“No, but they did mention an old fish-packing plant.”
She smiled ruefully. “I would imagine there are several of those in the area.”
“If there’s one person who would know something about this guy, it would be Hazel at the inn. She seems to know everyone and everything about this town.”
As they walked across the square toward the inn, Ryan kept an arm wrapped firmly around her. She wanted to snuggle into his warmth, but she knew the only reason he was doing it was for safety purposes.
As usual Hazel greeted them with friendly warmth and insisted they come inside and share a cup of tea with her. “Tourist season hasn’t really officially begun, so things are quiet. This crazy weather isn’t helping any,” she said as she bustled around to fix the tea. “Raspberry tea always sits well with me.”
Once it was ready and they were all seated in the parlor with dainty china cups of the fragrant brew, Ryan asked her what she knew about Ingram Jackson.
Hazel’s brow tugged into a frown. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about the mystery man. Nobody seems to know anything about him and he certainly hasn’t shown himself to anyone in town. I’ve heard a rumor that he was from the Midwest, then another one that he was from Europe. Who knows what the truth is.”
“You know exactly where he’s living?”
She nodded and her frown deepened. “Every town has the right side of the tracks and the wrong side, and from what I’ve heard this Ingram Jackson bought the old Jennings place and that’s definitely on the wrong side of the tracks. It’s a seedy area, mostly abandoned buildings. That part of town took a hard hit from the hurricane we had five years ago. The town was supposed to tear most of them down, but it hasn’t been done yet.”
“Do you have a description of the particular cottage this guy has moved into?” Ryan asked.
“It used to be a cheerful yellow, but it’s faded now and it’s almost directly across the street from the old fish-packing plant. Sits off by itself some. You can’t miss it.” She eyed the two of them worriedly. “You be careful down there. There’s lots of criminal activity around those parts.”
At that moment a tall, well-built man walked in. His hair was jet-black and his smoky, gray eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of them.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” he said.
“No problem, we were just getting ready to leave,” Ryan replied.
“Have you all met?” Hazel asked as all three of them stood.
“This is Grant Bridges, our assistant district attorney. And, Grant, this is Ryan Burton and his lady friend, Valerie. They’re visiting here in town for a while.”
Ryan and Grant shook hands, and he nodded and smiled at Britta. “Nice to meet you both,” he said. “I was just on my way up to my room.”
“Is there anything you need, dear?” Hazel asked.
“No thanks, Hazel, I’m fine.” He excused himself and went up the stairs that led to the guest rooms.
“Poor man,” Hazel said when he was gone. “He’s been lost since the tragedy.” Britta looked at her quizzically. “You probably don’t know about it,” Hazel said in explanation. “He was to marry Camille Wells.”
“Oh, I read about what happened to her in the paper,” Britta said.
Hazel nodded. “Terrible thing. Grant moved in here before the wedding. The mayor had bought him and Camille a lovely house to move into after the wedding, but now that the wedding didn’t take place, who knows what’s going to happen.”
She walked with them to the front door. “Thank you for the tea, Hazel,” Britta said.
“And the information,” Ryan added.
She wagged a plump finger at them. “You remember what I said. That part of town isn’t a good place to be.”
With her warning ringing in their ears, they left and returned to Ryan’s car. “When I read that newspaper article about Camille Wells falling off the cliffs, I didn’t even think about the man she was supposed to have married that day,” Britta said.
“I had been helping with the search effort for Camille when I spied you in the lighthouse. I’d gone to the wedding to mingle with the crowd, see if I could hear anything that might lead me to you. It wasn’t just a bad scene, it was…” He paused a moment as if searching for the right word. “It was just bizarre.”
Britta tried to imagine the scene in her head, but found it far too horrifying.
“That wind that came up seemed to come from the very bowels of hell.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and shook his head. “It had been windy, but that particular gust was something else.”
It didn’t take very long to reach a part of town that held none of the charm of a New England fishing village.
The cottages were closer together, most still sporting evidence of the killer storm that had hit years before. Many of the cottages were boarded up. Graffiti was spray painted everywhere. Some of the structures listed precariously to one side, the windows broken and never replaced.
On the opposite side of the street was an industrial area, a fish-packing plant no longer in use, several boat shops, a tattoo parlor and liquor store that were open for business.
Without the aid of sunshine, the area looked particularly dismal, although Britta didn’t think any burst of sunlight would do much to cheer the place.
Hazel hadn’t known the exact address, but as Ryan drove slowly down the street, they looked for a place that fit the description she had given them.
“It’s weird not to see any people,” Britta said. “The sidewalks in town are always bustling, but here it’s like a ghost town.” A chill swept through her, one that had nothing to do with the cool outside temperature.
“It is a little creepy,” Ryan agreed. “Although I imagine there are people here, they just aren’t showing themselves. This is probably an area where drug dealers ply their trade. I’ll bet most of the people in this part of town only come out at night like cockroaches.”
“There.” Britta pointed up ahead where a weathered yellow cottage stood off by itself. A car was parked alongside, but other than that there was no sign of occupancy.
