Headlong

by Shannon McKenna

  Anton scowled. “That bruise looks like shit. You got more? You get cut? Shot?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, with savage emphasis. His gaze went to the guy who had emerged from the second SUV and was following Anton up the walk. He was big and dark with gleaming black hair and lots of beard scruff. He wore a battered leather jacket and carried a large box. His knuckles, clutching the box, were heavily tattooed.

  He looked at the pink robe. White teeth flashed in his dark beard. “Great color for you, man,” he said. “Brings out your eyes.”

  “This is Nate,” Anton said. “He was in Force Recon with Mace, back in the day. He’s my head of security. He’ll cover you and Demi for a few days, until I can work out something more long-term. Plus, I wanted another set of eyes and ears to listen to all this crazy shit. Someone who’s not from this place. We’re too steeped in it to see it straight.”

  “Great,” Eric said. “Sounds good. Come on in.”

  Anton hesitated. “You said that Demi was asleep.”

  “Yeah, so be super quiet,” Eric said.

  “Wait,” Anton said. “You sure it won’t stress her out if she wakes up and finds two big guys she doesn’t know inside her house? After what happened last night?”

  His brother had a point, but Eric shook his head. “She’s tough. She’ll understand. I’m not leaving her alone here to go talk to you someplace else, that’s for damn sure. I’ll go upstairs and warn her before she comes down.”

  Anton and Nate followed him in, and Eric closed and locked the door behind them.

  “Thanks for coming out at such short notice,” he said to Nate.

  “My pleasure,” Nate said. “Anything for Mace’s people.”

  “What’s in the box?”

  “A drone,” Nate said. “This is a prototype that a friend of mine designed. Nothing like it on the market yet. A DTS-Ultra Gray Ghost. Very long range, extremely tough. Super lightweight, but it can face a stiff headwind and stay on course. Obstacle sensors on all sides. You can take it down real low and get great control.”

  “Thanks,” Eric said gratefully. “I ordered one, but it won’t be here until tomorrow, and this one sounds better anyhow. Let’s send it up right now.”

  Nate pulled a pen drive out of his pocket. “I’ll install the app.”

  While Nate got to work on the drone, Eric ran down a general overview of what had happened. It was harder than he’d thought it would be. He did a lot of backtracking, and repeating, answered a lot of baffled questions that only raised more questions. Nothing made sense. Nothing hung together.

  They were so focused on Eric’s adventures, the key in the front door lock took them by surprise. They leaped to action. Nate was closest to the door, gun in hand. No time to check the peephole before the door swung inward—

  Elisa came in, a paper-wrapped tray in her arms. Her eyes fastened onto Nate and his gun.

  She flung her tray at his face and leaped at him with a cry.

  Eric saw a flash of steel. “Watch the blade! Don’t hurt her!”

  Just in time. Nate blocked the stabbing blow with his arm, catching Elisa’s wrist in his huge hand. A box-cutter was clutched in her fingers.

  Nate wrapped his arms around her struggling form and slid down along the wall, pulling her to the floor. Elisa kicked and writhed wildly, her eyes unseeing.

  “Hey,” Nate soothed, both arms holding her tight. “I’m not going to hurt you. Calm down. I just don’t want to get cut. Relax. I’ll let you go. Swear to God. Relax.”

  “Elisa.” Eric crouched next to her. “You’re safe. Sorry we scared you. Relax. It’s okay.”

  Her tension broke. Elisa shuddered, blinked, and went limp in Nate’s grip.

  After a breathless moment, Nate took the boxcutter from her and passed it to Eric.

  Elisa drew in a ragged breath. “You can let go of me,” she said shakily. “I won’t rip off your face. Promise.”

  Nate released his grip, and looked up at Anton. “You told me your hometown was screwy, but holy shit, man. This place is fucking tense.”

  Elisa lurched forward, crawling away from him. She sat there for a minute, catching her breath. “Sorry,” she said. “I saw the gun and I panicked.”

  “You’re as quick as a rattlesnake,” Nate said. “You almost got me.”

