All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Deadly Reunion
Copyright © 2015 Odette C. Bell
A Deadly Reunion was previously published under the title An Unlucky Reunion.
Cover art photos: sexy detective woman holding gun silhouette © STYLEPICS, A group of men © Iurii, Mountain lake © muha04, and ancient map of the world © javarman. Licensed from Depositphotos.
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A Deadly Reunion
EPISODE ONE
CHAPTER 1
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I stared at the road signs before me. I had my phone set to GPS, but the gobbledygook instructions it suggested had already seen me drive into a field, a forest, and a freaking quarry. This town was so backwater even the modern age shied away from mapping it.
I craned my neck, narrowed my eyes, and crept forward in my hire car. I was half on the verge, the tires crunching over the grass and rock. I needn’t have worried about obstructing the flow of traffic though, as there were no other vehicles around.
The road was dead. Because the town was dead. In fact, it had never been alive.
Wetlake City.
The place I’d grown up and promptly escaped from once I had landed a driver’s license and my first pay check.
Well, now I was back.
Reluctantly.
Really, really reluctantly.
My family had long since moved away from this place, and I had no good reason to visit the scene of my uneventful childhood. I had a bad reason though. A rotten one.
A high school reunion.
I took my hand off the wheel for a second and flattened it against my head, pushing my shoulder-length mousy-brown hair out of my eyes.
“Oh man,” I whimpered, blasting another breath up and against my face.
I hated high school. I’d hated it when I’d had the displeasure of attending, and I still hated it now, all these years later.
Yet I was still going to my reunion. Why? Because my mother had convinced me to go, of course. She’d tried regaling me with stories of how much she’d enjoyed her own reunions over the years, and when that hadn’t worked, she’d appealed to my job instead.
“Just think of all the people you can watch and lives you can observe,” she’d said. “Now’s your chance to find out if the popular kids in school made it or crashed and burned. You’ll be able to study their successes and failures for your fabulous books! You’re always going on about how you’re over high school, well now it’s your chance to prove it.”
I’d tried to ignore her advice, but she’d won out. In typical motherly style, she’d appealed to my ego while offering a challenge. I did spend a lot of time talking and writing about how much I’d grown out of high school and grown up in the process.
I had a successful string of self-help romance books on the market. In them, I often harped on about how important it was to move on from your past.
Now was my chance to prove I could do that myself. Hence the hire car and the cynicism.
It took me a long time, but I found the right street. Wetlake was up in the mountains, near a lake – a wet one, funnily enough – and the city was like a damn rabbit warren of tracks and winding woodland roads.
With a bit of luck and a couple of foggy memories, I located my motel.
I pulled up into the car park, and took my time before I yanked up the park brake and opened my door.
I took a sobering moment to stare at the motel before me.
Drab, styled in shades of “70s brick cladding and brown, plastic window frames, it was an eyesore. Though I could have afforded to stay in better style, I’d booked late, and this was the only place in town with any vacancies.
Narrowing my gaze as I took in the ugliness that was the Lake Motel, I actually let out a snarl. A quiet and private one.
Whispering to myself to “come on,” I flipped the button under the dash to open the trunk. Taking angry, forceful steps, I grabbed my luggage and dumped it on the gravel.
Before I could muster the courage to find the front desk to rustle up my keys, I paused again.
This time something caught my eye.
Heels. Sparkly ones. Knock offs too, if I was any judge.
Following the sparkle up to the legs, body, and face, I found myself frowning as something slowly clicked into place.
The woman who had caught my attention was wearing a seriously tight-fitting black dress that was pulled up on one side, and she had a small designer bag dangling off her shoulder, likely another knock off.
Yet it wasn’t the clothes and their trademark-infringing origins that got to me, neither was it the sultry, dancer-like walk.
It was the hair.
The blinding blond hair that was backcombed and had so much body you would have been forgiven for thinking it belonged in an “80s music video.
A name came to my lips and pushed its way out in a harsh whisper, “Nancy.”
Holy crap. The chick in the knock-off heels had to be Nancy Harrison. The most popular girl in my senior class. Voted most likely to succeed, she’d been the Prom Queen too. She’d ruled the roost. She’d gone out with Denver and Thorne Scott – Wetlake High’s hottest brothers. She’d also spent her reign torturing me and the other kids who had never fitted in.
Wow.
Before I could do anything radical – like running over to ask Nancy whether a lifetime of stilettos had caused permanent skeletal damage – a car pulled up beside me. I glanced to the side automatically, and then I stopped.
Well gosh darn.
Denver Scott.
The Denver Scott.
I recognized him immediately. Of course I did. I’d only spent the majority of English class scribbling out his likeness on the back of my pencil case.
If Nancy had been the undisputed queen of Wetlake High, then Denver was her king. A freaking handsome one too.
Not wanting to be caught staring at the guy, I neatened my luggage and then mucked around in the trunk as I surreptitiously shot Denver a long, calculating look.
