“Yeah,” Heath agreed. The always practical Austin, being practical. As if he’d forget that Austin had jumped at the chance to bed Jemma as soon as he’d resigned. He glanced around the room one last time. They’d moved all the crates out this morning. “Did you catalog a steamer trunk from this room?” He tried to climb to his feet, the cold, stiff ice caking his pants making moving difficult.
“No. Just some wooden crates. Not many. Nothing big enough to hold a steamer trunk. But we haven’t opened any of them. Why?” Jemma answered from his other side. Her long, slender hands slipped under his elbow, while Austin tucked one hand under his other arm. They lifted, forcing him to stand. Frigid water dripped down his ass and legs, sending chills through his body. “Why?”
“No reason. I thought I saw one… when we were up here the other day. I couldn’t remember seeing it today.” Why was he lying? If anyone would believe him, it would be Austin. “Oh, fuck, my phone. I need that. I don’t have any contacts saved on my iPad. What if I need to get in touch with the main office?” He shook off their hands and stumbled to the wall to salvage what was left of his life.
“If the SIM card is fine, then you should be fine. We’ll run get a new phone as soon as we get you out of those clothes.”
Heath turned to Austin. The flush on his face would be adorable if he hadn’t just been half-undressed with someone else. “I can get myself out of my clothes, thank you for the offer, though.”
“Fuck. Heath!” Jemma sighed, following him to the wall to crouch beside him as he gathered up the shattered bits from his phone. “It’s… not like that… okay. We need to talk about what happened.”
“I know. It won’t happen again. I keep hearing that. But it keeps happening again. It doesn’t matter, Jemma. You’re both consenting adults, and we’re not… we’ve only just met. It’s not my business.” He didn’t look at her. He pulled out the part of his phone that had embedded in the wall, dragging pieces of wood with it. And newspaper. The wall shards stained an ugly shade of rust behind the wallpaper that flaked off in his hands.
“What the hell?” Austin spoke behind him. Curiosity in his voice. Heath pulled the last of his phone pieces out of the crumbling wall and tucked them into his jacket pocket. He was freezing and exhausted. He needed to go take a hot shower so he could be here when the crew came to clean the water and soot from this room before it leaked through the floor to the rooms below.
“What?” Jemma said from Austin’s side as he reached past Heath to poke at the wall.
“This wall. It’s hollow. It’s an outside wall. It should be solid.” Austin squatted beside Heath, his boots squeaking on the frosty floor.
“You’re right.” Jemma stood behind him, the lantern she’d carried up earlier swinging over Heath’s head. “Isn’t there a window on this side of the house? I swear there’s a window up here. Right out there. But there isn’t one on this wall at all.”
Austin pulled a piece of wallpaper revealing more of the rust-colored stained drywall. “Was there drywall back then?” Curiosity overcoming his anger, he reached out and pulled a hunk of the crumbling stuff off the wood slats that made up the wall. The rotten wood giving way easily.
“It’s a type of stucco. Looks like someone put up a temporary wall. Maybe to cover fire damage. That sometimes happens in old houses for whatever reason. May we?” Austin’s eyes glimmered with unbridled curiosity… and Heath would forgive him anything just to see him happy. “I mean it’s your house. And we’re going to tear a hole in a perfectly good wall.”
“One that should have been fixed when the rest of the house was restored. So… knock yourself out. It’s not as if this room will mind.” Somehow, he doubted that. He looked around the room again, looking for the rocking chair or the steamer trunk, or the cradle. “Was there a cradle in any of the furniture that made it back to the house?”
“There’s several. We placed them in the room that was marked as a nursery. We don’t know which child used them. But there were three Cortlandt children. So, we assumed each child had a special cradle,” Jemma answered. She reached past Austin to pull at the wall with her two good hands while Austin struggled to clear the wallpaper off a spot that wasn’t rotten.
“Okay… good to know.” Heath had no idea there was a nursery in the house. He’d never found it on any of his wanderings, and no one had shown it to him when they gave him unofficial tours. Maybe they figured he wouldn’t be interested.
