Krewe of Hunters, Volume 6: Haunted Destiny ; Deadly Fate ; Darkest Journey

by Heather Graham

  “And careful, of course,” Astrid said, looking at her brother anxiously.

  “Always careful,” he said. He hesitated. “I hate to say this, but in this particular case—”

  “You’re worried about your family, too,” Astrid said. “Yeah, Dad called and said that you would be. We’re alert, wary, and we’re good.” She turned to Clara with a small smile. “My brother thinks that our dogs are big babies, but they’re not. I know when anyone is anywhere near the property, and whether they belong here or not. They were back in the stables with me until a few minutes ago. We knew that Thor was here—they made a beeline for their dog door into the house.”

  “She trusts the dogs,” Colin said to Thor, shaking his head. “I’m a crack shot, and Astrid grew up knowing how to handle a gun, as well. We’re okay here,” he told Thor. “You go out and find the son of a bitch.”

  “I just need to clean up, get a few things,” Thor said. He started to walk and then paused, turning back to speak to his sister and brother-in-law. “Thanks for taking good care of Boris and Natasha.”

  “Hey, it’s what we do!” Astrid said. “And don’t worry about Clara—I’ll make tea and we can get to know her.”

  “Ohhhhh,” he groaned, shaking his head. “Don’t worry,” he said to Clara. “I’ll be out before water can boil.”

  “Even you are not that fast!” Astrid told him.

  “Come on into the kitchen. So,” she said, leading the way. “This is Thor’s part of the complex. My parents only had two kids, him and me. My dad is a cop in Nome, so he and mom are almost never here. My great-grandfather was the guy who created the family biz, and now, Colin and I run it. My mom was the dog woman before me. Guys in this family seem to like being cops or agents or marshals—my uncle was a marshal. Anyway, not to worry, we’re not alone here, either. We have two couples who work with us, and they have families…altogether, we have ten horses and twenty-four dogs at the moment, so…so, anyway, what about you? Where are you from, what do you do—something interesting, right? You were going to be interviewed, so, I figure…”

  “Actress, musical theater. I work for Celtic American Cruise Lines,” Clara said.

  “Wow, cool!”

  “Are you good?” Colin asked, grinning as he met them in the kitchen, a room that artfully joined a few state-of-the-art appliances with logs and an old-fashioned hearth, and copper pots that were hung from the rafters.

  Clara laughed, liking Thor’s sister and brother-in-law very much.

  As well as Natasha and Boris, who trotted in behind the three of them.

  “Good is always in the eyes of the audience,” Clara said.

  Astrid poked a button on an electric kettle on the counter and set about taking cups out of a cupboard. “We’d love to see your show,” she said. She paused, looking at her. “I take it the show is only on the ship?”

  Clara nodded.

  “Well, hopefully you’ll be out to sea and performing soon. But, hey, when you’re not on the ship, you live here, in Alaska?”

  “New Orleans,” Clara told her.

  “Oh, oh, too bad,” Astrid said, looking over at her husband.

  “Why? It’s a great city, really,” Clara said.

  “Oh, NOLA is super,” Colin agreed. “We just wished that you were here.”

  “Um, well, thank you.”

  “Except, of course,” Colin added, “that it’s terrible you’re involved in this…this horrible, awful situation. Be careful, please.”

  “Do whatever Thor tells you, no matter how paranoid or ridiculous it may seem,” Astrid said.

  The water had boiled. Thor wasn’t out yet. Astrid began to prepare the tea. “So he’s going back to the island. And you’re going back, too? Why?”

  “I found the body… I was involved,” Clara said a little lamely.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be on the island,” Colin said.

  “Why not—I mean, where is safe?” Astrid asked. “That one woman was killed in her room in a busy hotel!”

  “Maybe Clara has a more personal bodyguard,” Colin murmured.

  Clara was startled, certain that he was suggesting that she and Thor were a twosome. “Really,” she murmured. “We just met. I mean, he seems to be a really great agent, but—”

  “You’re gifted,” Astrid said.

