A Dark Lure

by Loreth Anne White

  “Such as?”

  “Murder.”

  She paled, removed her hand from the door and brushed it over her blonde hair, which was secured in a smooth bun at the nape of her neck.

  “I believe he thinks he’s hunting a serial killer. A killer he believes got away twelve years ago. I also have reason to think that Burton might act out the killings himself, using the same signature as the perpetrator from twelve years ago, and that he might have started with a first victim already.”

  She moved back behind her desk, took a seat, her eyes narrowing. “Continue.”

  “He has knowledge about a very recent homicide that no one but the killer could have.”

  She inhaled deeply, but her jaw tightened. “I really am sorry, but I can’t give out information about a patient. You need to ask this question of another medical professional.” She hesitated, then opened her drawer and removed a card. She slid it across her desk toward him.

  “Dr. Greenspan. He’s a colleague of mine. He’ll give you what you need.”

  “What did that woman want?” Tori demanded as her father reentered the cabin.

  “That woman has a name, Tori. It’s Olivia.”

  “What did Olivia want, then?” She glowered at him, arms folded tightly across her stomach.

  “I booked us a guided outing with her. For later this afternoon.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  He looked tired as he dumped a newspaper and a small plastic bag on the table, and shrugged out of his jacket. She thought of what Aunt Louise said on the phone, and fear surged back.

  She latched onto anger instead. “Why did she faint in the lodge?”

  “She was shocked by the terrible news on TV. You shouldn’t have seen it, either.” He filled the kettle in the kitchenette as he spoke.

  “Why do you think that killer hung his victim up by the neck and gutted her like that?”

  He stilled, his back to her, and he took a breath, as if straining for patience. She knew she was poking him, and she couldn’t help it. “Sometimes a bad guy wants to send some kind of message, or fulfill a fantasy. He’s not a well person.”

  He plugged the kettle in and took two mugs from the cupboard above the sink.

  She got up and went to see what was in the bag lying atop the newspaper. Through the window she’d seen Olivia giving these things to her father.

  The story about the murder was on the front page of the crumpled newspaper. A smaller headline questioned whether the Birkenhead murder held echoes of the Watt Lake killings.

  That dark thing prowling along at the periphery of her mind circled a little closer. She frowned and touched the small plastic bag. Inside was a fishing lure.

  A lurid lime-green fly with three shining red eyes.

  Her heart started to stammer. She glanced up at her father. “Dad, weren’t you a staff sergeant in Watt Lake?”

  His head jerked around. “Why?”

  She felt a punch in her stomach at the sudden, hot intensity in his face.

  “Were you?” she said a little more cautiously.

  “Yes, of course. You know that I was. Watt Lake is where I met your mother. Why is this coming up now?”

  “No reason.” Her gaze went back to the lure.

  . . . The sergeant didn’t know until the following spring that it was Sarah Baker who’d tied his three-eyed fly. And that she’d given it to a monster . . .

  Something sinister started to unfurl inside her.

  “Where did you get this fly?” she said.

  “It was a retirement gift. I left it in the lodge office. Olivia returned it to me.”

  She looked up. His eyes bored into hers.

  And inside Tori felt scared. A real dark, confusing kind of scared.

  “What the fuck?” Fury crackled into Cole’s features as he reached for his shirt. “How long have you been standing there?”

  Olivia recoiled at his explosive reaction, aware of the open door at her back. Of escape. Then the light caught the wetness on his cheeks, the dark gleam in his eyes. Her heart crunched at the visible emotion on his face, his obvious humiliation at being caught in a private moment of memory.

  “Why in the hell’d you go sneaking up on me like that?” He stuffed the photo back into his wallet, pocketed it, and punched his arms into his sleeves. His pecs were defined, his abs taut. His chest hair was dark and ran in a tight whorl into the waistband of his jeans. Cole McDonough might have been drowning his sorrows in Cuban and Florida bars, but that clearly hadn’t yet gotten the better of his physique.

  “I didn’t. I was riding by and saw that someone was in the barn.” Her gaze went to the old wreck at the back. “No one comes in here,” she said softly.

  “Weather is picking up,” he said curtly, buttoning his shirt. “I needed to batten down my plane before the storm blows. Sorry I didn’t get your permission first.”

  “That’s not—”

  “That’s exactly what’s going down here,” he snapped. “You bloody run this place. This, all of this—” He cast out his arm. “All yours when he goes.” His voice was thick, rough, full of frustration at having been caught half naked in more ways than one.

  “I don’t want it, damn you,” she hissed under her breath. “I told you already. His decision was as much of a shock to me as it was to you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes. As soon as Myron passes I’m outta this place. So you and your sister can do or take whatever you want. Sell the land. Carve it up into tiny pieces for a development.”

  She turned and marched out of the barn, a strange emotion pounding through her chest.

  “Olivia!”

  She kept going. She didn’t trust herself. Didn’t trust him.

  “Stop. Just wait. Please.”

  She stalled, something in his voice snaring her. She turned.

  He came out into the sunlight. “I’m sorry.”

  Her gaze flickered reflexively to his jeans. Faded and worn in all the right places. She flushed at the sudden hot sensation in her belly, the way her pulse raced.

