Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

She pressed her cheek flat on the floor. Tears ran over her nose and dripped onto the wood. “He hid his face,” she said more quietly. “He hid his face and he had a knife and I didn’t recognize him.”

“Yeah? Well, when a masked man with a knife comes after you, it doesn’t commonly mean that he’s here to save you.” He strode to the backpack lying near the door. It was the same one van der Hoeven had been carrying earlier. “Let’s just see what he had in store for you, shall we?” He unzipped the bag and upended it.

A Thermos fell out, clanging dully on the wooden floor. Two sandwiches followed. An apple rolled out, landing on the sandwiches. He shook it again, numbly, and a roll of toilet paper bounced to the floor. A slim thermal blanket slithered out after it.

Shaun stared at the young woman sprawled on the floor. She looked at the food and supplies, then at him. “You killed my brother,” she said.

He backed out of the room and slammed the door. The key. The key. He scrabbled around the base of the stairs where he had seen the thing fall. When his hand closed over it, he sagged with relief before turning to the door and locking it. He pocketed the key, and then, without being conscious of descending, he was outside the tower.

It was the same day it had been when he went inside. The sun had hardly budged in the sky. The trees, the ruined house, the forest closing in all around-it was all the same as when he set foot in the tower.

Except that he had killed a man.

Okay. He wasn’t going to panic.

He was a smart man. He was going to figure out what to do, and in what order to do it. He tried on the idea of heading for his house and calling the police. Who would then arrive and take Millie van der Hoeven’s statement that he had killed her brother before locking her in a tower room. No.

He considered calling his lawyer first. No, calling his lawyer and getting her to give him the name of a good criminal attorney. Who would stand beside him when the police asked him how Eugene van der Hoeven had toppled from the tower. And why he had shut the man’s sister up instead of freeing her, as any innocent person would have done. Oh, yes, having an attorney there would certainly reassure the police that Eugene’s death had been an accident.

Hadn’t it?

He thought about that moment, about van der Hoeven’s expression, about the rage and frustration that had been coursing through his body, pounding in his head. He sucked in a breath. Of course it had been an accident. He had no motive to wish van der Hoeven dead. Not one.

Of course, now he knew for sure that one of the three owners of Haudenosaunee wasn’t going to be signing anything over to GWP tonight.

And the second of the three owners was trapped in a tower. No one knew she was there. Except Shaun.

What if Millie van der Hoeven didn’t show up for the ceremony tonight? The sale of the land would be, if not voided, at least delayed. Eugene’s estate would have to be settled. There would be time for Shaun to unearth alternate financing. Buy back-stock. Maybe tender his offer of partnership to Louisa van der Hoeven.

Admittedly, she wouldn’t be likely to be receptive if he had been arrested for her brother’s death in the interim. But he could cross that bridge when he came to it.

Meanwhile, his thoughts circled around to tonight’s ceremony. To Millie van der Hoeven. The person who had walked into the tower, the man who hadn’t ever caused anyone’s death, was horrified. What are you thinking of? Just keeping her?

The old nursery rhyme sang in his head. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell. He looked up at the tower. And there he kept her very well.

He was thinking what to do with the body as he walked around the tower. He wasn’t cocky, but he was rather pleased by his composure and rationality-until he stepped around a birch tree and finally saw Eugene van der Hoeven up close. There was something wrong about the way Eugene’s limbs lay. As if he were a mannequin put together in a hurry. Or a marionette doll flung aside by a careless child. Shaun started shaking. His breath sawed in and out, too fast, until black spots swam in front of his eyes. Eugene wasn’t a person anymore; he was a broken thing . And Shaun had done it to him.

He bent over and lost his lunch.

He staggered back around the base of the tower until the corpse was out of sight. He bent over, breathing deeply, willing the light-headed, spots-in-front-of-his-eyes feeling to go away. Okay, he thought. Okay. Eugene is dead. He was not going to touch Eugene. But he had Millie. He had to see the opportunity in it. Everything was an opportunity, if you were gutsy enough to take it. He would get Millie out of the tower, take her… someplace. A motel. The van der Hoevens don’t show at the signing ceremony tonight. Haudenosaunee keeps producing cheap pulpwood for Reid-Gruyn.

And what do you do with her after? the old Shaun asked. But the new Shaun, the one who was going to come out a winner in this debacle, was already figuring how he could get a vengeful, uncooperative Rapunzel out of her tower.

He would need something to carry her in. He flashed back to the garage, talking with Eugene, the garden cart in the third bay. Perfect.

The walk back to the drive passed in a blur. There were the trees, the still-green grass, the dead hydrangeas, and then he was standing in front of the garage, thankful, now, for van der Hoeven’s out-of-date, manually opened doors. He hauled up the far door. There it was, the garden cart, stored against the coming winter. Rectangular, with metal-bound wooden sides, it was big enough to hold a grown woman, if she curled up.

He rolled it over the gravel, past the edge of the house, along the broad part of the trail. He could see the stone wall enclosing the back lawn and the mellow, peeled logs of the house’s rear facade. He was just swinging the cart onto the edge of the trail to the old camp when he heard it. The crunch of tires on gravel. He shoved the cart ahead hurriedly, only to stumble in its wake and nearly fall.

A door slammed. He froze in place. He heard the sound of footsteps, gritting over the gravel, thumping on the wooden porch. There was a pause, as if the unseen visitor had rung the bell and was waiting.

Shaun took a deep, silent breath.

“Hello!” a voice called. “Anyone home?”

Randy had his excuse for being on Fire Road 52 all ready. The Haudenosaunee entrance was marked only by stone pillars and was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. He was on his way to pick up his wife. He was absentminded. He thought this was the road. Who could argue with that?

Of course, he hoped there wouldn’t be anyone to argue with at all. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the logging road. No sign of any activity. He signaled, then turned in. Was she there? Undiscovered? Should he risk going on? He accelerated gently, rolling uphill. Just a guy out to pick up his wife. That’s all. He rounded a bend.

He almost hit the red pickup parked in the middle of the road. He jammed on his brakes, the slight shuddering stop making his stomach swoop as if he were on a roller coaster. Past the truck, he could see-oh, shit-a cop car. No ambulance, no hearse, no sign of her . He didn’t see anybody. He worried his lip. Should he back out? Would that look more or less suspicious than getting out and taking a look-see? He sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his options, until a man in hunter’s camos and a blaze-orange vest wrenched through the thicket of brush lining the road and walked toward him.

A hunter. He started to smile in relief, until the man looked at Mike’s license plate. Looked at the tires. As he approached Randy, the man ambled wide of the car, in a path that might have been dictated by a rut in the dirt road but that also placed him in a position where he could see what was coming at him if Randy opened the door. He took off his cap, and that was when Randy saw it was the chief of police.