Then they came to a plateau with a sparse clearing. “This is it,” McCoy said.
“It’s what?”
“It’s where I’m supposed to leave the case.”
Julie nodded. McCoy set the case down.
“Now what?” Julie asked.
He swore softly. “Now we go back to the phone.”
“No!” Julie exclaimed suddenly.
“No? What do you mean, no?”
She shook her head fervently. “Tracy isn’t here. She’s—” Julie paused. “She’s near the river. She can’t hear the water rushing now because he’s buried her. She couldn’t even hear it once he had dragged her up. But she could see it. She could see it from the rock. And he thought it was funny. Really funny when he buried her. He kept laughing. He was careful, he didn’t talk. But he laughed. There was something funny about it. Something really funny. He was so proud of himself. For being so bold. And he has no intention of letting her out.”
“Where is she?” McCoy demanded harshly. He dropped the briefcase at his feet and grabbed Julie’s shoulders. Roughly, he swung her around, studying her intensely. “Damn you, where is she? And if you’re wrong, Julie Hatfield, I’ll wring you out and hang you up to dry myself!”
“I’m not wrong!” she gasped. “I’m not wrong!” Julie shook her head. “She’s not here, not here, not here …”
She paused, feeling the sensations as they began to steal over her. Tracy …
Tracy, where are you?
It came to her, slowly, then more quickly. Then frantically.
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe …
What happened, where are you?
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, Mommy, where are you, please, I’m so scared …
Tracy …
And then Julie was with Tracy. She was with her as it had happened.
He was there. The kidnapper. And she was Tracy.
She was over his shoulder. He was panting, and they were climbing. Higher and higher. There were people around. No one could see Tracy, though. She was packed up like painting equipment. Lots of people sketched or painted here. They stopped, they milled around. They chatted, they saw things. Saw the rock, saw the water. Saw …
Tracy couldn’t see, though. There was canvas over her head. She was still so dopey. She knew she needed to cry out. She couldn’t. She felt him climbing. She’d been here before. It was so obvious.
And it was getting dark. Nearly dark. The people were gone, there were no lights. It was perfect. Such a perfect place to bury someone. And he had planned it all out. The hole was there, the box was there …
“Damnation!” McCoy shouted suddenly.
Julie’s eyes flew open. She had been talking out loud, she realized. Describing what she had seen—and what she hadn’t seen.
“What?” she cried.
“Come on, hurry up, I know the place you’re talking about.”
He had the briefcase in his left hand, her fingers in his right. With her in tow, he began to plunge down the mountainside, running, balancing, running harder.
She stumbled. He paused to pick her up. He halfway carried her all the way to the car.
Then he was on his radio, calling Petty. Demanding that he get the cars to the cemetery, telling him to get people up there right away.
It took them at least ten minutes to drive into town and park the car among all the official cars already there.
Then there was the climb up the pathway to the old cemetery.
When they reached it, Petty already had search lights going. He saw them across the broken and angled tombstones as they arrived. “Robert, are you sure?”
McCoy said something. Julie stopped in her tracks. Yes, yes, this was it!
Tracy, where are you?
Can’t … breathe. Mommy, want Mommy, can’t…
She could hear it. Julie could hear the awful, ragged, desperate sound as Tracy Nicholson struggled for the last of her air.
Julie spun around. She could hear it …
“There, over there!” she cried.
McCoy was ahead of her. “There’s dirt plowed up here!” he shouted. There was a man nearby with a shovel. Without a word McCoy snatched it up and began to dig. Julie was quickly by his side. “Hurry, oh, hurry.”
Mommy, Mommy, Mommy … can’t breathe …
“Please, dear God, hurry!” Julie cried frantically. A pick lay nearby. Men were running toward them, but she was so desperate. She grabbed the pick and slammed into the ground.
Someone else was there. She looked up. It was one of Petty’s regular men. Joe Silver. He smiled at her. “Julie, I’m stronger. Hand it over.”
