His love for her was as strong as ever, but she’d needed to leave him, and he’d never stood in the way of her happiness.
She’d gone through a miscarriage alone, while he had been on a case. In his defense, she’d never told him that she was pregnant. She’d been waiting for a special moment, a moment that had never happened, because he’d been so buried in his case. They’d tried to arrange a romantic evening, but somehow it had never happened.
And then it had been too late.
He noticed the attractive older couple who followed her out. He realized they must be Ben and Trisha Kendall.
Scarlet hurried toward the car, and he couldn’t help noticing that her jeans and a blue sweater heightened the color of her eyes, which looked as clear and pristine as the sky.
He stepped out of the car, determined to be calm and professional, to keep his emotional distance and remember that she had only called him because she was in trouble.
She wasn’t really in trouble anymore, he reminded himself; she’d been released. But the expression on her face told him that she was still upset about something, and he wondered what it could be.
To his astonishment, she threw herself into his arms.
For just a minute he allowed himself to pretend it was because she still loved him, and he reveled in the scent and feel of her. She smelled of the same shampoo she’d always loved, mixed with a light perfume. She was warm and soft, and it was the most difficult thing in the world to tell his body that this embrace wasn’t a prelude to more.
He held her tightly. She was trembling almost imperceptibly, but he could tell that she was scared, really scared, and Scarlet didn’t scare easily. In her day she had crawled through Egyptian tombs, excavated Native American burial mounds and explored what many might consider to be the creepiest places on earth.
He held her, wishing he could somehow infuse her with some of his own strength.
Despite himself, he remembered, not just in his mind’s eye but deep in his soul, the way they had somehow known instantly when they’d met that they were meant to be together. The way they had dated and fallen so quickly into one another’s arms, and then into love. He remembered her laughter when she’d greeted him the night of his last birthday, wearing a bow tie, stiletto heels and nothing else. He would never forget the way she moved against him, with him, like a sweet, sensual heat wave.
But marriage was more than desire and even love, and they had somehow allowed it to fall apart.
Her call. But his fault, he knew. He’d been so blind. She had known that his work was important to him, of course, and she had never protested his long absences or said anything about the late hours as he let his career become all-consuming. He hadn’t even realized that she’d slowly stopped talking to him because he never talked back, not about anything important. He didn’t see what he was doing, how much he was gone...and that nights together, no matter how passionate, didn’t make up for the things that went unsaid.
At last she pulled away and he felt her absence like a physical pain.
Brett cleared his throat and Scarlet turned to greet him. They had always gotten along well, and now she smiled, then gave him a big hug, as well.
“Thank you for coming,” she said to Brett, and then she turned to the others, her eyes questioning.
Diego quickly introduced them. “Scarlet, these are Special Agents Matt Bosworth and Meg Murray. We met when they came down to Miami to work a case, and now Brett and I have transferred to their unit.”
She thanked them both for coming, then turned to the older couple and said, “Ben and Trisha Kendall, owners of this fantastic place.”
“Rattled owners, at the moment,” Ben said, shaking Diego’s hand.
“This place is absolutely beautiful,” Meg said.
“It is—or was,” Trisha said.
“One thing we’ve learned,” Matt said, “is that you can’t let what happens somewhere affect your feelings about it. This place is beautiful, and I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re not only glad to be here to help, but also to get a chance to enjoy the area.”
“In fact, assuming you don’t mind,” Brett said to Ben and Trisha, “my fiancée is coming for the weekend.”
“You’re engaged? That’s wonderful!” Scarlet said. “Is she FBI, too?”
“No, she handles media relations for the Sea Life Center,” Brett told her.
Diego took control of the conversation then, taking refuge from his reawakened feelings in the details of the job. “Just so you know,” he explained, “we’re not here officially, though in a little while we’re going to head down to the police station and see if Adam Harrison, the director of our unit, has managed to arrange an in for us.” He turned to Ben and Trisha. “I don’t know how many rooms you have available, but I think he plans on coming out, too.”
“And we’re all paying guests,” Meg added.
“Not necessary,” Ben said.
“Maybe not, but it only makes sense. Whenever we travel for a case, we have to stay somewhere,” Diego said.
“Save the taxpayers’ money,” Ben told him, smiling as he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We’re not the Vanderbilts but I invested wisely over the years. We run this place because we love it, not because we need the income.”
“We’ll let you and Adam hash that out when he gets here. Right now, we need to take a look at the crime scene, then check in at the police station and introduce ourselves,” Brett said.
“You don’t want to see the whole place first?” Trisha asked.
“I can’t wait to look around,” Meg said.
“And we will,” Brett said. “When we’re back.”
Scarlet looked suddenly nervous. “All of you are leaving?” she asked.
“I’m staying,” Diego told her.
She lowered her head quickly, but he got a glimpse of her expression first and could tell that she was tremendously relieved. Strange. Was she afraid of Ben and Trisha Kendall?
