by B. J Daniels
As Casey approached the back entrance, she regretted not calling the local handyman to remove the plywood on the boarded-up structure. What if she couldn’t get in without tools? She hadn’t called because she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she was back in town yet. Telling Lars Olson would have been like putting an ad in the local newspaper—if Buckhorn had one.
She told herself that she’d figure it out. It couldn’t be that hard to get in, she thought. There might be some tools in one of the outbuildings on the other side of the parking lot if all else failed. As she glanced that way, her gaze strayed to the concrete firepit and the woods beyond where Megan Broadhurst’s body had been found. She closed her eyes for a moment, before quickly turning back to the hotel.
As she moved closer, she saw that one of the sheets of plywood barring the entry had been unscrewed from the wall. Someone, she realized with a start, had already broken in.
She cautiously stepped through the opening to try the door to the back hallway. Unlocked. The realization that any number of people could have gotten into the hotel over the past two years and destroyed everything inside had her heart pounding again. What if the family items her grandmother had begged her to save were already gone?
For all she knew, teens had vandalized the place with drunken parties. She feared what she would find, unable to bear the thought of her grandmother’s hotel being defaced. It was one thing to raze it; it was another to desecrate it.
She hurried down the hall and stopped abruptly, her heart in her throat. The massive main lounge was just as she’d remembered it. The plush inviting furniture, the huge rock fireplace with its dizzying rise up past the mezzanine and beyond. The registration desk with its beautiful mahogany wood inlay, the antique key boxes, the handcrafted wood cubbies and the period wallpaper.
She looked around the huge lobby and main lounge with its stone pillars and high-arched, stained-glass windows, its marble floors and expensive Persian rugs. The lamps and chandeliers were all original from the time the hotel had been built in the late 1800s, as were most of the fixtures. She’d forgotten how beautiful the place was.
Casey felt tears rush to her eyes. Relief swamped her, making her knees go weak. Nothing had been destroyed. She felt the irony soul-deep. She’d desperately wanted—needed—the hotel to be intact and not defaced and pillaged.
But as she looked around, she felt such a sense of history that it filled her with remorse at what she was about to do to it. The quiet took on an eerie feel. She was used to the main lounge being alive with staff and tourists. Not that the hotel hadn’t seen hard times before. One year, a wing had been closed and less staff hired as the accommodation lost its allure to the traveling public—until people began sensing the ghosts.
Word had quickly spread, and before long, the Crenshaw was listed among haunted hotels. That was even before people began seeing Megan Broadhurst’s ghost—a beautiful blonde in a white dress stained with blood. When the stories were picked up by a San Francisco newspaper and traveled across the region, the hotel was again filled with guests who wanted to spend the night in a haunted hotel in the middle of Montana.
Before her death, Megan had been one of the staff. Anna often hired students from across the country, along with some older full-time staff. Young people had jumped at a chance to spend the summer in Montana with room and board and a job. Plus, they’d loved that the hotel was haunted—and that there were hiking trails up into the pine-covered mountains practically out the back door, and summer street dances where they could meet other young people.
Like Casey, Megan had come all the way from San Francisco to work at the hotel that summer. Casey pushed the memory away as she had for years and headed to the registration desk. As she did, she noticed that the Old Girl had seen better days but was still in remarkably good shape. Yet it could never again be the luxury hotel that had hosted the rich and famous. Not even if Megan’s ghost and others were drifting through the hallways, patiently waiting for guests to arrive.
Casey shivered at the thought. Why hadn’t she sold the place without setting foot on the marble floors again? Because she’d promised her grandmother. But she would have promised anything seeing how distraught Anna had been the night she died—and she had. She’d made the two promises that night to keep her grandmother from getting even more upset. The first seemed easy enough. She would return and collect some family items Anna wanted her to have.
The second promise, an impossible one, she’d made on the elderly woman’s deathbed and had been broken the moment the words had left Casey’s lips. But when she’d finally agreed, her grandmother’s expression had softened. She’d released Casey’s hand and closed her eyes. Anna Crenshaw never opened them again.
Now, forcing away that memory as well, Casey retrieved her key for her room from the antique boxes behind the registration desk and headed for the grand staircase. There’d been a time as a girl when she’d dreamed of coming down these steps in her wedding gown to join her waiting groom. Childish dreams, she thought now as she climbed. Her footfalls echoed around her in the empty vastness.
She fought the urge to look over her shoulder. No one was following her up the steps because there was no one here but her. She told herself not to buy into any of her grandmother’s stories of Megan’s ghost. Anna clearly hadn’t been in her right mind the night she died. Why else would she swear that she’d seen Megan? Why else would she force Casey into a promise she couldn’t keep?
Yet as Casey reached the landing, a chill curled around her neck as if something had only just swept past. She cringed at her own foolishness. Even as she did, she was glad that in a few days’ time she would be finished here, the hotel also finished, taking Megan’s ghost and her unsolved murder with it.
