Dangerous Secrets

by Lyn Cote

  The soft wool of her sweater twisted in his fingers as he tightened his hold on her shoulders again. How could she bring up Dan at a time like this? “This has nothing to do with that.”

  Then he could say no more. He couldn’t say, “You’re too important to me. I can’t lose you, too.” He couldn’t become attached to anything, anyone who was tied to Winfield. He no longer belonged here. His parents had silently sent him away. If they couldn’t have Dan, they wanted no son at all. His long-denied pain manifested itself in a low half groan.

  As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she stroked his cheek with her palm—once, twice. “Nothing is going to happen to me, Ridge. You and the sheriff will catch Ginger’s murderer.”

  Her touch had the power to move him. He wished it wasn’t so. Her soft, warm palm on his face distracted him from what he’d come to achieve, her safety. Her touch prompted him to think about kissing her lips again. No. “What am I going to do with you?” he muttered.

  She stared at him, her lovely eyes fringed with golden-brown lashes, gazing at him with such understanding. To her, he was apparently transparent.

  Why had he asked her that question? He wasn’t going to do anything with her. He just wanted to find the culprit and then escape Winfield for good. But he was weakening.

  She stroked his cheek again. Then she stilled. And reminded him of a lovely doe in the forest, becoming aware of another presence. Becoming aware of him.

  Had she suddenly sensed how intensely she attracted him? In that moment, he could have forgotten every bit of common sense he owned. And taken her into his arms. And kissed her. As she deserved to be kissed.

  Instead she slipped from his grasp. She turned away and finished preparing the pot of coffee. Without looking back, she said softly, “Ridge, I appreciate your concern. But I’m not leaving Winfield. This is my home. There are people here who need me. And I believe you will find whoever has done these awful things. You will find Ginger’s murderer.”

  Afraid to speak, afraid that all the foolish words he must hold back would come spilling out, he turned away and left her there alone.

  Back outside on her front step in the cutting wind, he stared down the side street toward frozen Lake Superior. A few vehicles from Madeleine Island were driving across the thick ice toward town. Though the ice was strong enough at this moment to support a vehicle, it would soon begin melting and cracking, breaking up.

  A few moments ago, he’d felt as if he were walking on thinning, quaking ice. And Sylvie’s evocative touch had done that to him. His reality, the way he’d chosen to live his life, had felt as if it were breaking up under his feet. Winfield and Sylvie were drawing him home, luring him to dangerously thinning ice. Away from Winfield, his life was simple, easy.

  He turned his mind back to the firm ground of facts. There must be another way to persuade Sylvie to leave Winfield until it was safe for her again. He would find the way. And then he’d finish this case and leave. Soon.

  In her kitchen, Sylvie stared at the coffee dripping slowly into the glass carafe below. She’d been foolish not to see this coming. But so much had happened over the past weeks. It was like night driving through heavy snow and switching on her bright headlights. The higher beams highlighted the pelting snow and magnified it, so that the road ahead became invisible. One couldn’t see anything but the snow falling. Since Ginger’s death, she’d been driving with her brights on, snow-blinded by everything that had happened.

  Grief over Ginger, worry for her aunt Shirley and Rae-Jean had distracted her from perceiving danger to herself. And the peril was not just to herself but to her heart. Had she really stroked Ridge’s cheek just now? She’d definitely miscalculated how much jeopardy he presented to her. She’d thought that she could have him near her yet be able to hide her feelings.

  In this moment, Ridge frightened her more than the mysterious killer. Ridge could do more than kill her. He could destroy her. And then walk away. Leaving her breathing but lifeless, crushed.

  She couldn’t give in to those fears now. Ridge was right. She might become a target. The memory of Ginger’s still body froze her to the floor. Heavenly Father, this is too big, too frightening for me. Should I stay? Or should I go?

