Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  But everyone seemed to know she was involved in Tatro’s arrest, and what he’d done to her niece, and Ham didn’t want to attract attention to himself. He decided to rent a kayak—prove that his interest in the same lake where Deputy Longstreet owned land was purely coincidental, and all he wanted to do was to spend the day on a quiet lake that didn’t allow motor-operated watercraft.

  He’d had to rent a roof carrier, too. He headed out to the nature preserve, alert for any sign of Deputy Longstreet’s campsite as he drove up the dead-end dirt road. He passed a small lake house, a cabin up on a hill on the other side of the road, then, back on the same side of the lake, a sign for a spring, a rustic old barn, another lake house, and, finally, the turnaround he’d read about in his guidebook, where he could leave his car and launch his kayak.

  He hoped he’d be able to see the marshal’s campsite from the water.

  The autumn scenery was breathtaking, and Ham was able to lose himself in the peace of a solitary paddle in an isolated Vermont lake. This was where he should have come to restore body and soul, he thought, not home to Texas, not into the middle of all the secrets he and his parents kept from one another.

  The long, slender kayak was easy to maneuver, tracked well, forgiving of his lack of physical conditioning. But there was no wind, just a bit of fog to contend with, and it was dissipating fast. Ham paddled through a thick patch that hovered in the middle of the lake. When he came out of it, he was just ten yards from shore.

  A girl was standing under a giant pine tree on a narrow, rocky point, mouth agape as she stared at him as if he’d just emerged from a cloud of doom, the devil himself.

  Ham smiled and waved to her. “Good morning!” he called cheerfully, noticing another sign for the spring, this one on the lake, presumably to alert paddlers like himself. “I’m just stopping for water. That sign’s right, isn’t it? There’s a spring here?”

  At first the girl looked as if she might bolt, but then she nodded, although still tentative. “It’s a short walk through the woods.”

  She looked about seventeen. Ham wondered if she was the marshal’s niece who’d had the run-in with Tatro. What was she doing out here alone, with that sick bastard on the loose? Didn’t she know?

  Ham kept smiling, paddling, feeling the strain in his shoulders. He didn’t have much upper-body strength. “Great. I need to stretch my legs.” He did, too. He hadn’t taken the time to adjust the seat properly, and his knees were almost up to his chin. “My name’s Ham.” He didn’t know what else to say, then added, lamely, “I’m here on vacation.”

  The girl watched him, suspicious, as he pushed his kayak onto a muddy, grassy spot just a few yards down from her pine tree and climbed out, splashing into the water in his moccasin shoes, yelping at how cold it was. That made her smile.

  He gave a small, awkward laugh. “I’m not used to Vermont lakes.” He laid the paddle across the top of the kayak’s cockpit. “Ah. Sorry if I startled you.”

  “That’s okay. I didn’t see you in the fog.”

  “Are you from around here?”

  She nodded.

  He glanced around at the small clearing, surrounded by blueberry bushes, a simple wooden picnic table sitting in the shade of an oak tree. A pretty spot. “Would you freak out if I asked you to show me to the spring?”

  “I can’t. My dad’s meeting me here in a few minutes. He’s a state trooper. My aunt’s coming with him. She’s a federal marshal.”

  The kid was nervous. Ham didn’t blame her. He smiled. “Wow. A trooper and a marshal in the family.”

  “I have another uncle who’s a town police officer.”

  Probably the guy at breakfast. Ham squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Cool.”

  Cop’s daughter that she was, she narrowed her eyes on him. “Where’s your water bottle?”

  Fortunately, the outfitters had insisted he take basic supplies with him, and he was prepared. He got his hip-pack from where he’d stuffed it down into the cockpit, unlatched it and pulled out a brand-new neoprene water bottle that he’d bought from the outfitters, hoping to keep them from becoming suspicious.

  He held the bottle up toward the girl. “It’s right here.” He gestured toward the woods, grinning at her. He had a fair idea of what Tatro had put her through the other day and didn’t want to scare the hell out of her. “Any lions, tigers and bears back there?”

