Scent of Roses ; Season of Strangers

by Kat Martin

  “Benson left on his own. He got a job somewhere else.”

  “Where, exactly?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know exactly where Jake is because you put him there. You knew he wouldn’t be missed. He had no family. He was just a working man, a guy who moved from job to job. Better to have him dead than have him tell the truth about the wreck and what you did that night to Dad. Better he be dead than blackmailing you for even more money.”

  Carson’s eyes darted wildly from Zach to his father then back again. He started to say something but no words came out. Instead he turned and started running, his feet pounding off down the hall.

  Zach tore after him, reaching him just as he turned the corner, tackling him and bringing him crashing to the ground.

  “Get off me!” Carson rolled onto his back, trying to get away, but Zach grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him up. Carson began to struggle and Zach drew back his fist, aiming it at his brother’s face.

  “Give it up, Carson. The game is over.” His fist tightened in warning. “I’m better at this than you are. You might as well face it. You aren’t going to win this one.”

  Carson hesitated a moment, then his head fell back against the carpet. Zach relaxed his grip on the front of his brother’s shirt and slowly rose to his feet.

  “Call 911,” he instructed the receptionist who was standing wide-eyed at the end of the hall. “Tell the sheriff that Carson Harcourt wants to talk to him.” He looked down at his brother. “Isn’t that right, Carson?”

  Carson nodded, and Zach backed a couple of feet away. Even if Carson tried to run, there was really no place to go, and when Zach looked at him, he could almost see the wheels turning in his brother’s head, planning his strategy, figuring the best way out.

  “I’ll let you handle this,” Zach said to him. “Good luck.”

  Carson struggled to his feet, brushing off his sport coat, straightening the front of his shirt. “This isn’t over,” he said darkly.

  “Actually, Carson, it is.” Turning, Zach started walking. Down the hall, Elizabeth raced toward him. Zach met her halfway and pulled her straight into his arms.

  EPILOGUE

  Fletcher Harcourt sat at the desk in his study. He was still using his wheelchair to get around, but during therapy he was able to walk on those aluminum walkers. His body was taking its own sweet time to heal, but his brain seemed to be working. He still couldn’t remember everything that had happened in the years since the accident. But oddly, his strongest memory was of the night he’d been pushed down the stairs.

  Fletcher pulled his mind away from thoughts of his son and the ugly moment that would be forever burned into his brain. He leaned back in his old oak swivel chair, pulled out of storage in the barn. Damn, it felt good to be home, to be sitting at the rolltop desk he had worked at for more than forty years.

  The house was different now. Carson had redecorated the whole damned place, but Fletcher had to admit he’d done a good job, and though it was more formal than he liked, the rooms were comfortable and he was getting used to the changes.

  There were going to be a whole lot more of them.

  Since his return to the house, he’d had time to do some thinking. He went over the life he’d led, how selfish he had been through the years, never really thinking of his sons or his wife, always doing exactly what he wanted, no matter who he hurt.

  Constance had been dead for more than a decade. There was nothing he could do for her. Teresa was happily married, and she had Zach to look out for her. And Carson would be spending the next few years in jail, though not as long as he undoubtedly deserved.

  His son had pled guilty to manslaughter, said that he and Jake Benson had gotten into a fight the night Jake was killed, said Jake had pulled a gun and Carson had turned it against him and shot him in self-defense.

  Afterward, he’d been scared, he said, so he buried the body inside the foundation of the overseer’s cottage that was under construction on the farm.

  Both Zach and Fletcher had refused to testify against him, or mention anything about the wreck that Zach had spent time for in prison. Blood was blood, and both of them would probably have perjured themselves if they’d been subpoenaed. But Carson had always been a smooth talker.

  Fletcher had hired his son one of those fancy, overpriced criminal lawyers from L.A., and together they’d negotiated a reduction of the charges. With good behavior, Carson would probably be out in a couple of years.

  It didn’t seem quite right, yet Fletcher wouldn’t have it any other way. The man was, after all, still his son.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He looked up to see his younger son standing in the doorway, an arm around the little gal he was marrying next Sunday afternoon. She was a pretty thing, he thought, with her heavy auburn hair and blue eyes. Fletcher believed his son had finally found a woman who would make him happy. And the girl was getting a damned fine man in the bargain.

  “You said you wanted to see us,” Zach said, looking a little concerned.

  “That’s right, come on in.”

  Zach ushered Liz through the door then fell in behind her. He dragged over a chair and she sat down, then Zach sat down in the chair next to Fletcher’s desk.

  “I asked you to come because there’s something I want to show you. You got that medal I asked you to bring? The one you said you found under the house?”

  “I brought it.” Zach pulled the old rusted piece of medal out of his pocket and laid it down on Fletcher’s desk.

  Fletcher picked it up and examined it. “See this writing on the front?”

  “We tried to read it the night we found it but we couldn’t make out what it said.”