Ryan parked his car but remained behind the wheel, gazing at the house with sharp intensity. He finally turned and looked at her. “Anything jog a memory?”
She stared out the window, seeking any elusive whisper of familiarity, but there was nothing. “No, I feel as if I’ve never been here before, but who knows if I have.” She tamped down an edge of frustration.
Ryan opened his car door. “Let’s go check it out. Maybe when you get closer something will connect with you.”
Together they walked toward the house. Behind it the sea bubbled and rolled to a shoreline littered with driftwood and trash. The wind had picked up and buffeted them as they walked across the sandy ground.
As they drew closer she could see that all the windows were covered with dark plastic on the inside. It was dark enough to not only keep people from peering in, but also keep the sunshine from lighting any of the interior rooms. Weird, just plain weird.
“Maybe he really is a vampire,” she said half-jokingly, but a nervous tension coiled in her stomach, making it cramp uncomfortably.
Ryan pulled his gun from his ankle holster, reminding Britta that danger could come to them from any direction at any time.
The tension in her stomach knotted tighter as they walked up the rickety porch stairs, each one creaking ominously beneath their weight. With Britta squarely behind him Ryan knocked on the door.
“Hello?” he called.
There was no answer. He knocked harder. “Mr. Jackson, we’d like to have a talk with you,” he shouted.
Still no reply.
“He’s in there, I know he is,” Ryan said with frustration.
“Come on, let’s take a walk around back and see if we can get his attention.”
The back of the house looked worse than the front. Here it was impossible to tell that the house had once been yellow
as it had weathered to a dull gray. A back porch had once been covered, but the roof was now missing and the remaining posts leaned to one side.
The windows back here were also covered with the dark film that allowed no peek inside. As Ryan approached the door, Britta turned to look at the ocean.
Today it looked as gray and ominous as the clouds that hung low overhead. The waves rolled in, sporting a white crest whipped by the wind.
To the sea.
Go to the sea.
The voice whispered inside her head. Compelling her, demanding her immediate response. Everything around her faded to nothingness as the voice whispered once again.
Go to the sea.
Chapter Ten
Ryan knocked one last time on the door, then stepped back in frustration. He believed Ingram Jackson, or whatever his name was, was inside, but he had a feeling nothing was going to compel him to open the door to a couple of strangers.
The man obviously didn’t want to be seen, and although that made him a person of interest in Ryan’s mind, there wasn’t much he could do about it at the moment.
“He’s not going to answer,” he said, and turned around, surprised not to find Britta standing right behind him. He saw her in the distance, walking slowly across the beach.
“Britta?” he called to her, but she didn’t seem to hear him. He frowned as he watched her. She wasn’t walking with her usual sensual grace, but rather like the marionette of a demented puppeteer. Her jerky, uncharacteristic gait filled him with sudden alarm.
“Britta,” he yelled again as he jumped off the porch and hurried after her. She was nearly to the water’s edge and didn’t appear to be slowing down. What in the hell was she doing?
He raced across the sand, horror surging inside him as she reached the water but didn’t stop walking. She was knee deep in the surf when he finally caught up to her.
He grabbed her by the shoulders from behind, shouting her name as she struggled to get away from him, to wade deeper into the sea. “Let me go,” she said in a dreamy voice. “Let me go to the sea.”
“No, Britta!” He finally scooped her up in his arms, and for a long moment she stared at him with a blank gaze. He saw recognition strike as her features crumpled and she hid her face against his shirt and began to cry. What in the hell was happening? he thought.
He carried her to the car and placed her in the passenger seat, then hurried around to the driver’s side and got in. “Are you all right?” he asked, even though he knew it was a stupid question.
Of course she wasn’t all right. Something had happened to her, something that terrified him. If he hadn’t been there, would she have continued to sink deeper into the water until she’d drowned?
“I don’t know what just happened,” she said through her tears. She began to shiver uncontrollably, and Ryan didn’t know if it was because she was wet and cold or if it was because she was afraid.
“Let’s get you home,” he said. He started the car and turned on the heater. She cried for just a few more minutes, then stopped and closed her eyes. She continued to shiver even though Ryan had the car heater blowing at full blast.
When they got to the cottage, Ryan led her into the bedroom. She appeared to be in a mild state of shock. She didn’t fight him as he helped her out of her wet jeans, nor did she protest when he pulled her blouse off and tucked her in beneath the sheets clad only in her panties and bra. She merely relaxed against the pillow, closed her eyes and appeared to fall asleep.
Ryan sat in a chair next to the bed, staring at her as he tried to figure out what in the hell had just happened. She’d looked as if she was in a daze, a trance of sorts. He sat up straighter. A hypnotic trance.
He thought of what the doctor had told them about the drug that had been injected into her. Stinging Flower, a drug with the properties of strong suggestibility.
Was it possible the person who had abducted Britta had implanted some kind of hypnotic command in her brain? But what kind of a command would make her walk mindlessly into the sea? It didn’t make sense, and what didn’t make sense worried him.
