by Linda Ladd
“Your memory’s coming back, right?” That was Booker, squatting down beside her, his hand resting lightly on her back.
“Yeah, fast and furious, no holds barred.”
“Let me call Nick,” Booker said, quickly pulling a smart phone out of the utility pocket on his fatigues. “He’ll know what to do.”
“No!” Claire cried, forcing herself to be calm. “Don’t, Booker. There’s nothing he can do. I’ve got to handle this on my own. Just let me do it my way.”
Booker didn’t punch in the number, but he kept the phone handy, just in case, as if Claire was about to go stark raving mad and he had to order a straitjacket posthaste.
It took a while, but then she stood up, and looked down the road past Bud’s car. “I remember where the road is. It’s down there, off to the left. That’s where he held us. That’s where he killed all those people. C’mon, I want to go there.”
Oh, God, it was happening, finally. And it was in this quiet, peaceful place with the soothing sound of the babbling stream and dappled sunlight glinting through the leaves and birds singing their happy songs. It was this place. It was being back in the exact spot where she had been so traumatized and knocked unconscious. When she took off running to Bud’s car, the two men followed. They all got in. Claire directed Bud to the correct gravel road and felt her fists clenching and unclenching with tension as they jounced down it and came out at an old weathered warehouse sitting on the riverbank.
“This is it. I remember it now. It’s all coming back. Everything.”
They climbed out, and the two men stood there outside the Bronco, watching her warily.
“I’m going inside.”
“Not by yourself.” That was Bud.
More terrible memories flooded through her. “I was drugged. Somebody half carried, half dragged me in there.”
The front door was ancient and opened in a long horror-movie kind of creeeeakkk. She didn’t start trembling until she stepped foot inside. Then she was back there on that terrible night, living inside her own flashback, unarmed and very afraid. She could hear the high river rushing outside. Then she relived it, in all its extreme horror and helplessness and hopelessness. She walked slowly to the center of the big room and looked around at the dusty boxes and dirt-crusted windows.
“I was only half-conscious when I came to, Bud. People were talking around me. I was groggy and confused and kept trying to force myself to wake up.”
Yes, she’d forced her eyes open, tried to focus, and had a lot of trouble doing it. She was slumped in some kind of lawn chair, but she could make out the other chairs, too, all in a circle. There were people sitting in them, but dark shadows hugged the corners of the room and obliterated their faces. Who were they?
“You sure you’re okay, Claire?” It was Booker again, sounding even more concerned this time. “Please, let me call Nick. I gotta call him.”
She wasn’t so sure that she was all right, as the horror of it barraged her mind. “Oh, my God, he made us shoot each other.”
Claire began to shiver and shake all over, and she saw the blood spattering on the walls, heard the deafening blams of the gun, felt the nightmare unfold in all its gory horror. Then everything else came at her in one giant, roaring tsunami tidal wave, like a cataclysmic deluge bringing all of her forgotten past along on its crest: her youth, the deaths of so many loved ones that she’d endured, of her darling, adorable little Zachary and how he died in her arms. She fell to her hands and knees again and wept hard, wracking sobs. The shocking revelations were unrelenting, steady, endless, as her mind let her have it all back, everything at once, all the pain and heartbreak and despair. Her life there at the lake came rushing back with it, the way she’d met Black, the way she’d fallen for him, her relationships with Bud and Charlie and Shaggy, all of them.
Bud was kneeling beside her now, his arm around her, hugging her against his chest, trying to comfort her. Booker was on the other side, his hand tightly gripping her shoulder. She let them try to comfort her, heard their concerned voices, while she struggled to gain control of her shattered, out-of-control, ragged emotions. Then with everything she had, all her strength of will, she pulled herself together, wiped her tears away, and just sat there and tried to absorb it all and put things in order, while the two men hovered and watched her suffer. Still, she waited until she was ready, really had a grip on her nerves. It took some time.