  She seemed to relax somewhat. “Maybe a bear, more likely a fisher cat or a fox, and probably some wild turkeys, but they won’t bother you.”

  “Good to know.”

  Ham had no doubt he looked out of his element. Never mind that he’d climbed mountains all over South America, he figured he’d always look like a mad, nerdy scientist. Since he was a scientist, he didn’t shatter anyone’s stereotypes, even when he wore his black cowboy hat and cowboy boots. He had on cargo pants and a sweatshirt and had pulled his hair back into a neat ponytail, but the bug bites on his face couldn’t help his cause. Since now he really was thirsty, he figured he’d fetch some water from the spring.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said.

  “Nice meeting you. I need to go meet my dad.”

  Ham silently applauded her for sticking to her obvious lie. The kid was taking care of herself. It was better than he’d done for himself in recent months. He shambled off onto the path amid yellow-leafed birches and young pine trees, knowing she’d be long gone when he got back and he’d missed his chance to ask her where her aunt had pitched her tent.

  He stopped abruptly. Hell! He’d been so damn concerned about reassuring the girl he’d left the emeralds behind in his pack. To go back now would just draw more attention to him. He’d just make quick work of his jaunt to the spring.

  Wendy waited until Ham was out of sight on the path to the spring before she scrambled off her rocky point and over to his kayak, recognizing the logo of the place where he’d rented it.

  She’d been watching the ducks on the other side of the point when he’d materialized out of the fog. Ham—what kind of name was that? Was it his real name? Who was he?

  Trust your instincts.

  It was what her father had always told her.

  Her instincts were on high alert, as if they were trying to tell her something that she just wasn’t getting.

  She didn’t feel safe.

  She noticed that the main compartment of Ham’s hip-pack was still open in the cockpit. She squatted down and glanced behind her, but she didn’t see him—it was a good hundred yards to the spring. She didn’t want to get caught snooping, but why hadn’t he just waved to her and kept paddling? It seemed odd that he’d come to shore the way he did, even with the spring right there.

  He’d shoved a mess of stuff into his hip-pack, but sitting right on top was an unopened bottle of store-bought spring water.

  He hadn’t needed to stop at the spring.

  Her ears were ringing from tension and indecision.

  What was going on?

  She gingerly moved aside a couple of crushed granola bars and pulled out what looked like an airline boarding pass and a battered wallet.

  The boarding pass was issued to Hamilton Carhill. Ham.

  Okay, so that really was his name. Feeling a little more reassured, Wendy opened the wallet and saw a Texas license with a photo of the man who’d just headed off to the spring.

  Maybe she was just paranoid.

  “Wendy! Wendy—run!”

  She shot to her feet. The yell came from the woods. Ham, but she couldn’t see him.

  Acid rose in her throat. How did he know her name? She hadn’t told him. She knew she hadn’t.

  It was like the diner in New York all over again.

  “Get out of here.” It was more of a shriek this time. “Call the police. I’m—”

  She heard a grunt, then nothing.

  Trust your instincts.

  Moving fast, Wendy shoved the hip-pack out of the way, pushed the kayak into the lake and ran in
after it, ignoring the shock of the cold water. She floated the kayak into water up to her knees, then grabbed the paddle and dropped into the cockpit butt-first. The bow struck an underwater rock, but she pushed off from it with the paddle, using it for leverage to get her farther from shore.

  Paddling as quickly as she could, she steered the kayak past the rocky point that she loved so much, ducks ignoring her, in their own peaceful little world in the shallow cove. She stayed in deeper water. She was headed in the opposite direction of Juliet’s campsite, but she didn’t care—her first priority was to get out of sight of anyone on the path to the spring.

  As she passed the point, Wendy heard thrashing in the woods, as if a bear were tearing out toward the lake.

  What if Ham was being attacked by a wild animal? She should help him.

  But he’d screamed for her to run, and to call the police, and it wasn’t a bear who’d told him her name. Unless he’d known it all along and the shouting and the thrashing were some big fake-out.

  Her instincts told her they weren’t. Besides, it didn’t matter; she wasn’t going back there.