Casey’s room had always been the first one down the mezzanine-level wing. Her grandmother had had a suite downstairs behind the lobby. Casey would have preferred to stay on the staff wing. She’d wanted to be one of them, but her grandmother said she was too young to stay on a wing with older girls—let alone boys. Being younger and the owner’s granddaughter, she’d never really fit in, even though her grandmother showed her no special preference.
At the top of the stairs, she saw that the door to her room was ajar. In fact, a lot of the guest-room doors down the hall were open. A dozen homeless people could be living here, she realized, having forgotten for a moment that the hotel had been broken into.
With two fingers, Casey pushed the door to her room open wider. Nothing out of place. In fact, it looked as if housekeeping had just finished in there.
She cocked her head at a sound—not in her room, but in the one across the hall. That door, too, was ajar. She frowned. She could hear what sounded like running water coming from inside.
Stepping across the hall, she pushed the door all the way open. The room looked as if her teenage self had just left it. The bed was unmade and clothing was piled on a chair nearby. The table was covered with take-out containers, newspapers and other debris.
She could definitely hear water running from inside the bathroom. She’d recently called to have the water and power turned back on, only to be told it had been on for months. She’d thought her grandmother must have gotten confused and maintained the utility service.
Now she realized that she’d never seen a bill, which meant that whoever had had it turned back on must have paid for it. How odd.
Frowning, she inched toward the bathroom, the splash of running water growing louder. Like the room’s door, this one was also ajar. She put a finger to it and pushed. The door swung inward.
Hit by a cloud of steam, she could barely make out the black and white tiles on the floor, let alone the giant claw-foot tub in front of the window or the large glass-block walk-in shower across the room.
But as the steam began to dissipate out the now-fully-opened bathroom door, she saw wet, soapy flesh behind the glass blocks.
Opening her purse, she pulled out her small handgun her grandmother had gotten her for Christmas before advancing to the shower’s opening.
CHAPTER THREE
FINN STOOD UNDER the hot spray. He was going to miss this shower when he finally left here. That was about all he could say for the place. The bed was all right. Too large for one person, but the clean sheets he’d found in the laundry were Egyptian cotton, and the down comforter had been like floating in a cloud. He’d discovered everything he’d needed in the hotel once he’d gotten the electricity and water turned back on and had moved in.
He’d expected one of the locals to contact the hotel owner and rat him out. But after the first few weeks, he’d quit worrying about it. As he lathered up with the Swiss soap scented with chocolate and lavender, he told himself his stay here hadn’t been all that bad—except for the nights.
Come twilight, shadows began to form. By nightfall, the huge hotel began to make way too many noises that couldn’t be explained away easily. Too many nights, fueled by the old ghost stories, he’d heard footfalls out in the hallway, hammering somewhere deep in the building and the distinct sound of someone digging.
Once, he’d seen a blur of white move so swiftly at the end of the hall that he swore he’d glimpsed a woman for just an instant, her long blond hair billowing out behind her. He’d raced down there to find...nothing.
Nope, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t going to miss this place.
He turned his face up to let the spray rinse the soap from his hair that he’d trimmed a little—as well as his beard. Once he got to a real city, he’d visit a salon, but in the meantime... The soap ran down his chest to pool on the floor at his feet. As he turned, wiping water from his eyes, he saw her. For a startling second, she was a ghost from his nightmares.
But he was pretty sure that redheaded, blue-eyed ghosts didn’t carry guns.
* * *
“MIND HANDING ME a towel?” the man drawled as he nonchalantly turned off the shower. Casey watched him shake his dark head of too-long hair like a dog, droplets of water flying through the air.
She took a step back to avoid getting wet. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
He quit shaking off the water to look at her. Water droplets clung to his dark eyelashes, accentuating the deep blue of his eyes. “Taking a shower. I thought it was obvious. A towel, please?” He didn’t seem in the least embarrassed to be standing in front of her stark naked. Not that he had anything to be embarrassed about, since she could hardly miss his well-developed body. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and endowed.
She tossed him a towel. “You’re trespassing.”
He nodded. “And you’re early,” he said as he slowly dried himself off.
Early? Early for what? She could feel him studying her with his intense gaze, his lashes as dark and full as his hair. He didn’t seem at all upset at being caught red-handed, so to speak, and he’d certainly made himself at home, she’d noticed.
“I wasn’t expecting you until later this evening.”
Expecting her? “Why is it that you seem to know more about my plans than I do?” she demanded. He didn’t seem to hear her. Anxious to put even more distance between them, she backed out of the bathroom to let him finish toweling dry. Had Devlin Wright, the agent handling the sale of the hotel, hired this man to keep an eye on the place? Maybe he was here to assess the value of the salvageable furnishings before the building was razed.
As she stepped into the main room, she saw more of the man’s clothing had spilled out of a large duffel on the opposite side of the bed. Whoever this man was, he’d been here for a while. “How long have you been staying here?” she called over her shoulder.
“Why? Thinking of charging me rent?” he asked right behind her.