  “That’s because the letters are in German.”

  “German?” Liz picked up the medal, studied the printed letters. “Ben Donahue said it looked like something that came from the military. We thought maybe someone brought it back from the war.”

  “Well, in a way, that’s what happened.” Reaching down, he pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. He’d had Isabel, the housekeeper, dig around in his old room upstairs until she found the box he was looking for. He was living in a bedroom downstairs now and she’d helped him collect his things.

  Nice girl, Isabel. He’d asked her to stay on and she’d agreed. It was good to have someone else in the house.

  Fletcher lifted the metal box, set it on the table, and lifted the lid. Inside was a stack of old, dog-eared, time-yellowed newspaper clippings.

  He lifted them out of the box and set them down on top of his desk. “I been doing some thinking. Mostly about that house over there and this one, too. You see, I did a little research on that couple who killed those little girls. Sheriff Morgan says before they kidnapped that child, they were model citizens. Not so much as a parking ticket. Then they moved into the old gray house.”

  “What are you getting at, Dad?” Zach asked.

  “You told me about Miguel Santiago, how the house seemed to change him.”

  “That’s right,” Liz said. “He was different before things started happening in the house. He’s different now. Thank you for giving them another place to live.”

  He waved away the thanks. The couple was afraid to live in the house, and after finding two dead bodies underneath, he didn’t blame them.

  “I started thinking about Carson…about how a boy I raised could kill a man the way he did. I still have trouble imagining it. Which got me to thinking even more.” He shoved the stack of clippings toward Zach, motioned for Liz to come round where she could read them.

  Zach picked up a page of yellowed newsprint. “These came out of the San Pico Newspress. Looks like they were printed during World War II. They’re all dated in the 1940s.”

  “That’s right. I don’
t know if you remember me ever mentioning it. It was so far back…I was just a kid at the time. I don’t remember much about the war, but my dad would sometimes talk about it.”

  Zach and Liz both started reading the articles, skimming the pages, picking up the next article in the stack.

  Zach finished first. “It says that between 1941 and 1945, the government set up prisoner of war camps all along the San Joaquin Valley.” Zach tapped the yellowed page. “It says one of them was right here in San Pico.”

  “That’s right. In fact, the camp was right here on this property. It was a farm labor camp even back then. The government needed a safe place to keep German prisoners until the war was over.”

  “I think my high school history teacher mentioned the camp,” Liz said. “It seemed so long ago I never gave it much thought.”

  “Being patriotic, my old man agreed to let the government use the land. Unfortunately, according to what my dad told me years later, he wound up with the worst prisoners of the lot. The captured German soldiers were Gestapo and Nazi S.S. Really bad men. Some of them were responsible for the massacre in Warsaw in 1941.”

  Zach shook his head. “I’m afraid my history’s not that good.”

  “I read up on it. Happened in a little town called Jedwabne. Nazis forced sixteen hundred people into a barn and set it on fire.”

  He looked over at Liz, saw the color wash out of her face. “Sorry, but that’s what happened. That’s the kind of men these were. Evil men, according to my dad. When the war was over, they shipped the soldiers back to Germany. I have no idea what happened to them. My father tore down the temporary buildings and tents that housed them and in their place, built the old gray house.”

  Liz leaned toward him. “Are you…are you thinking that maybe that’s where all this began?”

  “That’s about it. I guess you could say I’ve been thinking a lot about evil. About the nature of the beast, if there is such a thing. Seems to me a lot of bad stuff has gone on around here since the war. Maybe…well, maybe if the evil is strong enough, it stays on after the carrier is gone.”

  “That’s pretty far-fetched,” Zach said.

  “Maybe. But considering what’s happened out here—”

  “Good point.”

  “At any rate, I’ve decided to close this section of the ranch, move the workers to another part of the property. The overseers’ houses are old and in need of repair. I’m gonna tear ’em down and rebuild in a new location.”

  Zach just stared.

  “I guess you think I’m crazy. Maybe you’ll start believing your brother was right about me, all along.”

  Liz reached over and caught his hand. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I was in that house. I felt the evil that lives there. I think it’s a good idea.”

  “So do I,” Zach said softly.

  Fletcher Harcourt just nodded. Perhaps men of strong will weren’t affected by the forces of evil, or perhaps they were able to overcome them. Maybe that was the reason he had lost only one son and not both.

  Or perhaps it was all just a big pile of bull.

  He looked at his younger son and the woman who would soon be his daughter. He thought about the spirit of the little girl who had come to warn Maria Santiago of the evil that still existed in the house years after the child was gone.

  Whatever the truth, they were all starting over.

  Fletcher figured it was long overdue.

  * * * * *

  Rediscover this thrilling tale of romantic suspense by New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin.