  She stared at the calendar. The time was almost up. How long would this take? How many more days? Why had she let herself get sucked into this? It was all getting too creepy. Maxed-out creepy. She couldn’t remember trashing the bookshop in town. But she’d been so high that night. Sometimes with Ecstasy, she couldn’t remember doing stuff that others told her she’d done. And she did remember throwing books, a lot of books to the floor. But were they the books in that Sylvie’s shop? Or were they the books in the dead girl’s apartment? Holding her aching head between her hands, she wondered if she was losing her mind. And if she cared. If anyone cared.

  That afternoon after closing up shop early, Sylvie stood at the bottom of Shirley’s basement steps. On top of everything else today, her clothes dryer had decided to spin its last. So while Shirley was out doing her grocery shopping, Sylvie had lugged her wet clothing over here to dry.

  During lunch, Sylvie had almost discussed with her dad Ridge’s fears for her. But she’d decided not to. She was afraid that if she had brought up Ridge at all that she might tell her father everything. Tell him how deeply she had begun to care for Ridge once more. Thoughts and feelings had buzzed around in her head till it felt like a busy, teeming beehive.

  Standing beside an old, battered table next to the dryer, Sylvie started matching her father’s dried socks. She reached to switch on the old radio for distraction. Then she heard the back door just above her open and close. And voices. She froze where she stood.

  “Rae-Jean,” Chaney insisted, “I don’t want to know the outcome of the test.”

  “But why?” Rae-Jean asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I just can’t face it right now.”

  The scraping of wooden chairs being pulled back from the table sounded above Sylvie. Should she let them know that she was here? She felt as if she’d already heard too much. Indecision held her captive.

  “I know,” Rae-Jean declared, “this is all my fault. We had everything and I went and spoiled it all.”

  “If you’d been happy, it wouldn’t have happened,” Chaney replied. “I should have noticed that things weren’t right between us. Fact is, I did notice. But I didn’t do anything. It’s not all your fault.”

  “Don’t try to take the blame.” Rae-Jean sounded tearful, fretful. “I was the one who cheated on you. I was the one who was stupid enough to get hooked on drugs.”

  Sylvie let her hand fall. She was afraid to breathe for fear they’d hear her.

  “Elsie Ryerson talked to me about it, Rae-Jean. Elsie made me see that you were vulnerable. I should have protected you, paid more attention. I should have tried to talk to you.”

  “Elsie is a sweet woman,” Rae-Jean said, “but going over how this all happened doesn’t help.”

  “It helped me.” Chaney’s voice strengthened. “Rae-Jean, you are the only woman I have ever loved. We have a son together. Maybe a daughter. I just can’t push you out of my life.”

  “You can’t mean that you think we can get back together,” Rae-Jean objected, sounding exhausted, disbelieving. “I’m not strong enough. I don’t want you to depend on me. I could go back to drugs at any time. Sometimes I still feel like I did wrong by not giving Hope up to someone who could take better care of her.”

  Silence. Then Chaney’s voice. “You could be stronger than the meth. Don’t you believe God can give you the strength?”

  “Why would He bother with me,” Rae-Jean said, sounding desperate, “and what has that got to do with Hope’s paternity test?”

  Sylvie heard a chair being pushed back. “God loves you, Rae-Jean. And I don’t want to know about the test right now. It’s time for me to go. I still have to go next door and say goodbye to our boy then leave for work.”

/>   A second chair was pushed back. “Chaney, I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll see you soon. I promise.”

  Sylvie heard Chaney’s retreating footsteps, the back door open, frigid air rushing in and down the basement steps. The outside door closed.

  She prayed that nothing would bring Rae-Jean down the basement steps. She heard the sound of Rae-Jean walking out of the kitchen. Then from above, Sylvie overheard the creaking of the steps to the second-floor.

  Sylvie leaned against one of the beams at the bottom of the basement steps. Guilt warmed her face. I didn’t mean to overhear that, Lord. But what does it mean? Is there anything I can do to help?

  March 16

  Later that afternoon, Ridge and the sheriff walked toward Milo’s shop along the frozen waterfront. Maybe they could make him see sense. But Ridge didn’t think he’d have success with Milo. Still, they had chosen to visit Milo during school hours so that Ben would be away. As well as during work hours, so Sylvie would be at her shop. As they opened Milo’s door, it triggered a small bellows that blew into a duck call, Milo’s signature welcome.

