book

by Chosen [Decadent] (mobi)

  But the skeletons under the boathouse weren’t imagined. The moment Kate began to think of a way to use that to her advantage, she began to calm down.

  Jack didn’t know what she’d seen. He’d been angry with Tommy for playing with the door of the boat house, but if Tommy had gone inside, he wouldn’t have found what Kate had seen. The bodies were under the boards. So it was possible Jack didn’t know. She’d keep it secret. She shouldn’t give up hope. Even if no one was looking for her, they’d be looking for Tommy. Maybe someone would recognize him eating ice-cream.

  With a superhuman effort, Kate got to her knees and slithered into the tub.

  Suddenly, there was a terrible noise. A keening sound she’d never heard before,

  and her heart leapt in her chest, fighting to get out of her body. Only the noise was coming from inside her and Kate couldn’t stop it. She was washed away in a raging flood of pain, rolled over and over until she no longer knew which way was up, which way down.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As Jack drove to town, the snow fell fast and thick, not only coating the trees and shrubs, but covering the road as well. He tuned out Tommy’s chattering about building a snowman. He’d almost had it with Kate. She’d seemed weak and pliable and turned out to be stupid and impulsive—a bad combination because it had made him lose control. Jack clenched his teeth when he thought of her back.

  Luckily, he hadn’t touched her face. He didn’t want his father thinking he beat his wife, or he’d get nothing out of him.

  After stopping to drop the house garbage in a dumpster, Jack made the turn onto a snow-covered main street and parked in front of Harper’s. Someone had shoveled the path to the door and the open sign showed in the window.

  Jack looked at Tommy. “What’s your name?”

  “Tommy Thompson.”

  “Good boy. Where’s your mommy?”

  “She stayed home ‘cause she’s sick.”

  “That’s right.”

  Jack unfastened Tommy from his seat and took him into the café. A bell tinkled when they walked in. It was exactly as he remembered: silver chiseled cash register, old-fashioned tin signs on the walls with prices in cents and red and green Tiffany-style lights hanging from the ceiling. Red upholstered stools lined the counter and wrought iron tables stood along the wall. The place was empty.

  Tommy climbed onto a chair at one of the tables.

  An elderly white-haired man was filling up a coffee machine. Jack recognized Ben Harper, the owner. Same round face and round body.

  “Morning folks, I’ll be right with you,” he called in a cheery voice.

  “Can I really have anything I want?” Tommy asked.

  “Anything you like.” Jack sat next to him. “You’ve been a good boy and good boys get rewarded.”

  Ben came from behind the counter. “Here are a couple of menus for you two gentlemen.” He handed over laminated menus. “So, what’s your name, young man?”

  “Tommy Thompson.”

  “And let me guess how old you are. Seventeen, maybe eighteen?” Tommy giggled. “I’m three.” He looked at Jack.

  “Only three? You’re a big boy for three. Passing through? Taking a break from the weather?”

  “No, we just moved here,” Jack said.

  “Can I have that?” Tommy pointed to a picture of a banana split, the biggest dish on the menu. “Please,” he added.

  “Sure,” Jack said.

  “Ice cream in this weather? You must have teeth of steel.” Ben laughed.

  “I’ll have coffee.” Jack handed back the menus.

  Ben went back behind the counter, returned with coffee and a little jug of cream before going back to work on the ice-cream. “So whereabouts you folks staying?”

  “Echo Lake.”

  “Renting?”

  “No, it’s a family place. I used to come here when I was a boy.” Ben looked across as he peeled the banana. Jack watched the recognition hit his face like an axe blow.

  “Jack Thompson.” Ben’s voice wavered and then came back strong. “Extra chocolate sauce and hold the nuts.”

  Jack smiled. “That’s quite a memory.”

  “How many years has it been?” Ben shook his head. “I’m sorry about what happened. Your mom was a real nice lady. How’s your dad doing?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Is it just you and the boy?”

