River Road

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  At one point he picked up what looked like a fist-sized rock and examined it closely. She watched him drop it into the pack. He put his arms through the pack straps and made his way back up the hillside.

  “What is it?” she asked. But she had a horrible feeling that she knew what he had found.

  He removed the pack and took out the rock. There was a dark, long-dried stain on the stone. She stared at it, dread seeping through her.

  “Blood?” she whispered.

  “Maybe. I think so, yes.”

  “Dear heaven. You were right. The killer went down there to make sure.”

  They got back into the car.

  “It’s not proof of murder,” Mason warned. “There’s always a lot of blood at the scene of a bad crash.”

  “One or both of them was still alive.” She clenched her hands together in her lap. “The bastard used that rock to crush their skulls and finish the job. You think that’s what happened, don’t you?”

  He hesitated. “I think it’s a very likely possibility.”

  “But why wouldn’t the authorities have noticed the injuries?”

  “There’s always a lot of trauma at a crash site,” Mason said gently. “And no one had any reason to believe that it was a case of murder. You don’t find evidence unless you go looking for it.”

  Neither of them spoke for a while.

  27

  A few miles later they crested the last hill and started down toward the coast highway. The sweeping view of the dazzling Pacific Ocean exploded into sight. The mostly empty shoreline stretched for miles, raw and wild.

  They stopped in a tiny, weathered community that huddled on a small bay and found a restaurant on the wharf. They ate rich, creamy clam chowder served with generous portions of sourdough bread. They did not talk a lot, but Lucy did not find the silence uncomfortable. It was as if viewing the sight of the crash had cast a somber spell on both of them.

  When the check came, she automatically reached for it. Mason deftly swiped it off the little plate and handed it back to the waiter along with his credit card. Lucy waited until they were alone.

  “Thank you,” she said, somewhat stiffly. “But that wasn’t necessary. We’re here because of the investigation. I should be picking up expenses.”

  Amusement gleamed in his eyes. “Do you always do that when you’re on a date?”

  She hesitated. “We’re not on a real date. But to answer your question, yes, I always pay my own way.”

  He narrowed his eyes a little. “You do that to make certain that the guy knows that the balance of power is equal in the relationship.”

  She tensed. “Most men appreciate it.”

  “Probably because they don’t understand what’s really going on.”

  She raised her brows “Do you always psychoanalyze your dates?”

  “No.” He smiled. “Just the interesting ones.”

  She blushed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It was meant as one. Did you handle money that way with your fiancé?”

  “Absolutely. We split all expenses.”

  “Rent? Utilities?”

  She frowned. “We didn’t live together, so rent and utilities weren’t a problem. Paying my own way for everything else made things a lot simpler when we split up. There was no arguing over money.”

  “Sounds like you were planning to go into the marriage with one foot already out the door. Wait, I take that back. You didn’t even have a foot in the door, because you weren’t sharing living quarters.”

  “Let’s just say I was ready to adjust to changing circumstances.”

  Mason nodded once. “Right. You had one foot out the door.”

  She was starting to get annoyed. “You’re not in any position to talk. How long did your marriage last?”

  “About five minutes. I told you, I’m a lousy communicator.”

  “Is that the reason you didn’t have kids?”

  “No.” He smiled briefly, but there wasn’t much humor involved. “That particular kind of communication I understand. I just wasn’t good at the verbal kind.”

  Intuition told Lucy to hold her tongue.

  There was a beat of silence, and then Mason exhaled slowly.

  “Irene said she wanted to wait to have children until we were both making more money. She found someone else who was already on the fast track financially. That was before Fletcher Consulting became successful.”

  The waiter returned. Mason signed the slip, tucked his credit card back into his wallet and got to his feet. Lucy rose and collected her windbreaker. She hesitated.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. She was going for simple and gracious, but she knew that it didn’t come out that way.

  Mason looked amused. “Now who’s having trouble communicating?”

  Face burning, she headed for the door. “You know, this has actually been a very nice getaway in spite of the stop at Rainshadow Farm. Back in Summer River I feel like I’m always on guard, waiting for another Colfax to spring out of the bushes.”

  “Things have definitely been lively since you arrived in town,” Mason agreed. “We’ve got time. Let’s take a walk on the beach before we drive back.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Mason drove a short distance out of the small community and found a lay-by on the bluffs above a rocky beach. He parked the car, and they made their way down to the water, pebbles skittering beneath their shoes. The snapping breeze off the ocean whipped Lucy’s hair and sent a rush of pure, unadulterated delight through her. It was good to be here, alone on a beach, with Mason.

  She glanced at him, smiling to herself at the sight of his tousled hair. He looked delicious in his black windbreaker, jeans and sunglasses. She was no longer sixteen, but the hormones she thought had matured and perhaps gone a little stale in the past thirteen years were playing havoc with her senses and emotions.

