From the Shadows

by B. J Daniels

  He felt sick to his stomach. Did she have some reason she wanted to hold off the sale? Why else would she even bring up Megan’s name, let alone get everyone back to Buckhorn, back in that boarded-up hotel for a weekend?

  Unless... He’d gone weak at the thought. Unless she was trying to trap the killer. If so, then Casey had lost her mind, and he’d better get her to sign on the dotted line before she was hauled away. Or before she got herself killed and his investors backed out.

  * * *

  PATIENCE RILEY HAD laughed when she’d gotten the invitation. Of course it was a joke. A bad joke at that. She’d turned away from her massive desk to look out over the city of Manhattan. From the wall of glass that was her corner office, she admired the view—and her reflection.

  Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, she didn’t look much different than she had ten years ago. Slim, petite and cute with her short dark pixie cut that accented her big gray eyes, she’d kept in shape. She’d always looked young, something she’d used to her advantage. Ten years ago, she’d looked even younger than Casey—and Anna’s granddaughter had been merely a child.

  Looking young and naive had always served her well, but she had been neither. Just as she hadn’t had the luxury of growing up like most of the staff that summer. Rich, privileged, spoiled rotten, it had angered her that Megan, Claude and Jason had taken jobs that kids like her really needed—not to mention Casey, whose grandmother owned the place. Jen and Shirley had been the exceptions. Local girls with no big plans for the future, they’d at least had a roof over their heads their whole lives. Patience hadn’t been so lucky.

  But her upbringing had given her a kind of strength that the others lacked. She demanded more of herself, while hiding that raging desire inside her. That was why Megan had underestimated her time and time again. Megan hadn’t seen what was really inside her, or she would have run for her life while she could.

  As Patience had turned back to her desk to peruse the invitation again, she was sure that Casey hadn’t sent it. That would have been completely out of character for her. But one of the others? She could believe that. They probably had nothing better to do.

  Or maybe one of them had an agenda. Nothing good, of that she was sure. She’d had no desire to attend. Did she care if she looked guilty?

  “Excuse me,” her assistant had said as she’d stuck her head in the door. “They’re ready for you downstairs.”

  “Thank you.” The editor of one of the leading women’s magazines in the country, Patience wasn’t easily intimidated anymore like she’d been ten years ago when she’d been nothing more than one of the hotel staff.

  She’d tossed the invitation into the trash and risen from her desk. She’d said goodbye to Megan ten years ago. She saw no reason to repeat herself.

  Pushing out the door of her office, Patience had smiled to herself at the thought of the staff huddled around the campfire again behind the hotel telling ghost stories. Did they really think they could call up Megan’s ghost? What then? Ask her who’d killed her?

  Or was it more about assuaging their guilt? None of them had stood up to Megan even as they’d watched her tear apart one staff member after another. They’d been a bunch of cowards, afraid they’d be next.

  If they were looking for absolution, good luck finding it. They were all guilty, herself included. But Casey Crenshaw the most. She could have gone to her grandmother. She could have stopped it. If anyone was to blame for what had happened, it was Casey and her grandmother.

  Megan and her mind games, she’d thought as she’d headed to Paste-Up. Megan had spared no one, except Ben, who she’d simply pretended didn’t exist, and Patience, whom she fawned over like she was her pet. Patience had smiled bitterly at the memory. Megan had known better than to try to torment her. Instead, she’d made the rest of the staff mistrust Patience and treat her as an outcast by simply sparing her alone.

  Oh, yes, Megan loved mind games. Right until she took her last breath.

  * * *

  ACROSS THE HALL, Finn was pulling on a hoodie sweatshirt, his door still open. “If you give me time to change, I’ll go with you,” Casey called.

  He looked up in surprise and maybe concern.

  She hurriedly closed the door before her good sense returned—or he could talk her out of it. She had to face them at some point. As tired as she was, she wanted to get it over with. Would they all show up? Had they all arrived?