  “No, my wife Kate is back at the house. Mommy’s not feeling well, is she, Tommy? We’re giving her some peace and quiet.”

  Ben shot a blast of whipped cream onto the dish in front of him and then reached for the cherries. “Working around here, Jack?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find much in the winter. The tourists are all at the big resorts like Breckenridge and Keystone. No skiing or snowboarding in these parts.”

  He brought the sundae to the table. Tommy’s eyes grew when he saw the size of it, a mountain of ice-cream and bananas. Ben had made a face with the toppings. Cherries for eyes and nose, dark sprinkles for the mouth.

  “Two spoons in case your dad needs to give you a hand. And extra chocolate sauce.” He winked at Jack.

  ***

  As Nathan approached Echo Lake, the wind whipped the snow into eddies that swirled across the road like mini tornados. He drove slowly through the town.

  The place was smaller than he’d expected: a hardware store, grocery and pharmacy. He wondered if it had changed at all in the last ten years.

  When he’d discovered his mother had been murdered here, he read everything he could about the case and the town. At eighteen, he’d harbored dreams of solving the crime. By the time he had the skills and the money, he’d lost the heart.

  Echo Lake seemed a million miles from San Antonio and the trail was frozen solid. What could he do that the local experts couldn’t? Then or now, for that matter.

  Nathan couldn’t help wondering if things might have been different for Jack if he’d been around. Maybe Jack and Steven wouldn’t have been enemies with an older brother to arbitrate. It gnawed at the back of Nathan’s mind like a slow cancer, what his life would have been like if his mother had taken him with her and not left him with his father. She’d abandoned him completely and his throat tightened at the thought.

  Although Nathan couldn’t forgive Jack, he hadn’t lost sight of the fact that Alison was to blame, too. Three happy years destroyed by her ecstatic cry in another man’s arms. Why had she preferred Jack? That was all he needed to know. Nathan hadn’t thought he’d been bad in bed. He’d never had any complaints. Maybe his partners hadn’t wanted to say. Insecurity about his sexual performance had a lot to do with his unhappiness over the last year. How could he talk to anyone about that? It was something he just had to get through.

  Nathan drove though the town without stopping, afraid if he did, he wouldn’t get going again. Snow fell in flakes the size of quarters, settling everywhere now the wind had dropped. The wiper blades struggled to cope. No plows out yet.

  Although they’d had freak snows in San Antonio, he’d never driven in anything like this. Nathan gripped the wheel and squinted. The zooming fat flakes were hypnotizing. He kept his foot steady on the gas, plowing through a good six inches. The snow scattered around him like he was locked in one of those children’s snow globes. He prayed he didn’t get stuck. But God, it was beautiful.

  He found the turn to Echo Lake more by chance than design and pulled off the highway. There were no tracks to follow, but the route through the trees was clear. He made a right turn at the fork, figuring he needed to go down rather than uphill.

  The house was farther than he'd thought. As he drove deeper into the trees, Nathan wished he'd waited until the snow stopped falling. If there was a place to turn, he might have done that and returned to town but the road was narrow with trees either side.

  His nerves relaxed when he saw the house up ahead. It was closed up, shutters fastened over the downstairs windows. No
smoke from the chimney. He turned the car in the yard so it faced the way he’d come and decided he wouldn’t risk turning off the engine or the wipers. He lifted his gray jacket from the back seat and put it on. It wasn’t going to be much help against this sort of weather, but it was better than nothing. He stepped out into the snow in his even more unsuitable leather shoes.

  Snow painted everything, smudging angles, disguising nature, transforming ugly to beautiful with sweeping strokes of nature’s brush. On the white carpet under his feet, Nathan saw no footprints, no sign of life. He heard only his car engine, no voices. He turned up his collar and stuck his hands in his pockets. His feet were soaked after a few steps, but he did a slippery circuit of the house and even checked the garbage can. The lid was off and it was filling with snow.

  The broken deck furniture had already morphed into an abstract work of art.

