No, killing hadn’t been his motive.
Otherwise he would have torched the house, not the shed.
Whoever he was, he’d wanted her to be afraid, to know that he had some kind of power over her, enough power to steal her only child and taunt her with the fact that he’d kidnapped her.
So it has to be someone who knows how important the child was to you, how difficult it was to give up the baby. A relative? A friend? Confidante?
It wasn’t as if she’d kept her pregnancy a secret. A lot of people in this small community had known.
So what does kidnapping Dani Settler have to do with Mary Beth’s death? Shannon asked herself. Why had the bastard gone to such great lengths to spare her, but then make certain Mary Beth died? Horribly.
Shannon stared at the debris that had been her shed, the yellow tape now flapping in a slight breeze that had kicked up the dust and blown a few dry leaves across the field. She leaned against the top rail of the fence. Her thoughts, as they had all night, turned to Mary Beth. Shannon found it incomprehensible that her sister-in-law was dead.
Atlas came up and nuzzled her leg. Patting his wide head, she managed a smile. He was her best tracking dog. Confident but not aggressive, social but not to the exclusion of listening to commands, Atlas had the intelligence and nose to be an excellent search and rescue dog as well as a tracker. “Good boy,” she said, rubbing him behind the ears. “We’ll work together later. I promise.” His long tail wagged.
She glanced up at the sun, stealing upward in the morning sky, already promising the day would be another scorcher. She felt disjointed and achy, but she toughed it out, didn’t want to be groggy or distracted when Settler appeared.
She kenneled the dogs. As she was heading back to the house she heard the phone ring. Jogging as fast as her injuries would allow, she made it into the kitchen by the fourth ring, picked up, and shouted over the prerecorded message on her answering machine, “I’m here. Just give me a sec.” She managed to disengage the recorder as she read the caller ID message. It was Shea. “Hey,” she said, bracing herself against the counter. “What’s up?”
“A lot,” Shea said. Shannon could hear the strain in his voice. “First off, it looks like Mary Beth was murdered.”
Travis had told her as much but she started shaking inside anew. “It’s just so hard to believe.”
“Because I’m family, it was suggested strongly that I relinquish the investigation to someone else. You’ll probably get a call from Nadine Ignacio, she’s been my second in command and she’ll do a good job.”
“You’re being relieved of your duties?”
“No one’s saying that,” he said, sounding faintly bitter. “I’m still the chief investigator, but I’m just to steer clear of anything to do with fires that involve my family members including the one at your house. It’s a conflict of interest.”
“This gets worse by the second.”
“I was told it was to protect me.”
“You believe that?”
“Not for a second, but there it is,” he said flatly. “So, you’ll probably get more questions from the arson squad, as well as from Nadine and now, probably, someone from homicide, probably Detective Paterno.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s been with the San Francisco PD for years. A homicide inspector who was involved in that Cahill case that was in the papers a few years back.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“Well, it made a splash, a socialite with amnesia. Anyway, it put Paterno in the limelight and he apparently didn’t like it. Moved to Santa Lucia about eighteen months ago. All I know about him is that he’s good at his job. Plays straight. You can trust him.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, suddenly realizing that Shea was warning her.
“Because the questions might get a little sticky, Shannon. I’ve spent the last hour with Paterno and he’s not only interested in the fire at Robert’s house but also the one at yours, the fact that Travis Settler’s daughter is missing, and he’s even dredging up the old Stealth Torcher thing and Ryan’s death.”
Shea’s worry was contagious; she felt a jolt of concern race through her blood. “The Stealth Torcher? Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s probably just getting himself up to speed. Being thorough.”
But she heard the hesitation in her brother’s voice. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she charged.
“Look, really, I can’t discuss the investigation with you or anyone else,” he snapped, his frayed nerves finally giving way. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up on what’s going on.”
She wanted to argue but knew it would be useless; Shea wouldn’t be budged. She changed the subject. “Have you seen Robert? How’s he holding up?”
“About as bad as can be expected. He’s eating himself up with guilt. It looks like he was the last one to see Mary Beth alive and, given that their fight outside El Ranchito was witnessed by all of us: Settler, Liam and the manager of the motel…”
“He’s a suspect.” Of course he was—the estranged husband involved with another woman, a man who wanted a divorce from a clinging wife who was fighting him.
“Yeah, but he isn’t alone. Quite a few people didn’t get along with Mary Beth.”
“Not getting along isn’t exactly motive for murder,” Shannon said, wondering where this was leading.
“So when’s the last time you talked to Mary Beth?”
“Me?” Shannon asked, surprised.
“Yeah, you…Paterno will ask, just like he’ll ask all of us.”
“Well, of course I saw her in the parking lot, and then later she called me after I got home.” Shannon remembered the phone call. “She sounded as if she’d been drinking and she wasn’t making much sense. She was still mad at Robert. I gathered he’d dumped her off, then split. Anyway, she was complaining and looking for him again. You know, the usual stuff.”
“She didn’t say anything weird?”