  She could imagine the speculation down there around the campfire. Like her and Finn, they would wonder who’d sent out the invitations and why. By now Jason would have told them that Casey denied doing it. But would they believe him?

  Her fingers trembled as she dressed. She pictured each of them—Ben, Claude, Devlin, Jason, Shirley, Jen and Patience—as they’d been as teens and wondered if they’d changed as much as she felt she had. Why did she fear that one of them had been waiting for ten years for her to return here?

  Clothes changed, she grabbed a jacket and left her room.

  Finn stood in the hallway waiting for her, his door closed. “You sure about this?”

  She nodded, lifting her chin in almost defiance as she locked her door, then checked it, still wondering why it had come open earlier. She felt scared and more than a little paranoid. But she wasn’t sixteen anymore. The woman she’d become could do this.

  He gave her a look like one her grandmother would have, as if proud of her for facing her demons. It made her want to laugh. She was trembling in her sneakers. But then Finn had no idea what she’d been hiding all these years.

  They took the staff stairs at the back, just as she’d done as a kid. She’d spent one summer looking for secret passages. She knew they had to exist in the rambling hotel, but the back stairs were the closest she had come to finding any.

  The moment she and Finn stepped outside, she smelled the pine smoke and was hit with the memory of the night Jason took her into the pines after everyone else had left the fire for the night.

  “You all right?” Finn asked.

  She nodded. She hadn’t realized that she’d stopped and now stood staring at the dark silhouettes standing around the orange crackling blaze fifty yards away just inside the trees at the foot of the mountain.

  This was probably a mistake—just not as large a mistake as she’d made ten years ago, she told herself. “You’re a lot stronger than you think you are.” She heard her grandmother’s voice so clearly that the woman could have been standing next to her. Casey smiled, realizing it was true. She wasn’t that shy girl Megan had manipulated. Nor would she be manipulated now by whoever had sent out the invitations.

  As they neared the gathered group, she could see Jason with his back to them and heard him talking. She couldn’t make out his words, but suddenly he broke off in midsentence to look over his shoulder. Someone had warned him of her approach.

  “Are your ears burning?” Finn whispered to her. “Mine are.”

  Casey didn’t answer. She was looking at the familiar faces around the campfire and remembering. They were all looking back at her.

  Except for Patience Riley. She was looking into the woods as if she’d heard something, an odd smile on her face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE FIRE GLOWED bright orange in the growing darkness as Casey and Finn reached the group. Jason hurried to the cooler, coming back with two beers. He handed one to her and one to Finn. Several of the others had been talking among themselves but now stopped to listen.

  “This reunion was a great idea!” Patience said, lifting her beer can in a salute. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Casey.”

  “I didn’t send the invitations. I had nothing to do with this. In fact, I can’t imagine why anyone thought this was a good idea.” She looked around the campfire. They’d all changed little except for Ben. It could have been ten years ago, the campfire, the beer, almost all of them gathered
out here.

  Ben rushed forward to hug her. Casey was surprised by the gesture and shocked by how much he’d changed. “It’s good to see you,” he said. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother.” The others quickly added their condolences. “I knew this wasn’t your doing.” All she could do for a moment was nod and smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Good to see you, too, Ben,” she said lamely, since who in their right mind would want to be a part of this?

  “It’s Benjamin now. I’m a doctor. I specialize in viruses. You probably saw me on the news during the pandemic.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly. She had seen him, but she hadn’t recognized him nor even put the name together with the Ben from that summer. “I always knew you would do well.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled, reached for her hand and squeezed it before going back to his spot by the campfire.

  The roar of a car engine made them all turn. The sound was followed by the flash of headlights as a vehicle sped into the parking lot behind the hotel. The lights blinked and went out, and moments later Shirley Langer and Jennifer Mullen stumbled out, laughing. They walked up carrying a bottle of wine, sharing a joke.