She did.
Joe swung the pick while McCoy shoveled.
“Easy!” she cried suddenly to Joe. The shovel struck something hard. She was afraid that the pick might crash through wood and enter into delicate flesh.
“It’s some kind of a coffin, I think,” McCoy said.
“It’s a cemetery! There’s probably hundreds of coffins up here!” Petty roared.
But not like this coffin, Julie knew. Her chest hurt. She couldn’t speak because she couldn’t breathe.
Tracy Nicholson was in that coffin, in the square box deep down in the hole. This time, the kidnapper had employed a truly bizarre sense of the macabre. Had his victim died, there would be no need to move her. Had she never been found, hundreds of years from now she might have been dug up just like any other corpse in the graveyard.
“Julie—” Petty began.
“Hurry!” She felt as if her chest were caving in on her. She gasped, deeply, desperately, drawing in air. “It’s Tracy. She only has minutes left. He never intended to return her. Never.”
Maybe Robert McCoy didn’t believe in her, but he answered the desperation in her voice. He was down in the hole, having discarded the thought of attempting to drag up the box. Heedless of the dirt, he slammed the spade against the latch on the side of the coffinlike wooden box. There was an awful, wrenching sound. His hands on the rim, he tore at it. Julie heard the groaning of wood, then the lid gave at last to the power in his arms. There was a splintering sound, and the lid popped open.
And there was Tracy Nicholson.
She was just as Julie had seen her, dressed in her jeans and her pretty white shirt and her navy sweater. Her red hair was all tangled and askew.
Her freckled face was pale. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were silent.
“Dear God—” McCoy breathed.
She couldn’t be dead, Julie thought. No, she just couldn’t be dead. She would know; she would feel the loss.
McCoy had the silent girl in his arms and quickly stretched out on the ground. His fingers closed her nostrils as his lips descended over the girl’s mouth, forcing air into her lungs.
Once, twice, three times …
Suddenly the little girl gasped, choked, coughed and choked again. Her little chest rose and fell on its own. “Oh, thank God!” Julie shrieked. McCoy moved aside. Tracy’s eyes were opening. She looked right at Julie.
“Thanks,” she mouthed softly.
Her eyes closed again, but she was still breathing. Evenly.
A cheer went up in the cemetery. Almost loud enough to wake the dead, Julie thought. And that was almost what they had done. A few more minutes, and there wouldn’t have been a prayer for Tracy. Julie was shaking. She had seen. Yes, she had seen Tracy. But she hadn’t seen the cemetery. She would have never made it on her own.
McCoy …
He had known what she was saying. He hadn’t believed, but he had taken a chance.
He was looking at her now. She was on her knees in the middle of all the dirt that he had dug up. She was covered in it.
So was he.
“Make way for the medics!” someone called.
“Her parents are here, down on the street,” someone else said.
“Here’s the doctor!”
“And her folks!”
The Nicholsons didn’t notice
either McCoy or Julie as they rushed for Tracy. “My baby!” Louisa shrieked. Tracy’s eyes opened at the sound of her mother’s voice. She didn’t seem to have any strength, but she could talk.
“Mommy! I called you. I called you and called you.”
“And I’m here, my dearest, I’m here, I’m here.”
Tracy was quickly wrapped in her mother’s arms. Martin Nicholson supported his wife as she stood with their child. The two of them turned away, stunned with the wonder of their daughter’s return.
People were following behind them, Petty and Joe Silver and some of the other officers. The hole in the earth still lay gaping open. There would be investigative work on it. Fingerprints would be taken, the area would be searched for the minute clues.
But for the moment, it was just a hole. This time, the grave had been cheated.
They were nearly alone. And McCoy was still staring at Julie. Then suddenly his arms were on her and he was lifting her, nearly throwing her into the air.
“Damn it, we did it! We made this one, we made it!”
And as he dropped her, she came sliding down against his chest. She felt the tight, hot ripple of muscle in his arms, in his torso. She felt the silver fever of his eyes, blazing into hers.