“We need to talk to the officer over there in his car, too,” Matt said.
“They had people out there for hours—pretty much all through the night—after I called 911,” Ben said.
“You never heard anything?” Diego asked. “You didn’t hear the gunshots?”
“No, nothing,” Ben said, as Trisha shook her head. “None of the guests did, either.”
“Well, we’ll take a look, see what we can see,” Diego said. “Ben, you mind coming along? You can tell us what you found.”
Trisha took Ben’s hand, making it clear that if he was going, so was she. Scarlet, arms crossed over her chest, joined them without a word as they walked across the gravel parking lot toward the police cruiser.
The back of Diego’s neck prickled. They were being watched.
He turned toward the stables and saw a grizzled cowboy standing in the doorway. The man waved to Diego.
Diego waved back, then looked over at the house. Upstairs, a curtain was pulled back. Someone was watching them from one of the bedrooms. He also thought he saw a face in a downstairs window, but whoever it was quickly stepped back, as if they realized they’d been seen.
Diego decided not to pretend. He waved to whoever was at the house, as well. No response.
The officer got out of the car as they approached and said, “Can I help you folks? No lookie-loos allowed up on the mountain, just in case that’s what you’re here for.”
Matt stepped forward to produce his credentials. The officer looked at him and then at the others. “This is of interest to the FBI? Why?”
“Let’s just say there’s something about it that resonates for us and leave it at that,” Matt said.
The officer nodded, studying them. “Don’t go past the tape,” he told him. “Not unless I get an official okay f
rom my boss.”
He got back into his car and Diego figured he was calling headquarters, alerting them that the FBI was interested in their crime scene.
Diego turned to Ben as they all started walking up the slope. “Tell us what happened, how you discovered the bodies.”
“I had been at the stables—I’m a horse guy, spend as much time as I can there—and was walking toward the house when I saw lumps up by the trees, lumps that shouldn’t have been there. It was too dark for me to tell what they were, so I walked over and...”
He paused and drew a shaky breath.
“He was a bloody mess. She was just...bloody. It looked as if he had been...cut up before he was shot. I was shaking so badly I dropped my phone. I had to pick it up from the dirt to dial 911. I turned my back to them and just stared down at the house until the cops arrived. I think I was in shock when they finally got there. I couldn’t help thinking the scene was just like the pictures Scarlet had shown me, and I said so to the cops, and I am still so damned sorry I did.”
Diego looked at Scarlet. “Tell us about those pictures.”
“I don’t know how they got on my camera,” she said, and there was a mix of frustration and fear in her voice. “I ran into Ben and wanted to show him the shots I’d gotten of an elk. And they were just there. Pictures of dead people.”
“The same dead people you saw?” Diego asked Ben.
Ben frowned and then nodded gravely. “If it wasn’t them, it was just like them. One showed the guy hung up in a tree, but the other one... It was both of them, same position, same huge amount of blood. I handed the camera back to Scarlet, asked her what the hell was going on. She saw the pictures and she was stunned. And then they were gone. Just gone. And the elk was back where he was supposed to be.”
“I didn’t take those the pictures,” Scarlet said firmly. “And I didn’t erase them.”
“The police took the camera,” Ben said. “They didn’t find any sign of those shots, and they let Scarlet go.”
Scarlet looked at Ben and then at the agents. “The thing is...well, it’s strange, even stranger than it seemed at the time. I was thinking about it while I was cooking breakfast, and those pictures were like the story of this place. It was built by one of Ben’s ancestors, Nathan Kendall. He was attacked one night. Whoever did it dragged him up the mountain and tortured him with a knife, then shot him. And when his wife heard him screaming and went to help him, she was shot, too. They never did catch who did it. There were several theories, but no one was ever arrested, much less convicted.”
She paused, shivering slightly as she looked straight at Diego. “It’s as if history repeated itself. He was tortured, then shot...she was shot but at least not tortured. They died the same way and in the same place as Nathan and Jillian Kendall died nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.”
4
Scarlet was extremely grateful—and still a little incredulous—that Diego had not only come to help her, but that he had also come so quickly and with a contingent of fellow agents.
She knew Brett, of course. He and Diego had worked together for years—she’d often felt that Brett knew her husband better than she did. Of course, in their line of work learning to think almost in tandem was imperative.
She still thought the world of Brett. He had been a good friend to both of them during the divorce, even helping her pack up when it had been time to leave.
But she’d never heard of the other agents or this “special” unit Diego and Brett had joined. She still didn’t know anything, if it came to that.
Didn’t matter. It had to be one hell of a unit if they’d gotten here in less than twenty-four hours simply because she’d asked her ex-husband for help.
She’d heard—the whole country had heard—about the Miami zombie case, and she’d known that Diego and Brett had been assigned to it. She had to assume that Matt and Meg had worked it, too, and that it was somehow connected to whatever made their special unit, well, special. She’d thought several times about calling Diego, just to see how he was weathering the stress. The pressure on law enforcement must have been terrible. She knew how he took his cases—or, really, the people who were part of them—to heart. The temptation to pick up the phone had been almost overwhelming at times.