  Stop staring, woman. You’ve got him all to yourself for a while. Do what Aunt Sara would tell you to do—be in the moment.

  That bit of enlightenment advice was all well and good, except that she wanted the moment to go on indefinitely. Not a realistic option.

  She refocused her attention on the rough beach and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her own windbreaker to restrain herself from doing something rash like, say, grab Mason and kiss him senseless. Assuming she could kiss him senseless. Her commitment issues had some disappointing side effects when it came to sex. But given the hot embrace at the river’s edge the other night, she had cause for hope.

  “What are you thinking?” Mason asked.

  Caught off guard, she groped for words and finally came up with the question that had been on her mind since she had walked into Fletcher Hardware and found Mason behind the counter.

  “Why did you return to Summer River?” she asked.

  She didn’t expect a straightforward answer, so she was more than a little stunned when she got one.

  “I screwed up,” he said. “Someone died.”

  It took her a moment to process the information. Shaken, she came to a halt and turned to stare at him. He stopped, too, and looked at her. They were both wearing sunglasses, so she could not read his eyes, but she could see the grim line of his jaw.

  Shadows, she thought. Sara said that everyone carried a few around.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Again, she did not expect an answer. But she got one.

  “We were consulting for a small-town police department. Twenty years ago there were three murders, all within a hundred-mile radius of the community. The victims were hitchhikers who had been picked up by the killer. They were homeless men.”

  “Victims who had no family to push for a thorough investigation.”

  “The cr
imes were clearly the work of one person, but the victims appeared to have been chosen at random. The killings stopped within a few months, but the killer was never found. The cases went cold. The locals didn’t have the money or manpower to pursue the investigations. But a few months ago they called us in when a new murder occurred.”

  “A new crime that looked like part of the old pattern?”

  “Right. The current chief of police had started out on the force twenty years earlier as a rookie cop. He recognized the pattern and asked for our help. We ran the program, but the results were too vague to be useful. All we got from Alice was the standard unhelpful profile of a serial killer. It described over half the adult males in the community.”

  “Alice usually gets closer than that?”

  “Much closer. Aaron’s program is good. But like any computer program, Alice depends on the data that is fed into it. The basic gi-go rule has never changed.”

  “Garbage in, garbage out. I’m very familiar with that particular rule in an investigation,” Lucy said. “I come up against it frequently in my work.”

  “I looked over the files that had been sent to us and decided there was something wrong with the data. So I visited the scenes of the crimes myself, to see if I could get a feel for what was off.”

  “You said it helped to go into the field sometimes.”

  “It took me a while, but it finally hit me. The killer had to know how the program worked.”

  “Good grief, the new murderer was someone who worked for you?”

  Mason’s mouth twisted. “He was an employee who had left a year earlier to establish his own investigation business. Gilbert Porter, one of our first hires. He knew some of the trapdoors, and he also knew some of the key algorithms Alice uses to analyze data.”

  “So he was able to manipulate the results by leaving false clues at the scenes of the crimes.”

  Mason angled his head slightly. “You know, you really are good at this kind of stuff.”

  “I thought I’d made it clear, I am also in the investigation business.”

  “I’m starting to get that.”

  “About time,” Lucy said. “Go on with your story.”

  “As you said, Porter deliberately staged the crimes in ways he knew would throw off the results. When I finally realized what was going on, I was fairly certain I knew who we were looking for, but Aaron ran the program again to double-check. He looked for a killer with an insider’s knowledge and a strong desire for revenge against Fletcher Consulting. Gilbert Porter’s name was at the top of a very short list.”

  “Why did he want revenge?”

  “Because I fired him,” Mason said. “I caught him embezzling from the company using some sophisticated code. I knew he was pissed at the time, but I thought that if he came after anyone, it would be me. Actually, I didn’t think he would do anything violent. Figured if he tried to take revenge the assault would come in the form of a cyber attack on Alice. But I was wrong. He killed two men before I caught up with him.”

  Lucy used one hand to hold her flying hair back from her face. “You did your job. You solved the crime.”

  “Too late for two homeless hitchhikers. Hell, Fletcher Consulting—the company that’s dedicated to hunting human predators—created a killer.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Mason looked bemused by her sudden fierceness.

  “You didn’t make him kill anyone. He was a monster, and he managed to hide in plain sight for a time because he was perfectly camouflaged. But you did identify him, and you caught him. If you had not done that, he would have continued to kill. You saved all of his future victims. In addition, you discovered a blind spot in your program that will help you catch more killers. That’s what matters. You did your job. What happened? Is Porter in jail?”

  “No, I set him up,” Mason said evenly.

  She caught her breath. “I don’t understand.”

