Your competition. But he wasn’t. She didn’t want to kiss him, either. “Max Di Luca. He’s come to handle security. He’s smart, he’s tough and he’s fast. You’d better figure out this investigation quickly, or he’ll figure it out for you.”
Nils took a step toward her.
For the first time since that first night, she pulled her pistol and pointed it at his chest. “Don’t.”
“This is not a game,” he said. “Let’s end this before it gets deadly.”
“Priscilla Carter is dead. Lloyd Magnuson is dead. Your Jessica is dead.” She slapped him with words, with truth. “How much more deadly do you want it to be?”
“I want it to end with the good guys alive.”
“Then you’d better go out there and see that they do.”
* * *
Kellen barricaded herself in her cottage, set a trap beneath every window and in front of the door and slept the sleep of the pure.
In the wee hours of the morning, her phone vibrated and lit up, and she woke from a dream of something about sex and Max and…sex.
Caller ID placed the number inside the resort, and for one moment she couldn’t imagine who among the guests would have her number, and who among the staff would call her when they could text.
Then she knew. She leaped to her feet, swayed as she fought for her equilibrium. “Mr. Gilfilen?”
No sound. Only the faintest breathing.
“Mr. Gilfilen?”
His voice was almost nonexistent. “Depend…you.”
“I’m coming,” she said. “Hang on. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
32
Kellen’s ATV swayed as she leaped in. She drove through a blistering cold wind and past the occasional snowflake toward the west wing, toward the suite Vincent Gilfilen had appropriated for his investigation, and all the time she prayed she was in time. Mr. Gilfilen had undertaken this mission because he believed he could make a difference. He should not die for his efforts.
She parked and grabbed the first aid kit. She used her pass card to open the outer door, pulled her pistol and proceeded cautiously into the empty living room. Across the eating bar, a light shone over the range top in the kitchen.
She listened but heard nothing, only her own breath, harsh and broken.
She looked but saw nothing. Then…a dark blot on the rug. A trail of wet crimson into the bedroom, into the bathroom. She followed that trail, pistol clutched in one hand, first aid kit in the other. The bathroom light was on. She stepped into the doorway. And saw him—Vincent Gilfilen, smeared with blood, unconscious, stretched out on his back. The throw rug was rolled and thrust under his neck, tilting his head back, revealing a dark throat bruised darker in a long thin line. Someone had used a garrote on him.
The cat, the mangy cat he had rescued, sat on the counter and growled at her.
“It’s all right,” she told it. “I’ll help him.” She stepped over his prone body, faced the door, dropped on her knees beside him. “Mr. Gilfilen!” She touched his cheek.
His eyelids flickered. He twitched as if fighting for breath, but his chest didn’t move. She adjusted his head, pinched his nose, put her mouth to his and tried to fill his lungs. No luck.
The swelling in his throat had obstructed his airway.
She had no time, and she had no choice. If he didn’t get oxygen soon, he would die, another victim of the Librarian.
Kellen would not stand for that. She understood the procedure for an emergency tracheotomy. She knew how…in theory.
She’d learn on the job. Right now. As she opened the first aid kit, she called Max. He answered, she said, “Nine-one-one to the west wing. STAT.”
“On my way.” He hung up.
She searched the first aid kit, found gauze, tape, a tube. Nothing to cut with. Very well. She popped open her pocketknife. It was sharp; she always made sure of that. But she had no time to sterilize. Hell, she didn’t have time to think.
The cat growled again.
“I’m hurrying,” she said. With her fingers, she located Mr. Gilfilen’s Adam’s apple, found the spot between it and the next hard ring, and without pausing for courage—he had no time left—she cut a slit through his skin and into the tough gristle of his trachea. Blood welled. She wiped it with the gauze, pinched the hole open and inserted the tube. “Okay, breathe.”
Nothing happened.
She pressed on his chest. “You’re supposed to start breathing.”
