Solid as Steele (2 page)

She opened the door but didn't say, “Come in.”

Taking the gesture as an invitation, Mack stepped into the front hall, then closed and locked the door behind him.

As he took off his coat and hung it on the antique hall tree, she felt emotions well up inside her. Emotions she didn't want to feel. He'd come here because he was worried, and she wanted to lean on his strength. At the same time, she wanted to tell him she was just fine on her own. But she'd proved just the opposite by making that call an hour ago.

When he turned back to her, tears sprang to her eyes, and she didn't know exactly where they came from. Maybe she didn't want to know.

“Sweetheart, what is it?”

She couldn't speak, couldn't resist when he reached for her and pulled her into his arms. She should duck away. Instead, with her eyes closed, she leaned against him, breathing in his scent, absorbing his strength. His hands stroked her back, her hair. It felt so good to be held after so long.
And not because it's Mack
, she told herself.

When his hands began to knead her tense muscles, she sighed and dropped her head to his shoulder. After Craig died, she'd worked hard to be self-sufficient. That resolve seemed to melt away as she nestled into the strength of Mack's arms.

Despite herself, she let a little fantasy play through her mind. If she lifted her head, he'd lower his, and their lips would meet. She could imagine what they felt like. Imagine what he tasted like.

The two of them swayed together, and she wondered if he was sharing a similar fantasy. If he—

She stopped her wayward thoughts and summoned the resolve to ease away.

“Don't,” she whispered.

Instantly, his hands dropped to his sides.

Taking a step back, he dragged in a breath and let it out as he stood looking at her. While she tried to figure out what his expression meant, he said, “Tell me what's wrong.”

Could she?

Talking to Jo had seemed like such a logical move. Talking to Mack didn't have the same appeal.

To keep from blurting anything right away she said, “Let's have a cup of tea.”

“Okay.”

He followed her into the kitchen and looked around in surprise at the flour, sugar and other ingredients spread around on the counter. “You're baking?”

She flushed. “After we talked, I knew I wasn't going back to sleep, so I started making some of those baking jars we've been selling in the Lobby Shop.”

“I see,” he answered, though she was pretty sure the gift items weren't on his radar.

“They were selling so fast before Christmas that Sabrina asked me for some more,” she answered. “She's paying me up front for the ingredients and giving me a commission on every sale. Maybe we can make them into a feature at the shop.”

When she realized she was babbling, she stopped. Instead she asked, “What kind of tea do you want? Or would you prefer coffee?”

“Don't go to the trouble of making coffee. I'll have whatever you're having.”

“You're into green tea flavored with ginger?”

“Maybe not. You got any… Earl Grey?”

There was a moment of silence when they both remembered that Craig had liked Earl Grey.

Turning quickly away, she filled the kettle and set it on a burner, then got tea bags out of the pantry and put them into mugs. As she waited for the water to boil, she finished up the jar she'd been making, then started putting away the rest of the supplies, aware all the time of Mack sitting at the kitchen table watching her. He didn't sit in Craig's chair, she noticed. Probably he knew which one to avoid.

As she wiped spilled flour from the counter, he said, “You'll feel better when you tell me why you called the office.”

“Probably not.”

“Give it a shot.”

The kettle whistled, and she snatched it off the burner, then poured water into the mugs.

“Sugar?”

“No, thanks.”

She added sugar to her own mug, keeping her back to him. After taking a breath and letting it out, she blurted, “I had a nightmare, and I think it's real.”

“You mean, like you dreamed someone was outside, and you woke up and heard rustling in the shrubbery?” He glanced toward the darkened window. “Do you want me to check around the house now?”

“No. Not someone around here. Someone in Gaptown. Someone in trouble.” She swallowed. “Someone who was calling out to me.”

Long seconds passed before he answered. “That's your hometown?”

“Yes.”

“They called on the phone?”

Obviously, he didn't get what she was trying to say.
More likely, she wasn't being very clear. She set his mug on the table in front of him but remained standing.

He shifted in his seat, keeping his eyes on her.

Her throat had turned dry, so that she had to swallow before she could speak. “Not a phone call or anything like that. It was a dream. But…I'm pretty sure it was real.” Absolutely sure. But she wasn't going to say it that way. Not to Mack Steele.

He turned his mug around on the table. When he spoke, his words were measured. “Dreams aren't reality.”

“Yeah. Right,” she agreed too quickly. “Everybody knows that.” Rushing on, she added, “It was a mistake for you to come over. I think the best thing for you to do is leave.” As she spoke, she knew that her voice sounded sharper than she'd meant it to be.

 

O
NE HUNDRED AND THIRTY
miles away in Gaptown, Maryland, the man who now called himself Fred Hyde took off his fright mask and black cape. Still wearing a black shirt, pants and boots, he looked down at the lifeless body of the woman sprawled on the floor of the Funhouse.

