Stampeded (Harlequin Intrigue Series)

by B. J Daniels

  “I’m just a little tired,” Alexa said, not wanting to question Archer in front of the rest of them.

  “You’re sure she doesn’t have a concussion?” Sierra asked her husband.

  But it was Jayden who answered. “I checked her pupils. They seem fine. Nothing like mine yesterday.”

  “Remodeling this house ourselves was a mistake,” Sierra cried. “I can’t bear to see anyone else get hurt. Landon, I should have listened to you. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Don’t you dare back out now,” Carolina said. “Everyone is fine and this is our project. We’ve done too much work for you to make us stop now.”

  “She’s right,” Jayden said. “We’re all invested in this old place. Let us finish.”

  Alexa saw Sierra weaken and suspected she hadn’t been serious to begin with. “If I hired contractors, they would kick us all out until it was finished,” she said. “And we do love that our closest friends are a part of our adventure.”

  Landon looked as if he wanted to object, but it was already decided. Everyone started to leave the room to go back to work. Her brother let go of her hand to follow them out.

  “Landon, can you please stay for a moment?” Alexa asked.

  He hesitated. Sierra had turned at the door waiting for him. “I’ll be down in just a moment,” he told her.

  Sierra shifted her gaze to Alexa, anger flashing in her eyes, then she smiled a weak smile. “Make her promise she won’t be wandering around the house anymore,” she said and left.

  “Close the door,” Alexa said quietly to her brother.

  He studied her a moment before walking over and closing the door. “Want to tell me what really happened to you? Or are you still in denial about this house and the spirits in it?”

  She didn’t want to fight with him, even if she’d had the energy. “I found your Crying Woman,” she said as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and started to stand.

  He moved quickly to grab her arm as she suddenly felt lightheaded and had to sit back down on the edge of the bed for a moment.

  “What are you doing? You need to rest.”

  “No, I need to show you something.” She moved to the door, opened it and looked out, half expecting to find Sierra or one of the others lurking there. The hallway was empty. “Come on,” she said to her brother as she pulled the old skeleton key from her door and headed down the hall.

  As he followed her to the north wing of the house, she motioned to him to be quiet. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.

  Once at the broom closet door, she used the key to get inside. The panel slid back just as it had earlier. As she started to step through the opening, Landon grabbed her arm.

  “You shouldn’t go in there,” he said. “Sierra doesn’t want—”

  “Inside here is where someone hit me and knocked me out,” Alexa said. “I didn’t faint out in the hallway and hit my head. Look at the dust on my clothes.”

  He released her and she stepped through, squeezed through the narrow space between the stairs and hallway wall and stopped at the spot where she’d found the speakers.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She could hear Landon next to her.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  She wished she’d thought to have him bring a flashlight, but she hadn’t wanted the others knowing what they were up to. “Strike a match.” She suspected he still had matches from the fire he’d built for Sierra in their room.

  In the blackness, she could hear him rummaging in his pocket. A moment later came the scratch of the match head. She’d been right and was now all the more curious about the papers Sierra had burned.

  The small burst of the light illuminated the interior wall. Alexa stared at the wall, telling herself she shouldn’t have been surprised. The wiring and speakers were gone. Whoever had struck her had taken her proof.

  She looked over at her brother as the match burned down. “It’s gone. The wiring, the speakers, the Crying Woman deception. I didn’t get a chance to find the rest of the device before I was struck by whoever was in here with me.”

  Just before the flame died, Alexa saw her brother’s expression. He thought she was lying. Again.

  MARSHALL WAS RELIEVED WHEN he got Alexa on the phone. “Are you all right? When I stopped by earlier, the woman who answered the door said you’d had an accident and couldn’t come down.”

  “Was the woman blonde, bossy and seemed to be put out that she’d had to answer the door?” Alexa asked.

  He let out a laugh, relieved that she sounded fine. “As a matter of fact, she was.”

  “That’s Sierra Wellington Cross, my sister-in-law.”

  “So you’re all right?”

  “None the worse for wear.”

  Something in her voice told him she wasn’t as fine as she was pretending to be. Her scream as she’d run across his pasture last night was too fresh in his mind. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to her bad dream than she was letting on. And now she’d had an accident? He was all the more anxious about her staying in that house.

  “Have supper with me,” he said impulsively.

  “My sister-in-law has something planned for this evening. Can I take a rain check?” She forgot she wasn’t going to see him again.

  “Sure. Why don’t you give me a call when you can get away,” Marshall said and gave her his number. “Call any time. Even in the middle of the night if you have another bad dream.”

  She chuckled. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. The truth is I’m worried about you being in that house, especially after I heard that you fainted and hit your head. That is what happened, isn’t it?”

  He heard a click on the line.

  “I appreciate your concern,” Alexa said. “We’ll talk soon.”

  As he hung up, Marshall knew why her voice had changed and she’d quickly gotten off the line. Someone had picked up another line in the house and was listening in.

  ALEXA HAD HEARD THE CLICK as well. She’d heard the person on the line, felt them listening to her conversation. Sierra?

