Chilled by Death (35 page)

“These mountains are riddled with caves,” Stevie said. “It’s not unusual to see something like this. It’s only because we found it that makes it unusual. If it had been mapped, then we’d have thought nothing of it.”

True enough, and something Stacy hadn’t thought about.

“Dinner is ready,” she said. “Royce, can you please carry it to the table.”

He hopped up and carried the large pot over. The others, appetites returning, crowded around. Serving full bowls, she walked into the kitchen and pulled out the last of the French bread, sliced it up, and took it out to the table. Everyone grabbed a slice and silence prevailed.

But it was a good sound. Stacy ate slowly, enjoying the hot meal. Just being inside, safe, was a comfort. Knowing that she would be leaving tomorrow was another comfort. And as much as she didn’t want to look at everyone around this table with suspicion, she didn’t know how not to.

After dinner, the group slowly did dishes together, no one moving quickly or happily. The conversation stayed muted and centered around generic issues. Stacy stood in the kitchen and wondered what to do with all the food. Was it worth packing up tonight or should she wait until the morning after they’d all eaten?

“Leave it for now, Stacy,” Royce stood in the doorway. “Everyone is likely to want a snack later tonight, and we still need a meal in the morning.”

“I’d just decided on that, too.” She filled the teakettle and put it on the stove. “I’d like a cup of tea.”

“You could have a drink,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of that flowing this evening.”

She shuddered. “No thanks. And I wouldn’t trust any of those bottles, and neither would I want to lose my wits to any degree tonight.”

“I should have said,” he walked closer, “that if you wanted a drink, I’d watch over you.”

She smiled up at him. “You aren’t going to drink?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Clear. Firm. Decisive. She liked that. But she still wasn’t going to have a drink from anything.

*

Royce held out
his arms, smiling when she stepped into them. He hugged her close. The two of them stayed quiet until the teakettle whistled. She stepped back and walked over to the stove and the kettle.

“Do you want a cup of tea?”

“No, thanks.” He waited for her to make tea then stayed behind her until she walked out to the main living room where the rest of them sat.

She might not have connected the dots. He wondered how long before she realized that she was the last woman left in the group. Although Christine had disappeared on her own – at least as far as anyone could figure.

Only Stacy was left, and he planned on watching over her like a hawk. He wouldn’t drink or eat anything unless Stacy or he had made it. That wouldn’t guarantee his safety, but it would give him a better chance. He wondered about the Hungarian stew, but the only time Stacy had left it unguarded was when they were in the boot room with George, and Royce had stood in the doorway to keep an eye on the others.

Now it was late, but not late enough for bed. They had a few hours to kill.

He winced at that phrase. So not what he needed to think about right now.

Standing beside the fire, he studied the others around the room. He couldn’t believe any were cold-blooded killers. Still, maybe Kathleen’s had been an accident. Yvonne – well, who knew? Christine – no one had heard from her, but hopefully she’d found a safer place to stay.

Kathleen’s attacker could have been anyone. A stranger.

Not one of his friends. They’d never shown any tendency towards violence. A few had tempers, but then so did he. A few got mouthy when drunk while others were adrenaline junkies. He used to be one of them.

No, he couldn’t believe it of his group. Someone else had to be responsible.

His mind worked the issues. What if this friend of Kathleen’s had been responsible for her accident? Maybe they’d had a falling out. It could even have been Christine. She was conveniently missing. Maybe she’d lured Kathleen to the cave, they fought, then she’d run.

Possibly getting revenge on something she’d said or done. He glanced over at George. Had George ever had an affair with Christine? If so, could that be why? Not that such a thing warranted killing the woman.

He sat down beside George and asked him in a low voice.

George stared at him in confusion before a tinge of anger flared in his gaze.

“I’m just wondering if she’d be holding a grudge against Kathleen.” George still stared at him, but at least there was spark of awareness.

“What if she isn’t missing? What if she planned this? Then found a chance to get her revenge on Kathleen and took it.”

George shook his head. “Christine isn’t like that.”

Royce shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’d have sworn none of us were.”

“Kevin came in late,” George muttered in a barely there whisper. “Maybe it was him.”

“But why?”

“For the same reason I have to consider Stevie.” At that, George stared at him hard, as if willing him to understand his reasoning.

Royce sat back and stared at Kevin and Stevie without trying to make it look like he was. They’d both been friends with the group for years. So had Mark for that matter. Mark sat in the corner and nursed a bottle of whiskey. He wondered. Had Kevin or Mark ever made a play for Kathleen? He dimly remembered that Stevie had. Somehow he felt he could discount that. Stevie made a play for every woman.

Had Christine, though, made a play for George? His friend hadn’t answered that query. He repeated his question and watched George’s gaze slide away.