“It was all weird, Shea.”
“But she called you, right?”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“I just wondered if you called her.”
“No. Why would I?” Shannon said. “But it was odd because she said I’d phoned her and that she was calling me back. I said she was wrong and she got all belligerent, said something ridiculous like she had my number on caller ID or something. I figured she’d just had too much to drink. Why?”
“You’re sure about all this?”
“Of course I’m sure, Shea! She called me,” Shannon insisted. When Shea didn’t respond, she sensed, again, there was something more he wasn’t telling her. Something vital. Maybe even something damning. “What is this? You don’t believe me? Check her phone records.”
“We are.”
“Good!” She pushed herself away from the cabinets, tossing the remains of her coffee down the sink. “That should settle everything.” Deciding the conversation was going nowhere, she changed the subject again. “Has anyone else talked to Mom?”
“Oliver stayed with her last night and I stopped by this morning. I don’t know if Robert or Aaron have seen her.”
“I’ll call.”
“That would be good.” She heard other muted voices, apparently Shea was no longer alone. “What? Yeah. Just a sec,” he said, his voice muffled, then he turned his attention back to her. “Look, Shan, I gotta go now. We’ll talk later.” He hung up before she could say good-bye, but that wasn’t unusual. Shea’s brain was always two steps ahead of his body.
She hung up, feeling cold from the inside out. Although the temperature was already over eighty, she felt as if her blood was slowly but surely turning to ice.
“Stop it,” she told herself sternly, and as she did she heard the sound of a truck’s engine rumbling up the drive. Within seconds Travis Settler’s pickup rolled into view.
Chapter 18
The Beast was back!
Dani’s heart flew to her t
hroat. So engrossed was she in pulling out the darn nail, she hadn’t heard his truck arrive. Since he hadn’t come back last night, she figured she had the day to herself. Now his boots were clomping on the creaky floorboards of the porch.
She tossed her dirty clothes over the nail, then vaulted from the closet onto her bed. Her heart pounded as she heard the locks click and the door unlatch.
Heavy footsteps pounded through the cabin.
She swallowed hard as she realized she’d left the door to the closet open. But it was too late to do anything about it.
Half a heartbeat later the door to her room opened with enough force to bang against the wall. Terrified, she stared up at him and knew something had happened.
Something bad.
His usual cool was gone, his hair was uncombed, the pupils of his eyes were pinpricks, and there was a desperation to him that scared her to her bones. She hoped to God he wouldn’t walk into the closet, see that the nail head was over half an inch above the board.
Looming over the bed, he was sweating, dusty and breathing hard. It was almost as if there was an electric current running through him. “Get up!” he ordered. He jerked a hand to the living area and didn’t so much as glance at the open closet. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“In there.” There was the hint of a tic over his eye and she didn’t argue, though she wondered what had happened. The sun had been up for several hours, the cabin was already warm and he hadn’t returned all night, which was odd, different from his usual pattern.
She walked into the living area, a room he usually forced her through at a quick pace.
“Sit,” he said, pointing to the broken hearth. “And don’t try any funny stuff.”
He started building a fire and she knew then that he was over the edge. The room was already hot, but he lit the stacked paper, kindling and chunks of wood anyway, rocking back on his heels and grunting in satisfaction when the flames began crackling and growing, burning bright.
For the first time she got a closer look at the pictures on the mantel. She’d been allowed through this room before, but always only as she was being shepherded outside. Now she saw that there were six pictures, all of them looking as if they’d been taken long ago. Four of the pictures were head shots of serious young men who all had similar traits: shiny black hair, intense, don’t-mess-with-me blue eyes and thin lips. Another picture was a snapshot of a couple on their wedding day, the woman wearing a long white gown and a wedding veil, the man in a tuxedo. He could have been one of the guys in the head shots, taken at a different time. The final picture was of a woman, just her face, and Dani felt her heart tighten. She had reddish brown hair, big green eyes and a smile that showed off just a bit of her teeth. Her expression looked as if she was in on a private joke as she tilted her ear, leaning it upon one hand, her fingers buried in the riot of auburn curls.
“Who are those people?” she asked, her mind snapping with questions.
He didn’t respond.
“They’re all related, aren’t they? Brothers?”
He’d been kneeling, staring at the fire, but now his head whipped around fast, as if he’d forgotten she was there, forgotten she was close enough to the pictures to make them out. He scowled. “You ask too many questions.”
“Who are they?” she asked again.
“Shut up.” He rose quickly and reached onto the mantel. For a second Dani thought he was going to burn the pictures, frames and all, but instead he merely replaced his small torch, then from his pocket he pulled out a miniature recorder and a piece of folded, lined paper. The paper’s edge was frayed as if it had come from a tiny spiral notebook. A message was scrawled upon the single sheet.
He squatted next to her and placed the recorder close enough to her mouth that it would certainly pick up anything she might say. “Read,” he instructed.
