Letting Alley out to the fenced-in run behind the cabin, she glanced at the wall phone by the back door. Maybe she should let someone know where she was. Not Michael. Maybe she’d telephone Pratt. Give him a shock. After a ski, she’d decide.
Outside, brilliant sunlight glistening on pristine snowfields greeted her. The heavy snow had continued overnight, leaving the world new and clean, the way Claire wished she felt. The crisp air brought the fragrances of pine and wood smoke to her nostrils.
She locked the door behind her. Then she collected her skis from the outdoor storage locker.
“I won’t be long,” she called to her pets. “Be good.” A little stiffness remained in her shoulder from slamming against the car door, but skiing would work it out. She slipped her headband over her braid, set her ski poles and glided away.
Not a hundred feet from the cabin towered one of the pylons holding up the chair lift for the Cougar trail and a few others that departed from the same point. Nearing the groomed edge of the Cougar, the site of Alan’s death, Claire angled her skis to stop. A shiver of gruesome memory chilled her. Or was it foreboding?
Shaking off the eerie sensation, she set out in the other direction, to the nearer cross-country trails.
“Can’t you drive any faster?” Michael growled. He squirmed in the passenger seat and peered at the two-lane, tree-lined road ahead.
Cruz slanted him an indulgent look. “No, man, this agency-approved sedan won’t take these hilly curves like my sports car.”
“Could your wheels handle the snow?”
He shook his head and laughed. “Like a duck on skates, mano, but the sedan will get us there in one piece.”
Informing their boss about the loss of the Cherokee hadn’t loosened his purse strings for a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Michael slumped and tried to relax. “Who knows how much of a head start the bastards have?”
“They couldn’t have found out any sooner than we did that the lady left town. With the old handyman under wraps, they might not figure out where she went.”
“I hope you’re right.” Michael laid his head against the headrest. “If only it hadn’t taken so damn long to switch the team rendezvous to the ski resort. It’s a three-hour drive. Nearly nine-thirty now. Shouldn’t we be there soon?”
“No sweat. There it is.” Cruz pointed ahead. He turned left at an engraved wooden sign that read Caribou Peak, Skiing for Everyone. “We’ll reach the cabin in a few minutes.”
“If we can figure out where the hell it is.”
At nine-thirty, Claire whooshed onto the sloping hillside by her cabin. A flock of chickadees chattered in a nearby spruce tree. They darted from branch to branch like winter butterflies. Tired but exhilarated, she maneuvered a snow-plow stop to enjoy the view.
Caribou Peak, in truth a ridge of connected peaks, formed a semibowl called a cirque. Claire, at its edge, had an excellent vantage point. Brightly clad skiers swished down the slopes, from Otter to Moose to Bobcat to Cougar. Except at that moment, no one skied down Cougar.
Snow conditions resembled those of last year, she realized. Then, fluffy snows alternating with ice or wet snows had created weak snow layers. Was this slope as dangerous? She hadn’t stopped at the lodge to check. Just to be safe she’d avoid Cougar.
Not allowing the steep slope’s proximity to intimidate her, she set off in an easy stride toward the cabin. As she approached, she observed the chairlift in operation. Laughter and snatches of conversation wafted to her on the light breeze. Ski-bound legs dangled with carefree abandon, but their owners held on tightly to the lift when they bumped over the pylon’s pulley.
Thump-thump.
Claire froze.
Another chair neared the pylon. Its occupants were oblivious to her gaping at them as she strove to maintain her balance and stop. Her gaze jumped from the pylon to the cabin and back.
Thump-thump.
The noise she’d heard over the phone.
Light-headed at her realization, Claire gulped in air and blinked away dizziness.
No mistaking that sound. At least some of the time, the anonymous caller telephoned from her own cabin. Thank God she’d locked the door when she left.
How could it be?
Who could it be?
She wondered if Quinn—for emotional distance, she forced herself to call him that—had ever interviewed the caretaker here.
