Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

Nate was frowning now. "Yeah. Yeah, I worked on it. She went out to play in the gardens one morning, and nobody admitted to seeing her once she stepped off the back veranda. We never found a trace of her. My boss at the time decided her father had snatched her; there'd been an ugly divorce. But we couldn't trace him."

"Trust me, the father didn't snatch her. Or, at any rate, she never left The Lodge." Quentin glanced toward Ruppe, and added, "I'll wait here while you talk to Ms. Boyd, if you don't mind."

"You suspect Ruppe?"

"He was here twenty-five years ago. He's here now. That's all I know." Quentin was also wary of the fact that Ruppe had turned up here when, if Quentin hadn't followed her, Diana would have been alone and vulnerable. Maybe the stable manager would have posed no threat to her even so, but Quentin wasn't prepared to accept that as a given.

There had to be a reason, after all, why his own abilities had sent him down here after her. Maybe he had just needed to wake her, to pull her from the gray time before she remained there too long. Or maybe the threat to Diana had been of the flesh-and-blood sort.

Quentin didn't know. Yet.

"Considering the precious little we've got," Nate said with another sigh, "I can't say as I blame you for what's probably grasping at straws."

"I know he was questioned after Missy was murdered. I read the file." He had memorized it.

"Then you know the cops at the time couldn't find a whiff of anything suspicious about Ruppe."

"I know. But like I said, he was here then. He's here now. If nothing else, maybe he knows something he doesn't know he knows."

Nate considered that and nodded. "Yeah, maybe. People do, often enough. But don't question him, Quentin, not yet. He woke at what he states is his usual time and came down from his apartment to find two guests poking around in his tack room, so he's got a right to be rattled and pissed. Let's not make things worse until we've got reason to, okay?"

Quentin nodded. "Understood."

"Are you okay? You look a little..."

Thinking he probably looked a lot, Quentin grimaced and said, "Headache. A real bitch of a headache." Plus his ears felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, like his sinuses, and his eyes burned and ached. He was definitely paying the price for his all-night vigil.

"You should take something for that," Nate said.

"Yeah. Yeah, I will." Quentin didn't bother to explain that painkillers couldn't touch this sort of thing. Nothing ever had, except time and rest.

Nate headed off toward The Lodge's main building, leaving Quentin and Ruppe eyeing one another across nearly half the distance of the barn's long hall. Quentin knew Ruppe undoubtedly had work to do; managing a stable comprising three separate barns and more than thirty horses was a full-time job even if others did most of the grunt work. The horses were already restless in anticipation of their morning feed, stamping their hooves and snorting softly; the maintenance crew would be showing up any moment to feed them and begin mucking out the stalls.

The clipboard hanging by the tack room listed three trail rides scheduled for today, as well as half a dozen classes for those beginning riders who wanted to do more than just hang on for dear life during future trail rides.

Ruppe clearly didn't have time to stand around all morning, much less engage in a pissing contest with the cops or Quentin. But it was just as obvious that he was jealous of his authority, and not about to give ground unless forced by Management to do so.

Quentin knew the type. He'd come up against them often enough in his years as a federal cop. He also knew that Nate was right in saying this wasn't the time to question the stable manager, badly as Quentin wanted to do that.

Nate would probably point out, however gently, that there was really no hurry, after all; Missy had been gone twenty-five years, and a few more hours or days or even weeks wasn't going to change that.

Probably.

But the restlessness Quentin had been conscious of last night had shifted abruptly into a deep, cold sense of foreboding this morning when Diana had opened her eyes so suddenly to make an eerily familiar statement.

"It's coming."

And it had required all his willpower to allow her to leave his sight. To walk away from him, back up the well-lit paths to her cottage in order to change. Because that was exactly what Missy had said to him twenty-five years before.

The last time he had seen her alive.

Ellie Weeks ate a piece of plain toast and sipped hot tea, longing for the black coffee that was her usual morning pick-me-up. But pregnancy and black coffee didn't appear to go together, at least where she was concerned; drinking the tea was infinitely preferable to puking her guts out. Besides which, The Lodge's head housekeeper, Mrs. Kincaid, had been watching her very closely the last few days, and Ellie couldn't afford to do anything even remotely suspicious.

Not again, at any rate.

Hitching her chair closer to Ellie's in the staff dining room, Alison Macon whispered, "Did you hear? About last night?"

Ellie looked at her fellow maid blankly for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. They found some old bones in one of the gardens."

Alison was clearly disappointed that she couldn't be the bearer of dramatic news, but nevertheless managed to make her whisper theatrical.

"It was a kid. A little boy, I heard. They found his watch buried with him."

Wrapped up in her own worries and problems, Ellie said, "Bad luck for him."

"But, Ellie, they're saying he was murdered."

"They're also saying it was years ago," Ellie pointed out.

"But aren't you afraid?"

"Why should I be?"

Alison appeared at a loss, but only for a moment. "There could be a murderer here at The Lodge."

"Yeah, and he could be long gone. Probably is. Why stick around and let himself get caught?"

With a visible shiver, Alison said, "Well, I'm scared."

"Be careful, then. Stay inside The Lodge. If you have to go out alone, don't wander off the paths."

"You're really not afraid, are you?"

"I'm really not." Not about that, at any rate. Some faceless killer that was maybe still hanging around years after his crime couldn't hold a candle to the very real worries gnawing at Ellie.

A baby.

I can't raise a baby. Not all by myself. I can't have an abortion. What else is there?

"You're so brave," Alison said admiringly.

"If you say so." Ellie drained her cup, hoping it would settle her jumpy stomach, and pushed back her chair. "Fifteen minutes before we're supposed to start work. I'm going out to get some air first. I'll meet you in the supply room."

Alison nodded, but absently, her gaze already directed across the room to another maid who might not have heard about last night's discovery.

Ellie got up, making a show of looking at her watch for the benefit of Mrs. Kincaid. A show of pausing, considering, deciding she had time. Then she left the dining room, moving briskly, someone with a specific place to go.

The staff dining room was in the lower levels of the South Wing, along with the kitchens and other maintenance areas. Also in that wing were the very few small suites reserved for those comparatively few employees on the housekeeping staff who lived as well as worked in The Lodge.

Ellie occupied one of those, at least for now. But not once everybody knew about the baby. When that happened, she'd be out on her ass. Mrs. Kincaid was hard-nosed about that sort of thing. An unmarried maid turning up pregnant? No, she wouldn't have it. Not at The Lodge. So Ellie would be lucky to get a week's pay and half an hour to pack her stuff and get out. No job, no home. And no one who gave a shit what happened to her.