  “That barn is . . . full of mixed-up memories. Unhappy ghosts. They bring out the worst in me.” He tried to smile, but in the bright sunlight his face was bloodless under his tan, the lines around his eyes drawn deep. He was tired—the kind of deep soul-tired that was born of grief. Compassion mushroomed inside her chest.

  He raked his fingers through his thick mop of hair, dust and perspiration making it stand up further. He looked suddenly defeated. He came closer.

  Olivia tensed, an urge rising in her chest, warning her to step back, pull away, leave now, before it was too late. But it was coupled with something trickier, darker, a whispering physical awareness, an excitement that made her mouth dry. And she was besieged by an impulse to reach up and cup her hand around his strong jaw, to comfort, ease his pain.

  She stuck her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans.

  “I know about the accident,” she said quietly.

  “Who told you? My father?” he said, looking at his hands.

  “Adele, mostly. Everyone in town knows the story. You were driving with Jimmie and Grace in the truck, lost control on an icy bend, and went over into the river ice. They say the brakes failed.”

  He snorted softly, looked away for several beats. When he turned to face her the rawness in his eyes made her breath catch. “The brakes did fail. But they didn’t tell you I’d also been drinking, did they?” He heaved out a breath. “Only my father and I knew that.”

  Shock rippled through her. “So that’s why he blames you?”

  He seated himself on a rock in the lee of the barn, where it was warm. It was as if everything had suddenly been walloped out of him.

  “I used to stash booze here in the barn. I was drinking, listening t
o music while I tinkered with the brakes. I’d put in new pads, drums, rotors. Brake fluid was fine. It appears I screwed up. Maybe if I hadn’t been drinking . . . maybe if I hadn’t been so pleased with my work and offered to show off to Mom and Jimmie by taking them for a spin along the river. Maybe if I’d been sober I’d have seen the ice was too bad . . .” He fell silent for several beats.

  “Did you tell your father you’d been drinking?”

  “He suspected. He came up here, found the bottles.” He moistened his lips. “He never told the cops. By the time emergency services got up here in the snow, by the time they pulled the truck out, by the time they realized there was nothing they could do for Jimmie and my mother . . . They eventually checked out the truck, and did find the brakes faulty. So that and road conditions went down as the cause.”

  “Was that a photo of your brother and mother you were looking at?”

  He took it out. Showed her. “I carry it everywhere.”

  Olivia took it from him. In the photo Jimmie was a little echo of the McDonough men. Grace as beautiful as in all the other photos she’d seen. But the image was marred with white creases, worn with use. As if it was looked at often. She glanced up at him. This man was consumed by remorse. Guilt.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said quietly, holding her eyes. “So long. But coming back to Broken Bar, going into this old barn, it’s like stepping right back in time. As if it were yesterday and I’m still the stupid-ass kid who makes poor decisions.” He rubbed his brow. “It makes you wonder, what does it all mean? What does it mean that you had a partner, and a stepchild—your own family? That you traveled as far away from this place as you possibly could, only to find yourself back, and it’s all concertinaed down to nothing? Just that wreck in an old barn, and yourself, and the guilt.”

  Olivia lowered herself onto the sun-warmed rock beside him. “I heard about your family. I’m sorry.”

  “Adele told you about that, too?”

  “Your father did.”

  He held her gaze for several beats. “What did he say?”

  “Only that your relationship with your partner and her son faltered because of an incident in the Sudan, and that you were on some sort of guilt trip, drowning your sorrows in Cuba because of it.”

  He gave a snort. “Ah, I see, so that’s where it came from—that ‘wallowing in your own self-pity, all you know is your own narcissistic pursuit’ comment over the phone.”

  Heat burned into her face.

  “My stepson—that’s how I think of him—his name is Ty.” He paused, then gave a wry smile. “He’s Holly’s son from her previous marriage. He’s around the same age as Jimmie was when he died. Sometimes life really makes no sense.”

  “I know.”

  His gaze collided with hers. Then very slowly, still holding her eyes, he reached over and took her hand in his. Softly, he traced his thumb across the scar on her wrist. Olivia started to shiver inside. Her eyes began to burn. But she fought the urge to pull away, fought the shame.

  They sat like that, touching, in tremulous silence. Unspoken words heavy and pregnant between them. A kestrel wheeled, cried up high.

  “Jimmie,” he finally said, “used to come into the barn and sit on one of the hay bales, or on the tack box. He’d watch me working on the truck for hours, drove me nuts with his questions.” A sad smile curved his lips. “I think I secretly loved the adulation—the fact little Jimmo actually wanted to learn things from me. I would come straight here after school, and I’d spend most of my time here during vacations, after I’d done my ranch chores.” He paused, looking into the barn, watching the shadows, the interplay of sunlight and darkness. The flock of swallows swooshed back in under the eaves, and she realized an orange cat was sitting next to a bale, watching them.

  He was right. She could feel it. Ghosts. As if this place were suspended in time. As though his words, his memories, were unspooling the years so that she could almost see a young Cole here, shirt off, working on the vintage truck, the clunk of metal tools. Little Jimmie swinging his legs, chattering away.