What worried him even more was that if he hadn’t turned away from Ingram Jackson’s back door when he had, she might have disappeared altogether in the water and he wouldn’t have known what had happened to her.
His heart crashed as he realized how close he’d come to losing her, but along with the clutch of his heart came the pounding questions that had no answers.
He spent most of the day pacing the living room floor, worrying everything around in his mind, wondering if somehow he’d missed a clue that might hold the answer to Britta’s missing four days. He checked in with his boss and let him know what was going on.
Britta’s abduction and drugging wasn’t officially an FBI issue and Ryan knew that what his superior, Kimble Cross, would like most would be for Ryan to remove her from Raven’s Cliff and get her relocated someplace else. But Ryan was adamant that he wanted time to chase down this mystery, and Kimble had indulged his wish.
Britta slept until he woke her just after dusk. He’d checked on her several times throughout the day, but her sleep appeared to be deep and without dreams.
It was after seven when he carried in a tray with a bowl of soup, some crackers and one of the diet sodas she liked. He set the tray on the floor next to the bed.
He watched her for a moment, as her features were relaxed and vulnerable with sleep. She had beautiful bone structure and the Scandinavian coloring that made her striking no matter what clothes she wore.
It wasn’t just her physical beauty that drew him. She was spirited and bright and had a wry sense of humor that matched his own.
What was happening in that pretty little head? What had somebody done to her mind that would compel her to walk into the sea?
He leaned over and gently touched her shoulder.
“Britta, honey. You need to wake up. You need to eat something.” She stirred, a smile curving her lips as she saw him. In that soft, sleepy smile, memories of waking up with her next to him in bed crashed through his head. But when full consciousness hit her, the smile fell away.
As she rose to a sitting position he picked up the tray from the floor and placed it over her lap. “I fixed you some lunch,” he said, and tried not to notice the dainty lace bra that barely contained her breasts.
Once again she began to shiver, as if the deep chill that had clutched her before sleep had found her once again. “Eat your soup,” he said. “It will warm up your insides.”
Dutifully she picked up the spoon. “I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again,” she said. She took a sip of the soup and frowned. “What happened out there, Ryan?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he replied. He pulled his chair up closer to her side.
She ate another spoonful of soup and shook her head. “All I know is that one minute I was right behind you at Ingram Jackson’s back door and the next minute you were pulling me out of the water.”
He leaned forward. “And you don’t remember why you went into the water?”
“No.” She set her spoon down, her eyes hollow as her shivering intensified. She reached out and took Ryan’s hand in hers, squeezing tightly. The fear that darkened their beautiful depths tugged at his heart. “What’s happening, Ryan? What’s happening with me?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to figure this out, Britta. I promise you.” And he meant it. He was damned if he was going to leave this cursed fishing village until he got the answers he sought.
She shoved the soup away. “I’m just so cold.” Her eyes held his appealingly. “Come cuddle with me, Ryan. Get me warm.” She tugged on his hand, and even though he knew it was a mistake, he took the tray from the bed and set it on the floor. And even though he knew it was an even bigger mistake, he crawled into bed beside her and pulled the blankets up around them.
As long as he kept his clothes on there shouldn’t be any temptation, he thought. He was in control of this situation
and he knew he had to be strong.
She trembled against him, and more than anything he wanted to reach inside her and grab that core of ice and melt it so she would finally be warm.
He wanted to take her from this place, from the nightmare that she was now living and put her someplace safe where she would be happy forever. But he couldn’t. He was afraid that whatever the destructive force was, it would follow her.
She cuddled closer and laid her hand on his chest, and he wondered if she could feel the thundering of his heart. Although he tried to keep himself rigid and emotionally distant, it was next to impossible with her sexy curves pressed against him and her warm breath on his neck.
He rubbed down her slender back, telling himself all he was attempting to do was get warmth into her blood. But it seemed the only blood that was warming up was his own.
What he didn’t want to do was kiss her, yet as she raised her face to his and her lips parted in a silent plea, he was helpless to overcome the rush of desire that swept through him.
He lowered his mouth to hers and tasted her and remembered what her naked body felt like against his, remembered how easily he could lose himself in her sweet warmth.
The one thing they had shared when they’d been together in the past was a passion for each other, and it was that way again. Despite all of his intentions to the contrary, as she opened her mouth to him and wrapped her arms around his neck he was lost.
She flicked her tongue into his mouth, and he deepened the kiss, swirling his tongue with hers. All the questions that had plagued him throughout the day fell out of his head as Britta filled him up. It felt as if they kissed for an eternity and yet it wasn’t long enough, would never be long enough.
As if they had a life of their own, his hands wrapped around her back and unfastened her bra. As it fell from her body his hands captured the lush fullness of her breasts, his thumbs grazing her erect nipples.
She moaned, that deep sensual sound that had always touched him on a level no other woman ever had. He wasn’t even aware of undressing, nor was he aware of her removing her panties, but suddenly they were skin to skin.
With the Material Witness in the Safehouse Page 10