Dani looked at the words written in bold block letters:
MOMMY, HELP ME. PLEASE, MOMMY. I’M SCARED. COME AND GET ME. I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM AND I THINK HE’S GOING TO HURT ME. PLEASE, MOMMY. HURRY.
Instead of saying the words, she turned her head to look at him. She could smell the scents of smoke and body odor upon him. “My mother is dead,” she whispered. She felt a deep ache within her as she thought of Ella Settler, the mother who had been so overprotective, who had made her suffer through Sunday school, who had worked with her doing math and history nearly every night before bed, who had abided no sass. Dani bit the insides of her cheeks to keep her lips from shaking as she remembered how she’d fought her mother’s strict sense of right and wrong. Maybe that’s why the God Ella had so firmly believed in had taken her mother away. To punish her. Maybe the reason that she had ended up in the hands of this sicko was because she’d been such an ungrateful daughter. She swallowed back the urge to sob and blinked against the hot tears that were touching the back of her eyelids. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, break down in front of this creep.
“Just do it,” he growled.
Dani met his gaze. “What’re you going to do with this?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I told you, she’s dead,” Dani said, her voice catching.
“But your birth mother isn’t,” he snarled and Dani felt as if her heart had just dropped through the rotten floorboards of this forgotten shanty. “Remember, the one you were so hell-bent to find? She’s still alive.”
“You know where she is?” Dani asked, incredulous. Then she warned herself that this could be another one of the perv’s tricks. He couldn’t be trusted. Hadn’t she found that out about a jillion times over?
All of a sudden she understood. Her gaze flew to the mantel where the picture of the pretty young woman with auburn hair was staring down.
“Figure it out?” he taunted.
Dani shot to her feet. Scooped up the picture and stared down at the woman who, in the shot, couldn’t have been much more than twenty. “This is her, isn’t it?” Her heart was pounding and she glared down at him. “Where is she? What are you doing to her? Who are all these other pictures of?”
“Just make the recording. That way no one gets hurt.”
Dani’s fingers gripped the edge of the cheap frame so tightly, the metal cut into her flesh. But she was tired of taking orders, sick of his bullying her around. Her birth mother was nearby! She had to be! That’s why Dani had been dragged down here. She stared at the picture of the beautiful woman who had given her life, then given her up. Why? Who was she?
This creep knew.
He’d known all along.
That’s how he’d lured her into trusting him, with just enough knowledge to entice her.
“I said make the fuckin’ recording and you won’t get hurt!”
“Are you threatening me?” she demanded as he ripped the frame from her hands.
“Take it anyway you like. Make the damned recording and you don’t get hurt, your mom doesn’t get hurt and your dad doesn’t get hurt, either.”
“My dad? You know where he is?” she demanded.
He didn’t respond but the smug smile that pulled at the corners of his thin lips told her all she needed to know.
“Where?”
“Don’t even worry about it.”
“Where is he?” Then it hit her. “You mean my biological father. Right? I’m talking about my adoptive dad, he’s my real dad. Travis Settler. That other guy…He doesn’t count.”
Something in his eyes flashed for an instant and his nostrils seemed to flare just a bit. “I don’t care who does or doesn’t ‘count.’ Make the recording. You’ve got five minutes.” He looked at his watch, then pulled a big hunting knife from the back of the mantel. Slowly he unsheathed the blade and Dani thought of the big garbage bag that had dripped blood in the dirty white van with the out-of-state plates, the van that he’d first dragged her into and was now parked with the bag and its grotesque contents rotting in the garage somewhere in Idaho.
What good would it do to get herself k
illed now?
What good would it do to refuse him?
Maybe her natural mother was really, really rich and the recording was some kind of ransom demand.
She took the recorder from him and tried to come up with a subversive way to tell whoever received this tape her location, but she didn’t know where she was. This was all happening too quickly. She didn’t have time to come up with a signal, or some kind of secret message to let whoever received the tape know anything other than yes, she was alive…or had been when the message was recorded.
He stood in front of her, his arms folded over his broad chest, the fingers of his right hand curled over the handle of the knife. There was no way out. She had to do what he wanted.
For now.
Soon she’d escape anyway.
The nail was just about out of the board in the closet.
She clicked on the recorder and as a squirrel scampered over the roof of this dilapidated shack, she started reading. “Mommy, help me. Please, Mommy. I’m scared—”
Angrily he reached forward, snapped off the recorder and rewound the tape in a whir of noise. “Stupid bitch!” His face suffused with color and his laser-blue eyes narrowed on her furiously. “I know you’re not that dumb, so no more game playing. Now, do it again and this time, don’t just read it like you were in fuckin’ English class, okay? Make it sound good. Real. Like you’re scared.”
“But I don’t know how to—”
Suddenly, he bent down, squatting next to her, one arm around her middle, the other with the knife next to her face.
She nearly peed her pants.
His lips so close to her they brushed the shell of her ear, he whispered, “You just need some motivation, a little incentive.” The blade pressed against her cheek and it was all she could do not to squeal in fear.