  Cole traced his thumb absently across her wrist again, and Olivia’s heart quickened. The instinct to escape began to pound louder through her blood.

  “I used to like to take things apart just to see if I could put them back together,” he said.

  “You still do, but with people. In your books. You deconstruct motive, figure out what drives people to do things like climb mountains. To risk life. To live on the edge of existence. You take them apart to examine why they do the extreme.”

  He shot a look at her. “You really have read my books?”

  This time she smiled. “Truth? I’ve skimmed, mostly. And I’ve read the jacket copy. But I’m reading your latest right now. The one on survivors. I sort of borrowed it from your dad’s desk.”

  “It was on his desk?”

  “In his drawer when I went looking for your number. It was bookmarked.”

  “He’d been reading it?”

  “Appears so.”

  His gaze burned into hers, as if he were trying to see right inside her. Deconstruct her. See what fired her. His mouth was so close, his lips chiseled to perfection. Wide mouth. Strong mouth. She imagined it against hers. Heat seemed to swell and shimmer between them. Tangible. She swallowed at the intensity but seemed utterly incapable of looking away. So she filled the space with words instead.

  “Sven Wroggemann—he was a guy you mentioned in the chapter about bush pilots. You said he was driven by survivor’s guilt. That he believed he should have died in his wife’s place, and that’s what kept him chasing death, tempting and daring it to take him at each turn. You wrote that you thought part of him actually wanted to die, to be punished for having survived.”

  She turned her body to fully face his. “Is that how it is with you?” She tilted her head toward the barn. “You feel it should have been you who died, not Jimmie or your mom? Is that why you tempt your own fate, and chase others who do, too?”

  He stared at her for a long while. Leaves clattered in the wind and branches scraped against the siding of the barn. He then scrubbed the dark stubble on his jaw.

  “I suppose it’s absurd, but I never thought about it that way,” he said.

  “Sometimes it’s easier to deconstruct others.” She paused, then said, “When I started reading of your pursuits, I envied your freedom to live life at such full throttle, but I see now it might not have been freedom at all, but a kind of prison.”

  Ace came snuffling at their feet. Cole reached down, scratched behind the dog’s ear. Ace repaid him by sitting on his boot and leaning into his leg for a deeper scratch.

  Olivia was suddenly conscious of the time and needing to complete her chores before the guided fishing session with Burton and his daughter. But she was also deeply curious now. “What did happen in the Sudan?”

  His features tightened, and his eyes darkened.

  Inhaling deeply, he said, “It was also my fault. I should have had a better read on how volatile things had become.” He paused. “Truth was, I did have a read. Yet I was in this rush, amped with adrenaline.” He met her gaze. “And yeah, maybe that was the drug I was chasing, the drug that numbed the memories. It gave me a kind of tunnel vision. I’d scored a one-on-one interview with one of the rebel leaders. Holly and Ty were with me. She was doing a shoot for National Geographic and was going to capture the whole thing on film. But we let slide one fundamental thing—that we were parents. And that we should have been parents before reporters. That our son was more important than showing the world the atrocities in a foreign land.”

  “That’s a tough call.”

  “It’s not. Not when you dig deep and ask yourself what it is, really, that drives you to bring these stories and images to the world. Is it outrage? Is it exposing the atrocities, shining the light on egregious injustice, a tool t
o fight it? Or how much is about your own thrill, the excitement that you could be nailing a blockbuster story, something that’s going to make you famous, a journalistic hero, land you another movie deal. Blot out the past.” He met her eyes. “How much really is narcissistic self pursuit?”

  Olivia met his eyes, realizing in that moment how her comment must have sliced him.

  “I wrapped up the interview. That afternoon we were in a small rented room in Wadi Halfa. We had Ty with us. We were liberal. Bold. Acclaimed in our circles. We were homeschooling and giving our son a radical world education. We were self-righteous and smothered with hubris, which made us feel . . . invincible. And that’s how it happened. The attack came in the streets of Wadi Halfa. Short end of it all, we were trying to flee when Ty fell and got caught up in the melee. Holly and I were swept one way in the crowd, and Ty the other. He tried to run across the street to us.”

  He stopped talking. His features changed, and his eyes went distant.

  “Ty was almost taken down by a machete, got cut across the upper arm. I managed to run into the melee and grab him away. I carried him back to Holly, to the doorway where she was hiding. Ty’s blood was hot on my hands, my face, my arms.” His voice caught. He took a moment to marshal himself. “We got him to safety. We’re both first aid trained and managed to bandage him up. We made it to a doctor. We were all more shook up than anything. It was a close call. The warning knell. The end of our relationship.”

  “Why?”

  “Holly and I fought. We blamed each other. We tried to go on. But Ty’s scrape with death became an irreparable rift, a symbol of everything we were doing wrong as a family. Every time Holly and I looked at each other, touched each other, we saw blame in each other’s eyes. With it came the associated self-recrimination, the bitter words, the questioning about where we were going and who we really were as a couple, a family. She left. A break, she said, to think. It became permanent.”

  “Maybe you both just need some more time,” Olivia said.