by Gina Wilkins
“People who are asleep,” he pointed out.
“And who will wake up if I should scream or shout. Really, Aaron, I do this all the time.”
His left eyebrow shot up. “Leave one of the cabins in the middle of the night?”
“Not like this,” she chided with a shake of her head. “But I’ve been called out for problems in the middle of the night, just as the rest of the family has. And I’ve never felt unsafe here. It’s home.”
She couldn’t read his expression when he shrugged and conceded. “Your choice, of course.”
Patting his cheek, she said, “Don’t worry, Aaron, I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She kissed him, then headed for the door. “Meet me at the pavilion in the morning if you’re interested and awake that early. It’s always a lovely service.”
“Maybe I will. Sounds nice.”
“We could have breakfast afterward, before you join Uncle Bryan on the roof again.”
“You’re on.”
“I’ll count the minutes,” she promised him, and though she spoke jokingly, she meant every word.
“So will I,” he said, and he sounded entirely serious—which probably meant he was joking, she thought with a laugh at herself as she stepped out his door.
They were quite an odd couple, temporary though it might be. She wondered if she would ever think of him in the future without wistfully wondering what might have been.
There was only one totally dark stretch between Aaron’s cabin and her mobile home, just after stepping off the main road past the private-drive sign. It was perhaps ten yards of deep shadows from which she could see the houses ahead, but was probably invisible to anyone looking back at her from there. She never thought twice about that dark stretch, no matter what hour she walked, drove or biked it. As she’d told Aaron, this was home.
Something slammed into the back of her head. She stumbled forward, the lights ahead of her splintering, blurring into darkness. As if from a distance, she felt her chin make contact with the pavement. And then felt nothing at all.
Chapter Ten
Aaron lay on his back in the rumpled bed, suddenly feeling all the aches of the day. His body craved rest, but he was having trouble shutting down his mind. He wished he could pass what remained of the night with Shelby wrapped in his arms, only to make love again with the rising of the sun.
He’d spent a lot of time with her in the past few days. More hours, perhaps, than he’d spent with Elaina during an entire week while they’d seen each other. Granted, he and Elaina had both been busy with jobs and other activities, but he realized now that as hot as the sex had been between them, as often as he’d wanted to come back for more, he’d had no overwhelming desire to spend time with Elaina outside the bedroom. They’d had few interests in common—or so he’d learned when she’d stopped pretending to find everything he said utterly fascinating—and when they weren’t in bed, they’d struggled to find something else to do that entertained them both. She’d loved fancy parties, elegant dining, shopping, cruises. He’d rather be on a mountain trail, in a boat, on a bike or watching a game, none of which she’d enjoyed. He couldn’t imagine her skimming over the water straddling a personal watercraft, no makeup, hair in the wind, sun on her face. Just remembering how Shelby had looked exactly that way made his whole body harden.
He was getting in too deep with her. He shouldn’t be this preoccupied with her after such a short time. Definitely he shouldn’t have been so teeth-grindingly jealous when she’d driven off with ol’ Pete earlier. For all he knew, she could get back with Pete again after Aaron went back to Dallas, despite her assurances that it wasn’t going to happen. The thought of her kissing that other man, letting him touch her... He found himself grinding his teeth again, and had to make a conscious effort to relax his jaw.
Flopping over on the bed, he closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. He was just tired. Hard to think clearly in this state of exhaustion, he assured himself. The rest of his life was so unsettled, maybe that was affecting his judgment about Shelby, too. He didn’t have to say goodbye to her forever just because he had to go pursue a new career path. They could stay in touch, see each other occasionally, maybe. The resort wasn’t all that far from Dallas. Or maybe he could find something closer. Yes, she came with a lot of family entanglements, something he’d carefully avoided with other women, because he had enough of that already in his life. But he liked Shelby’s family—even her grandfather, who seemed to be convinced he wasn’t who he said he was. And her parents, who’d given him the evil eye at lunch today for encouraging Steven and not discouraging Lori.
Maybe someday when he’d gotten his own life in order, when he was settled into a career he found challenging and fulfilling, when he was ready to take on the complications of someone else’s needs and obligations, when he felt as though he had something worthwhile to offer in return—maybe then he’d see if Shelby was interested in pursuing something more than a vacation hookup with him. If by then she hadn’t already found someone who could offer those things before Aaron got around to it.
Groaning, he pulled the sheet over his head and started mentally counting by sevens, usually a surefire way to lull himself to sleep. It took him a bit longer than usual that night.
He was jolted out of a sound sleep before sunrise by a sharp knock on his door. It took him a couple of groggy minutes to realize what he’d heard, but a follow-
up pounding brought him to his feet. Tugging on a pair of jeans, he glanced at the clock, noted that it wasn’t even yet 6:00 a.m., then headed barefoot down the stairs, dragging a white T-shirt over his head on the way. He opened the door, then blinked in surprise upon finding Maggie on his porch.