  After returning to her bed on Landon’s orders, she’d waited until she was sure he’d gone back downstairs with the others before she’d taken her key again and gone over to the north wing.

  She’d tapped lightly at Sierra and Landon’s bedroom door, then had let herself in, feeling like a thief in the night. But she had to know what Sierra had burned in the fireplace. It was probably nothing, and yet she had the feeling that Sierra didn’t do anything without a good reason.

  Burning papers instead of just throwing them away made Alexa suspicious. Using the poker, she carefully dug the unburned portions out of the ashes, shook them off and gave them a cursory glance before hightailing it back to her room.

  Once there, she tried to make sense of what appeared to be financial documents. She couldn’t and found herself wondering if she hadn’t wasted her time retrieving them. There were a couple of names she could make out. She started to write them down when a tap at the door made her jump.

  Sierra stuck her head in. “Supper’s ready. Gigi cooked her famous chicken enchiladas. I hope you feel well enough to come down. You already missed her margarita pancakes. You can’t miss the enchiladas.”

  Her stomach growled in answer as she covered the partially burned documents with a book she’d been reading. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “You do feel up to coming down, don’t you? We’re going to play charades after dinner in the main hall. Your brother is terrible at it so I want you on our team. Hurry down. Everyone is waiting,” she said and closed the door.

  Alexa groaned as she hurriedly wrote the two names from the document into her notebook that she always carried for reporting at the newspaper, put it back in her purse and picked up her wrap from the chair where she’d thrown it earlier. This drafty old house was starting to get to her, but she couldn’t let on. They were all watching her, probably more
closely than ever after today’s incident.

  On her way down the hall, she noticed the phone in a small alcove. It could have been Sierra who picked up the line and listened in. Alexa wouldn’t have put it past her.

  Hurrying down to the kitchen, she found Gigi making margaritas to go with dinner. Everyone seemed in great spirits. Except Landon. He didn’t look up as Alexa took her place at the table amid all the lively conversation and laughter.

  After they’d left the space behind the wall earlier, he’d accused her of making up what she’d seen rather than accepting that the Crying Woman was one of many spirits trapped in this house.

  “If I can feel something in this house, then you sure as hell can,” he’d said. “Do you want to know what Mother told me on her deathbed?”

  She hadn’t. Not that she could have stopped him, though, from telling her.

  “She said if I ever needed you, you would quit lying about your gift and help me. Don’t you see? She had seen the future. She knew about this place.”

  That was such a leap that Alexa had only stared at him speechless. “I am trying to help you,” she said finally.

  “Are you?”

  She had silently cursed her mother for this as she’d watched her brother walk away. Landon would rather believe in the paranormal than what was right in front of him. Someone in this house was behind all of this and as Alexa accepted a margarita, she felt even more determined to find out who it could be.

  She’d proven, at least to herself, that someone was behind the Crying Woman. But her brother was right. There were other things in this house. She needed to learn the history of this house and the people who had lived in it, because she suspected whoever was behind the Crying Woman already had.

  Alexa couldn’t wait to talk to Marshall. She was sure he would know the history of Wellington Manor or who to talk to about it. But there was no way she could get out of dinner or charades. She took a sip of her margarita. It tasted wonderful and it numbed her senses just enough that she didn’t feel the house watching her—as well as the people in it.

  HOYT HAD CALLED THE sheriff the moment he’d entered the ranch house.

  “You’re sure it was Aggie?” was McCall’s first question when she arrived twenty minutes later.

  “It was her.” Emma knew she could prove it by producing the note, but she wasn’t ready to do that and it wasn’t as if by having the note, the sheriff could find Aggie.

  She knew it was crazy, but Aggie was trusting her and she couldn’t betray that trust. Had she said that to Hoyt he would have had her head examined.

  Everyone believed that Aggie wanted her dead. But Aggie’d had all kinds of chances to kill her when she’d abducted her—and hadn’t. Aggie swore she was trying to save her and a part of Emma believed her.

  The trouble was that no one believed Laura Chisholm was still alive. Even Emma, but especially Hoyt. But what if Laura was? Hoyt had admitted that Laura was horribly jealous in the short period of time they were married before she was believed to have drowned.

  “Did she say something to you?” the sheriff asked Emma.

  “No. By the time I ran out of the store and across the street she was gone.”

  McCall frowned. “Why did you run after her?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Hoyt said. Emma could tell he was scared and that made him all the more angry with her for taking a chance like that. “What if Aggie had had a gun?”

  “I just saw her standing there and didn’t think,” Emma said. “She looked as if she wanted to say something to me.”

  “And yet she disappeared when you came out of the store?” the sheriff said.

  Emma nodded. “I think she was scared off.”

  “I hope she was scared out of town,” Hoyt said.

  The sheriff shook her head. “I doubt that’s the case. I’m surprised she would take such a chance to see you—or have you see her. That was reckless on her part.”

  Hoyt shot his wife a look. “That’s what frightens me. You would think she’d have the good sense to skip the country. Who knows what the woman will do next?”