  “I drew him into a trap. I knew if he felt cornered he would try to shoot his way out, and he did. I killed him.”

  Understanding flashed through her. “You knew that if he went to trial, he might walk.”

  Mason looked out at the restless ocean for a long moment before he answered.

  “I didn’t have enough evidence to get him convicted,” he said. “Porter was very good at concealing his handiwork.”

  “That’s what you’re having a hard time dealing with, isn’t? The fact that you set a trap and he fell right into it.”

  “Maybe. It was the first and only time that I’ve killed a man. Hell, most cops go through their entire careers without ever firing a gun except on the practice range. And I wasn’t even a cop at the time—I was an investigative consultant who carried a weapon. I don’t regret Porter’s death, but I knew I had another option that night. I could have taken him alive and hoped that the system would find him guilty. But I didn’t.”

  “Instead, you think you committed the sin of acting as judge, jury and executioner. But that’s not how it went down.”

  “It is how it went down. Exactly how it went down. I knew Porter cold by then. I’d studied him. I knew what he would do if he was cornered.”

  “You trapped a killer who tried to shoot his way out of the trap. The fact that you were pretty sure he would attempt to murder you doesn’t make you responsible for his final decision. Gilbert Porter challenged you to a duel to the death, and he lost.”

  Mason did not speak.

  “What about the old cases?” she asked after a while.

  Mason’s face tightened as if he had to make an effort to pull his thoughts together. “We closed all three. The reason the killings had stopped was because the first killer was doing time for another murder in another state. He’ll do life now.”

  “You’re a decent man, born to protect others,” she said. “You know you’re supposed to come down on the side of law and order. That night you took a different path, a more ancient path. That’s a heavy burden for a good man, an honorable man, to carry. But you will find a way because there are other people to save, other bad guys to catch. That’s your mission, and you will fulfill it because if you don’t, people will die and the bad guys will win.”

  Mason just stood there, looking at her, for a very long time.

  “I don’t want to go back to Summer River today,” he said finally. “I want to spend the night with you, here, where no one knows us and we can be alone together.”

  She caught her breath. But she had known all day that this was coming. It was why she had tucked those few personal items into her tote. Mason had known it, too. It was why he had quietly stashed an overnight kit in the back of the car. Now the moment of decision was upon them, and he was leaving it up to her.

  She took a deep breath.

  Be in the moment.

  “Yes,” she said. “I would like very much to spend the night with you.”

  He took her hand, closing his fingers tightly around hers. They continued walking along the beach in silence.

  28

  He was exhilarated, thrilled, and walking an invisible high wire without a net. Hot anticipation stirred his blood. Lucy had said yes.

  It was only three o’clock. The night was still a long way off. Getting through the rest of the afternoon and evening without making a fool of himself was going to take a lot of willpower. But he would not ruin things by hauling Lucy off to the nearest no-tell motel. He wanted the day and the night to be memorable, to be important to her. Definitely something more than a damned matchmaking-agency date.

  He did not let go of her hand until they’d finished the long walk on the beach and started up the path to the car. Part of him did not want to release her, even then. He did not just want her, he needed her. She was a bright ray of sunlight cutting through the cold, gray fog that had enshrouded him for the past coup
le of months.

  That was crazy talk, and he knew it. Okay, he had some issues because of what had happened two months ago, but he wasn’t that messed up. His problems were mere ripples on the surface of a pond compared to the dark waves that Deke had survived in his years as a warrior.

  But he knew now that the lightning bolt that had struck him the other day when Lucy walked into the hardware store had not been a fluke. The universe was, indeed, trying to tell him something. One look at her and the fog had begun to clear. He was once again aware of the warmth of the sunlight. He felt reenergized.

  That first awakening was nothing compared to what he was experiencing now.

  Lucy was going to spend the night with him. Tonight would be a very important night, possibly the most important night of his life. He would not screw it up.

  When they got back into the car he did a quick check on his phone, searching for the address of the hotel he had found online that morning. Before leaving town, he had spent an hour going through the short list of establishments in the vicinity of the small coastal community. He had wanted a nice place, a classy, upscale place. Just in case.

  At the time he’d had no real reason to hope that Lucy would agree to spend the night with him, but if she did say yes, he wanted to be prepared. He was not going to take her to some cheap, grungy dive.

  He had found a lodge that looked like it met his requirements. The price was definitely right—several hundred bucks a night—but he did not mention that little fact to Lucy. The last thing he wanted was another argument about splitting the bill.

  He drove the short distance to the Ocean View Lodge and was relieved to see that outwardly, at least, it lived up to its advertising. The handsome, rustic building was perched on the hillside and commanded romantic views of the coastline. He parked the car at the entrance.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Lucy.

  “I’ll come with you to register,” she said. She started to reach over the seat for her tote.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll take care of this.”