“We’ll take you there. After lunch. After you’ve had a shower, and are dressed for the weather and the work. You need some coveralls or something if you’re going to continue rooting around in the damaged rooms,” Austin said, breathless now as a huge section of the wall crumbled in his hand. “What is that? I swear there’s something in there. Jemma, see if you can get the lantern in there.”
“Heath, here, you’re closer.” She handed off the small LED lantern and dragged another large piece of the wall away. Making a hole large enough to stick a lantern, and a head, inside.
“What do you think you will find inside a hollow wall? What’s got you both so excited? By the smell of it, a century of dead rats is all that’s in there.” But he worked the lantern into the gaping hole, anyway. The chills racing over his body explained away by the ice in his ass crack.
“Don’t know. Maybe she hid the family silver. Someone was squirreling it away, right? What happened to all the jewels? Could be a treasure. Probably dead rats. It’s usually dead rats.” Austin scrabbled at his side of the hole, making it bigger, big enough for Heath to get the lantern inside now.
“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” He smiled at his friend’s enthusiasm. Both of his friends.
“Hell, yeah, this is what I wanted to do when I went into anthropology in the first place. This and searching for pirate gold off the coast. That’s the whole point of all of this… to uncover the treasures of the past. Even if it’s only a stash of vintage porn. Still worth it.”
“I don’t think these people had vintage porn anywhere,” still pulling at the wall, Jemma answered. “Who wants to be the first to see what’s in there… family jewels, vintage porn, or rats?”
“Laying my bet on the jewels,” Austin called out. “Heath, it’s your house, do you want to do the honors?”
No. Absolutely not. Every fiber of his being screamed for him to run. Now. Close the wall back up and never come back to this room… or this house ever again. “You go ahead. If it will make you happy.”
“Jemma?” Austin glanced over to his partner in crime. They worked well together and had since the beginning, Heath realized. It was inevitable they’d end up together. They had more in common than anyone else in the house. Same interests. Same—
A wave of nausea hit him hard. Probably from the fumes coming from the wall. For a moment, the dark-haired beauty on his right became a pretty, strawberry blond with a slight sprinkling of freckles on her pert nose, her hair pulled back in a bow… innocence and happiness sparkling in her eyes as she looked at him, shyly. He’d taken her innocence. And her happiness. And destroyed her in the end. And to his left… the sweetest soul, he’d ever met, bright red hair, tousled around his head, usually from Heath’s hands, the freckles that covered his whole body… not just the parts that saw the sun… and those sweet trusting eyes.
“What? No. I am not sticking my head in there. I’ll never get that odor out of my hair. And I’m betting on the vintage porn. Victorian-era National Geographic’s or something like that. Lady’s split crotch, pantaloons… merkins… and corsets… lots of ankles... What? The Victorians were weird as fuck and you know it.”
“I didn’t say anything. I got stuck on merkins and ankles is all.” Heath wheezed, laughing as they bantered about… yeah, they were perfect for each other. Absolutely perfect. Why hadn’t he seen it earlier… before he’d… allowed himself to feel something?
“Okay… going in.” Austin added dragging Heath back to his senses. The dread that had ridden him just bef
ore the bickering back, in spades.
“Wait!” Jemma shouted, pulling the scarf from around her neck. “Here, wrap this around your head, cover your nose and mouth. You don’t want to be breathing in rat feces.”
“Thought you were going with porn?” Austin took the scarf and tied it, bandit style, around his head. And, dragging in a deep breath, he leaned over and pushed his head in the hole. And quickly yelped as he scrabbled backward, falling into Heath, taking him to the wet floor with him. “Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Fuck… Fuck. Jesus FUCK.”
“What?” Jemma grabbed the lantern and started to stick her head inside, but Heath pulled her back. If it was bad enough to scare Austin into freaking out, he knew… and Jemma shouldn’t see it. “What did you see?”
Don’t say it? Heath’s mind screamed. Freaking the hell out before he even knew… what he didn’t want to know. Don’t say it. Just don’t.