Nothing.
“You’re not going to die like this.” She took a hard, deep breath, leaned down and exhaled forcefully into the tube. Once. Twice.
His chest expanded.
“Mr. Gilfilen! Breathe!” she said firmly. She exhaled into the tube again.
His chest rose again.
“On your own this time!” She leaned down to do it again.
The cat yowled and jumped off the counter, landed close to his head.
Kellen jumped and gasped.
The cat raced out of the bathroom.
Mr. Gilfilen’s chest gave a great heave. And another. And another.
She wanted to collapse with relief.
He was breathing, but his rapid pulse and cool, clammy skin told her he was in shock. Shock would kill him.
She had no time for tears, but they trickled down her cheeks as she wrapped him in the second bath mat, then ran to strip the blankets off the bed. When she returned, his eyes were open. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes flicked at her.
“Honestly,” she scolded as she flung the blankets over his legs and went looking for the source of all that blood. “I tried to tell you. Let the big boys handle this. Did you listen? No, you did not. Now look what they did to you.”
He closed his eyes.
“Look what they did to—” she faltered “—your hand.” His left hand was half severed. He’d wrapped it in his handkerchief. How he had not bled to death, she didn’t know.
Outside in the suite, she heard a tumult as people crowded through the door, as Max called her name.
“In the bathroom,” she shouted.
He got there first, filled the doorway with his mass, took in the situation. He moved in and took over, pushed her gently out of the way. He wrapped Mr. Gilfilen more tightly in the blankets, called for warm packs, pressed the hand firmly onto the arm, said to Kellen, “They’ll try to reattach.” Then to the resort’s assembled first aid team, “Get ice packs for the hand.”
In moments, the team had stabilized Mr. Gilfilen, loaded him onto a gurney and wheeled him away.
When he was gone, Kellen sat on the toilet and did what she’d told Mr. Gilfilen to do. She breathed.
Max returned with a throw. He flung it around her shoulders, knelt and hugged her.
She let him. Philadelphia or not, she needed a hug.
“Helicopter is on its way,” he said. “You saved his life.”
“I hope so. Did you find the cat?” she asked.
“What cat?”
The one that saved Mr. Gilfilen’s life.
She turned to him. She had wondered what she should say when next she saw Max Di Luca, the questions she should ask, the explanations she should demand. But her private nightmares didn’t matter now. Instead, she said, “We’ve got to evacuate the guests.”
“And all personnel.”
She shook her head. “No. One of them is a killer. We have to find out who and end this thing.”
33
In the morning, Mr. Gilfilen was still alive in the ICU in a Portland, Oregon, hospital, Kellen had donned her Kevlar vest under her shirt and was carrying her pistol and the Yearning Sands guests were being kindly ushered out the door. Finding guests accommodations elsewhere was easy enough in the off-season and with such a reduced guest list. The official story was that a structural pr
oblem had been uncovered in the recent construction. Most of them had heard some version of the real story and were more than willing to accept a voucher or better accommodations elsewhere.
No one could find Nils Brooks to ask him to leave—dark and suspicious mutterings were heard—and Kellen felt her suspicions of him rise once more.
Carson Lennex flatly refused to go. The resort was, he said, his home, and no killer was going to chase him away. Which in the circumstances was damned shady, to say the least.
As people came and went, Max made himself useful, carrying bags, helping Frances and Sheri Jean contact the other resorts, reassuring the guests. More than that, he was the security manager, he was clearly packing a firearm and he was visible. His size alone, packaged nicely in that dark suit, seemed to reassure everyone and keep terror at bay.
Kellen personally arranged transportation for those headed to the airstrip and organized the farewell appetizers and beverages in the lobby for every departing guest. Finding the necessary staff to handle the workload proved the real challenge; most of the spa staff called in sick or scared, some of the maids and desk staff simply didn’t come to work and the security center was unmanned. Chef Reinhart and Chef Norbert arrived separately, both bearing well-sharpened butcher knives in their belts; the sous chef for each was a no-show. That created a great kerfuffle in the kitchen as they shouted commands at each other, until Gabriella got tired of listening and made them chop for her.