  In a neat flannel shirt and khaki slacks, Milo looked up from his computer desk behind the glass counter at the rear of the store. His half-glasses perched on his nose. “Just let me finish this e-mail order and I’ll be right with you.”

  Ridge walked along the aisles in the shop, looking at the many lures, sinkers, bobbers and rolls of fishing line. Keir went to the rear aisle and began examining muskie rods. Ridge recalled coming to the shop with his dad when he was just a little kid. The same worn hardwood floor, rough and unpolished, remained underfoot. The walls had never been painted or if they had the paint had worn off many years ago.

  Vintage fishing poles and rods were arranged helter-skelter on the walls. Faded photos of fishermen, displaying prize catches, were thumbtacked here and there to the walls. All manner of bait buckets, creels and stringers hung from the ceiling. In short, it was a store that any fishermen could spend hours in. Happily.

  “When was the last time you fished, Ridge?” Milo asked at Ridge’s elbow, taking him by surprise.

  Ridge stared at Milo. Unable to answer. The peace of the shop had been working its outdoorsy charm on him. He retrieved the reason he had come and put it front and center in his mind. It was too important to let slide.

  The sheriff walked toward them. “Did you get in that new muskie rod I ordered for Tom yet?”

  “It’s still on back order. If I don’t get action pretty soon from the supplier, I’ll cancel the order and go with the more expensive one.”

  Keir nodded.

  “I’m sorry but I can’t believe,” Milo said genially, “that you two have come in today to get a jump on the fishing season. What can I do for you?”

  “The sheriff and I have been talking,” Ridge began, girding himself for battle, “and we both think that you should talk Sylvie into leaving town for a while.”

  “The idea had already occurred to me.” Milo crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  Milo’s reply startled Ridge. “Then you agree—”

  “But I didn’t even bother,” Milo continued, “to mention it to Sylvie. I knew she wouldn’t go for it.”

  Milo’s casual attitude made Ridge grit his teeth. “But your daughter could be in danger, life-and-death danger. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to leave, too,” Keir added.

  “How can I leave town? There’s Ben to consider. And so many others who need us right now,” Milo replied, again aggravatingly calm.

  “They are not in as much danger as you are,” Ridge insisted, feeling his blood pressure rise.

  “Milo, if others are depending on you, your safety is very important, don’t you agree?” Keir said.

  Ridge was grateful for Keir’s support. How could Milo disagree with that? “And it would be best, safest, if Shirley and Tom went away with you. Couldn’t you all go back to Arizona together?” Ridge asked, feeling hope bobbing up inside him.

  “Yes, why not?” Keir agreed with enthusiasm in his voice. “This is the slow season. Most shop owners get away now. That’s why Shirley and Tom were in Arizona.”

  “I know you mean well,” Milo said, dropping his arms and leaning against the counter of sinkers. “But in a time like this, we need to be here in Winfield where all our family and friends are around us.”

  Ridge felt his stomach acid begin to burn. “But you must realize that you and Sylvie, especially Sylvie, could be targets? Someone is looking for something that belonged to Ginger. And your daughter was the last person to see Ginger alive. The murderer might decide that Ginger must have told Sylvie wherever it—whatever the thing he’s seeking—is hidden. And that for her own reasons, Sylvie hasn’t let anyone know she knows about it or has found it. Or that it’s something that she hasn’t put two and two together about yet.”

  “All that had occurred to me. But running away wouldn’t help, would it? Wouldn’t the person just come after us then? And wouldn’t it be easier for the murderer to get to Sylvie in a place where we are among strangers? We wouldn’t even be sensitive to the fact that he is a stranger. Here we can pick out someone who doesn’t belong, someone who might hurt Sylvie.”

  Ridge couldn’t think of an answer to that. It was infuriating. Why couldn’t he get anyone to listen to reason?

  “We can’t persuade you, then?” Keir asked, sounding defeated.

