Heather Graham: The Hidden

“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 from 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.”

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