  “What?” Clara said, startled.

  Astrid shrugged. “Thor—since he was a kid—has, well, a knack. An instinct…a way of seeing things.” She smiled “I’m horrible at this. I can’t say sight, because it’s not really sight. I mean, sight is seeing, right? And sometimes, it’s an intuition, or hearing, or knowing…going to sleep and waking up and knowing something. He doesn’t talk about it much. But I’ll never forget when he worked with Jackson Crow. The two of them together, they were something. I’m not making any sense, am I?” she asked.

  Yes, actually, you are, Clara thought.

  But the words that came to her lips were, “Jackson Crow is here. I know Jackson. I mean, I knew him before he came here. He was…” She paused and took a deep breath. “I was on another ship when there was an incident. I met Jackson on that ship.”

  They both looked at her. Boris made a noise that was partially like a howl, and partially a whimper—a reminder that he and Natasha were there and needed to be in on whatever was going on.

  The dogs provided a great break.

  “Treats! They need treats!” Astrid said. She looked at Clara and said, “Oh, Lord, I am way too impulsive. It’s just that…please, don’t tell Thor that I made him sound…strange. Out there… Oh, I’m so sorry! You know what I mean.”

  “Astrid!” The name was spoken from behind Clara—by Thor.

  Clara spun around. Well, the water might have boiled, but he was fast. His hair was still damp from the shower. He was dressed in jeans and a casual sweatshirt and he was shaking his head.

  Astrid winced; Boris and Natasha woofed happily. Thor reached for a cabinet and a bag of savory dog treats and told his sister, “It’s okay, Astrid, she’s strange, too, so if you made me sound strange, she might just be a happy person.”

  “So, I was right, and you’re going to help?” Astrid asked.

  “We didn’t actually agree on that,” Thor said.

  “We didn’t disagree,” Clara reminded him.

  “And she knows Jackson!” Astrid said, nodding gravely, as if that mattered tremendously. “And Jackson is here. Thor, I can’t see where you have a choice. And we’d love to see Jackson, of course.”

  “Astrid,” Thor began.

  “When this is all behind us,” Colin said, putting his hands gently on his wife’s shoulders.

  Astrid impulsively hugged Clara. Clara hugged her back.

  The huskies barked.

  Thor groaned. “Hey…we’ve got to go.”

  “Of course, sorry, we’re just so delighted to meet you, Clara,” Astrid said. “Thor never brings people here, so—”

  “Goodbye, I love you,” Thor said, giving his sister a kiss on the cheek. One of the huskies woofed; he bent down and both dogs came to him, tails wagging, smothering him with affection. He spoke to them both softly.

  They both sat then, tails wagging.

  To Clara, it almost looked as if they nodded, agreeing that he needed to go on to work.

  Clara was hugged in turn by Astrid and Colin; the huskies were allowed to tell her goodbye, too, and she and Thor were finally out the door and heading back to the car.

  She couldn’t help but smile as she slid into the passenger’s seat. He glanced over at her, frowning slightly.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. They just made you human.”

  “You didn’t think I was human?”

  She was still smiling. Looking straight ahea
d, aware of him watching her, she shrugged.

  “They made you more human.”

  He grunted and drove and she turned in the seat to study him. “Thor…it’s what you do for a career. I imagine it’s not just work. So you deal with bad things all of the time. How do you not let it rule everything in your life?”

  He glanced at her, head at an angle, and he smiled slightly himself, as well. “Most of the time, you don’t bring it home. There is no way not to care, but you have good days, too. Like today, really. By the happenstance of your group talking about Connie Shaw, we might have saved her life. Maybe we’re wrong and a horrible trickster had stalked her—I don’t know. But putting the pieces together, this might have been, as Jackson said, a really good day.”

  “So…you’re in the city most of the time?” she asked him.