But then she’d reminded herself that maybe he’d moved on. Maybe he had a girlfriend. Diego was a natural flirt. He simply liked people in general, despite what he did for a living and the kinds of people he so frequently had to deal with. Women, especially, naturally liked him. It was those dark good looks and killer smile. They couldn’t help themselves.
He had never betrayed her during their two years together, but they weren’t married anymore. She hadn’t just left him, she’d left the state.
He’d had the right to move on.
The thought that he might well have done so disturbed her more than she wanted to admit, and that, as much as anything else, had kept her from making the call. Being so far away, cradled by the mountains, had acted like a buffer zone. It was almost as if she was looking back at a story about two other people.
But after Brett, Matt and Meg had left for the police station, and Ben and Trisha had headed back to the main house to check on their five remaining guests, Scarlet discovered that she suddenly felt incredibly awkward with the man she had once known better than anyone else in the world.
Admittedly, she’d been drawn to Diego at the outset because of the way he looked. He was tall and fit, and there was something of the aristocrat about his features, as if he was descended from a line of Spanish kings. She could see him wearing a conquistador’s helmet and posing for a gold coin.
He was also charming, and quick to make her laugh. They were opposites in many ways. He was daring and quick to make friends, to dive into a situation or experience. She had been decidedly shy, at least at first, always wanting to know what made things tick. At first it had been great. He had taught her to be spontaneous, as daring as he was. She had taught him to look beneath the surface of things. They’d both learned about compromise.
She had believed then and still did that the reason they’d stopped talking was that they were trying to be considerate of each other, to avoid upsetting each other. She’d told him that she didn’t need an explanation when he needed to work all hours. And she didn’t. But maybe that had made him think she didn’t care about his job, so he tried too hard not to bring work home.
And then she’d lost the baby. A baby he hadn’t even known existed.
She knew this was not the time to analyze where and why they’d gone wrong, or why she had felt the irresistible need to flee from their marriage and from him, to ask for the divorce.
And still he was there for her the minute she called.
Now the others were gone and it was just the two of them. He wanted to hear everything from her point of view, starting with the pictures that had mysteriously appeared on her camera and then going on to cover her experience at the police station and anything else that might be relevant. So now they were up in the apartment, at the little table in the kitchen. She’d brewed more coffee and was sitting opposite him, much as she’d sat opposite Lieutenant Gray the night before. She kept noticing his hands. His fingers were long, his nails clipped and clean. She’d always loved his hands; they looked like a pianist’s hands. Actually, he did play, but only for pleasure. He claimed he was awful, but in fact he was anything but.
She looked away, avoiding his eyes. She’d been anxious to be alone with him so she could tell him about the mannequin. But now that the moment was here, she was afraid he was going to think she was an idiot. He dealt with true evil every day. How was she going to explain her terror of a mannequin in a way that didn’t sound ridiculous?
Then again, how the hell had the damned thing wound up at the foot of her bed?
Apparently he could sti
ll read her better than anyone else could, because he immediately asked, “What is it? Please, Scarlet, two people have been murdered. Tell me what you didn’t want to say in front of everyone else.”
She couldn’t say it. Too silly. Or maybe not. There was still the possibility that someone made of flesh and blood, and in possession of a key, had moved it to terrify her.
“A mannequin moved,” she blurted out.
She’d expected skepticism—perhaps polite, nearly hidden skepticism, but skepticism nevertheless.
“Okay, I saw a bunch of mannequins down in the museum,” he said. “But which one, and how did it move?”
She let out a long breath. “Nathan Kendall—and he’s not downstairs. He’s in my living room about fifteen feet away from us. Yesterday he fell over on his own.” She hesitated, then went on. “And when I woke up this morning, he was standing at the foot of my bed.”
To her amazement, he didn’t look at her with sympathy, as if the thin mountain air was affecting her brain.
He simply asked, “Who has keys to this place, Scarlet? The first thing, always, is to look for the simplest and most likely possibility.”
“To the best of my knowledge, only Ben, Trisha and myself. And I just can’t believe that either one of them would try to scare me that way.” She met his eyes as if begging him to understand. “Diego, I was never afraid to be here. I loved this place from the moment I arrived. But I swear to you, I’m not crazy. The statue was on its pedestal at the bottom of the stairs when I went to bed after we finally got back from the police station. Ben and Trisha went with me to make sure the museum and the apartment were safe. I went back down with them and locked the door once they left. I woke up in the middle of the night, but I had a cup of tea and went back to bed. I’d had the feeling the whole time that I was being watched, though. When I woke up in the morning, Nathan Kendall was standing at the foot of my bed. Do you think someone got in and put him there without me hearing a thing?”
“First, thank God you’re all right. And second, maybe. That’s certainly the logical explanation, and we always look for the logical explanation first.”