“Maggie? What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
Her expression looked strained in the watery security lighting, her face pale in contrast with her dark brown hair. “Please tell me Shelby’s here with you. If she is, I’m sorry I woke you, but I just needed to—”
“Shelby’s not here, Maggie,” he cut in with a frown. “She left a few hours ago to go back to her trailer. Why?”
Maggie’s hand wasn’t steady when she showed him the cell phone in her hand. “It’s Shelby’s. I woke up early and wanted coffee, but I was out. I didn’t want to wake anyone else, so I decided to run over to the marina and get a pot started there. Uncle Bryan always has coffee going by six-thirty for the early fishermen, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make it early...”
She was babbling, her voice high-pitched and nervous. “Maggie,” he cut in quickly, impatiently. “What about Shelby?”
She drew a quick breath. “The golf cart headlights reflected off something on the road by the private drive sign, so I stopped to see what it was. It was this, Shelby’s phone. Finding it there made me nervous, so I had to go check on her. I mean, I figured she just dropped it or something and maybe didn’t know she’d lost it or couldn’t find it in the darkness or—”
Taking another steadying breath, she finished, “I went to her house, let myself in with the emergency key we all carry, and I saw that her bed was still made. I know she’s been spending a lot of time with you, and I figured maybe—well, maybe she spent the night. But something still just didn’t feel right, so I had to check, even if it embarrassed all of us.”
“She’s not here,” Aaron repeated numbly, going cold inside as he remembered his last glimpse of Shelby walking jauntily away from his cabin, smiling and unafraid. “Could she be with her parents? Her brother or sister?”
“I don’t know why she would be, but now that I know she’s not here, I’m going to call them,” Maggie said grimly.
“Call them.” Aaron tugged her inside, then turned for the stairs. “I’ll get some shoes.”
It took him two minutes to throw on shoes and pull a polo shirt over his tee. Maggie was
still talking on the phone when he bolted back downstairs, but he could tell she wasn’t getting good news.
“They don’t know where she is,” she whispered to Aaron, as though her throat was too tight to allow her full voice to push through. “Lori didn’t come home last night, but she’d already told them she was staying with friends. Shelby’s car is still at her trailer and she didn’t leave any messages for anyone. I’m really scared, Aaron. Why was her phone on the road?”
He had his own phone in his hand. His first instinct was to call his brother—the one person he always turned to in times of trouble, no matter what issues they might be dealing with personally. His second thought was to call the police. He forced himself to hold off on both until he knew what to tell them.
“You haven’t been to the marina yet, have you?” he confirmed with Maggie.
She shook her head. “I came straight here. Uncle C.J. said he was headed that way. Everyone’s going to spread out and look for her.”
“She told me there’s a church service this morning. That she usually goes to sort of monitor things. Could she be at the pavilion already?” She could have just dropped the phone, he reminded himself. Probably hadn’t noticed. Maybe she’d had the same idea as Maggie about the marina coffee.
Maggie bit her lip. “I can’t imagine why. No one would be there this early.”
“Let’s go find out.”
Instinct made him look toward Terrence Landon’s cabin on his way to the golf cart. As usual, the blinds were tightly closed. He thought he saw a very faint glow of light from inside, but it was probably just a dimmed lamp serving as a night-light. He had no reason to believe Landon had anything to do with Shelby going missing. For one thing, he’d watched her head off in the other direction when she’d left him.
Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t be pounding on Landon’s door if Shelby didn’t turn up soon.
* * *
“What the hell have you done, Russ?”
Shuddering at the barely repressed fury in the gravelly male voice, Shelby shrank back against the wall in Cabin Seven. Her head pounded. Tied behind her, her arms ached. Her ankles were bound so tightly that she couldn’t feel her feet, but she had a feeling they were going to hurt like the devil if—when she was released, she amended quickly, trying to stay as positive as she could considering the circumstances.
It was dark in the cabin and her vision was still blurry from the hit on the head, but she could just see the two men standing on the far side of the room, glaring back at her. One was Terrence Landon—or Russ, as the other man had just called him. The angry newcomer was a man she’d seen once before, the pudgy middle-aged guy who’d visited earlier in the week.
“She’s been snooping around the whole time I’ve been here, Lowell,” Landon countered defensively. “I think she might have been in the cabin earlier today. She’d have seen the stuff.”
“You mean the stuff I told you not to leave lying around?”
Landon growled. “How was I supposed to know she’d come in?”
Shelby wanted to tell him that she hadn’t set foot inside the cabin, but because he’d stuck duct tape over her mouth, all she could do was mumble irritably.
“Shut up,” Landon snapped at her before turning back to the other man. “All I was waiting for was for you to get here with the cash. I’ll help you load your car with your stuff, then we can clear out of here, probably before anyone knows she’s missing. I’ll carry her out to my car under a blanket, hang on to her until I know we’ve gotten away clear, then I’ll let her go or something.”
Shelby didn’t like the sound of that “or something.”
She’d known from the start that the so-called Terrence Landon was strange, but she’d figured out in the past hours that the guy wasn’t particularly bright, either. He was such a bumbling TV stereotype of a bad guy that she might have laughed had she not woken up trussed up like a turkey and with him pacing and sweating, neither an encouraging indication of his stability. Lowell had shown up about ten minutes ago.