“There’s a body in there. A dead body. Like… A… Dead… Body... I’ve never found a body before. Unless you count rats. Or possums. Hard to tell a dead rat from a dead possum. Because of the tail… Oh god… what do we do?”
“Call the police,” Jemma said, calmly, coldly, reaching into her pocket for her phone. But before she called her face went a touch green, and she stuck her phone into the hole, the flash going off three or four times. She pulled up her camera roll, and the green, washed away to white as a sheet. “I think it’s… can’t be… but…”
“Tell me it’s not the missing stable boy? Just… anything but that.” Austin sat down on the ice-coated floor without noticing.
“No… it’s…”
“HC Cortlandt,” Heath said, closing his eyes to shut out the violence that threatened to overtake him. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Looks like.” Jemma held out the phone, but Heath wouldn’t look. He couldn’t look. He was afraid… he’d see his own face. Not that there would be a face. Just some bones and probably some clothing.
Austin took the phone and swiped through the pictures. “He’s… mummified. How did that happen? Still has the hair. But yeah, the suit, that’s how he dressed. The pipe is a nice touch. Like someone thought it would be funny to stick it in his mouth. Oh god… I’m going to have nightmares.”
Heath was on his feet and moving out of the room before Austin could get off on the fucking dead dude.
His nightmares… the ones that tore him from sleep every night since he’d been here, coming back to him with the sun shining brightly overhead.
“Call the police. I’m going to wash. Someone… just… handle it. I… can’t… not this time. Earn your paycheck and handle it.” And he left… his father’s dead eyes staring out of his face in surprise, or shock. As if he’d never expected Heath to… the blood, so much blood. But what he’d done to that little boy… the motherfucker deserved to die.
Heath didn’t make it to the stairs. Austin, calling his name, the last sound he heard before his worlds collided–the scent of pipe tobacco swirling in its nightmare embrace–and faded to black.
Chapter Forty-Two
Rory raced in the courtyard door while Austin paced in the workroom. “What the hell is going on? Why is there a coroner’s van outside? Please tell me everyone is okay?”
He grabbed Austin first, his eyes wild, as he scanned him from head to toe. Satisfied that Austin was standing there, trembling in his arms, he glanced around the room at the girls huddled together with coffee mugs and whispered conversation in the corner.
“We’re all fine,” Austin answered, wanting to wrap his arms around Rory and fall apart.
“Wait… where’s Heath?” The terror in Rory’s eyes kicked Austin in the gut. Until last night he’d been anti-Heath. Right up until Rory had followed him out into the storm. Austin had discovered them clutched together like they were going to kill each other… or kiss. The guilt on their faces screamed kiss.
Rory and Heath had kissed… he was sure of it. Jealousy burning in the pit of his stomach at the thought of—
“Right here?” Heath stomped into the room, his hair still wet from his shower, but there was color in his face now. And he was dressed for working in a house with no power, in the freezing cold. “Glad to know you were worried I’d kicked the bucket there, Rory. Or was that wishful thinking?”
“Wishful thinking,” Rory drawled out, his Irish definitely up as he let Austin go and stepped away. “Who died? Seriously?”
“We found old HC’s mummified corpse hidden in a wall in the attic,” Jemma answered the question, offering her cell phone to Rory. “I’m not sure if I’m excited or petrified. It was… awesome. Like something out of a movie.”
“Anyone ever tell you, you’re one weird chick?” Donna chimed in, sipping from her mug as she huddled with Britney for warmth.
“Suck my dick, Donna.” Jemma quipped, a touch of an accent in her voice that Austin had never heard before.
“Austin already did.” Donna shot back… and everyone in the room froze in place like shocked statues. Jemma’s shoulders slumped and… Austin felt the weight of Rory’s accusing gaze on him. What little color that had returned to Heath’s face faded away.
“Jealous bitch.” Jemma sneered at her… well, they weren’t exactly friends or co-workers. Not really. Just two women forced to work together during their winter break from school.