Behind her a branch snapped with a loud report. Heart crashing against her ribs, Claire looked around. Her eyes swept the snowfield and the scattered trees leading to the wooded trail. Only her tracks and those of small animals marred the snow’s virgin surface.
Branches and twigs did crack of their own volition, she told herself. Especially in cold weather.
The thumping’s significance frightened her more than anything that had happened. Since the day of Martine’s death, she’d had no more phone calls. Perhaps he’d gone away. Given up.
“Non, pas possible!” She was a crazy woman if she believed that.
The truth was that someone frequently invaded the cabin to threaten her, and that person might return.
She couldn’t stay at Caribou Peak any longer.
Hurriedly she bent and with trembling fingers released her ski-boot catches. Without a care to removing the snow from them, she slammed her skis and poles into the outdoor locker. She fished her key from her zipped parka pocket and jammed it in the door lock. A false turn or two and at last she stumbled into the house.
Alley set up a racket outside, but she’d be fine in the sun for a while.
Spook pounced at her ankles as she strode to the kitchen. Picking him up, she cuddled him a moment while deciding how to proceed. She would pack the animals and her stuff into the car faster than a squirrel stowing nuts. When she released the kitten, he scampered up the stairs.
First she had to telephone. Not Pratt. Not for this.
She had no choice but to call Quinn. The cabin had no Portland phone book, but information would have a number for the DEA. It was a government agency, so it must have a public number.
She yanked the receiver from the wall phone and tapped in the 555 number for information. Holding the receiver with one hand, she straightened the canisters arrayed before her on the counter and fiddled with the pencil and pad of paper she kept by the phone.
A moment later, listening to a disembodied, computerized voice, she wrote the DEA’s number carefully on the notepad.
Her breath coming in short gasps, she disconnected and began to punch in the number.
Without warning, a hand clamped down on the keypad and another snatched away the receiver.
“We’ll have to approach the cabin through the woods in case he’s already there,” Michael said, handing Cruz a pair of snowshoes. Of new lightweight plastics, they made for easier going through the woods than skis. They stood beside the sedan at an empty house downhill from Claire’s cabin. “Everything takes so damn long. The lodge manager took his own sweet time with the directions to this place.”
“If we hadn’t waited, we wouldn’t have seen Santerre’s truck. He must have followed her here last night after he ditched me,” Cruz said.
Michael made a noncommittal grunt. He didn’t want to think about Claire with her erstwhile dead husband. Naturally he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Too many possibilities. If he meant her harm. If he meant to kidnap her. If she welcomed him. If she kissed him.
If she slept with him.
Failing to derail his tortured brain, he snatched the rifle case from the car’s trunk and opened it. Action would dull his pain and force him into a professional mode. With the automatic but detailed care of long practice, he checked over the SAR-8 and its laser scope. Then he loaded the twenty-round magazine.
Cruz loaded his sidearm, the standard SIG-Sauer nine-millimeter. He nodded toward Michael’s high-tech rifle. “I didn’t want to mention this before now, buddy, but have you practiced with that on the firing range since last year?”
Using i
ts leather strap, Michael slung the gun over his shoulder. “Every day for a week. I’m up to speed. If it comes down to it, it’s something I have to do.” For himself as much as for Claire, he added silently.
“Understood. You can count on me.” Cruz slammed down the sedan trunk. He pulled on a polypropylene stocking cap and lined leather gloves. “Ready?”
Michael, too, donned cap and gloves. Tension wound his guts tighter than guitar strings, and sweat beaded his back, even in the twenty-degree weather. Uncertainty about his ability to pull the trigger still plagued him. If he had to, he would. For Claire. “Check.”
Covered in warm layers topped with mottled white winter camouflage ski bibs and hooded jackets, they trekked up the wooded hill.
Heart racketing loudly in her chest, Claire pivoted away from her assailant. When her gaze found his smiling face, her heart stuttered with shock. The blood drained so quickly from her head, she nearly fainted. Backing against the kitchen counter, she gripped its edge to prevent sliding insensate to the floor.
“Paul!”