Then she felt the rough, searing enthusiasm of his kiss as his lips suddenly and passionately covered hers.
Lightning seemed to strike. Julie might have heard thunder crashing across the heavens.
Heat, startling, sweet, astounding, swept in her and throughout her.
He started to raise his lips, started to pull away.
But he did not …
His mouth settled more firmly on hers, and his arms wound around her. A searing pressure forced her lips to part for his. The amazing fever held her still in his grip, responding almost savagely to his touch, tasting his mouth, savoring the feel …
Oh, no! This just couldn’t be right. She wanted to go on and on.
She barely knew him.
No, she had met him in a dream.
Demon or lover?
She didn’t know. All she did know was that the electricity was nearly more than she could bear, that she had never felt like this about any man, anywhere, be it real or in a dream. And it was wrong. He didn’t even believe in her …
But she didn’t pull away. He was the one to do so, his arms still around her, his eyes a silver fire as they stared into hers.
“Now this—is madness!” he said hoarsely.
Julie pulled furiously away from him. They were alone with an open grave site and dozens of broken-down tombstones. Voices were growing faint in the distance.
“Yes, it is. You don’t even like me, do you?” Julie accused him.
“I never said that—”
“Well, it is certainly extreme madness,” Julie insisted. “The moon is out, that’s my only excuse. Really. A handshake would have sufficed!” Confused, flushed, dismayed, she turned, nearly stumbling over one of the old tombstones. He caught her arm. She wrenched it free. “Good night, Mr. McCoy.” Determined not to trip again, Julie kept walking. She heard his soft laughter behind her.
“Miss Hatfield?”
“What?”
“Am I going to see you again?”
“No!”
Again, his laughter touched her. She spun in a new fury. “All right, McCoy, what is it now?”
“All right, Miss Hatfield. You’re the psychic. But you’re wrong. I will see you again. I’m very certain of it.”
And smiling like a self-satisfied cat, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his black leather jacket and sauntered confidently past her.
Chapter 4
McCoy was right.
Julie did see him again, and much sooner than—but certainly not where—she had expected.
Just five days later she saw him in church, sitting just a few rows ahead of her. He was with a tall, slim woman with dark sandy hair and two children. An uneasiness spread throughout her. She hadn’t thought that he could be married.
No, she couldn’t be his wife. Not even someone with McCoy’s inborn arrogance could have kissed her the way he did if he had a wife.
Still …
When the woman turned enough so that Julie could see her face, she saw that the woman was beautiful. She had bright blue eyes and fine, stunning features. At her side was a little girl, maybe a year or two older than Tracy Nicholson. She had soft, pale blond hair that waved down her back. She must have sensed Julie watching her, because she turned and her eyes met Julie’s. She smiled. It was a wonderful smile.
Then the boy turned, too. He was about twelve. His eyes weren’t blue. They were that steel gray color, just like McCoy’s.
So he did have a wife and family …
No, he couldn’t have. She was certain she would have known.
Maybe not. Inner sight could be blind at the strangest times.
The woman, realizing that the two children were staring at someone or something behind them, turned, too. Of course, she caught Julie staring right at her.
She smiled.
Well, it was time.
McCoy turned, too.
He wasn’t in his black jacket, but neither had he really dressed for church. No one really dressed up in the spring and early summer; they didn’t want the many tourists in the area to feel awkward for dressing casually. Julie was casual herself in a short denim skirt and short-sleeved tailored white blouse. A little bit of warmth went a long way. She was wearing sandals and no stockings.
McCoy wore black trousers and a turquoise knit shirt. The buttons were open at his neck. She didn’t meet his eyes. She was staring at the tiny space of chest covered with coarse, sandy whorls of hair that was just visible at the opening of his shirt. He was tanned, so the skin beneath the springy feel of hair would be bronze. And tight. He was very well muscled. A powerful man. She had noted that when he had ripped the coffin open, and she had felt it the several times that he had touched her.
