That would not have been the case seventeen years ago. Pamela always kept the door closed in those days and with good reason. She’d had a lot of things she wanted to hide from her father and the housekeeper, including birth control pills, condoms and mysterious packets of what she claimed were designer drugs that she had purchased from dealers who hung out around her fancy boarding school.
Pamela had been very proud of the hiding place she had crafted to conceal her treasures—so proud, in fact, that after swearing Irene to eternal secrecy, she had shown it to her.
A trickle of anticipation fluttered through Irene as she moved into the room. It was the memory of Pamela’s secret place that had lured her back here tonight. The odds of finding anything in it that might offer an explanation or an insight were slim to vanishing, but it was a place to start.
The curtains and shades had been pulled shut in this room, too. Relieved that she did not have to be overly cautious with the flashlight, she splashed the beam quickly around the space.
Shock drove out the sense of anticipation she had been feeling. A dark, edgy chill of déjà vu roiled her nerves.
Nothing had been changed.
She walked slowly into the room, unnerved. True, the downstairs had not been redecorated but at least it had always been furnished in an adult manner. Even seventeen years earlier Pamela’s pink-and-white bedroom had struck her as somehow too sweet, too innocent, for the sophisticated and worldly Pamela Webb. Tonight the canopied bed with its gossamer clouds of drapery and pink satin pillows seemed downright weird.
Another case of time warp, she thought. It was hard to believe that the room had never been redecorated. Surely Pamela had needed it for her guests on those occasions when she brought friends up to the lake.
Poor Pamela. Had she been so deeply attached to the memories of her girlhood that she could not bear to alter her old bedroom? Somehow that didn’t seem Pamela-like. She had been a risk-taker; always excited about the forbidden. And she loved fashion.
But Pamela had been a girl who lost her mother at the age of five, Irene reminded herself. Maybe some part of her had tried to cling to the memories of that shattered bond here in this room.
There was so much that she had never comprehended about Pamela, Irene thought. She did not even know why Pamela had selected her to be her best friend that long-ago summer. At the time she had not questioned her good luck. It had been enough to bask in the reflected glow of Pamela’s dangerous, glittery light; enough to pretend that she, too, was a bad girl. But in hindsight, she had often wondered what Pamela had seen in her.
She crossed the room to the fairy-tale bed, selected one of the pink satin pillows and placed it on the nightstand. She propped the flashlight against the pillow so that the beam struck the light switch on the wall.
Reaching into one of her pockets, she took out the screwdriver she had brought with her. Very carefully she inserted the tip into one of the screws that anchored the light switch plate to the wall.
Pamela’s words the night she had revealed her secret hiding place floated through her mind as she worked.
“It’s such a guy thing, hiding stuff in the wall behind a light switch. No one would think that a girl would do it.”
Certainly not the sort of girl who lived in a pink-and-white princess room like this, Irene mused as she removed the second screw.
She put the plate and the screws down on the table and went back to work on the two screws that secured the switch itself. A moment later she was able to pull it away from the wall.
Pulse leaping, she grabbed the flashlight and angled the beam into the outlet box.
Light gleamed on brass. Her breath caught in her throat when she realized that she was looking at a key.
She reached into the outlet box and removed the small find. When she held it up to the light to get a closer look she was disappointed to see that it looked like an ordinary house key.
Why would Pamela keep a spare house key tucked away up here in her secret hiding place?
She dropped the key into a pocket and reached for the light switch plate.
She was tightening the last screw on the plate when she heard the sound of a door opening downstairs.
Her blood turned to ice in her veins.
She was no longer alone in the house.
Fourteen
The almost noiseless plop of the screwdriver falling onto the thick white carpet at her feet broke the trance.
Irene finally remembered to breathe.
In the darkness below, floorboards squeaked. Someone was moving through the house. The intruder was not turning on any lights.
A burglar, she thought. That was the most logical explanation. Some local vandal had decided to see what he could steal from a dead woman’s house.
She heard footsteps in the front hall. Whoever was down there was making no attempt to be quiet. She prayed that meant he was not aware that there was someone else in the house. But if he was looking for cash and valuables, he would no doubt make his way upstairs sooner or later.
She had to get out before he found her. People who confronted burglars got killed. She had sometimes wondered if that was what had happened to her parents.
She pushed past the panic that was threatening to clog her throat and tried to concentrate. The only way out of the house from this floor was the staircase, the lower section of which ended in full view of the living and dining area. Whoever was downstairs would surely spot her if she tried to leave via that route.
She realized that the penlight was still blazing. Hastily she switched it off and then worked to fight the inevitable tide of fear that closed in around her together with the darkness.
She went down on her knees and groped for the fallen screwdriver. When her shaking fingers closed around the hard plastic handle she felt an inexplicable rush of adrenaline. The screwdriver wasn’t much, but it was all she had in the way of a weapon.