  “Depending on what’s going on,” he told her. She thought that he flushed slightly. “I love my sister. My brother-in-law is great. And I love riding—and watching them with the dogs when they’re training. I come here often. I see my folks in Nome. We still…live. But, in this case…”

  “It’s what happened with Tate Morley?” she asked.

  He nodded grimly as he drove. “Most men and women in law enforcement have that one case…the one that seemed to rip you up, even if it did come to a legal conclusion. Morley was that case. We’d been hunting for a magician, or so it seemed. Someone who could disappear at will. Mandy Brandt came to see us—she came to Jackson and me. She gave us the first viable clues. Nice kid, really nice kid, just concerned for someone else. We followed up on what she told us and started a search on this guy her friend was dating. He was going by Thomas Jones at the time—he knew it would be a good choice of name because there are probably thousands of men with that name. The man is something of a magician, or an actor. He also wore costumes sometimes when he abducted women—never the same. He was a clown at a birthday party once, a ‘cowboy, new to town’ when he picked up another of his victims.” He paused, shrugging. “He wore a suit and tie and picked up one victim as an FBI agent. He’d go from glasses to none, a bald look to long hair, different clothing all the time. We followed dozens of leads. Anyway, we’d finally gotten a tip on where he was supposed to meet Mandy’s friend. But while we were heading off there, he was busy killing Mandy. We found him. She’d told me things about him in conversation that suggested he was heading to a museum with her. We found her—and he was still with her. But, Mandy was dead.”

  Clara sat in silence for a minute. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thing is…I just always wonder now about ‘the book’ and what’s right and wrong, morally. I shot him, but I didn’t kill him. I was actually shooting to kill—that would have been by the book under the circumstances. But I had to take a wild shot. Still, it was just Jackson and me there then. We could have killed the bastard—no one would have known that we didn’t have to take a second shot. But we didn’t take it. He was down. We called for backup. He went to the hospital—Mandy went to the morgue. I watched the case every day. He wound up in federal court because he’d crossed state lines. They debated the death penalty. They decided on maximum security. Now, he should have stayed—the sentence was harsh enough. There was no chance of parole. But…”

  “But, he’s out. And you believe that he is killing again, and killing here.”

  “And I could be crazy. They could catch him in Kansas or Nebraska tomorrow.”

  They had arrived back at the McGinty house. Jackson was waiting at the end of the walk with a tall man of about forty-five with short-cut hair, in a plain wool suit.

  The place was busy now; Clara could see a number of vehicles there. Writing on the vans identified them as belonging to forensic crews.

  Jackson walked down to the car with the tall man. By the time they reached the vehicle, both Thor and Clara were out of it, waiting. She saw that Thor knew the tall man; they greeted one another briefly.

  “Erikson,” the other man acknowledged.

  “Detective Brennan,” Thor said, and introduced Clara to the man.

  He eyed Clara curiously and then said, “You had quite a bad time, so I understand,” he said.

  “I found Amelia Carson, yes,” she said. “And naturally I’m passionate that we find her killer,” she added softly.

  “Will you be heading to the Fate now with Connie Shaw?”

  She hesitated, aware that Brennan might protest her determination, and insist that non–law enforcement personnel must not be involved.

  “Clara is returning to the island with us,” Jackson said.

  “She was given a tour of the island when she arrived and witnessed a great deal that may help us now,” Thor told him.

  “And,” Jackson added, “Marc Kimball has seen her perform. He’s a huge fan.”

  “She’s been quite a help easing into any access we might need,” Thor said. “We were at the Hawthorne Hotel today with Clara and her cast when we discovered that Connie Shaw was out here.”

  Brennan was grave. “You’re willing to do all this, Miss Avery? You can just board your ship and be with your cast mates, away from all this. I have men watching over your friends. We don’t usually allow civilians to place themselves in danger.”

  “I won’t be in danger, sir. I’ve been asked to be a guest by Marc Kimball—I believe that I can work as a liaison.”

  Brennan nodded. “I’m not a Fed, so it’s not really my call anyway. And however it happened, you might well have averted disaster here today. But, we do have two actual murder sites. And, I thank God everyone is in on this because we do need all the manpower we can get.”