Ah shit.

How long ago?

George sighed and sat back, his shoulders slumped. “A month before I hooked up with Kathleen, she came onto to me, but I said no. I was into Kathleen by then.”

*

All his plans
were falling to pieces. He couldn’t have that. Not at this stage. He’d wanted this for so long. He wanted to cry. Like a baby with a long promised treat snatched out from under him, he wanted to scream and rage.

But he’d grown up a long time ago.

And this, well, this was something he needed. What the other two needed. It was completing the circle. Something that had to happen this time around.

Who knew when he’d get another chance? No, he couldn’t let this time slip away. They had no idea. A weird save on Kathleen, but other than that, no one had any reason to suspect him. At all.

That Irish luck of his grandmother’s was still holding.

Nice timing with Christine to mix up the issue, too.

He could feel his nerves jangling. His heart racing. Damn it. How could he make this happen, and in such a short time?

Everyone was leaving tomorrow…or maybe not. An idea sparked in the back of his worried mind. An idea that just might be doable.

But he might need help. Only asking for that help might cause him to lose the prize. He knew where Stacy belonged but knew his buddy wanted her, too. And his plans were different. Ugly.

That couldn’t happen.

His own vision was beautiful. So how could he make this work?

S
tacy wanted to
go to bed and sleep, but she knew she’d never close her eyes long enough to get there. Who could? There was too much unknown and too much suspected. She knew Royce and her brother couldn’t have had anything to do with this. But in the back of her mind, she could see file upon file of cases where men and women said the same thing about their loved ones. Did one ever really know someone?

She didn’t want Royce to have anything to do with them. She trusted him.

And many a woman had lost their lives for doing the same thing.

She tried to look at this scientifically. Who had the opportunity? As Royce had been with her all day, neither of them had attacked Kathleen. George had left Kathleen to go to the peak with Geoffrey. That should then clear both of them.

According to Kevin, they were going to the village for lunch when Kathleen got a text. She said she was going to stay until a friend caught up with her, then they’d both come to find him for a cup of coffee. She’d been standing in the middle of the crowd texting away. He hadn’t caught the name of who she was meeting. And he hadn’t thought to ask.

Her cell phone wasn’t with her when she was found. It was easy to assume that her friend was the attacker and had removed the evidence of the meeting.

No one had seen her again. And, they admitted, they hadn’t worried about it or her. She’d met a friend. They were all on holiday, so who knew how long the two had gotten to talking? Maybe they’d decided to go to a restaurant, or if they were both snowboarding, maybe do a couple of runs. If it was George she was meeting, they were likely coming to the cabin for a few moments of privacy. They hadn’t seriously thought anything of it.

Until they’d found her, George hadn’t even known she’d been missing. Mark and Stevie were together boarding for most of the day with Kevin joining them for a couple of runs before going off on his own then back for more runs. They confirmed that George and Geoffrey were together up to where they split with Kathleen, then Kevin had joined them and he and Kathleen went for coffee. George and Geoffrey had gone out boarding again. They may have lost sight of each other on the runs, but they’d always met up at the bottom. And yes, they were boarding on this side of the mountain.

Stevie frowned. “This sucks. I hate to think we are all sitting here and wondering if one of us attacked Kathleen.”

“I’m not worried,” Geoffrey said. “I was boarding with George all afternoon.”

“And you never once lost sight of him? You never did runs in different directions or lost each other only to meet up on the top of the mountain again where you both laughed and took off down one more time?” Stevie sneered, more than a little bitterness in his voice.

Stacy studied Geoffrey’s face as he reacted to Stevie’s accusation.

“No, we did not,” he snapped. “We did all the runs together. You know what the peak is like, that’s not a place to go alone or to lose sight of your buddy.”

“Hell, we’ve all done that peak on our own,” argued Stevie. “And we’ve all pulled stunts where we ditched our buddy to go left and take a series of jumps.”

“Regardless of small things like that, we weren’t out of each other’s sight for more than a few minutes.” George glared at Stevie. “To get to where Kathleen was found and get back would have taken thirty minutes at least. More likely forty minutes.”

Geoffrey subsided into his chair, anger vibrating through his long lanky frame. “I had nothing to do with her attack.”

He stared at the shot of Scotch in his hand and refused to say any more.

Stacy looked over at Royce. She knew this was important. They needed to know where everyone was, but at the same time it was damn scary.

Just when she thought the conversation would die down, Mark piped up, “You know, just because Stacy and Royce found her, that doesn’t mean they weren’t the ones that knocked her out.”

Stacy stared at someone she’d known and worked with for years and felt that inside center that kept her stable and calm start to crumble. Could they really be accusing her?