Don’t think like that. You’re not facing hand-to-hand combat here. You’re going to do the smart thing and hide until whoever is down there finishes whatever it is he came here to do.
She had one big advantage, she thought. She knew the layout of the house. Pamela’s bedroom was a trap. There was no place to hide.
The good news was that the upstairs was fully carpeted, and whoever was down below was making a fair amount of noise. If she was careful, she could move about up here without alerting him.
She slipped off her loafers. Holding them in one hand, she tiptoed to the doorway of the bedroom.
Under cover of another flurry of footsteps downstairs, she made her way past a guest bedroom and bath.
She paused when she reached the top of the staircase, flattened her back against the wall and risked a peek around the corner.
The narrow beam of a flashlight arced through the shadows at the foot of the stairs, but she could not see the outline of the person wielding it. Talons of fear gripped her insides.
When she heard the ring of shoes on the tile floor of the kitchen, she moved into the master bedroom.
The curtains were open in this room. Moonlight slanted onto the pale carpet through the sliding glass doors. She could see the railing of the deck that overlooked the lake.
The deck was her goal. It formed the roof of the breakfast nook on the first floor. There were no stairs leading down to the ground, but if she could get out without alerting the intruder, she could hide in the shadows of the eaves until he left.
She walked silently across the carpet, trying to time each step with the sound of activity down below.
When she reached the slider, she unlocked it gently and then hesitated.
Something metallic clanged loudly in the vicinity of the kitchen.
She would never get a better opportunity, she decided. She eased the door open and stepped outside onto the deck.
Shutting the slider very softly, she moved into the shadows of the tall storage locker that the Webbs used to protect the deck furniture during the winter.
A moment later light flashed inside the master bedroom. The intruder was already upstairs.
The flashlight beam disappeared almost immediately. The prowler had left the master bedroom and was heading down the hall to Pamela’s old room.
She never sensed the presence of the other person on the deck until a man’s palm clamped across her mouth. Strong fingers closed around the hand in which she clutched the screwdriver, disarming her with a flick of one powerful wrist.
“It’s me,” Luke said against her ear. “Don’t freak.”
Fifteen
It was all she could do not to dissolve into a limp puddle of relief. Too much, she thought. One more shock tonight and she would be a mindless wreck. A body could only take so much adrenaline.
Luke reached around her. He grasped the handle of the door.
It dawned on her that he was going to enter the house and confront the intruder. Another dose of panic hit her overwrought nervous system.
She grabbed his arm with both hands.
He paused. In the moonlight she saw him turn his head slightly toward her, curious why she was trying to restrain him.
“Are you crazy?” She mouthed the words and yanked harder on his hand.
He put his mouth very close to her ear again. “Stay here.”
No. She wanted to scream the word aloud. But men like Luke did not respond to the emotional approach.
“Gun,” she whispered, instead, going for the logical angle. Gun, as in, maybe whoever is in there has one, she added silently.
Luke patted her on the shoulder in what was no doubt intended to be a reassuring manner. In her considered opinion, it was nothing short of patronizing.
When she refused to let go of his arm, he seemed to get a little annoyed. He pried her fingers away and opened the door very quietly.
The unmistakable odor of kerosene wafted through the opening.
She thought she heard Luke whisper something that sounded a lot like “shit,” but she couldn’t be sure because he was moving too quickly.
He closed the door, grabbed Irene’s arm and hauled her toward the deck railing.
Belatedly she realized what he intended.
She tried to be philosophical about the plan. A few broken bones were going to be a nuisance, but they beat the heck out of the alternative.
“It’s okay, I just came up that way,” Luke whispered. “Hold on to my wrists. Go over the side. I’ll lower you as far as I can. It’s all grass and shrubs down there. Soft landing, guaranteed.”
“Oh, sure.” She looked over the side. The view reminded her of the one time she had mustered the courage to climb up to the high dive board at a swimming pool. She had taken one look at the long drop to the water and immediately climbed right back down. “What about you?”
“Believe me, I’ll be right behind you. That bastard is saturating the house with whatever he’s using for an accelerant. When he puts the torch to it, this place is going to go up like a bomb. Move, woman.”
As soon as his powerful hands tightened around her wrists, she took heart. His fingers felt like iron manacles. He would not let her fall.
She scrambled awkwardly over the side and found herself dangling a short distance above the ground. Luke released her. She dropped lightly onto the lawn, stumbled and sat down hard.
That hadn’t been so bad, she thought, scrambling to her feet and brushing off her hands.
She looked up just in time to see Luke swing himself over the side of the deck. He hung there for an instant, found the edge of the breakfast nook window frame with one foot and then bounded down to the ground in one easy motion. She realized that it was the window ledge that had made it possible for him to climb up to the deck in the first place. Men and their upper body strength.
He grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”
They plunged into the trees.
The muffled roar of a distant freight train shattered the night.