  Wendy paddled furiously. She focused on using her shoulders to power her strokes, careful to maintain her center of gravity and not overturn the kayak. She didn’t look back.

  She needed to get to a telephone.

  There were two houses on the lake, one behind her—past the spring—and one up ahead. She couldn’t remember if either had a phone, but the one up ahead was closer. It was owned by a family from New Jersey. They’d had some landscaping done over the summer, and Wendy had helped her uncles plant apple trees and fix a problem with drainage. They were nice people. And yes, she thought, they had a phone—she remembered Uncle Will asking to borrow it, because his cell phone didn’t work out there.

  By the time she reached the house, Wendy’s shoulders ached, and she was gasping, totally out of breath. She lifted her paddle out of the water and let the kayak glide toward shore, then felt it scraping the rocks, until it finally hooked among them and stopped. She jumped into knee-high water and grabbed Ham’s hip-pack, slinging its wide strap over her shoulder as she waded onto the shore.

  The house was painted a dark evergreen and had a screened porch that overlooked the lake. Wendy tried the porch door. Of course, it was locked. She went around back to the glass door there, but it, too, was locked. She didn’t hesitate—she found an empty clay flowerpot and smashed the glass on the front door, then gingerly reached in and flipped the simple lock on the knob.

  She was shivering, her pants soaked from her thighs down. As she pushed open the door and ran inside, she felt her running shoes squishing, tracking up the rugs and wood floor.

  When she reached the kitchen, which opened out onto the porch, Wendy grabbed the telephone off the wall next to the stove.

  It was dead. Not even a dial tone. The owners must have had it shut off for the season.

  She fought back tears. The receiver fell off the hook, and she just left it hanging as she set Ham’s pack on the kitchen table. Now what? She needed to get her bearings.

  She took out the bottle of spring water and opened it, her hands shaking. She hadn’t had anything to eat since the apple crisp last night. She gulped down the water, digging deeper into the pack, in case Ham had a cell phone that she could get to work.

  She came up with a soft, drawstring bag made of suede in a deep maroon. It looked as if it’d come from a jewelry store.

  Odd.

  Almost grateful for something else to think about, Wendy tugged the bag open and saw that it was stuffed with what looked like little bubble-wrapped packages. Using her thumb and forefinger, she pulled one out. It was taped shut, but she could see a shiny green stone inside.

  She dumped out more of the little packages onto the table. Each one protected a green stone. She pried the tape off one and unwrapped it, and a smooth, beautiful, spring-green stone rolled out onto her palm. It felt incredible against her skin. She held it up to the window and saw a bluish tint, but the green was deep and clear.

  An emerald?

  Was Ham a thief?

  She was tired and hungry and thirsty, and now she wished she’d left the pack back at the spring. What if Ham thought she’d stolen it?

  Wendy returned the emerald to its packaging as best she could and stuffed them back in the suede bag, which she tucked into the hip-pack. She took a Nutri-Grain bar with her, and the water, but left everything else on the table. She’d get her dad or her aunt and let them figure out what was going on.

  She went out through the porch, figuring she’d explain to the owners later what had happened and fix the door she’d broken.

  But she didn’t go back down to the lake. The kayak was no use. The other lake house wouldn’t have a working phone, either. And it was farther away—the wrong way, too. She’d be faster on foot—she’d reach her grandparents’ house before she could paddle back across the lake.

  She walked up the dirt driveway to the road. She didn’t hear any cars, or anyone yelling, or any thrashing.

  What had happened to Ham?

  A slight breeze stirred atop the huge maple tree at the corner of the driveway, most of its leaves still green. Wendy’s teeth were chattering now. She hoped she wouldn’t get hypothermia—she’d had basic first aid and knew the signs. But she didn’t dwell on the possibilities.

  Patting the old maple’s rough trunk, as if somehow it could comfort her, protect her, she forced herself to start down along the road, staying within the cover of the woods, in case she had to hide. She only wanted to see her dad or her aunts and uncles, her grandparents—Matt. It wasn’t that far to the cabin where he had his camper, to the lane back to her grandparents’ house. Someone would be around to help her. Help Ham. And she’d been gone a long time now. She wouldn’t mind so much if her father had sent out a search party for her.