She couldn’t see a clock, but she thought it was probably somewhere between six-thirty and seven, judging from the light filtering in through the blinds and the sound of the awakening resort outside. It had been almost 2:00 a.m. when Landon had followed her and grabbed her on her way home. She didn’t know how he’d gotten her back to the cabin without anyone seeing him, but maybe it hadn’t been all that hard. As Aaron had pointed out when she’d left him, not many campers were awake at that hour. She hadn’t had a chance to scream and awaken anyone. By the time she’d come to, hurting and disoriented, she’d already been tied up. Landon had tried interrogating her about what she knew, but he hadn’t believed her repeated vows that she didn’t know anything. He’d taped her mouth when she’d tried to warn him that he was making a huge mistake holding her hostage.
People would be gathering at the pavilion soon. Aaron would be there, she reminded herself hopefully. Would he know to question Landon when she didn’t show up? How long would it take him to look for her, to figure out that she hadn’t just overslept? By that time Landon and Lowell could have left the resort, taking her with them.
“What you do with her is up to you,” Lowell growled. “I want nothing to do with it. You’ve got five minutes to help me get my stuff out of here. I’m not paying you a cent until it’s in my car and I know I’m going to drive away without any trouble.”
Landon nodded curtly. “Keep a watch out for the guy next door. I think he might be a cop. He’s been watching me, too. That’s why I called you and told you I had to get out of here today. I didn’t know it would take you almost four freaking hours to get here. If I’d know you were way the hell on the other side of Dallas when I called, I’d have already cleared out and met you somewhere else.”
“A cop?” Lowell’s already-ruddy face reddened even more. “That guy who was staring at me the other day is a cop?”
Grunting, Shelby shook her head fervently, though she wasn’t sure they even noticed.
“Look, I don’t know that for sure.” Landon sounded even more nervous now. “Could be she just has a nosy boyfriend. But I’m hanging on to her for insurance, just to make sure no one tries to stop us from leaving if they want her back safe.”
Lowell already had an armful of boxes and was headed for the door. “You don’t have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot, Russ. Don’t know why I was stupid enough to get hooked up with you, but I am not going down with you for kidnapping. This is all on you.”
Landon grabbed several more boxes and followed him, shooting a hard look at Shelby. “If you’d just minded your own business...”
She wished sincerely now that she had.
It took less than ten minutes for the men to carry out all the boxes. “That’s it?” Lowell looked around with narrowed eyes, clutching a fat briefcase in one hand. “That’s all of it?”
Landon nodded. “I’ll call you when I’ve found another place to stay and have some more stuff for you.”
Shoving the case at him, Lowell muttered, “You said this place would be good for the summer. Said no one paid attention to just another summer camper. Said folks mind their own business at a fishing resort.”
“Most of them do,” Landon grumbled, turning another scowl toward Shelby.
Lowell turned toward the door. “I’m out of here.”
“Wait. I could use your help getting her out to the car.”
“I told you you’re on your own with that. It’s your own stupidity for grabbing her in the first place.”
“I had to know what she’s seen. Who she told. She said she hasn’t seen anything or told anyone, but I don’t believe her. I had to have some insurance that I’d get away from here safe.”
Shaking his head and muttering, Lowell reached for the doorknob, only to freeze when someone knocked. Lowell and La
ndon stared at each other for a moment, and then Landon called out nervously, “Who is it?”
“Mr. Landon, it’s Maggie Bell. I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I need to ask you something.”
“You’ll have to come back later.”
“Please, sir, just a quick question.”
“Get rid of them,” Lowell hissed.
“Give me a minute,” Landon called out. Moving with clumsy haste, he threw the briefcase into a cabinet, then reached for Shelby. She shrank back from him, but he had his sweaty hands on her forearms before she could evade him. He threw her over his shoulder and carried her to the small storage closet under the stairs that led up to the sleeping loft. Shoving her unceremoniously inside with the broom and the vacuum cleaner, he stood back.
“Not a sound from you,” he grated, pointing an unsteady finger at her. “I’m warning you.”
He slammed the door, leaving her in dusty-scented darkness. She leaned against the hollow-core door, straining to hear through the thin wood, ignoring the pain in her shoulder where something dug into her skin through her blouse.
“Get upstairs. If anyone sees you, you’re a business associate, here for a meeting,” she heard Landon say to Lowell.
She heard footsteps on the stairs, and then the front door opened. “What do you want?”
“We’re looking for my cousin,” Maggie said, her voice slightly muffled by the closet door. “Shelby. She’s gone missing.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but what makes you think I’d know where she is?” Landon demanded.
Shelby’s heart clenched when she heard Aaron’s deep voice. “She left my place at almost two this morning. We were hoping maybe you saw something.”
“At two in the morning? I was asleep. Even had I been awake, I don’t make a habit of spying on my neighbors, unlike some people.”
“Maybe you heard something?” Maggie asked, her voice sounding so strained as to be almost unrecognizable. “Needless to say, we’re afraid something has happened to her.”