“Austin?” Rory asked softly, sounding like Austin had somehow betrayed him.
“Jesus… okay, yes, it happened. Jemma and I had sex. Are we all caught up… do you want details? I’m not her boss. And it was… consensual… all of you have hooked up… so… don’t look at me like… just fuck you all. All of you.” Austin stormed past the assembled crew. Past Rory with his pain-filled eyes. Past Jemma with her stoic, cut-a-bitch gaze. Past… Heath caught his arm before he could make his escape.
“Stay,” he said.
“I’m not a dog. And I’m… the resignation stands. I can’t be here. This place will be the death of me.”
“I know, Austin.” Heath dropped his arm and tucked his hands into the pockets of his heavy sweatpants. “Believe me, I understand. If you would like to wave the two weeks… I’ll understand. After today… and the fire… not sure if this will ever become much more than a money pit.”
Austin nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat that threatened to turn into tears. “It would be a shame if this place isn’t restored. Even if you do nothing with it. Don’t let it rot again. It’s a beautiful old house. It deserves to be saved.”
“That’s the plan.” Heath swallowed nervously, and Austin noticed he rocked on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to do or say something completely different. If they’d been in a private place… would this conversation be something else entirely?
He wanted to reach out and beg Heath to love him. Swear he was sorry, and that it wouldn’t happen again. The fact was… he wasn’t sure if he could blame the weird shit going on in the house for last night with Rory… or this morning with Jemma.
He’d wondered about Jemma since that day in the men’s room. He’d wondered what she’d be like. Maybe… what if it wasn’t the house? What if he was just… a slut?
“That’s good.” Austin closed his eyes and tried not to think about finding Heath on the second-floor landing, crumpled and twisted as if he’d fallen down the stairs. Or was pushed. He tried not to remember Jemma crying real tears, while the paramedics revived him and proclaimed that he hadn’t broken his neck. “There are subs and hot soups, well, the soups were hot, not sure now. You should eat something, so you don’t pass out again.” And he pushed past Heath to… go clear out his office of his personal effects.
Heath let him go without another word. He closed his eyes and Austin thought he saw him swipe at his face, but that could have been a trick of the light. Or the serious lack of sleep. Or food.
Austin stumbled into his office, his eyes stinging. It was over. Before it even got started. Because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, or his mouth off
other dicks.
The chair rolled as he sat behind his desk. He didn’t see a damn thing. There was work he needed to finish before he could go. He needed to organize his files so that his successor could find everything. The manifest from the last shipment lay on his desk, the boxes still cluttering the workroom. The weather and his injuries… were no excuse.
“Petrified?” Britney laughed, her voice breaking the silence in the house. “You said mummified and petrified in the same sentence. That was a good one, Jemma.” Her laughter like little bells tinkling in the cold air. He could picture her now, pointing at Jemma, with one perfectly manicured finger, her glossed lips turned up in a contagious grin, her eyes sparkling with humor. Because that was Britney. The best of the bunch. Always happy. Always seeing the bright side of any situation.
“You know what I don’t understand?” Donna said, her earlier antagonism subdued now that she’d done real damage. Whether or not she meant to, Donna always went for blood. “If the dude upstairs is HC Cortlandt, then who is buried in HC’s tomb?”
“Oh… yeah? Wow. That. I hadn’t thought of that.” Britney again. He could see her sitting down to think. Because that’s how she worked best. “Better question… if HC was supposedly killed down in Savannah, how’d they get him home with no one noticing whoever they were burying wasn’t HC?” She said, her voice muffled now like she was chewing and talking at the same time. Also, very Britney.
“What if HC never went to Savannah?” That was Heath, throwing some wild speculation out there, but Austin had a strong suspicion Heath knew something. Something he didn’t want to say aloud, for fear of making it real. After all, he and Jemma had found him, on his knees, in the frozen water, his focus miles… or years, away. “What if he never left that room upstairs? Why else would he be inside the wall? No one would bring a body back from as far away as Savannah and then stick them in a wall.”
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