Another one punished for her sins, even when she claimed not to know what she had done.

Her name was Lynn Vaughn, and she'd suffered before she'd died. Not so much physically, but mentally. He'd known how to feed her terror and enjoyed every moment that she'd run desperately through his private amusement park, trying to get away from the relentless pursuer behind her.

He'd told her more than once that she had a chance to escape, but that was just part of the fun for him. Really, he'd known all along how their private drama would end. Well, not which of his clever setups would stop her. But there was no question he would get her in the end, because
that was his goal. When he set his mind to something, it always worked out the way he wanted.

He clenched his teeth. Except once. One damn time. In this damn town.

Asserting his will, he drove that thought from his mind. He would not think about failure. Not now.

He went back to contemplating his masterpiece. Everything had been planned. Down to the smallest detail. Like the place where the floor had been slippery. And then the hallway where she'd stubbed her toe on an unexpected rock sitting in the middle of the passageway. And it had all worked out the way he wanted. Yet…

He dragged in a deep breath and expelled it sharply. While she'd been running from him in terror, he'd had the strange feeling that someone else was watching the whole performance. Someone he couldn't see.

But that was impossible, of course. No one else was here. Not an invisible person or anyone else. Only himself and Lynn Vaughn. And he wasn't going to tell anyone what had happened to her. By the same token, she wasn't going to call up her friends and relate the nightmare either. He laughed at his little joke, then stopped abruptly.

Nightmare.

What was he thinking? Something impossible. Yet as unsettling thoughts swirled in his brain, he began to work faster, wrapping Lynn in the tarp he'd brought so she wouldn't get blood in his SUV. Methodically, he rolled up the body, which was still limp enough to handle easily, then carried her out the back door and down the steps to the detached garage.

When he'd deposited her in the back of the vehicle, he pulled down the long driveway and into the mist-shrouded city, heading for the mountains.

His sense of satisfaction increased as he began looking
for a good spot to dump the body. The ground was frozen, but he wasn't planning to dig a grave. He wanted people in this damn town to
know
.

He was going to make everyone who'd ruined his life four years ago pay for what they'd done. The punishment wouldn't make up for his loss, of course. But it would be fitting retribution. When he was finished, he'd leave this jerkwater town that was the scene of his misery and never come back.

 

M
ACK'S VOICE WAS FIRM
when he spoke. “Jamie, I'm not leaving until you tell me why you called the Light Street Detective Agency at two in the morning.”

Anger, anxiety and defiance warred within her. That was none of his damn business, but unfortunately she'd been too quick to make a phone call in the middle of the night, and he'd been the one on the other end of the line. She didn't owe him anything, yet she heard herself trying to justify her behavior.

“Like I said, I had a dream. A nightmare. It wasn't my dream, exactly. It was something happening to a woman in Gaptown.”

He kept his gaze on her. “You're saying it was something that really happened?”

She swallowed hard before answering. “Yes,”

“How do you know?”

Jamie wasn't going to start off by telling him she'd been plagued by psychic dreams since she'd been little. She was going to avoid that, if possible. And she wasn't going to explain that the dreams had stopped when she came to Baltimore with Craig.

Could she convince Mack with a concrete fact? Up till now, she'd avoided using a name, even in her thoughts, because that made the dream too real.

Now she raised her head and said, “The woman's name was Lynn Vaughn.”

His instant alertness unnerved her. It was like when Craig was working on a case.

“How do you know?” he said.

“I just do.”

“Maybe we'd better check that out.”

“Okay,” she whispered, wishing again that she'd kept her mouth shut. What was Mack thinking now? From the look on his face, she was pretty sure she wouldn't like his speculations.

“Where's your computer?” he asked.

“In the office.” Craig's old office, which she'd kept looking like he'd left it so that when she sat at the desk she could pretend he was going to come to the door and ask her to get out of his chair.

She and Mack walked to the office, where Mack stopped for a moment in front of the desk before sitting down and booting up the machine. Jamie took the beat-up easy chair where she'd liked to sit and read while Craig was working in the evening. Usually he'd work late, and then they'd go upstairs and—

She ruthlessly cut off that line of thought. As Mack waited for the computer to go through the start-up routine, he said, “Lynn Vaughn, right?”

“Yes.”

He brought up one of the programs you could use to locate people and typed in her name, plus “Gaptown.”

Jamie sat with her pulse pounding, wondering if she had everything backward. What if it had been
her
dream, and she'd somehow pulled that woman into it? When Lynn Vaughn's listing came up, he dialed the number from his cell phone and put it on speaker so they could both hear. She sat clenching the arms of the chair as a woman answered on the first ring. It was the middle of the night, but obviously she wasn't sleeping.

“Lynn?” Mack asked.

“No. Who is this?”

