by Jean Thomas
“What are you doing?” he challenged Brenna when he glanced over and saw her lowering the passenger window. “We’ve got air-conditioning operating in here.”
“I know, but I’d rather breathe the warm, outside air.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she explained, her head practically hanging out the window, “it carries such wonderful scents. Can you smell them? The cinnamon, the nutmeg and that sweet fragrance...that’s frangipani. I saw it growing at the villa. They’re enough to make you drunk on them.”
“If you say so,” Casey said. Personally, he’d much rather be inhaling Brenna’s own faint, flowery scent, which he’d been enjoying with a sensual freedom before she’d opened the window.
Maybe she was drunk. That might explain why, after traveling another mile down the road, she cried out, “Pull over!”
God Almighty, was he about to hit a goat? The nuisances seemed to be wandering everywhere on the island, often in the road. Casey dutifully parked at the side of the highway, where he was reminded that scents weren’t enough for Brenna.
“What now?”
“The flamboyant tree over there! Isn’t it magnificent?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. The tree was in full bloom, like a crimson torch. Why hadn’t he remembered that scents alone wouldn’t satisfy her? Brenna lived for color. It was a heady wine for her.
Casey recalled how she never wore drab colors if she could help it. And even on those rare, formal occasions, like her gallery showings, when she wore a form-fitting black dress that emphasized her hips and breasts, she’d always managed to accent it with a bright neck scarf or a carefully selected piece of jewelry.
You remember too much about her, McBride. Not healthy. Not when you’re no longer a couple.
He needed to stop being aware of her beside him. Needed to stop thinking about her and Bradley. He had no right to any jealousy. Concern, yes. Because, like her brother, he didn’t trust Marcus Bradley and Brenna’s living arrangement with him. Just that. Nothing else, he ordered himself.
They moved on up the highway, Brenna switching from flowers to birds. Scarlet ibises, a blue tanager, jeweled hummingbirds. They were as plentiful as the flowers.
Or they were until she instructed him to leave the highway for the road that would take them up into the highlands.
“Where are they?” she wondered. “All the flowers and birds?”
She was right. There was suddenly none of them in evidence. The contrast between the shore highway behind them and the road here was startling, with its dark, shadowed green growth close on either side of them. Like an impenetrable jungle, Casey thought.
Brenna was silent now as they traveled along the gloomy tunnel. Even the engine seemed quieter to him.
“It’s...weird, isn’t it?” she finally remarked. “Not the same St. Sebastian at all.”
“Another one, anyhow. Ah, here we go. Sunshine up ahead again.”
The Toyota emerged from the dim passage that was the road into the open. The change should have been encouraging, cheerful even. Somehow, it wasn’t.
The thick forest was still off to their left, but on the right the land had been cleared away to accommodate expansive fields. They must have once grown crops, but now they were nothing but weeds.
“What’s left of an old sugar plantation, I bet,” Brenna said. “I read in the guidebook that in the slave days the island once exported a lot of sugar.”
Casey had slowed the car to a crawl. “Understandable,” he responded. “But with the land no longer cultivated, what’s with the fence?”
It was not an old fence. It was a modern, high cyclone fence that seemed to enclose the entire property. He stopped the Toyota in front of a pair of padlocked gates.
Behind them, in the distance up a narrow driveway, was a galleried mansion from another century. Shuttered, it looked abandoned and decaying.
“They called a place like that the great house in the plantation days,” she said.
“Yeah, but why would the security of a fence and locked gates be necessary now? It’s odd.”
“It’s eerie, is what it is. Come on, Casey,” she urged with a shudder, “let’s go on.”
He didn’t argue with her. He sent the silver chariot, as she’d referred to it back at the airport, along the road again.
The route began to climb, winding into the first of the highlands. The vegetation thinned again here.
Rounding a bend, Casey sighted what seemed to be a small, dilapidated general store at the side of the road. He pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of it.
“Why are we stopping here?” Brenna wanted to know.
“I’m thirsty. Let’s see if we can get a couple of bottles of water. And while we’re at it, maybe some answers.”
Chapter 3
The area was modest in size, but every foot of it was crammed from floor to ceiling with merchandise. Had there been time for it, Brenna would have treated herself to a tour of those shelves. Mixed in with a jumble of modern products were such old-fashioned wares as rolls of fly paper and dust-coated, metal electric fans.
A curtain of beads hung in a doorway at the rear. Suddenly it rattled, parting for a young black man who appeared from a back room wearing one of the island’s famous smiles and a head of dyed orange hair.
“Welcome to de store,” he greeted them. “What can I git for you?”
Brenna knew that St. Sebastian had been British owned before it was granted the independence it had requested. This explained the English that was spoken by the native population, although with a flavor of its own possessing a melodic cadence she loved to hear. This young man’s speech was a strong example of that.
“We’d like two bottles of water,” Casey said. “Cold, please, if you have them.”
“What you tink? We don’t have cold here?” Chuckling, he turned away, removed a pair of bottled waters from a cooler and placed them on the counter he stood behind.