  “No, and Ridge—” Milo turned his wise light blue eyes on Ridge “—I don’t want to be disrespectful or overly personal, but we’ve chosen a different way. When tragedy strikes our family, we hang together.”

  The true meaning of Milo’s words hit Ridge in the face like a wet oar. The blood drained from his head down to his feet. Milo had just told him, in effect, that Ridge was behaving just like his parents, running, hiding from life. True or false—that has nothing to do with this.

  Why couldn’t he get anyone to understand that this was an extremely risky situation? How could he get them to see that Sylvie was in real jeopardy?

  After his abortive interview with Milo, Ridge really had no solid reason to stop and go inside Ollie’s convenience store. He didn’t need to buy anything there. But he needed to kill time before having to go home to eat supper once more with his silent parents. In his short time here, he’d tightened his belt a notch. The morose silence during each meal made everything his mother cooked taste like shredded newspaper.

  And Ollie’s store beckoned him because he’d also been thinking that he wanted to see Tanya Hendricks in another setting, away from the sheriff’s interrogation room. And it seemed his only other choice was Tanya at work. Her odd behavior and evasiveness that he’d observed while Keir was questioning her had kept niggling him at the back of his mind. Could they be signs of guilt?

  He pulled up to one of Ollie’s gas pumps and filled his tank, his back to the harsh wind. Then he ambled inside as if he had all the time in the world.

  As he wandered through the neat aisles, he watched Tanya out of the corner of his eye. She’d washed up marginally cleaner for work and her royal-blue knit shirt with the little embroidered lighthouse logo looked freshly laundered. He expected her to recognize him, glower at him and watch him hostilely. She didn’t. She seemed totally oblivious to him. Was she on drugs at work?

  The back door of the convenience store slammed open. Instinctively, Ridge hunkered down between aisles. “Hands up!” a male voice ordered.

  Ridge reached inside his coat for his shoulder holster and lifted out the Glock there. He looked up to one of the large moon-shaped mirrors positioned at each corner of the store to frustrate shoplifters. What he saw did not make him happy.

  A lean man of medium height with a black snowmobiling mask pulled over his face was threatening Tanya with a sawed-off shotgun. “Open that cash drawer! Now!” the man shouted, waving the shotgun.

  Tanya appeared petrified. She wasn’t even blinking.
>
  Ridge didn’t make a move. He didn’t want to begin shooting up Ollie’s convenience store. Especially since he doubted that Tanya would obey his command to drop to the floor. If shots were exchanged, there was a good probability that she would be hit and perhaps killed.

  And the masked robber appeared twitchy and nervous. Was the guy on speed? He stuck the barrel of the shotgun right between Tanya’s eyebrows. “Open that cash drawer! Now!”

  EIGHT

  No. Ridge began to rise. Now he had no choice. The robber was going to kill the stunned girl.

  Then Tanya snapped into action. She punched buttons, opened the register. She jerked out the cash drawer. And nearly threw it at the robber.

  The masked man shoved the cash drawer under his arm. Coins dropped to the floor and rolled. He ran for the back door.

  Ridge charged after him. When Ridge burst through the back door, he shouted, “Stop! Police! Stop!”

  Oblivious, the robber covered the twenty or so feet of snowplowed asphalt. He then jumped onto a narrow path into the woods behind.

  Ridge tore after him. He shot a warning blast into the air. The other man did not even jerk.

  Ridge leaped after him into the woods. Someone had forged a deep path through the snow there. “Stop! Police!”

  The man didn’t even look back.

  But Ridge was gaining on him. Closing the gap. He raised his gun again.

  Then sharp pain at the back of his head. He felt himself falling.

  Ridge heard a voice. Someone was saying his name. He blinked and opened his eyes. Sylvie stood over him; her sweet fragrance filled his head. She held his hand in hers. “Ridge, you can wake up now. Everything is all right.”

  He blinked again. Groggy. “Sylvie, what happened? Where am I?”

  “You’re in a room at the hospital in Ashford,” she said, her voice gentle and concerned.

  He tried to think. Blocked. He tried again. Blocked. “How did I get here?”