  “You started the party without me?” Jen demanded loudly, verifying what Casey had suspected the moment they’d driven up. Both had already had a few drinks. “Wow, you really did all come back to Buckhorn,” the attractive brunette said as she looked around the campfire. Her gaze stopped on Finn and she frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Casey brought a date,” Jason said.

  Before Casey could correct him, Finn said, “I received an invitation, like I suspect the rest of you did.”

  Jen’s gaze swung to Casey for clarification.

  “Casey didn’t send out the invitations,” Benjamin hurriedly told her. “It seems she isn’t any happier about this than some of the rest of us.”

  “Does it really matter who invited us?” Jason demanded. “We’re all here. Why not make the best of it? I, for one, plan to have a good time.”

  * * *

  FINN DISAGREED. It did matter who had invited them. It mattered a whole lot.

  While the atmosphere around the fire had a party look to it, he picked up on the tension. None of them trusted each other, he realized, and probably with good reason. Not only was Megan’s murder unsolved, but also these people had been the last to see her alive. All were suspects.

  He found himself studying their faces, wondering if one of them was responsible and what that person hoped to accomplish by being here, even if they hadn’t sent out the invitations. He couldn’t help worrying that the one person who didn’t get an invitation—Casey—might be the target.

  “So, Casey,” Jason said, “I’ve been catching up with everyone else. Claude’s a famous surgeon, Ben’s some kind of scientist—”

  “Infectious disease specialist,” he interrupted. “And it’s Benjamin, not Ben.”

  Jason continued as if the man hadn’t spoken. “Patience is a fancy magazine editor, Devlin is a real-estate agent... So what about you, Case?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Finn saw Casey flinch at the nickname. “She’s a hotelier at one of the finest hotels in San Francisco,” he said. Casey shot him a surprised—and not necessarily appreciative—look.

  “What is a hotelier?” Jason asked with a laugh. “It sounds...dirty.”

  “She runs the entire hotel,” Finn snapped, hating that he was letting the man get to him. “I would think someone like you would already know that, since don’t you live in your father’s hotel?”

  Jason nodded. “You got me there. In the past ten years, I’ve accomplished nothing. If I wasn’t overeducated and not nearly as smart as the rest of you, I would have known Casey couldn’t have put this together. Because if she had, I never would have been invited. Isn’t that right, Case?” Finn wasn’t about to touch that remark as Jason turned back to the others. “Who needs a beer?”

  “I believe you left out a couple of people, Jase,” Patience said and motioned with her head in the direction of Jen and Shirley.

  Jen tilted her wine bottle at Patience. Her smile was venomous as she looked at Jason across the campfire. “I work in my aunt’s antiques barn, but I’m sure you already know that. Shirley manages the local motel. Any of you have a problem with that?”

  “Easy,” Jason said, holding up his hands as the tension around the fire rose to a new pitch. “No bloodshed, already. Also, no judgment, especially from me. I would have gotten to you, but I got distracted.”

  Finn knew what was coming. Patience slowly turned her gaze on him and tilted her head. “Who exactly is Casey’s date?”

  “Not one of the staff,” Finn said. “That’s why I was surprised to receive an invitation.”

  “Oh, come on, Finn,” Jason said. “I heard around town that you’ve been living in the hotel for months. Odd, to say the least. You must have some connection to Megan or you wouldn’t have gotten an invitation. You wouldn’t be here now.”

  Finn chuckled. “You’re right. Seems everyone here knew Megan, myself included. I came here a few months early to solve her murder.” He turned to look at Jason. “What’s your reason for being here, Jase?”

  “Me? Like I said, I just came to have fun.” He laughed and looked around the group before returning to Finn. “But I suspect there’s more to your story.”

  “You got me there,” Finn said. “I’ve since decided to buy the hotel and the land.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Casey as the news swept around the fire. Like him, she had to have seen everyone’s surprise, especially Jen’s and Shirley’s. Being locals, they knew that he’d been squatting there a good portion of the winter and early spring and had assumed he was homeless and broke.