Casey paid for them and handed one of the bottles to Brenna.
“De steel band, dey play tonight in Georgetown. Dey something when dey come togedder. Tickets don’t cost you much.”
“Maybe another time,” Casey said. “But there is something I’d like to ask.”
“Sure.”
“We passed this old plantation back down the road. The one with the high fence around it. What can you tell us about it?”
The exuberant smile on the clerk’s face vanished. He was no longer looking at them. His gaze had shifted to something behind them.
Mystified, Brenna turned. An equally puzzled Casey also twisted around. No one else had entered the store. She figured the clerk must be staring through the front window at what was outside.
And this, she convinced herself, was another car that hadn’t been there when she and Casey arrived. It was parked directly across the way at the side of the road, an old sedan as dark a green as the deeply shadowed stretch of jungle she’d been grateful to leave behind them.
The window on the driver’s side of the car had been lowered, revealing the figure at the wheel. He was looking in their direction, a man with a Nordic face, a buzz cut, and cold, blue eyes.
Brenna and Casey faced the clerk again, waiting for the answer to Casey’s question. His dark gaze turned reluctantly back to them.
“Mon, we don’t talk about dat place.”
“Why is that?” Casey persisted.
“You givin’ me too much worry,” he mumbled.
They were clearly being dismissed.
The green sedan was gone when they left the store.
“What was that all about?” Brenna wondered when they’d settled themselves in their own car. “The guy was spooked. You could see it in his face.”
Casey shook his head. “Dunno. Maybe our mystery plantation is haunted, and the guy in the green heap is its ghost.”
“With old legends in the West Indies so common, that’s not so funny.”
“But nothing to do with us.
” Casey started the Toyota and backed out onto the road. “Come on, let’s go find your waterfall.”
His intention wasn’t so simply achieved. A mile or so farther up the road Brenna caught a movement in the angled outside mirror on her side of the car. Leaning to the right for a better view, she was able to identify the green sedan tailing them.
She’d had no reason before this to check the road behind them, but it did seem that the vehicle had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Tempting as it was, she resisted the urge to call it a phantom. Casey would have loved teasing her about more ghosts.
“Casey—”
“Yeah, I see him. Spotted him in my rearview,” he said, indicating the driver’s mirror above his head.
“Um, you don’t think he’s deliberately following us? I mean, his car back at the store was headed in the direction we’re going. Now he’s somehow ended up behind us.”
“Could be he waited off on some side lane for us to pass and then pulled out.”
“But why? Why should he want to follow us?”
Casey had no explanation for her. His only response after a few seconds was a simple request. “Break out that map of yours again, will you?”
“You want me to see if that side lane behind us does exist?”
“Nope. I want you to see if there’s another road ahead of us branching off this one.”
That didn’t make sense to her. “For what reason?”
“I want to test something.”
Brenna waited for a further explanation, but again he gave her none. Grumbling to herself, she consulted the map as he’d asked.
“There is another road up ahead on the right, but it doesn’t make any more sense than your wanting to know it’s there.”
“Why is that?”
“Because after winding all over the place, it ends up looping back to join this one. And this one is a much shorter, more direct route to the falls.”
“The other road...lots of twists and turns, huh?”
“Yes.”
Casey nodded, looking satisfied. Why, she couldn’t imagine, and this time she didn’t bother asking him.
“I suppose,” she theorized, “since its being there at all doesn’t make sense when it doesn’t go anywhere but back to this road, it must have been constructed earlier. And then this one was built later, cutting off the old one to make a shorter route.”
“Sounds right. Our green sedan is still behind us,” he added, casting a fast glance into his rearview mirror. “Keep checking on it for me, will you? I’m going to be too busy before long to do it myself.”
He does love keeping me guessing, doesn’t he? Brenna thought wryly. But she obeyed his newest request, turning in her seat as much as the restraint of the belt would permit. Her view through the back window was considerably more accurate than what her outside mirror provided.
She waited a minute to report, “He’s sticking with us.”
“Coming up just ahead. Hang on.”
She did and learned why when, without slowing, Casey sharply and abruptly swung the Toyota into the side road he must have been watching for and found.
She was watching, as well. “The green demon turned, too,” she announced.
“Good.”
She understood now just what Casey was testing. He wanted to learn whether the green sedan only seemed to be following them or if this was a deliberate pursuit. Well, he’d evidently determined which was correct, but Brenna wasn’t certain it had been worth the risk.
She was even less certain of that when the Toyota bounced over a deep pothole, jolting her harshly. The road had obviously not been kept in repair. There’d been no reason to when the newer road was built. Worse than being in a rough condition with its broken pavement, it was narrow and without any guardrails. And now that they were fully in the forested highlands, with long drops over the side... Unnerving.
“Casey, this isn’t smart. The road is bad, and there’s nothing along it. If that guy tailing us is dangerous and should catch up with us out here in the middle of nowhere...”
“He won’t. I’ll lose him before that happens.”