“I'm an old friend of Lynn's. I was hoping to get in touch with her.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Sorry. I didn't realize the time,” he said, lying with the same facility that Craig had exhibited when he worked a case. “Is she there?”

Jamie could hear the tension in the woman's voice as she replied.

“Lynn didn't come home this evening, and she didn't call me. That's not like her. I'm worried.”

“Have you called the police?”

“I—”

“You should do that,” Mack said.

“What did you say your name was?” the woman asked.

Instead of answering, Mack clicked off and swung the chair around so that he could look at Jamie.

“Will she have your cell phone number on her caller ID?” Jamie asked.

He shook his head. “How did you know Lynn's name?”

She thought about how to answer. “I…don't know.”

“And you don't have any specific information about her tonight?”

“What kind of information?”

He shrugged and kept his gaze on her.

“Like I told you, I had a dream,” she repeated.

His reply totally startled her.

“I'm going to Gaptown in the morning.”

Her own response was just as startling. “If you're going, I'm going, too.”

“You don't need to do that.”

“I'm not staying here if you're driving up there,” she said, hearing her urgent tone and wishing she didn't feel compelled to return to the scene of so many unhappy memories before Craig had offered her an escape hatch.

She'd been taking classes at the local community college and working at the Star Bar and Grill when she'd met him. He'd come to town investigating an insurance fraud case in which a doctor had colluded with patients. Dr. Bradley had documented injuries after automobile accidents, injuries that he wrote up as much worse than they really were. The patient would get a nice insurance settlement, which he split with the doc.

The moment Craig had walked into the restaurant, she'd been attracted to him. They'd gotten to talking, and he'd
told her he'd be in town for several days. He could have eaten at a lot of different places, but he kept coming back when he knew she'd be on shift.

He'd been out of his element and lonely. She'd been friendly, and they'd ended up getting something going. They'd had a lot in common. He was from a small town, too. In Ohio. Only he'd had a scholarship to one of the state colleges.

After he'd sewn up the case against the doctor, he'd had another job that had brought him back to town. And after that, he'd kept returning to visit her. She'd moved to Baltimore to be with him, and gotten a job in the shop at 43 Light Street with Sabrina Cassidy. Pretty soon after that, she and Craig had gotten married.

Because she'd been ambitious, she transferred her credits to UMBC. She'd just gotten her degree in history when Craig had gotten killed, and she'd canceled her law school plans. Better to wait awhile before getting back into serious studying again.

“I'm spending the night,” Mack said, totally disrupting her thoughts.

Jamie blinked. “You certainly are not!”

Mack kept his gaze on her and his voice even. “I don't want to leave you alone tonight.”

“Because you suspect I'm up to something illegal?”

“Of course not,” he answered, too quickly for her taste.

“You shouldn't be alone. That's all.”

She stared at him, knowing that she wasn't strong enough to physically run him out of the house. She wasn't going to get Craig's gun and point it at him, either, but she didn't have to make this easy for him.

In a voice dripping with ice, she said, “If you want to sleep on the couch, go ahead.” As she spoke, she remem
bered that the bed in the guest room had clean sheets, but she kept that to herself.

“Okay,” he answered, his tone mild. “You go on up and I'll stay down here.”

The fight knocked out of her for the moment, she turned her back to him and without another word, she walked out of the kitchen.

 

M
ACK WATCHED THE RIGID
set of Jamie's shoulders as she exited the room. He was sure she hated having him here, but that wasn't going to make him back down. He was worried about her, and he was glad she hadn't put up too much of an argument. Still, she was being as inhospitable as possible. When she had climbed the stairs, he walked into the living room and looked at the couch, which wasn't exactly going to be comfortable for his six-foot-two frame. She hadn't even offered him a blanket, but an afghan lay along the upper edge of the backrest. He kicked off his shoes and arranged several small, square pillows behind his head. Then he unfolded the afghan and lay down, trying to adjust the covering so that it would warm both his feet and his shoulders.

Had Jamie taken her clothes off upstairs and gotten back into bed? Or was she lying on top of the covers in her jeans and plaid shirt? Craig's plaid shirt, actually.

He forced himself to stop thinking about what she was doing up there and focused on earlier in the evening. She'd been genuinely upset when she'd called the office. So what was going on?

Perhaps she really had some inside information on Lynn Vaughn, but didn't want to admit what she knew, so she'd made up the nightmare story to create an explanation.

He glanced at the stairs, then walked quietly back into the office where he sat down at the computer again. After
another furtive glance at the door, he called up the secure database that Light Street used and accessed Jamie's phone records. As far as he could see, she hadn't made any calls to Gaptown in the past few weeks. And she hadn't received any, either.

Again he glanced at the door and listened for sounds of activity upstairs. After long moments of quiet, he opened Jamie's email and looked at her messages. Once more, he found nothing that had to do with the reason she'd called Light Street.