  In one fleeting moment, anything—and anyone—can change…

  Real estate agent Julie Ferris is enjoying a day at the beach with her sister Laura when a strange, almost undetectable charge fills the air. Then, under the hot Malibu sun, time stops altogether.

  Neither sister can explain their “lost day”—nor the blinding headaches and horrific nightmares that follow—but Julie chalks it up to the stress she’s been under since her boss’s son took over Donovan Real Estate.

  Patrick Donovan would be a real catch if not for his notorious playboy lifestyle and matching attitude. But when a cocaine-fueled heart attack nearly kills him, Patrick makes an astonishingly fast—and peculiar—recovery. Julie barely recognizes the newly sober Patrick as the same man she once struggled to resist. Maybe it’s the strange beach experience fueling her paranoia, but she can’t help sensing something just isn’t…right.

  As Julie’s feelings for Patrick intensify, she’s about to discover how that day at the beach links her newfound happiness with her wildest suspicions…

  Originally published in 2008

  Season of Strangers

  Kat Martin

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was an odd sound, like the wind whipping a heavy wire stretched too tight. She heard it and a tense shiver crawled up her spine. The sun scorched down, hotter than she’d expected. The sky, a washed-out white instead of its usual blue seemed to trap in the heat. There wasn’t the hint of a cloud to offer relief.

  It was Wednesday, the middle of the week. No one swam in the ocean. No one looked down from the private, guarded cliffs rising up from this deserted stretch of beach. Only a stray black dog, little more than a pin-dot in the distance, wandered aimlessly in her direction, veering occasionally into the surf to cool its burning feet.

  Ignoring the dog and the heat soaking through her red bikini, Julie Ferris turned to her sister, propped up on the sand just a few feet away. “Listen, Laura—do you hear that sound?”

  The tall, sleek young woman beside her sat up on her faded yellow beach towel. A sticky breeze coming in off the ocean lifted strands of her pale blond hair. “What sound? I don’t hear anything.” She reached over and lowered the volume on the radio, extinguishing the low beat of rock music that filtered out toward the sea.

  “It’s sort of a thick funny buzzing. I think it’s coming from someplace over there.” Julie pointed toward the west, out toward the breakers crashing in with the rising tide. They were lying in a private cove on Malibu Beach, part of a huge estate owned by Julie’s neighbor, Owen Mallory, a friend and her most important real estate client.

  Cocking her head toward the odd hum that had begun to resonate along her spine, Julie rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of the goose bumps prickling her skin. “Now it sounds like it’s coming from the east. I can’t exactly tell.”

  Laura shifted in that direction, angling her slender frame and tilting her head. “Kind of weird, isn’t it? I can hear it and at the same time, I can’t. It seems to be sort of all around us.”

  Julie dusted clumps of gritty sand from her hands, which were smaller, more petite than the long-boned supple fingers of her younger sister. At twenty-four, Laura Ferris had taken after their handsome fair-haired father, while Julie’s dark-red hair, lightly freckled nose, and small pointed chin came from her mother’s side of the family. She looked more pixieish than beautiful, though she was attractive. She was
proud of her figure and shapely legs, and she thought she had a very nice behind.

  “Whatever it is,” Julie said, “it’s irritating to say the least.” For a moment, the sound seemed to heighten and a sharp stab of pain shot into her head. “It’s getting on my nerves and giving me a headache.” She craned her neck, scanning the empty stretch of beach, careful to keep her eyes shaded beneath the brim of her big straw hat.

  Glancing up at the washed-out blue sky, she tried not to stare into the harsh ball of early June sun. “Maybe it’s coming from above us…some kind of microwave something-or-other, or a military jet that’s flying really high.”

  At twenty-eight, Julie was more outgoing than Laura, more vivacious, more driven to make the most of her life. Their father had left when they were just kids and the years of bare subsistence gave Julie her relentless drive. Laura had reacted in an opposite way, growing up shy and withdrawn, dependent on Julie to take the place of a mother who was rarely there. As a child, Laura was sickly much of the time—or at least believed she was.

  “I don’t see anything,” Laura said.

  Julie scanned the sky. “Neither do I, but that noise is giving me the shivers. Maybe we ought to go in.”

  “I’m not ready to go in yet,” Laura said, sliding down onto her backrest. “Besides, it doesn’t seem quite so loud anymore. I think it’s starting to fade.” She yawned hugely. “It’s bound to stop in a minute or two.”

  Julie rubbed at the irritating goose bumps, trying to ignore the piercing hum that didn’t seem to bother her sister. She lay back on the red-and-orange beach towel that read Watch Out For Sharks, which she had gotten at a real estate conference in Las Vegas.

  “Turn the radio back up.” Julie clenched her jaw, wishing the grating noise would end. “Maybe that rock station you were listening to will drown out the sound.” Shoving her sunglasses up on her nose, she settled her straw hat over her face to shade her eyes. Beside her, Laura reached for the volume knob on the radio, but it was no longer working.