  “Glad I didn’t.”

  “Me, too,” he said forcefully.

  Eric held out the boxcutter. Elisa took it without looking at it and slid it into the pocket of her long flounced skirt. Then she got to her feet, straightening her clothes.

  “Well,” she said stiffly. “This is awkward.”

  “My fault,” Eric said. “I didn’t know you had a key. I didn’t have time to check before the door opened. And we’re all on edge.”

  “Of course. From the kidnapping.” Elisa shook her tousled hair back over her shoulders. “I should have called. I’m used to coming right in, but these are strange days. I thought Demi might be sleeping, so I thought I’d just slip in and out. Leave the tray.”

  As she mentioned the tray, she saw it on the ground upside down and crouched down, righting it.

  “What is it?” Nate asked.

  “Breakfast pastries. Sweet and savory. They’ll be a little the worse for wear, but they’ll still taste good. I’ll leave them on the counter.” Elisa hurried down the hall toward the kitchen.

  The three men looked at each other. Anton shook his head at the look he saw on Eric’s face.

  “Don’t,” Anton said softly. “Keep it simple. One big scary problem at a time.”

  Elisa came back, heading straight for the door.

  “Elisa,” Eric said. “Is there something you want to, uh…” His voice trailed off, and he tried again. “Can we help you out with some problem you might have?”

  “No,” she said forcefully, her hand on the door handle. “I’m fine, and you have problems of your own. I’ll see you around later.”

  “Stress flashbacks are nothing to be ashamed of,” Nate said baldly.

  Elisa shot him a startled look. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve had them. It’s just a thing your brain does in response to stress. I’ve never had one with a boxcutter in my hand, but that’s just pure dumb luck.”

  Elisa opened her mouth—and closed it again with a snap. “I have to get back to the restaurant,” she said, backing away. “Tell Demi I stopped by.”

  “I’ll go back with you,” Nate offered.

  Elisa shrank back. “No, that’s not necessary. I’ll be fine.”

  “This place is not safe. Isn’t that what you’ve all been telling me?”

  “No. Thanks, but I’m fine.” Elisa turned and ran down the porch steps, her shoulders high and hunched against the frosty wind.

  When she was out of sight, Nate finally turned around. “Who is she?”

  “Elisa Rinaldi,” Eric said. “She waits tables. Helps out in Demi’s restaurant.”

  “Somebody’s after her,” Nate said.

  “You mean somebody other than you?” Anton murmured.

  Nate looked outraged. He lifted his arm, and showed them the long slash in the thick leather of his jacket. “Get off my back. See that? Whatever her problems are, they are no joke.”

  “Nobody said they were,” Eric said. “Just please, keep your eye on the ball. How’s that drone doing?”

  “It’s fine.” Nate turned his back to them and got to work, radiating annoyance.

  Eric left him to it and turned to Anton. “Hey,” he said. “Got a couple hundred bucks you could spot me?”

  “Cash?” Anton looked baffled. “What for?”

  “There’s a thing I need to take care of. I have some money on me, but I need a couple hundred more. I’ll drop by the bank later on and pay you back.”

  Anton dug into his wallet, looking bemused, and handed his brother a handful of bills. It was now business hours, so Eric looked up the number on his phone and called.

  “Good morning, Steigler�
�s Fine Jewelry. This is Trudi Steigler.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Steigler, this is Eric Trask. I’m not sure if you remember me, but I—”

  “Of course I remember you. I was so sorry to hear about Otis.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Anyhow, seven years ago, I put a ring on layaway, and I was wondering if—”

  “Yes. I still have it. Whenever you’re ready. Come on in.”

  “Thanks for hanging onto it for so long. I’d like to pay the balance, but I can’t come in this morning. I’m at Demi Vaughan’s house at 228 Lakeshore Drive, right up the street from the Marina. I’d give a generous tip to anyone who would deliver it to me here, and accept the final payment from me. I have the cash on me now.”

  Trudi Steigler seemed bewildered by the request, but after some persuading, she finally promised to have her daughter Marlee stop by that morning with the ring.