“You’re awfully sure of yourself.”
He turned his head just long enough to favor her with one of his smug grins. “Hey, I’m an experienced FBI agent, remember? I know how to chase the bad guys and I know how to outrun them. Besides, that heap back there is in no shape to keep up with us. You’ll see.”
Maddening. He was maddening.
Moreover, Casey failed to ease his foot on the accelerator, and with the tortuous road growing more treacherous with every mile, she thought he might have realized that was imperative. He didn’t.
Brenna felt dizzy with all the rapid twists and turns. And when she found herself looking over the side into a deep gorge, and had a vision of the Toyota plunging into it, her giddiness morphed into absolute terror.
Casey’s only reaction to their perilous situation was a placid “Nice scenery up here, huh? I’d say they’re more mountains than highlands.”
“And I say I’m going to lose my breakfast if you don’t slow down.”
Much to her relief, he braked the car to, if not a crawl, at least a cautious speed. “Look,” he said.
“At what?”
“At what you were supposed to be on the lookout for. Your green demon is no longer behind us. He must have decided we weren’t worth it and headed back. Told you he’d give up.”
“Aren’t you the clever one? So, why are we stopping then?” she wondered when he pulled the Toyota over to the side and put the shift gear into Park. “The direct road can’t be much farther.”
He turned to face her. “Because I have some questions for you.”
“Such as?”
“Kind of funny, isn’t it, that some guy should turn up out of nowhere and decide to follow us?”
“Why should you imagine I would have an answer for that any more than you do?”
“I don’t know, Brenna. We had a pretty good view of him back at the store. It’s got me wondering whether you might have realized who he is.”
“What kind of question is that? Of course I don’t know who he is. Why on earth would I?”
“Maybe you saw him hanging around at the villa and recognized him from there. Could be Bradley is using thugs like him to keep tabs on you.”
“To an extent like this? That’s nuts, even if he did have a reason to have me watched, and I can’t imagine what that could possibly be. Why is it that you insist on connecting anything at all negative with Marcus?”
“Just trying to cover the possibilities.”
“Well, don’t. Can we please forget this and go on?”
“All right,” he said, shifting back into Drive, “let’s find your falls.”
She was ready to put the whole episode behind her. Wanted to do just that. Except Casey left her reluctantly remembering Julio last night outside the guesthouse.
* * *
A graveled parking area had been provided for visitors to the falls.
“Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves,” Casey observed, pulling into the small, empty lot.
Brenna left her tote and purse in the car, taking only her camera with her. By the time Casey locked the Toyota and joined her, she had located a sign posted at the mouth of a trail, the arrow on it indicating the direction of the attraction.
“It can’t be far,” she said. “I can hear the sound of the water from here.”
The trail was wide enough to permit them to walk side by side. Although the ever-protective Casey offered no comment on this feature, Brenna knew it satisfied him to be able to keep her close. There was no point in objecting. He wouldn’t have listened.
A few hundred yards brought them through the forest to their destination. They suddenly found themselves in the open, standing on the lip of a ravine.
Casey spoke his approval in her ear. “It doesn’t disappoint, does it?”
She shook her head, marveling at the sigh
t. She understood why it was called Braided Falls. There was no single stream of water tumbling over the ledge high above them on their right, but three distinctly separate ones. Several feet along their descent, the projecting rocks of the cliff face squeezed them together into one cascade. A little lower, and they separated again, then still lower joined once more, like strands of hair twined into a fat braid.
A pool at the bottom rimmed with moss and banks of ferns finally received the waters. From here they rushed through the ravine they had carved, their course taking them beneath a sturdy, hanging bridge that faced the falls.
“I’m going out on the bridge,” Brenna announced. “I should get some great shots from there.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t safe,” Casey agreed.
By the time he’d followed her to the center of the bridge, she was busy with her Nikon compact, adjusting it for color, sharpness and clarity. She was ready to record a series of photographs when she heard it.
“Listen!”
“What?” Casey questioned. “All I can hear is the roar of the falls.”
“Not that. It’s the sound of drums coming from somewhere off the other side of the bridge.”
“You’re imagining it.”
She shook her head in denial. “I don’t think so. There’s a path there. I’m going to follow it and see what I can learn about those drums. I don’t think they can be the usual steel ones. Could be really interesting.”
Before he could stop her, she was off the bridge and hurrying along the path.
“Brenna, come back here!” he yelled after her. “Damn it, now who’s being reckless?”
She ignored him, knowing he would catch up with her. He did, muttering, “You’re going to get into trouble with this appetite of yours for local color.”
“You should talk. You weren’t worried about trouble when you took us over that rotten road.”
“So we’re even.”
They left it there, the drums growing louder as they proceeded on through the forest. Sunlight ahead of them poured down into what promised to be a large clearing. When the path widened, Brenna could see a collection of small houses. More like shacks really, their peeling wooden walls painted in the rainbow hues favored by the natives everywhere on the island. Vibrant colors that had faded but which she still admired.