Birdie drove the first group to the airstrip to catch Chad Griffin’s plane to Seattle, but when Kellen tried to locate Temo for the second shift, he was unreachable, and she wanted to find him, shake him, make him be the Temo she believed him to be.
The last group out the door was the Shivering Sherlocks; they were scheduled to check out today anyway, but Kellen gave them a voucher for one night free on their next visit and got into the driver’s seat to take them to the airstrip. Mitch came along to serve the food and drink, and to charm the women with his good looks and flattery.
That was fine with Kellen. Her focus kept wandering, running through the suspects in her mind. To pick up a gun and shoot someone required a cold purpose—or a hot temper. But to deliberately attempt to strangle a man, to watch him kick and struggle, then when he was subdued, to take a sharp blade and try to sever his hand…that was cold. That was vicious.
Mr. Gilfilen had lived, but what had he done to his attacker to escape? He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell anyone. He was unconscious, recovering from surgery, fighting for his life. She would figure this out, and she would get her revenge. For Mr. Gilfilen, and for all of the victims who had died for this deadly game of smuggling. She would get revenge for herself, too. She’d come back to the United States determined to work hard, play hard, be strong, be brave for all the days that were left to her. Not to witness more pain. Not to fight an unseen foe who lived for blood and cruelty.
Who was it?
She glanced at Mitch, half-turned toward the back, asking the Shivering Sherlocks about their mystery weekend, asking what they would remember when they got home.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll remember.” Candy sat directly behind the driver’s seat, and she leaned forward and spoke right in Kellen’s ear. “The guest bath in Carson Lennex’s penthouse was busy, so I hustled upstairs to his suite to use the potty up there. Guess what I found?”
“Tell me you didn’t dig through his nightstand and find his porn,” Rita said.
“Not porn.” In the rearview mirror, Kellen saw Candy frown. “I don’t think. It certainly wasn’t hidden away.”
Nancy leaned forward out of the very back seat. “What was it?”
Candy said, “He had these stone statues on glass shelves with lights under each one, and I’m telling you, girls—”
Kellen found herself breathing slowly, steadily, listening intently.
“—if we ever met a man with a package like that,” Candy continued, “we’d run for the hills.”
“What was it?” Tammy asked.
“Some kind of fertility god, I suppose. Gross, this little guy holding this penis twice his size.” Candy must have made a gesture, because the women whooped with laughter.
Abruptly, Mitch turned around and faced front.
Because the Shivering Sherlocks were giving him the very information he needed? Or because he was embarrassed by a group of elderly women hooting about a man’s genitals?
“Sounds like an Inuit fertility god,” Rita suggested.
“Exactly.” Candy sounded pleased with the idea. “There was a female statue, too, all fat and pregnant, an exaggeration of fertility. Carson Lennex collects some pretty weird stuff.”
“Probably he didn’t think anyone would see it,” Patty said.
“He wasn’t too worried about it. There was backlighting.” Candy sounded as if she had settled back against the seat. “Those things were the grossest statues I ever saw. Art! Heaven preserve me.”
“Come on. Don’t you remember the toilet paper cover my grandmother crocheted? The one with the Barbie doll standing in the middle of the cardboard tube, and the crocheted part hung over the toilet paper and looked like a skirt?”
Kellen glanced in the rearview mirror.
Candy waggled her head. “You’re right—that was worse. But only because it was so tacky. I’m pretty sure this was art.”
Mitch was frowning, his cheeks flushed, his elbow on the window ledge, his hand over his mouth.
Kellen had to get these ladies out of here and to safety.