  But it was Devlin’s openmouthed reaction that pleased Casey the most, he saw. “What’s this?” Devlin demanded.

  “I’m making an offer and taking care of the paperwork in the morning,” Finn said.

  Devlin shifted his gaze to Casey. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “Not hardly. I kept waiting for a formal offer, and you kept making excuses and putting me off, trying to get a better price,” she said, returning his glare.

  Finn could feel Jason’s gaze on him. Speculating? Or had he already figured out who he was? Either way, Jason was enjoying this. Finn thought the man would like to see them all at each other’s throats. Finn wondered how long Jason had been in town. Long enough to hear about Finn spending months in the hotel, which meant he’d been here for a while.

  “Finn? Finn what?” Devlin asked, also turning to look at him.

  He’d known it would be out once he contacted his lawyer, accountant and banker in the morning. “Finnegan James.”

  Devlin’s gaze widened in shock as he recognized the name. He swore under his breath and kicked a rock into the firepit. Finn saw Jason smile. He really was enjoying himself. Maybe too much.

  “Let’s not argue.” Jen took a drink from the wine bottle and passed it to Shirley, who simply stared into the fire as if she wished she were anywhere but there.

  “So we have no idea whose brainchild this was,” Jen said, looking around at them all. “Kind of macabre and ghoulish, just like Megan.” Most everyone laughed. “But no one is going to take credit for this reunion?” She searched the group speculatively, meeting with only silence. “If none of you invited us all here,” she asked, “then who did?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” Jason said, grinning. “Someone wanted to get us all back here awfully bad. Got to wonder why, huh?”

  “That about sizes it up,” Finn said, seeing how quickly things could get out of hand.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BENJAMIN RATHER LIKED watching the others squirm. They were all terrified—even of Megan’s ghost. It amazed him how much the young woman had affected al
l of their lives.

  She’d ignored him as if he were nobody. He’d worked hard to prove to himself that she was wrong, which was silly. There was no proving anything to her. She was dead. Her body was slowly decaying in her dark, cold coffin.

  He looked around the campfire, wondering why the others had come back. Were they that afraid that if they hadn’t, someone would think that they really had killed Megan?

  He scoffed at that as he watched them all trying to have a good time, drinking too much, looking warily at each other. They really didn’t know who killed her—or if they were next.

  Ten years ago, he’d watched them play games, stabbing each other in the back, being tossed away like trash when Megan was done with them.

  Benjamin tried to gauge which one of them had hated her the most. It was difficult because any one of them had wanted her gone, himself included.

  He noticed, though, that no one seemed leery of him. What fools they were.

  * * *

  CASEY FOUND HERSELF watching Finn out of the corner of her eye. He was holding his own, which didn’t surprise her. He had just let the cat out of the bag, as her grandmother would have said. It wouldn’t be long before the press picked up on it and he was making headlines again. She was surprised that he’d given up his anonymity for her.

  She could see him studying the people around the fire, questioning each of their motives. She wondered about his. Was he really going to make her an offer on the hotel and property in the morning? Why was he doing this?

  Looking around the campfire, she couldn’t understand what they were all doing here. Were they really that interested in Megan’s murder after all this time? If one of them were the killer, wouldn’t they be glad to hear that the hotel was going to be razed? Any evidence would be gone. Or would it? Was the killer afraid something would be uncovered?

  They really didn’t look as if they had changed, except for Ben. Benjamin, she corrected. Patience still wore her dark hair in a pixie cut and looked younger than a woman hugging thirty. A curly brunette, Jen’s hair was shoulder-length and jagged as if she had taken scissors to it herself. Shirley’s long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail that stuck out the back of her baseball cap. Jason looked exactly the same, same smirk, same shiftiness in his gaze. Devlin appeared to be getting a little bald. He kept brushing his brown hair back as if to cover the sparsely covered spot.