He was wearing a suit. Though it fitted him well, it was a little too tight around the neck and pulled to the left a bit. It was also a fairly run-of-the-mill style, and while the fabric looked sturdy, it clearly wasn’t from Milan or Paris.
Tucking my hair behind my ears, I reached into my trunk and muscled my suitcase out. As I straightened, I shot him another careful glance.
He was bigger – which wasn’t so much of a surprise considering I hadn’t seen him since our senior year. Denver had filled out though, grown up, and now had his fair share of fine wrinkles around his eyes and tucked in at the edges of his mouth. If the dim light coming in from the room in front of us didn’t deceive me, he also had a few flecks of gray glinting out from behind his ears.
This made me smile. I’d met too many men who’d rolled out of bed at the tender age of twenty-five, only to shriek at the mirror when it had dared to show them their first hint of gray.
Some fellas didn’t handle aging well.
Some did. Denver appeared to be managing the first wrinkles and greys of his creeping maturity in style. Though he was hardly that old at the tender age of thirty, the point was, he certainly wasn’t eighteen anymore.
Before I could continue my in-depth analysis of the man, he hefted a single bag off the seat beside him, slammed his door, and walked off.
While I craned my neck to watch, he marched quickly across the scant lawn beyond the car park and du
cked into the main office.
I stood there a moment, pushing my teeth into my lips, and then I hefted my luggage and followed.
Far from being angry at the prospect of my impending school reunion anymore, I was now intrigued.
Clearly, my mother had been right. As long as I could keep a level head and remember I wasn’t actually in high school anymore, this could be a lot of fun. I hadn’t seen any of these people for years. Who knew where their lives had taken them or if they’d even made it out of Wetlake?
And far more importantly, who knew if Denver Scott was single?
Chuckling and muttering to myself that I was a very bad girl, I got my keys, found my room, and turned in for the night.
Tomorrow the fun would begin. Before it could, I had to remind myself of one thing.
I wasn’t the same spotty, goofy teenager anymore.
I’d changed.
It was time to show Wetlake how much.
Chapter 2
I got up that morning ready to go. I didn’t even have to wait for my phone’s alarm to go off; I woke up with a start, my mind spinning.
It was the day of the reunion.
I was excited. I had no earthly reason to be so, but I couldn’t deny the twist of nerves spiraling its way around my stomach.
I wanted to see how people had turned out.
I wanted to see if they’d changed, or if I’d been the only one to go off to reinvent myself completely.
Jumping out of bed and not caring that I sent the blankets tumbling onto the floor, I padded over to my open suitcase and pulled out the black dress I was going to wear. It had a decent neckline – nothing X-rated, but not something that would be passed around a nunnery either. I had a pair of sensible, but still fashionable, low, suede heels, and a pair of sheer stockings to match. I also had a nice woven cashmere shawl to top it all off. It was going to be cold out there, after all.
Though I tried to forget most of my life in Wetlake, I remembered the cold.
This place was freezing. Even in summer it was liable to sudden snowstorms and winds that could lift the hairs on a Scotsman’s legs.
I also knew the reunion was being held on the lawn just outside the school, hence the sensible shoes, stockings, and shawl. I didn’t want to freeze my ass off while engaging in stilted conversation with people I hadn’t seen since fourth-period chemistry class.
Picking up my dress and flattening it to my chest as I caught my reflection in the mirrors covering the built-in wardrobe, I cast a calculating gaze over my appearance.
I wasn’t classically beautiful, but neither was I a lump of unloved clay. I was somewhere in the middle. Which was exactly where you wanted to be.
Feeling satisfied with my choice of outfits, I wandered into the bathroom and started to brush my hair. Once I was done, I patted my fingers across my eyebrows, giving them a careful look as I reached for the tweezers.
Just as my hand hovered over them, I stopped.
I heard something from outside. There was a small window lodged high into the wall. It was right above the toilet, and it was open just a crack. It’d been like that when I’d come into the room, and I’d left it that way, figuring management rightly demanded their bathrooms have aeration.
Well, now it was letting in the low mumble of a voice.
I couldn’t understand what was being said – the thick bathroom wall was in the way – but I could pick out something.
The tone.
It was an angry one. Fraught even.
I started to frown, and I turned towards the window.
I stared at it and took a step forward.
As I did, the voice stopped.
Just as I turned back to the mirror, tweezers still in hand, the voice started up again.
It was angrier than before.
My lips pulled down naturally as I teetered there on my tiptoes, trying to get as close to the open window as I could without daring to make a sound.
Just as I got the brash idea to close the toilet seat and stand up on the toilet itself, the voice abruptly stopped, and I heard quick and heavy footfall leading away from the window.
I waited there anxiously until it was gone completely.
Then I scrunched up my lips, plucked up my tweezers, and went back to what I was doing.