  After the sheriff left, Hoyt finally went out to feed the horses and left Emma alone for a few moments, something that surprised her.

  She was just about to make the call to Aggie when the back door opened and two of her stepsons came in. Emma realized that Hoyt had called them to watch over her until he got back from the barn.

  After visiting for a few minutes, she excused herself and went upstairs to her bathroom. Closing the door, she pulled out her cell phone and the note from Aggie.

  Reading it again, she debated what she was about to do. She did tend to be impulsive. But she’d learned as she’d gotten older to follow her own instincts.

  She dialed the number and listened as the phone began to ring.

  EVERYONE WAS A LITTLE tipsy by the time they’d played charades. Alexa enjoyed herself even though Sierra was disappointed her team didn’t win.

  “Sorry, I’m terrible at charades,” she told her sister-in-law later that evening.

  Sierra gave her a look that said she hadn’t been trying or, even worse, had been cheating. The woman really didn’t understand how Alexa’s “powers” worked.

  Everyone but Carolina and Alexa got up and wandered into the kitchen for a midnight snack. Carolina had been quiet all evening, seemingly lost in her own thoughts.

  Now she moved over to sit next to Alexa on the couch. “Please,” she said sounding close to tears. “Tell me my future.” She held out her hand, palm up.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “Please.” There was pleading in her gaze. “I have to know.”

  “Palm reading is just a parlor game,” Alexa said, not unkindly, but she took the woman’s hand, unable to ignore the pain she saw in her eyes. As she idly ran her thumb across Carolina’s palm, she had planned to tell her that she saw a rosy future, but the words caught in her throat as she felt a jolt race up her arm.

  She let go of Carolina’s hand as if it were a deadly snake.

  “What?” the young woman cried.

  Alexa felt the weight of what she’d seen pressing against her chest. “It’s nothing. Just a cramp in my fingers.”

  Carolina stared down at her palm. “It’s bad, isn’t it? I knew it was bad.”

  “I told you palm reading is nothing more than a parlor game,” Alexa said, trying to reassure her. “No one can tell your future by looking at your palm.”

  She was angry with herself for not only scaring the woman, but also scaring herself. She realized the margaritas had weakened the barriers she’d built up and, while she’d sensed horror and dread, she couldn’t have told Carolina what would happen in her future or when—only that it would be very bad.

  “You are going to have everything you want out of life,” she said, the lie almost choking her.

  Carolina looked a little less stricken. “Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Alexa remembered what her mother had said when Landon had once asked, “What do you do when you are looking into a client’s future and you see something bad?”

  “I look for something good. I never lie,” Tallulah Cross had said. “The last thing you want to do is lie.” She had looked over at Alexa then, the warning clear.

  “What will happen if you do lie?” Alexa had asked. She must have been all of ten years old at the time. Her brother a precocious five.

  “You don’t want to know,” her mother had said.

  Alexa had just lied. But then she’d been lying for twenty-three years, hadn’t she?

  AGGIE WELLS ANSWERED ON the fourth ring. Emma had been about to hang up when Aggie picked up. She sounded so…normal, not at all like a delusional criminal who had law enforcement officers across the country looking for her.

  “I’m glad you called,” Aggie said. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “Aggie, you need to turn yourself in so you can—”

  “Get locked up i
n the state mental hospital? Emma, you wouldn’t have called me if you thought I was crazy.”

  Emma sighed. “How could Laura Chisholm be alive?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that she is and I can prove it. I have photographs of the woman.”

  “Why haven’t you taken the information to the sheriff?” Emma asked.

  “I can’t trust that Laura won’t find out and get away again. She’s been like a chameleon since she allegedly died thirty years ago. That’s why she’s been so hard to track down.”

  Did Emma really believe any of this? “You found her?”

  “She was only a few hours away from Whitehorse. She will be coming after you next, Emma.”

  Emma could well imagine what Hoyt or the sheriff might say about this. “How can you be sure she’s Laura?”

  “She’s changed over the years, of course. Some of the changes I’m sure were so no one in Whitehorse would recognize her, but I have no doubt that Hoyt will be able to.”

  “You said you had proof,” Emma said, thinking that even if the woman was Hoyt’s first wife, it wouldn’t prove that she killed his other wives or that she was after his fourth—her.

  “Meet me and I will give you the photographs and all the information about Laura.”

  “Why don’t you send it to me?”

  “You know why. Hoyt might intercept it and call in the sheriff,” Aggie said. “If Laura is scared away, she might not surface for a long time. Neither of us will ever be safe until she is caught.”

  “I don’t understand how my getting the information—”

  “Come on, Emma, of course you do. You and I have to trap her. She wants you. She’s biding her time and will strike when you least expect it. But if we go after her—”

  “You want to use me as bait?”

  “Don’t sound so shocked. I’ve come to know you, Emma. You’re tough as nails. I’d want you on my side in any fight. I hope you realize that I’m good at what I do and I’m not some crazy woman. Obsessed, maybe. I want to solve this. If I get sent back to the state mental hospital, Laura will kill you and who knows what they’ll do with me. I have to see this through. You can understand that, can’t you?”