A charter plane waited for the Shivering Sherlocks. Kellen and Mitch loaded them and their luggage and waved them goodbye, then piled into the van. Kellen got behind the wheel and they headed for the resort. “Mitch, what are you thinking?”
He pulled a wad of dollar bills out of his pocket. “I’m thinking that, for as much trouble as they were, those old ladies didn’t tip very well.”
“I mean…what are you thinking about the situation we have here at the resort? About the violence. What do you think is happening?”
“Have you seen Temo?” He sounded tense, terse, intent.
“I haven’t seen much of him, no.” She’d heard him in the maintenance garage. She’d heard him on the phone. But other than the brief chat in the resort kitchen, she hadn’t seen him.
“I’ll be frank with you. He’s got me worried. Working weird hours, mad at the world, talking about family. His mother recently went to prison, and did you hear about the stepfather?”
“I… No. I didn’t hear anything about his stepfather.”
“Temo told me he’s going to kill him.”
Kellen put it together. “Because of his sister?”
“He said he put the girl with relatives, but he hasn’t called her and he won’t say anything about her. I don’t know.” Mitch seemed bewildered. “When Temo lost his leg, he went violent. And that poor fellow who died—”
“Lloyd Magnuson?”
“Yes, him. Temo was the last one to see him. What is he thinking? Why would he kill him?”
Kellen’s doubts twisted and changed. Was Mitch deliberately misleading her, turning the evidence toward Temo? But he wasn’t, really. Only reminding her of Temo’s odd and disturbing actions. Even so, it was Mitch she mistrusted. Mitch had never done anything Kellen could put her finger on, yet he smiled when he should frown, moved when he should be still. When he spoke of his parents, he did so with reverence, but to her knowledge, in all the time he’d been here, he never contacted them and not once had he passed on family news or anecdotes. Not that Kellen trusted Temo, but more than that, the way Mitch looked at his own hands made her think she should get a message to Nils Brooks about the statues in Carson Lennex’s care.
She projected a mix of worry and urgency—and she wasn’t acting. “Do we have other guests to be transported?”
“I didn�
��t think you ever forgot anything like guests and their comings and goings.” But he didn’t seem unduly suspicious. He seemed preoccupied. “The newlyweds were fighting and they didn’t get ready in time to go with the Shivering Sherlocks. They should be in the lobby now.”
“Please take them to the airstrip while I search for any remaining guests and the employees who haven’t checked in.” She stopped the van under the portico and grasped Mitch’s hands. “Thank you for warning me about Temo. I swear, when this is over, you’ll get your reward.”
Mitch looked as if he didn’t know if he’d been praised or threatened, and for sure he didn’t want to take the newlyweds anywhere. But he didn’t challenge Kellen, and as she fled into the lobby and up the stairs to Annie’s office, he was rounding up the newlyweds and loading them into the van.
Kellen hoped he would stop at the kitchen for their appetizers, but she was willing to bet the fighting newlyweds were getting the Shivering Sherlocks’ leftovers. In the meantime, she needed to track down Nils Brooks. She called him, left a message. Texted him that she knew where the stolen tomb artifacts were. Got no response.
She got a text from Max. Can you come to security?
She hurried.
He sat alone in the room, facing the wall of monitors. He beckoned her over. “Look at this.”
She joined Max and watched as Mr. Lennex walked along an empty fifth-floor corridor, holding something that looked like a big flat book. He looked around to make sure he was alone, then disappeared into the housekeepers’ storage closet. He came out with another big flat book, a little larger, but he was holding it by the corners, looking at it and smiling.
He was holding a painting of some kind.
“What the hell?” Max said.
Light dawned in a slow, warm sunshine. “That’s it. That’s what he’s been doing.” Kellen kissed Max on the cheek. “Thank you. You’re brilliant!” She ran toward the door, turned back. “Have you seen Nils Brooks?”
“Not at all.” Max had his hand on his cheek and he watched her like…like Hagrid viewed a new dragon egg.
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