  Nate was staring down at the drone and trying not to smile as Eric closed the call. He headed outside with the drone in his arms, shaking his head.

  Anton just scowled, his big arms crossed over his broad chest.

  “What?” Eric demanded.

  “Don’t mind us,” Anton said. “Take all the time you need. Dinner reservations for two at the Lakeside Lounge? His-n-her massages and mani-pedis at Solaris Spring Spa? A honeymoon suite at the Five Oaks Inn, with the vibrating heart-shaped bed?”

  “Anton, I’m just—”

  “Dude,” Anton said flatly. “You are under siege. Now is not the time to pick out china patterns and monogrammed pillowcases, for fuck’s sake. Focus.”

  Nate walked back into the room. “She’s airborne.” He handed Eric the controller. “There’s not much wind today. Let’s get her up there and take a look around.”

  24

  Demi woke with a gasp.

  She’d been buried alive. Smothering darkness and terror, the taste of dirt in her mouth. She stared up at her own ceiling, heart galloping.

  Just a dream. She was safe in her own bed. But yesterday it had been all too real.

  She closed her eyes, remembering Eric emerging from the trees like a shadow, hands in the air. Offering himself up. Don’t hurt her.

  Everything that happens up at GodsAcre is my responsibility.

  Deputize me.

  God. It hurt just to think about it. She admired his selfless heroism, but she wanted to shred his ass for taking it all onto himself. The way he was wired up for self-sacrifice could drive her stark raving nuts. And at this point, she didn’t have that far to go.

  She could not enter that category. Things Eric Trask Was Responsible For.

  She was responsible for her own goddamn self.

  Say goodbye to your ear, beautiful.

  She jolted upright, shivering. That memory stung like a lash.

  Yeah, she was just doing a stellar job taking care of herself lately.

  A sound intruded on her consciousness. A murmur of male voices. It sounded like it was coming from downstairs.

  “Hey, there.” Eric’s voice. “Finally awake?”

  She looked around. Eric leaned in the bedroom doorway, wearing only his jeans. His thick brown hair stuck up every which way from running his fingers through it. He held a cup of steaming coffee that she could smell from across the room.

  He looked gorgeous.

  He gave her a brief, blinding smile that made her heart trip over itself, like always. It hardly mattered that he looked exhausted, eyes shadowed, his face marked with scratches and bruises. The bruise on his shoulder from the fight at Spruce Tip had turned a violent blue and purple. Even so, he looked so freaking fine, she could hardly breathe.

  “Good morning,” she said. “If it’s still morning.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Will be for a couple of hours yet. It’s almost ten.”

  “Were you just on the phone downstairs? I thought I heard voices.”

  “No. I came up to tell you that you’ve got company. My brother Anton drove from Seattle like a bat out of hell, and he brought a friend with him to cover us.”

  “Cover…? Meaning?”

  “You know,” Eric said. “As in, guard us. So we can sleep from time to time.”

  “Ah.” Demi pondered that for a silent moment. “I’d appreciate being informed of decisions like this. At least when they involve me.”

  “I would have,” he assured her. “I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet, and I wasn’t expecting Anton to move that fast.”

  Demi flung the comforter back. “Guess I should get up, then. Be hospitable.”

  “There’s no rush. Take your time. But, ah…I should tell you that Elisa came over, to bring you some breakfast pastries.”

  “Oh. That was so sweet of her.”

  “Yes, it was,” Eric agreed. “Except that, um…she wasn’t expecting to see us.”

  “Eric,” Demi said in a warning tone, rifling through her sweater drawer. “Will you please stop waffling and just say whatever the hell it is you’re afraid to say?”

  “She panicked,” Eric confessed. “Looked to me like she had a stress flashback. She attacked Nate. With a boxcutter.”

  Demi spun around with the sweater stretched over her arms. “Holy crap,” she said. “Is he hurt?”

  “He’s fine,” Eric said. “Intrigued, even. I guess he’s like me. He goes for complicated femme fatale types with mysterious problems.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You think this is funny, Eric?”