She spun around, startled. But he only walked over to a pair of jeans lying across his bed and let the towel drop. She tried not to watch him pull on the jeans, going commando, before he tugged a black T-shirt over those broad shoulders.
He turned to look at her, and she realized that she’d forgotten to hold the gun on him. She quickly raised it. He had no reaction to the weapon—just as he’d had no reaction to her finding him in her hotel taking a shower as if he lived here. He did live here.
The man had maddening gall even if Devlin Wright had employed him, since the sale was far from a done deal until the papers were signed, and Devlin seemed to be dragging his feet.
He settled that deep blue gaze on her. “This was not the way I’d hoped we’d meet,” he said in that same lazy drawl. His grin made him all the more handsome—and clearly dangerous.
“Excuse me? Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing in my hotel?”
His gaze traveled all five foot six of her, slowing in critical places before finally settling all that heat and intensity on her face. She felt as if she’d just been frisked naked.
“Sorry, it’s just that I’ve heard so much about you, Casey Crenshaw, that I feel as if I already know you.” He cocked a brow, deepening that grin to expose two perfect dimples. “Some of what I heard about you was even good.” He must have seen that she wasn’t amused at his attempt at humor.
He took a step toward her and held out his hand. “I’m Finnegan. Finnegan James. But please, call me Finn.”
She ignored his hand as she took a step back toward the open doorway to the hall. “Finnegan James?” she repeated, her pulse jumping in response to the familiar name. It took her a moment to remember where she’d heard it, since that name had been all over the news months ago—and so had a very different headshot of him. She frowned, trying to superimpose the businessman’s face from the television onto this wild-looking man’s features. In shock, she cried, “You’re...him.”
There was just enough resemblance that she knew this was the same Finnegan James of San Francisco who’d sold his tech business for an astronomical amount of money at the end of last year and, having become ultrawealthy overnight, disappeared. The next headline she’d seen had read Foul Play? Multibillionaire Bachelor Now Missing.
“People are looking for you,” she said angrily. “What are you doing here in my closed hotel?” At first glance, she’d just assumed he’d been squatting here because he was homeless. Instead, he was some supersmart, very rich man who’d made his fortune before forty. He’d been dubbed eccentric, single-minded, brilliant and very private both personally and otherwise. So she figured if he was hiding out here, she could add weird and possibly mentally imbalanced.
She took another step back, even though she still had the gun trained on him.
“You going to use that?” he asked, motioning to the gun.
“If I have to.” She had the barrel aimed at his heart—just above his impressive six-pack. The man was incredibly built. With those long legs, she figured he could reach her and take away the gun before she could pull the trigger.
But if she were him, she wouldn’t bet his life on it.
“I asked what you’re doing here.”
“I thought it was obvious,” he said, cocking his head at her.
“Not as obvious as the shower. You’re trespassing on private property.”
“You’ve got me there. I definitely have been.” He smiled, softening the sharp planes of his face and making her aware of how much more handsome he was now than in the photo she’d seen of him on the TV news. In that photo, he’d looked way too serious compared to the killer smile he was laying on her right now. The smile, though, seemed to make him more of a threat, since it was a little crooked and charmingly disarming.
“If I tell you why I first came here, promise not to laugh,” he said almost shyly.
That was a promise she could keep. She was not in a laughing mood.
“I was hoping to see Megan’s ghost before you had the hotel razed. I figured it might be my last chance. A
nd, no, I didn’t see her, but there were times when I swear I felt like she was trying to run me off,” he said with a laugh. “The banging, the digging, the footsteps in the hall...” He shook his head. “I can tell you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Although actually admitting I originally came here looking for a ghost makes me sound...a little odd.”
“No, not at all,” she said sarcastically. His answer confirmed what she’d feared. The man was delusional. She really had to get him out of her hotel. If he was telling the truth. “But just to be clear, Devlin Wright didn’t hire you?”
He frowned. “Devlin Wright? Why would he hire me?”
To get the price on the hotel down. Devlin had been slow on getting her a definite offer for the place, so she wouldn’t have been surprised if the man was trying to pull a fast one. She knew Devlin. He’d worked here the summer Megan was murdered. That was why she’d been suspicious when he’d contacted her about buying the hotel and land for some investors he said that he’d gotten interested in the place.
“You need to leave,” she said now to Finnegan James. “There’s a motel in town called—”
“The Sleepy Pine. If you’d prefer that, although I wasn’t planning on leaving until Monday since...” He cocked his head again. Those midnight blue eyes shone in the afternoon light. She could feel them drilling into her with an intimacy that made her uncomfortable. “You did invite me for the weekend.”
* * *
FINN WATCHED CASEY CRENSHAW’S eyes widen in fresh alarm. He’d startled her again. Clearly, she hadn’t expected to find him here. He’d thought it was just because he’d obviously arrived early—months early. Now as she took another step back toward the open doorway, he half expected her to pull the trigger on that peashooter she had pointed at him.