Her eyes met his. She was suddenly convinced that Robert McCoy had a few powers of his own. He’d been reading her mind. And of course, her mind had been on his body.
Right in the middle of the last amen!
He smiled. Smiled just as he had the night they had found Tracy. Smiled like a man who knew something. As if he held something over her.
She nodded briefly, then tore her eyes from his and looked straight ahead.
But by then, the service was ending. And when she slipped from her pew and started out, she stiffened. She didn’t need to turn to realize that he was right behind her.
As soon as they stepped from the church and into the daylight, she felt his hand on her arm, stopping her. “Why, Miss Hatfield! Good morning. Were you in there praying for divine guidance?”
She spun, smiling sweetly. “On the contrary, Mr. McCoy. No one wants to see things that others don’t.”
He arched a doubting brow, then turned quickly as the woman he had been with emerged from the church. “Julie Hatfield, this is my sister, Brenda Maitland. Of course, underneath she’s really a McCoy. Being as you’re a Hatfield, I feel obliged to remind you of such a thing.”
“Oh, Miss Hatfield!” Brenda Maitland extended a hand to her and offered her a broad smile. “How nice to meet you. And how very wonderful that the two of you found that little girl.” She shivered, looking up the cliff toward the old cemetery. The church was on the pathway that led to the burial ground. The view from the church was stunning. There was the street, which was part of the National Park Service now, handsome with its ages-old buildings. And there were the rivers, the Shenandoah meeting the Potomac, beautiful blue with little whitecaps as water rushed over rapids. Then there were the mountains stretching onward, the spring greenery of Maryland Heights.
To reach the church from the valley below was easy enough. Some of the original settlers had carved steps right out of the rock. The climb became more difficult once there were no more steps, but the mountain residents were accustomed to climbs. I
t was the tourists who panted as they walked the trek to Jefferson rock and onward to the cemetery.
But all in all, it was a long climb to reach that cemetery.
“We’re so close to where it all happened. Imagine! Someone managed to bring that box up there, dig a big hole, then drag that poor little girl up, and no one even noticed all of it going on!”
It was extraordinary, Julie thought. Especially when they were already into the spring tourist season.
“But it turned out well, at least,” Julie said.
“Are you really a witch?”
Julie started at the softly spoken question that seemed to come from nowhere. She looked down. The little girl with her mother’s blue eyes and the beautiful cascade of blond hair was standing right before her.
“A witch?” Julie repeated.
“Well, Uncle Robert said that—”
“Tammy!” Brenda said, distraught.
“Did I say witch?” McCoy asked, his hands on his niece’s shoulders, his eyes sizzling as they touched Julie’s with no apology whatsoever.
Fine. Julie looked from McCoy to his niece. “I don’t cook with toads or snake’s eyes or anything like that, if that’s what you mean. I’m sorry.”
“But you are a witch in a way, right?” Tammy insisted.
“Well, I think your uncle is convinced that I am,” Julie said sweetly.
“Let me finish the introductions,” McCoy interrupted. Still no apology, but he was suddenly determined not to let it go any further. “This impudent little piece of baggage is Tammy Maitland. And my nephew here is Taylor Maitland. We were on our way to Sunday brunch. Care to join us?”
“Oh, no, I—” Julie began.
“Oh, please!” Tammy insisted.
“I really—”
“Please? I promise, I won’t ask you anything more about being a witch!”
Julie gazed at the little girl. What if I told you that your uncle really doesn’t like me? That I spent the majority of a night with him and he still didn’t believe in a single thing I told him?
“Please, do come,” Brenda insisted. “Of course, I suppose that you have been hounded. Robert was saying that you were lucky you’re not an official, and that you could crawl away to that house of yours up in the mountain. The station was just plagued with phone calls from newspapers and the television stations. Fending off the media is worse than coping with the criminals at times, so my brother tells me. We really won’t plague you. Yes, we will, but just a little.”
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