After learning all that she’d been, all that she’d been through, she took a deep breath, clasped her trembling hands, and said, “Okay, I got it now. I’m all right. I remember nearly everything, I think. My memory’s back. It’s a helluva big shock to absorb, that’s all. But I’m fine now. I’m fine. I am.”
“I still think I better call Nick, fill him in.” Booker again. Despite his big, rugged, tough-guy persona, John Booker looked like he was fighting an alien concept, that of feeling helpless. She bet he’d never felt helpless in his life. And he looked ready to crack under the pressure. Yes, she could understand that, too.
Pushing herself back to standing, Claire inhaled deeply, and took another cleansing breath or two. “Look, guys, I am not going to go crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m better now. I remember everything I needed to remember. That should help us find Thomas Landers. And it’s Jesse. I’m positive it is. I think we’ve got to find him and find him fast.”
Bud said, “You sure you’re up to it? Maybe we should take you home. Let you get some rest. You know, sort through things. Let Nick talk all this out with you.”
“Look, I lay there unconscious in a coma for almost a month, Bud. I don’t think I need any more rest. This’s what I’ve been waiting for. It’s just pretty overwhelming stuff to deal with. But I’m okay. Everything’s cool.”
Both guys looked inordinately relieved. They also looked unconvinced.
Standing in the room where such unspeakable acts of cruelty actually occurred, her breath caught again, and her heart careened like crazy. Truth be told, she did need time to come to terms and she would. But she was home again, home inside her head, home inside her body. She was stronger now, in every way. And she remembered Black at last, every detail about him, and everything he meant to her. That made it all better. It had taken longer than anybody had expected, but it was a good thing. She had made it through in one piece, whole, relatively unscathed except for all those mental scars she now had to learn to bury again.
“Let’s get outta here. Somebody should burn this place down.” She gritted her teeth as she thought of the people who died right there in front of her horrified eyes.
Back at the bridge, Booker continued to observe her, concerned as all get out. “Are you absolutely certain you feel up to this? Bud and I can handle the warrant alone. You can drive back right now. Bud can ride back with me.”
“No, I want to go on. Where’s this house you found?”
“It’s about three miles downriver, but there’s a road into it, too. I found the place when I paddled my kayak along the bank.”
“Let’s check out the house first, and then we can search the riverbank for the body, if we don’t get a lead inside. What’d you think, Bud?”
“Sounds good. Get your car, Booker. We’ll follow you.”
Twenty minutes later, they drove close behind him, headed down a rutted, overgrown, and very narrow road. The farmhouse was almost a mile down through the woods. When they came out in the clearing, she saw that it was old, more of a bungalow than a ranch-style house, with a front porch and second story, and it had a dilapidated, neglected look that made it seem deserted and condemned. There was an old barn behind the house.
“Do you know who lives here, Booker?
“The deed I found in Ozark says it belongs to a lady named Rosalee Filamount. That’s the name I asked Charlie to put on the warrant. Says she and her husband bought it in 1961 and have lived here ever since. According to census records, he died in ’82. She’s purportedly still alive and living here.”
Black was right about him. Booker got things done. And she hadn’t liked him at first, but she did now. He was a good investigator. “But nobody’s been here to check this out? Not the Ozark P.D.? Nobody in our department?”
“Nope. But I found a trail leading down through these woods to the river, and it ended near a low bank where Landers could’ve been washed up by the current and pulled himself out. He could’ve made his way up here, even if he was injured in the crash. There weren’t many other homesteads, roads, or animal trails along the riverbed that I could see him taking. Most of the riverfront acres are nearly impenetrable woods.”
They knocked at the front and back doors, tried to dislodge window latches, and called out for the owners, but all was closed up tight, and silent as the grave. Bud and Claire stood back and watched Booker climb onto the front porch. Claire took that time to breathe deeply and get used to all her new and awful life experiences. Booker took a tool from his utility pocket and expertly picked the old lock on the front door. It took him about five seconds flat.