  The falling snow all but obliterated the view of the lake, now hiding behind a thick white veil. Nathan would have liked to walk down, but he was already cold and wet, water dripping down his back. He returned to the car and kicked the snow from his shoes and brushed down his jacket before he got in, then cranked the heater as high as it would go.

  Ten years ago his mother had been brutally murdered a few feet from where he sat and he’d expected to feel something, a tug at his heart, but there was nothing.

  While he was a cop, he’d had access to more details of the case than he’d been able to get before. The killer had taken away some of her organs. Nathan wondered if Don could have killed her but it seemed inconceivable a man could do that to his wife. And if Don had killed her, and Steven too, why not Jack as well? In any case, Don had an alibi. He was in town when it happened. It would have been impossible for him to have killed his wife and driven away. But to have left his sons? That didn’t make sense. No bloodstained clothes were found. No forensic evidence linked Don to the murder. Things were different now, and CSIs could work miracles with DNA, but too much time had passed.

  If Steven killed her, what happened to him? Nathan felt frozen after a walk around the house. The police had searched and found nothing. Because Jack had been stabbed in the back and almost died, Nathan had always considered him a victim, but now he wanted Jack to be guilty. Maybe he’d stabbed himself and pretended to be traumatized. How many experts had he fooled? Could a kid do that? Nathan sighed. He knew he wasn’t being objective.

  With a final glance at the house, he set off back to the town, creeping toward the main road along the tracks he’d made. The wheels lost their grip several times sending the car skidding toward the trees. He breathed an audible sigh when he saw the paved road ahead, now plowed, leaving miniature mountain ranges on each side of the highway. Fortunately the incline wasn’t too steep to cross, though the back of the car fishtailed as Nathan pulled onto the road.

  He’d definitely stay the night in Echo Lake. He’d done what he wanted, seen where his mother died and Jack wasn’t there. Time to move on, only not today.

  Maybe he could rent some equipment and try skiing. Do something different with his life.

  Nathan decided to stop at the first decent looking place. Within a few minutes he decided the first place would do fine. He needed chains or a tank to drive in this stuff. Absolutely everything was covered in snow, it had even piled up on the power lines. He understood what they meant by a whiteout now. There was no color outside the car and he saw only one other vehicle on the road, going the other way. Nathan wished he had a SUV and regretted not having brought the charger for his cell.

  He slithered to a halt at the curb and made a quick dash to the only place open.

  Nathan closed the door on the blizzard and stamped his feet on the mat.

  “Any chance of something to eat?” he asked the guy behind the counter.

  “Absolutely. So long as it’s baked potato and chili.”

  “Sounds good.” Nathan picked a chair close to a heater and sat down with his back pressed against it.

  “Coffee?” the old guy asked.

  “You read my mind.”

  He walked over with a mug and the cream. “You picked a hell of a day to come out for lunch. You’re not dressed for this sort of weather, son.” He looked at Nathan’s soaked shoes and thin jacket.

  “Is this going to last long?”

  “Forecast says snow all day, clear overnight and more snow tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Maybe you can point me in the direction of a store for idiots.” Nathan took off his wet jacket. “I’m also looking for a place to stay.”

  “Sure. We’re only too glad to take your money in the winter.” He brought over Nathan’s lunch and went back to the counter, starting on a bowl of his own.

  “Why don’t you join me?” Nathan asked.

  “I don’t mind if I do.” He offered his hand. “Ben Harper, owner, waiter, dishwasher and today, cook.”

  “Nathan Beranson.”

  “Sorry this was all there was,” Ben said. “I called my girl and told her not to come in. You got business in town?”

  “Just outside. Echo Lake. Do you know it?” Ben paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Oh, yeah, I know Echo Lake.” Nathan heard more than the answer in his voice. “You had this place a long while?”

  “Long enough,” Ben said.

  “So you knew the Thompson family?”

  “Ah.” Ben dug into his chili.

  “I’m interested in what happened here ten years ago.” Nathan watched the guy’s reactions.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Elizabeth Thompson was my mother.”