  “Nope,” he said swiftly. “Serious as hell.”

  Demi harrumphed, jerking the sweater over her head, and wrestled it down, then shoved her staticky hair out of her face to admire his bare chest. “If you met her at the door half naked like that, no wonder she had an attack.”

  “Actually, I was wearing your robe.” He gestured at her fluffy coral fleece bathrobe, tossed over her reading chair. “I like it. It’s soft.”

  “I’m sure you looked delicious in it,” she murmured.

  Now she was smiling, in spite of herself, but now was no time for flirtatious banter. She had to be tough. Face reality. And visitors. God help her.

  She tugged on some battered jeans and slid on her house shoes.

  “You could just keep resting,” Eric said. “You don’t have to come down.”

  “Nope. I’m ready to face the day. Is that cup of coffee for me, by the way?”

  He held it out. “Yeah. I realized as soon as I poured it that in all the time we’ve known each other, we’ve never had a coffee moment. So I don’t know how you take it.”

  She took the cup, sipped it and coughed. “Wow,” she said. “Black death in a cup.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I like it,” he admitted.

  “I’ll tart it up with cream downstairs.”

  Eric followed her down into the kitchen, where two extremely large men sat at her kitchen table, hunched over a laptop. One she recognized as Eric’s older brother.

  Both men got to their feet as she approached them.

  “Hey, Anton,” she said, shaking his hand, then extending it to the other man. “And…?”

  “Nate. Sorry to descend on you like this. We didn’t want to stress you out.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Eric tells me you’re here to help. I appreciate that.” She smiled at them, and jerked her chin in the direction of the tray of goodies on the bar. “How’s Elisa’s breakfast buffet?”

  Nate and Anton looked at each other, alarmed. “Ah…great,” Nate said.

  “Eric said you made a big impression on her.” Demi tried to keep a straight face.

  “All I can say is, do not mess with that girl,” Nate said, with feeling. “Because she will fuck you up.”

  “Good to know.” Demi grabbed the cream out of the fridge and made the coffee drinkable. “What are you guys looking at on that laptop?”

  “We sent a drone up to GodsAcre,” Anton said.

  Demi choked and sputtered on her coffee and grabbed a napkin. “Really? What did you find up there?”

&nbs
p; “Nothing,” Eric said grimly. “So far.”

  Demi came around behind them to look into the screen. “Show me.”

  They did so, flying the drone slowly over the entire property, lingering finally over the scene of the mortal confrontation that had taken place the night before.

  The bodies and the injured men were gone. There were just indistinct stains of blood on the earth where one of the men had shot himself in the thigh.

  “All gone,” she whispered. “But who moved them?”

  “None of those men were in any condition to drive,” Eric said. “Or walk. Somebody was watching what happened, and he moved fast. He had a team on call. The means to haul two bodies out of a deep muddy pit in pitch darkness.”

  “We saw Otis’s pictures,” Demi said. “There was a whole fleet of cars up there when he took them. Plus all those big earth-movers.”

  Eric nodded. “Whatever this is, it’s big, and well-funded, and it’s been going on for a long time.”

  “And then there’s the death pen,” Demi said. “They killed my parents with it. And tried to kill me and Eric.”

  Eric stared at his brother, a look of challenge in his eyes. “Will you come back here and help me fight this thing?”

  Anton nodded reluctantly. “I need a few days to wrap some stuff up. I have some shows left to do this week, one in Vegas, one in Portland, and one in Seattle, but I can reschedule all the ones that are farther out. Nate will stay with you guys until I find someone good to take over. Excuse me for a second. I’m going to try to get Mace on the phone again.”

  “I gotta bring the Ghost back down,” Nate said. “She’s got just enough juice now to make it home.”

  Nate followed Anton out, the remote in his hand, leaving her alone with Eric.

  Demi leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping her coffee. “So,” she said to him. “Things were so intense last night, I don’t think I said thank you. Again.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I don’t want thanks.”

  “But here you are, making like you have to save me. Protect me.”

  He shrugged. “Well, yes. Duh.”