  Low, dead pine branches poked at her, but even with no one in sight, she refused to go out onto the road. Her hair caught on a thorny Japanese barberry, an invasive species, and her eyes teared up, but she didn’t cry out.

  Not that far to go.

  She pictured Teddy shaking himself off after an autumn swim in the lake and fixed that image in her mind, and kept moving.

  Nineteen

  Ethan waited for Juliet out on the side yard, next to a wooden trailer loaded with pumpkins and decorated with dried corn stalks. Sam Longstreet hadn’t caught their niece sneaking out of the attic or seen her at all that morning. Neither had Matt Kelleher, a temporary employee who’d apparently taken a liking to Wendy. Now Juliet was inside calling big brother Joshua. Ethan didn’t envy her that one.

  Kelleher approached the trailer, picking up a couple of pumpkins from the hundred or so laid out in the side yard. “No word yet on Wendy?”

  “Not yet,” Ethan said.

  “She’ll turn up. She wouldn’t stay out and get everyone worked up.”

  “I hope so. Kids that age don’t always think things through.”

  “That’s for sure.” Kelleher placed the pumpkins on the trailer and stood back, appraising his handiwork, but the display looked exactly the same to Ethan. “I only started work here a few days ago, but I gather she’s had a hard time. Her mom, her dog, then that business in New York. She’s got to be reeling. Sometimes, all you want to do is escape your own skin.”

  Since Kelleher’s words described what Ethan had been doing for most of the past year, he understood, but he said, “Nobody’s judging her. They just want to find her.”

  Spaceshot, the family’s chubby mutt, roused himself from the driveway and nudged Kelleher, who patted the dog. Kelleher’s shaved head was bare, but he had on a heavyweight black sweatshirt over a dark red turtleneck, jeans and trail boots. He was fit, agile. He’d told Ethan he’d hit the road after his wife’s death, fulfilling his promise to her. Smarter, Ethan supposed, than diving into the world he had since Char’s death. Murder, extortion, illegal weapons, spies, federal agents. Except for his weeks in N
ight’s Landing, he’d seldom slept in the same place for more than a few nights.

  But he’d met Juliet, who spoke her mind and liked her work and had energy and optimism and a strong, beautiful body. That bad things happened every time he showed up in her life was something they’d have to work on. Unless he just was snakebit. Then—he didn’t know.

  Kelleher straightened, Spaceshot flopping down onto his feet. “I heard on the radio that the guy in New York escaped last night. You don’t think Wendy knows?”

  “I doubt she’d have taken off if she knew.”

  “He’s not—” Kelleher rubbed the back of his neck, as if he didn’t want to show any sign of panic. “The police don’t think he’s headed here, do they?”

  Ethan shrugged. “They don’t tell me what they think.”

  “He’d be stupid to show up here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these Longstreets don’t come small—except for Wendy.” Kelleher winced, his humor falling flat, even for himself. “I’m glad she wasn’t here to hear that. She told me she sometimes feels like a mutant because she’s so small.” He quickly changed the subject. “This your first trip to Vermont?”

  “It is. It’s pretty country.” Ethan pointed at a giant, pale orange pumpkin among the cornstalks at one corner of the trailer. “That guy’s a Charlie Brown pumpkin, isn’t it? It’s so big, the orange ran out.”

  Kelleher chuckled. “It’s huge. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that big. Not real pretty, though, is it?” He sighed, awkward. “I should get to work. Good talking to you. I’ll keep an eye out for Wendy.”

  As Kelleher walked back across the driveway toward the greenhouses, Ethan was half tempted to find some work to do himself. He was talking pumpkins in Vermont, and Bobby Tatro was on the loose. Ham Carhill was off on his own when he needed to be lying by the pool, letting the Carhill cooks and maids wait on him, resting, indulging himself, forgetting he’d ever heard of Mia O’Farrell and Bobby Tatro—or had ever met the Brookers. He was in no shape—physically or mentally—to take on the unanswered questions of his kidnapping, or whatever the hell he was doing.