  “We’re going to stop by the Seward station—we’d like to see anything new that your officers might have gathered and, as you know, they were working with the video from the hotel when we were there earlier,” Thor said.

  “All right. I’ve had techs working over on the island today. Phone service is still pretty nonexistent, but we’ve got the internet going, so anything that you can manage by Wi-Fi is up.” He hesitated. “My officers are having difficulty dealing with Mr. Kimball. He’s played the outraged citizen on them. He doesn’t want his house invaded.”

  “As she mentioned, Clara can help us with Kimball,” Thor said.

  “That’s good,” Brennan said. “But, if you have any difficulty with him as far as access to what you need, let me know. There’s not a judge out there who won’t give us warrants for a search of any real property on that island under these circumstances.”

  “Will do,” Thor promised.

  Brennan shook his head with exasperation. “FBI, police, Coast Guard—so many people working on this. We have to come up with something. It’s almost like this guy is a space traveler—he’s here, there, gone. He knows that there’s no security other than the desk at the Nordic Lights Hotel. He knew when people would be on the island. It’s uncanny. Unless of course—”

  “We have two killers,” Thor said.

  “Working in conjunction,” Jackson added. “We are working that angle,” he said.

  “Get out to the island, then. We have communication now—please keep it going,” Brennan said.

  “Will do,” Thor promised.

  They headed back to the car; Thor went to the driver’s side. Jackson opened the door for Clara, giving her the front passenger’s side. She murmured her thanks.

  They had been driving a minute when she noted that Jackson and Thor seemed to be silently communicating; Thor glanced into the rearview mirror now and then.

  And at last, Jackson said, “Yeah. Two. Has to be.”

  “But who is calling the shots?” Thor wondered aloud.

  “Tate Morley,” Jackson said flatly.

  “With a local, someone with local access, someone who knows Alaska—specifically, Seward and Black Bear Island,” Thor said.

/>   They reached the police station. Officers nodded and acknowledged Jackson and Thor—and looked curiously at Clara, smiling at her politely.

  One officer led them through a maze of desks to a small office in back. A young woman in uniform quickly rose from her desk to greet them.

  “Sally, great!” Thor said, reaching to shake her hand. “Jackson Crow, Clara Avery—Officer Sally Martinelli. She’s one of the finest tech people you’ll find anywhere.”

  Sally was small with curly dark hair and eyes to match; she smiled quickly and ruefully. “Once, I thought I wanted to make great movies. I’m not the best tech around, really, but when it comes to video…anyway, their ‘security’ cameras at the Nordic Lights Hotel are almost older than I am. It’s not digital, it’s all film. But I think I’ve cleaned it up pretty well and I have it set to go to the screen—there.”

  “Perfect, thanks,” Thor told her.

  “Hit the lights—you’ll see better. Almost like the movies,” Sally said lightly. “If we only had popcorn. I’ll start from the beginning of the day…moving it along until we get to later in the afternoon.”

  The room was darkened. Sally hit buttons on her computer; images sprang to life on the screen.

  The camera angle had taken in the check-in counter, the concierge and some of the lobby. The hallway to the elevators disappeared into shadow.

  For the early part of the day, Sally fast-forwarded. People moved about like ants. Thor, Jackson and Clara all stared at the screen. They saw Natalie Fontaine meet with Amelia Carson and the rest of her crew—Becca Marle, Tommy Marchant, Nate Mahoney and a young woman Clara hadn’t met, but who Jackson pointed out as Misty Blaine, Natalie Fontaine’s production assistant.

  They saw that Natalie seemed to be giving fierce instructions to her workers, and the faces Tommy, Becca and Nate made as they listened and then turned—backpacks and suitcases in hand—to head out to Black Bear Island to prepare the Mansion.

  They watched as Amelia and Natalie seemed to have a heated argument. Misty Blaine stood back—definitely not wanting to be part of it.