Because it had just been a voice, right? Likely someone having an argument on their phone, or a member of the motel staff venting where they thought no one could hear them – or something equally as innocent and trivial.
Despite my enthusiasm to discount it, I found my mind going back to that strange incident as I dressed, finished a modest breakfast, and made my way outside to my waiting car.
I even paused with my hand on the door before I clambered inside. I stared up at the motel, then behind it to the pitching gray sky beyond. There were clouds sweeping in off the mountains, all shades of navy blue and messy white. No doubt rain was on the way, or snow or hail or the storm of the millennium, knowing Wetlake City. Yet even the promise of inclement weather wasn’t enough to stop me from gently closing my door and heading off around the car park towards the back of my motel room.
Curiosity got the better of me.
Though the voice had been quick, mumbled, and decidedly angry, here and there I’d been able to pick up the occasional word.
Coming.
That’s it.
I didn’t know if something was coming or someone was going to get what was coming to them, or if I’d even heard right in the first place.
Wrapping my red-and-gold cashmere shawl around my shoulders to stave off the wind, I made my way onto the grass that surrounded the motel buildings. Placing a hand on the brick wall nearest me, as I navigated through an uneven section of terrain, I couldn’t deny my heart skipped a beat.
I had no idea what I would find back there.
While my rational mind told me it would be nothing, my imagination fancied there could be anything from a moody woodsman to a disgruntled staff member defiling the walls with threats to their boss.
I was lucky my heels weren’t too high, as I quickly found that the staff didn’t maintain the upkeep the lawn past the front gate. The grass was up around my ankles, and it concealed holes and rocks and quite possibly centuries of used beer cans.
As a frightfully chilly wind came racing in off the pine trees at the back of the motel grounds, I shuddered and pulled my shawl all the way around my shoulders.
Then I reached it. The back of my motel room. I’d had to count the half-open bathroom windows to ensure I was in the right position.
Now I took a step in, placing a hand flat on the wall as I surveyed it carefully.
I really didn’t know what I was looking for. There certainly weren’t any people, and neither was there a handy transcript of the mumbled, one-sided conversation I’d heard before.
For heaven’s sake, what was I doing?
Chiding myself and rolling my eyes, I took one last, flickering look at the wall and grass around it, and then turned sharply on my heel to walk off.
I stopped.
I frowned.
I leaned down, pushed the long, lush grass back, and plucked up a pin with a bright blue top.
It looked new. How new, I couldn’t tell, but it certainly wasn’t covered in dirt, weathered, or rusted.
Pushing my pursed lips into my teeth, I stared at it for a moment, then casually tossed it over my shoulder and went to head back to my car.
“Are you littering?”
I jumped about a mile, my heart practically popping in my chest.
“Jesus Christ,” I spat, turning to see a man making his way along the back of the building towards me.
It wasn’t management, and neither was it a lost and angry woodsman.
It was Denver freaking Scott.
I could have stood there for a full minute with my mouth open, reminiscing over how much of a crush I’d had over that guy in high school.
Instead I pulled myself together and straigh
tened my shawl.
“No.” I gave him a stern look. “I found the pin on the ground, and I returned it to the ground.”
“And what exactly are you doing around here?” he was dressed in the exact same suit he’d worn yesterday when I’d surreptitiously stared at him from my car. Except in the daylight the effect was slightly different; the greys and blacks of the wool served to darken his stubble and accentuate the dusty, dark look to his eyes, making him appear all the more rugged.
Before I could swoon as my teenage dreams overcame me, I simply arched an eyebrow.
I was no longer in high school.
Patti Smith was a completely different girl to the one Wetlake High had once known. I wasn’t flighty, I wasn’t pathetic, and god knows I knew my rights.
“Well, stranger,” I said, emphasizing the s like a hiss, “if you must know, I overheard someone talking angrily outside my motel room. And I thought I’d come and have a look.”
I told the truth; I had no reason not to. Well, kind of the truth – Denver Scott was no stranger to me. But I didn’t want to introduce myself as Patti Smith, the supremely awkward girl from his English class, until the party. I didn’t want him to know I’d recognized him. I certainly didn’t want him to know that I had his likeness sketched crudely into a pencil case for reference.
Denver paused. As he did, his lips thinned out, and one side tugged down in a half frown. “What kind of an argument?”
“I don’t know; I didn’t really hear. I guess they were on their phone or something, and thought the back of the motel was a private place for a rant.” I shrugged my shoulders, but I was sure to keep one eyebrow raised the entire time. “Now, if you’re done here, you can either introduce yourself, or maybe I should get out of your way so you can continue to stake out the back of the motel, looking for strangers to relentlessly question.” I flashed him a hard smile.
It was a strange smile too, but purposefully so. It was neither totally sarcastic, nor entirely friendly. It was somewhere in between. It was a move designed to get someone’s attention and to keep it.
It worked. Denver stared at me, his eyebrows crumpling. “Do I know you? Are you here for the reunion?”
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