Except that there were no train tracks anywhere near Dunsley, Irene thought.
She did not need the whoosh of the flames or the wave of heat behind her to tell her what had happened. The intruder had ignited a firestorm.
Luke drew her to a halt.
“Stay here,” he said. “Got your phone?”
“Yes, but—”
“Call nine-one-one.” He turned away.
“For God’s sake, where are you going?” she called after him.
“To see if I can find the bastard. He’s on foot, same as us. Probably parked out on the road somewhere. Maybe I can catch up with him.”
“Luke, for the record, I think that is a very bad idea.”
But she was talking to the night. Luke had melted away into the shadows.
Glass exploded. Irene watched, stunned, as the flames engulfed the house with breathtaking speed. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and dialed the emergency number.
Somewhere in the distance an outboard motor roared to life. She knew then that Luke was not going to be able to run down the arsonist. The intruder wasn’t fleeing toward a car. He had used a boat.
Sixteen
I need a drink.” Luke shut the front door of the cabin with a sharp, definitive movement. He slammed the bolt home and headed for the tiny kitchenette. “Got any of that beer left?”
“In the refrigerator.” Irene watched him warily, uncertain of his mood. This was the first time he had spoken since they had finished talking to Sam McPherson at the scene of the fire. That conversation had not gone well, in her opinion. Luke’s silence in the SUV afterward had not helped. “Look, I’m sorry you got involved in this thing. I never meant—”
“If you say that one more time, I will not be responsible for my actions.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle and popped the top. “You know, for the first time in my life I’m starting to believe that there just might be such a thing as bad karma. Nothing else can really explain why I ended up with you for a paying guest here at Sunrise on the Lake Lodge.” He took a long pull on the beer, lowered the bottle and looked at her with narrowed eyes. “I mean, what are the odds?”
It dawned on her that he was coldly furious. The unfairness of it all annoyed her. She stood in the middle of the room and folded her arms.
“I didn’t ask you to follow me to the Webb house tonight,” she said.
“No, you sure as hell did not.” He leaned back against the counter, crossed his feet at the ankles and drank more beer. “In fact, you drove out of here with your headlights off in an effort to make sure I didn’t see you.”
“This isn’t your problem.”
“Maybe it wasn’t in the beginning, but it sure as hell is now.” He raised his brows. “You do realize that McPherson is currently contemplating the possibility that you and I are responsible for that fire tonight?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes. But we’re the ones who called in the alarm.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time that an arsonist set a fire, called the fire department and then hung around to watch the excitement.”
“I’m aware of that. But Sam has to realize that we have no motive. Neither of us stands to benefit from any insurance policy that the Webbs might have on the place.”
“A lot of arsonists don’t do it for the insurance money. They’re addicted to the thrill of the flames. But that’s beside the point in this case. You want to talk motive? Fine. Let’s start with me.”
She frowned. “You don’t have one.”
“Exactly.” He nodded, as though trying to encourage a slow student. “You, on the other hand, do.”
She nearly choked on her outrage. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“It wouldn’t take much to make you look like a prime suspect. Everyone in town knows you’re obsessing over the idea that Pamela Webb was murdered. You want to force McPherson to conduct a serious investigation, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Setting fire to the victim’s house is certainly one way of getting
his attention and ensuring an investigation of some kind.”
She was horrified. “That’s weak. Very, very weak.”
“If you believe that, you’re in denial.” Luke studied her with a hunter’s cold, calculating gaze. “No matter how you slice it, I’m your alibi for that fire tonight and you’re mine. Problem is, neither of us has a lot of credibility here in Dunsley. I’m the new guy in town. No one knows much about me. That makes me a natural suspect. But you’re in an even worse position because you’ve got a history around here. McPherson would have to be a really bad cop not to be suspicious of both of us.”
She unlinked her arms and threw them wide. “But there was someone else there tonight. We saw him.” She hesitated. “Or her.”
“McPherson’s only got our word on that.”
“Okay, you’ve made your point. You know something? I think I need a drink, too.” She marched to the refrigerator, opened it and took out the last bottle of beer. “By the way, I am well aware of the fact that you saved my life tonight.” She removed the top of the bottle. “Thank you.”
“Huh.” He drank more beer.
“True, you scared the living daylights out of me, appearing out of nowhere up there on the deck. But if you hadn’t been there, I might not have realized what the intruder was doing until it was too late.”
“You were scared? How the hell do you think I felt when I realized you had broken into the Webb house in the middle of the night and that there was someone else inside with you? You want to compare heart palpitations, lady?”
Best to ignore that, she decided.
“You never did tell me why you followed me,” she said after a while.
“That should be obvious. I’m renting a cabin to a woman who has a bad tendency to get into trouble in the middle of the night. An innkeeper has to take precautions when he’s dealing with guests like you.”
“You’re really pissed, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m really pissed,” he growled. “You shouldn’t have gone anywhere near that damn house.”