunted until tomorrow.”

  Plus, by this time tomorrow she might be asking Rick for a little forgiveness. She could stand to build up some good karma points before then.

  13

  Saturday, 9:39 p.m.

  This was not what Richard had envisioned for his evening. On the upside, Samantha’s chief crony Walter Barstone had sent some walkie-talkies along with the so-called ghost hunting equipment, so at least they could now communicate inside the house without tromping up and down the stairs. On the downside, t—

  “Rick, tilt it up and just a smidge left, will you?” Samantha’s voice came over the walkie-talkie, interrupting his thoughts.

  Clenching his jaw, he tilted the night vision camera standing in the corner of the portrait gallery in the direction she’d requested. He hadn’t said a word about the noises he’d heard there in the dark, but the fact that she’d assigned him this precise space out of all the rooms in the house did not sit well with him. At all.

  “Perfect,” her voice acknowledged tinnily. “Come on back to Spook Central.”

  He lifted the walkie-talkie. “We are not calling the formal dining room, ‘Spook Central’.”

  “Fine. HQ, then. Reggie, your camera’s fine. Yule, can you pick up the library tripod and move the whole thing about a foot backward?”

  “Aye, Miss Sam.”

  A pause. “Nice. Now I can see all the bookcases and the doorway. Okay, gang, head back here and turn out the lights as you leave each room.”

  “Why would spirits care if the lights are out?” Richard asked, sending a last look back at the long, empty hallway before he turned the old-fashioned switch and backed out of the room as it dove into darkness.