“In the flesh, darling,” he drawled. A wide grin on his thin mouth, he replaced the telephone receiver. Taller than his father and strongly built, Paul Santerre had aged noticeably during the last five years. White peppered his dark hair, and grooves lined his mouth and eyes. Like her he wore cross-country ski gear, his a dark green.
Claire didn’t know what to do, what to think. Rushing noises in her ears prompted her to breathe, and she finally dragged in enough air to clear her head.
Michael, you were right! Why didn’t I believe you?
Fighting panic, she reminded herself this was Paul. Her…husband. She knew him, knew how to handle him.
Outside, Alley barked and howled. Unsure how Paul might treat the dog, Claire decided to leave her outside for now. Spook had fled upstairs. She hoped he stayed there.
A life in hiding hadn’t dimmed the avid gleam in Paul’s keen blue eyes, she noted. Eyes that scanned up and down her body with fervent longing.
With an effort, she quelled a shudder of revulsion. She didn’t want him to touch her. Whatever he wanted from her, she had to find a way to notify the DEA or the police. There was much she understood only dimly. Though clarity might be painful, she had to know everything.
“You! It was you—the anonymous phone calls. The threats.” She rubbed her eyes as if she could erase the sight of him. “But why…?” At his upraised hands, she let her question trail off.
“Whoa there. Aren’t you happy to see me? Why aren’t you rushing into your husband’s loving arms?” he said, still grinning but without humor.
Claire realized that she should conceal the fact that the DEA believed Paul to be alive. If he thought himself safe from the authorities, he might be careless. “I mourned you, Paul. I’m still in mourning.”
“I suppose rainbow colors are the newest trend in funereal garb.” He gestured at her ski suit.
“This is the only bright color in my wardrobe,” she insisted haughtily. “I—everyone—thought you were dead. What happened? Where have you been? Why the phone calls?”
“Because you’re still my wife, darling. It was the only way to ensure your safety, your faithfulness. Besides, I needed to hear your sweet voice.” He held out an arm, curling his fingers slowly in a beckoning motion. “Now, come here and show me how glad you are to see me.”
“Since you’re not dead, that means you left me, deserted me. Why should I be glad to see you?”
He shrugged. “Leaving couldn’t be helped. The DEA and Customs were closing in on me.” His gaze browsed her features. “I see you know all about that now.”
“The DEA questioned me about your smuggling.” She’d wait to reveal that his father knew. “As much as I appreciate your not involving me in your dirty business,” she said dryly, “I abhor all the things you’ve done, including desertion.” An understatement. If Quinn and the DEA were correct, he’d committed murder and engaged in drug smuggling and blackmail. It horrified and sickened her.
Suddenly Alley ceased her protracted barking. At the silence, Paul relaxed visibly.
Claire forced herself erect. No cowering before him, criminal or not. They stood in the kitchen, a small, U-shaped extension off the living room. She remained at the counter beside the sink, and Paul maintained his stance beside the door, blocking her exit, with his back to the table and the window behind it.
A shadowy flicker at that window caught her attention.
Michael!
Quickly, she looked away, at Paul. Which of them had Michael followed? That didn’t matter, but his arrival explained why Alley had stopped barking.
Another glance, and she saw Michael place a device against the windowpane. A microphone. That sealed what she had to do.
Paul drew himself up to his full six foot three. Still lanky and lean, he had more of an edge to his demeanor than she remembered. “Everything I did was for you, my dear.”
“For me. C’est de la cochonnerie, that’s a crock! You had grand ambitions long before you met me.” She had to entice him to boast about his crimes.
“For us, then. I did what I had to do. Cozying up to the Farnsworths earned me scholarships and, later, loans to start my business.” He unfolded his arms and beckoned to her. “But true confessions can wait, darling. We have to be going.”
“Why should I go anywhere with you, Paul?” She had to keep him there, talking, coax him to spill everything. “You deserted me, left me alone.”
His blue eyes darkened, narrowed. “I may have left, but you sure as hell reaped the benefits. And I ensured that Worcester added to the pot with the rest of us before he bit the dust—or the snow, in his case.”