  Ben’s mouth fell open. “You’re Jack’s brother? Steven?”

  “No, I’m his half-brother. Elizabeth was married before.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Ben shook his head and resumed eating, dipping a chunk of bread into the steaming chili.

  “Do you mind talking about it?” Nathan asked.

  “Not much to say. They never got the guy who did it. They closed everywhere off, set up road blocks, used Winston’s tracker dogs, there was even a helicopter searching—came up with zip.”

  Ben’s eyes met his square on. Old eyes, but clear and bright. Nathan felt his pulse speed up. He laid down his fork and pushed his bowl away.

  “I always figured a few things didn’t add up. Jack’s mother—your mother—got sliced up pretty bad. Jack had one wound that was serious, but not fatal. Makes you wonder how he got away.”

  The cop in Nathan told him that if Jack hadn’t been the target, he wouldn’t necessarily have been subjected to the same violence.

  “You and Jack close?”

  Nathan’s mouth twitched. “No.”

  “The sheriff at the time was a friend of mine, Al Rider, knew him most of his life. Died of cancer last year, God rest his soul. We used to talk about the Echo Lake case. He never found the missing hunter but Al reckoned that was a red herring.” Ben pushed away his bowl. “The guy had a wife and two kids. Al thought he’d probably had an accident, shot himself. Right from the outset, the local view was Jack did it, even allowing for the difficulty of stabbing yourself in the back.

  He was clean as a whistle when the police got there. His father said he’d been thrown on the ice, but had somehow managed to crawl out. Amazing achievement in those temperatures, particularly for someone who’d been stabbed.”

  “Did the sheriff talk to Don about his suspicions?”

  “Of course, but you can imagine the conversation. Jack was thirteen, fourteen years old, something like that. He wasn’t interviewed at the start because he was catatonic. I remember Al telling me that after the kid recovered from the stab wound, he’d been spirited away to a private clinic in Texas. By the time the police were able to talk to him, he claimed not to remember a thing. Hysterical amnesia, I think Al called it.” Ben paused. “Maybe I’m being unkind. Maybe he couldn’t remember. Who knows? Maybe Steven did it. It’s not easy for a teenage kid to completely disappear unless he had help. Even if he could drive
, he had no car.

  Where was he going to go? Or maybe you’re here to prove me wrong?”

  “I’m not Steven,” Nathan said.

  “So why are you here?”

  “Looking for the truth, for Jack, maybe Steven, too.” Ben tipped his head on one side. “Why don’t you get on with Jack?” Nathan hesitated. “We fell out about a woman.”

  “Well, I think you might be too late, son.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s married with a child.” Ben got up and began to clear the table.

  Nathan stared at him in disbelief.

  “He came in with the boy less than an hour ago. Tommy, his name was. Nice kid. Cheeky face. Three years old. Said his wife was back at the house.” Nathan opened his mouth and then closed it. An electric shock couldn’t have had more impact. He and Jack had just missed each other. Had he been in that car he passed? But the house was closed up. Why would Jack have done that if his wife was inside?

  “Are you sure it was Jack?”

  “He was a kid last time I served him in here. He said he was Jack, I suppose it could have been Steven. I hadn’t thought of that.” Ben gave a short laugh.

  “How long have they been living here?”

  “Not long. I don’t know what sort of state the house would have been in. As far as I know, no one’s been there since Don paid a couple of locals to clean the place after the murder. They had to scrub and bleach the boards. Hey, I’m sorry.” Ben winced. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

  Nathan wasn’t sure why the thought occurred to him at that moment, but he realized he’d missed something important at the house. The chimneystack was clean. There was no snow on it, which meant it had to have been warm.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kate tensed when she heard the generator. He was back. She listened for Tommy’s voice and when she heard him laughing, relief washed over her. As Jack’s heavy tread pounded up the stairs, Kate tensed. She’d filled the bath with warm water until she’d used it all up and now she shivered in an empty tub under towels she’d snagged from a rail.