He breathed out a small sigh, relieved but feeling guilty about snooping.

Still, he'd like to know if she'd been back to Gaptown in the past few weeks.

He wished he could stop thinking and acting like a detective when it came to Jamie. She'd asked him if he thought she was up to something illegal. He didn't want to believe that, but the alternative didn't exactly make sense. Although she'd said she'd had a dream in which she watched something bad happen to Lynn Vaughn, she'd never spoken of any psychic experiences before, nor had Craig ever mentioned anything like that about his wife. But would he tell anyone else something that weird?

Mack couldn't help wondering if Jamie was stressed beyond the breaking point by her husband's death and then life on her own. Of course, he wasn't going to say that to her.

Trying to turn off his inconvenient thoughts, he returned to the living room, laid his weapon on the coffee table and lay down. Eyes closed, he courted sleep. It wasn't that easy with two little pillows under his head and his stocking feet sticking out onto the end table. But he finally dozed off.

In the morning he was startled awake by a crashing noise.

Springing off the sofa and reaching for his weapon, he looked for the source of the sound and saw a light in the kitchen. As he rushed in, gun in hand, he saw Jamie, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, standing in front of the stove, where she was lighting a burner that held a heavy frying pan. Presumably, she'd just slammed the pan onto the burner by way of a cheery good morning gesture, leaving no doubt that she was still pissed at him.

She turned and gave him and the weapon a considering look. There was no need for her to ask how he'd slept because that was all too obvious—he'd tossed around in rumpled clothes most of the night.

He brushed back his hair and ran his tongue over his teeth. “I don't suppose you have an extra toothbrush?” he asked.

She waited several beats before taking pity on him. “In the medicine cabinet.”

He went upstairs, used the facilities, then washed his face and brushed his teeth. After rubbing his dark stubble, he reopened the medicine cabinet and got out one of the pink disposable razors.

Her shaving cream was on the edge of the tub, and he used that, too, feeling guilty about taking liberties, but he was feeling more human when he came back down.

The smell of eggs, bacon and coffee drew him to the kitchen, where Jamie was moving briskly about, getting down plates. He could tell from her quick movements that she wanted to pitch him out of the house.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“I've got it under control.”

He poured himself a mug of coffee, then helped himself to eggs from the pan and bacon from a plate sitting on the stove.

“Toast?” she asked.

“That's okay.”

“Do you want it or not?” she snapped.

“No, thanks.”

So much for civil conversation.

After she'd sat down across from him and taken a few bites of the eggs, he said, “You still want to come with me?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“But I'm going anyway. I think you're going to need me.”

“What does that mean?”

“I guess we'll find out.”

Half of him wished he hadn't been on duty last night, and the other half was glad that he had been there when she called, but he couldn't tell her that or much of anything else.

“Pack an overnight bag,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it's a long ride and we might not get back tonight.”

“Fine.” She ate a piece of bacon before asking, “What about you?”

“We'll stop at my house. I keep a bag packed.”

She nodded, then got up and scraped the rest of her breakfast into the trash. He ate a few more bites, then cleaned off his own plate.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“About what?”

“Upsetting you.”

She made a sound like
harrumph
and began cleaning the pan where she'd cooked the eggs, her shoulders rigid.

He turned away, went back to the living room and folded up the afghan.

“I'll be right back,” she said over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs. When she was gone, he waited a moment, then pulled his cell phone from the holster on his belt and called the office.

Max Dakota answered. “Mack, I see from the log that you checked out last night. Where are you?”

“Something came up. I need to make a quick trip to Gaptown.”

“Because?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It's personal,” he said, glad that Light Street detectives had a lot of freedom. Still, he held his breath until Max said, “Okay.”

“I could be out for a couple of days,” he added, just as Jamie stepped back into the living room and stopped short when she saw he was on the phone.

As she gave him a long look, he said, “I'll talk to you later.”

“Who was that?”

“The office.”

She kept her gaze on him as she asked, “Did you say you're driving a nut to Gaptown?”

“Of course not,” he snapped, then changed the subject, striving for an even tone. “You packed fast.”

“We're not going out dancing,” she muttered.

“Yeah. Right.

“Do you want me to take out the trash?” he asked. “I mean, since you're going out of town.”

She hesitated for a moment. “All right. The cans are by the back door.”

He pulled the plastic bag out of the kitchen trash can and carried it outside. When he came back she was loudly
shaking out a new bag, and he knew she was uncomfortable with him doing a job her husband had obviously taken care of when he'd been alive.

The little kitchen drama set the tone for the trip to western Maryland. After a quick stop at his house to pick up his bag, they headed down Route 70 toward Hagerstown, then onto Route 68 toward Gaptown—the supposed scene of her nightmare.