“Alan? You?” The rushing, thundering noises whirled inside her head with increased force. Like a reverse tornado, the spinning linked the pieces together instead of ripping them apart. She understood what he had done. The agony of it twisted inside her, clawed at her heart. But she couldn’t yield yet to regret or rage.
“Of course, me.” He folded his arms and threw out his chest, as always when he gloated over a triumph. “I met him in a bar in Boston. I had a beard then, so he wouldn’t recognize me from a photograph. He poured out some sob story about how this wonderful widow wouldn’t marry him. I convinced him to show his good faith by changing his will. The fool.”
“And you’re the one who started the avalanche. Who fired the shots. You’re the one who killed Alan.” The police had found no signs of a break-in when the Beretta came up missing because there’d been no break-in. Paul had used his own keys. They hadn’t sunk to the ocean bottom. “But why, Paul?”
“For you, darling, for you. I couldn’t have my goddess be a bigamist, now could I?” She’d always considered the narrow line of his mouth determined, but it now seemed nothing but cruel.
Hands fisted at her sides, she longed to pummel him, to scream and rail at him for killing Alan. “No, instead of a bigamist, I became a murder suspect.”
“That I didn’t intend. Forgive me, my love.” He returned to his braggadocio stance. “I planned each death meticulously to the last detail, my own disappearance included, so they all appeared accidental.”
Her heart fluttered and then hammered with horror. “All,” she repeated numbly. “Jonathan. You killed Jonathan, too.” She struggled with memories, but no longer could picture Jonathan’s features, recall his smile. Tragically, no fury at his cruel murder would restore him. “But he was your friend, your best friend.”
“As I said before, I did what I had to do.” He spoke matter-of-factly, his manner cool, contained. “At first, I couldn’t support you. He could. In matters of money, there was no way for me to compete. I needed time.”
“You…you stepped aside, retreated from me. I always wondered why.” Her gaze swept the kitchen, absorbed the homey normalcy. She still smelled the aroma of her breakfast coffee. So she hadn’t tumbled into a nightmare from which she’d soon awaken.
“I allowed him
to have you for as long as I could tolerate,” Paul said. “Until I convinced him to write that will, and until I arranged my business dealings with my foreign partners.”
Everything he said exploded in her brain like mini-bombshells. Aching from the blows, she said, “And you lured him out to the Cliff Road that night?”
“It was so simple. He wanted to time his car, see how fast it would take the curves. Of course, I put the idea in his head, encouraged him. Then I merely filled his brake lines with baking soda and vinegar. Amazing what you can learn on the Internet.”
“Afterward you hurried home so when I telephoned, you pretended to be asleep.”
“Clever, don’t you think, darling? Clever as a fox. What is it you French say?”
“Malin comme un singe, clever as a monkey.” Diabolically clever. He’d plotted everything from the start, as the police had insisted she had done. They had merely chosen the wrong master criminal.
“Come here, Claire.” When she retreated, he continued, “The DEA and Customs pushed me until I lost everything I’d worked so hard for. I had to give up everything, but in these past five years I’ve built up another fortune. We can go away together, live like royalty. The Mediterranean, or perhaps the Caribbean.” In one long-legged stride, he approached her and clasped her arm tightly. “We have to go.”
“No. I won’t go with you. Why should I?”
“Foolish darling.” His voice purring at her like that of a predatory jungle cat, he stroked her braid from her shoulder and trailed a finger along her hairline. “Raoul and his men haven’t given up yet. They’re on their way here now.”
Claire wrested her arm from his grip and stumbled to the table. “Why? Why are they after me? The ledger?”
“El Halcón doesn’t give a damn about the ledger. My records can’t touch him.” He curled his lip in a contemptuous sneer as he stalked toward her. “No, they’re trying to get to me through you. They want me to involve my old man in their operation. That’s where I draw the line. Besides, it’s time I got out. With you.”
Dangerous Attraction Page 20