“Not bad, Booker. Maybe we need to check your rap sheet for breaking and entering. Might be interesting.”
“It’s just a knack I picked up somewhere.”
“Yeah, right,” Claire said. Booker smiled. She found it pleasant enough. It made him look less large and dangerous and threatening.
Inside, they spread out and cleared the house. Weapon out and ready, Claire took the living room and root cellar, Bud went upstairs, and Booker checked out the kitchen and back porch. The place was really old, all right, dated, not kept up to modern times the way it should’ve been. It felt timeless, as if she were standing in the middle of a rerun of the old The Dick Van Dyke Show. Very 1960s, with lots and lots of family pictures sitting around everywhere. There was a very faint scent of perfume hanging in the air, too. Something old-fashioned, that probably had lavender in it. Somehow she thought it might’ve been called Intimate, maybe, a cologne one of her foster mothers had worn. It absolutely permeated every single room.
She picked up a picture of a man posed with his elbow on a green military jeep. He wore a tan World War II uniform and black-patent brimmed hat. Another one depicted a different guy in Vietnam War fatigues. Children’s photos. Babies. Toddlers. The furniture wasn’t particularly dusty, though, no cobwebs. Someone had dusted the inside as of late.
“In here,” Booker called out from the kitchen about the time Bud descended the steps toward Claire.
Bud and Claire joined him where he stood in front of a small chest freezer in a tiny pantry just off the kitchen. He had already opened the lid, and the light was on. “She’s in here.”
Almost afraid to look, Claire moved closer and peeked over the side. There was a corpse inside, all right, a headless corpse, which looked to be a small woman, still dressed in a pretty lilac-flowered sundress and wearing white Keds. Frost was thick and white all over the body, and a good two inches of blood was frozen into red ice underneath her.
“Oh, my God, it is Thomas Landers,” she got out, but her voice sounded funny, choked up and unnatural.
“He’s still alive.” Bud’s voice was disbelieving.
Claire stared down at the poor old woman. Black was right. He’d been on target, all along. And Claire was in danger. They all were in danger. Anybody who ever encountered Thomas Landers was in danger, past or present. And more important, where was Landers right now and what victim was he stalking with his bloodstained meat cleaver? She clenched her fists to stop her hands from trembling. It was all coming down on her; she had to control her fear. It was harder than she had ever imagined it would be.
After leaving Booker at the river trying to find further evidence of Thomas Landers’s trail anywhere in the vicinity of the cabin, they first stopped at the office and filled in Charlie on the situation. Buck and his forensic team were ordered down to the Finley River to work alongside the Ozark Police Department at the crime scene. They hoped Landers had left behind enough fingerprints or DNA to prove his guilt. Which would probably pretty well exonerate Black, too, for the murder of Monica Wheeler. They were now hot on the monster’s tracks and getting closer. Even as on edge as she now was, all in all, it had been a damn good day, and she wanted Black to know it, too. She needed to talk to him, let him calm her down a little. And for once, she let herself admit that.
Chapter Twenty-six
Bored to distraction, Nicholas Black sat in the conference room at Cedar Bend Lodge, listening to quarterly reports given by his hotel managers and trying to remain attentive. The potent painkiller he’d injected that morning was wearing off now, and his shoulder ached like the devil. Absently, he slipped off the sling and massaged the sutured wound, uncomfortable, and annoyed at how everybody was droning on for so long. He wanted to get up and get the hell out of there, but he’d put off so many business meetings when Claire was comatose that it was impossible to ignore his business enterprises any longer.
All he thought about anymore was Claire. Today would be difficult for her. He should be with her to soften any ugly memories that she couldn’t handle. She was always on his mind, wondering when she would remember. It was like balancing on the edge of a razor blade. The idea that she was back at the crime scene bugged him. It could trigger something he didn’t want her to remember. Not first off. What had happened there had been absolutely terrifying. Hell, it could unbalance anyone who lived through it. Shifting in his chair, he picked up a bottle of painkillers, took two, and chased them with a sip of water. He should be there with her. Booker hadn’t called him, though, and he was supposed to if anything momentous happened. So, apparently all was well and he just had to get through this blasted meeting.
Still grimacing from the deep ache in his shoulder, he listened with one ear to the guy who was running Black’s newly acquired boutique hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter. The house with a private courtyard next to it was also his property and in the process of being restored, all of which happened before Claire was injured. He was thinking of opening a new clinic down there, too, if this nightmare with Thomas Landers ever ended.
Then, as always when he thought of that devil’s name, rage rushed through him, swift and hard and virtually uncontrollable. He clamped his jaw, teeth gritted, and stared at the man speaking about Mardi Gras revenues. But he was thinking about that son of a bitch Landers shooting him down like a damned dog. And nobody could tell him it wasn’t Landers who did it. Flexing his fingers and then balling his fists, he realized that he longed to kill Thomas Landers, kill him with his bare hands, and watch him die a slow and agonizing death. No doubt it was the way Landers had watched Monica Wheeler die as he strangled her. Black found himself eaten up with a deep-seated thirst for revenge, for everything that murderous psychopath had done to Claire, all the terror and pain he’d caused her since she was a small child. And by God, since nobody else seemed to think Landers was guilty, he’d find him himself. And when he did, there would be no more mental hospitals, no more jail time, and no more trying to rehabilitate the demons telling him to kill anybody associated with Claire Morgan. Booker would track him down, and they would end his murder spree, once and for all. Claire would never have to worry about that lunatic stalking her again.
Absolutely furious inside, seething with the need to take out Landers, he tried to hide it. He didn’t do a spectacular job, judging by the concerned looks his employees were shooting surreptitiously at him. Forcing himself to relax, he picked up his pen and doodled on the notebook lying on the table in front of him. Glancing around, he saw that everyone appeared on edge, too, all dressed exceedingly well in their expensive business attire, professionals in every way. They were all good people, too, top-notch at their jobs. He didn’t need reports to know that. He didn’t hire incompetent people. He trusted every single one of them and they were loyal to him. Problem was, he simply wasn’t interested in how his hotels were doing. He just didn’t give a damn, anymore. All he wanted was to get finished with all this boring business and
make sure Claire got home again and in one piece this time.
Fifteen minutes later, he glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time, the meeting droning on and on. Miki Tudor, his personal assistant, was sitting next to him, taking copious notes of every word said. He should let her print out a copy for him next time and avoid the unbelievable tedium. He started visibly, as did everyone else, when the outside double doors were suddenly flung open. Everybody turned in tandem to look at the interloper, and April Ward, the woman running his South Beach hotel, stopped her commentary in mid-sentence. Claire Morgan stood there on the threshold, her eyes riveted on him.
Shocked that she’d actually barged into his meeting, Black shot to his feet. Claire did not do that, ever. Hell, she never stepped foot in the office wing for any reason. Something had to be terribly wrong.
“Meeting adjourned,” he said quickly, never taking his eyes off her. Claire didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t smile, just stared at him.
Looking curiously at Claire, his colleagues hastily gathered their papers and briefcases, got up, and hurried outside. Miki Tudor was last to depart, quietly closing the doors behind her.
“I’ve got good news and bad news, Black. What’s your pleasure?”
“Which do you want to start with?”
“Well, I declare, that’s a typical shrink-generated response, if I ever heard one. You always answer questions with questions, don’t you?”
Black got what she was getting at right off. Her memory had returned, or at least he hoped to God it had. But she was approaching the conversation in a peculiar way, which made him cautious about how to proceed. He decided to play it her way. “You used to accuse me of that.”
“Yeah, I sure did.”
They were still standing a good distance apart, and Black felt unsure, not certain where she was going with this. He didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing, not at this point. “Okay, tell me some good news. Please do.”