Stranger in Paradise (8 page)

“Seems Junior is a bit smitten.” Zack tugged on the door and when it didn’t budge, he smiled. “Smart girl.”

Kacey flipped the lock and stood aside. “Not really. I had just told him that you were in the shower.”

“Ouch.” He grimaced. “Sorry I interfered with him asking you to prom, but I’ve been up interviewing several staff members, asking where they were last night.”

“And?” She followed him to the living room, where he collapsed on the couch. “What did you find out?”

“Did you get some writing done?” he asked, kicking off his canvas deck shoes.

“Answer my question first,” she insisted, planting her fists on her hips.

He grinned and damn if tingles didn’t rush to her happy place—happy, at least, after last night. “Ok, as it turns out your boyfriend there got off work at the main lodge around ten.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” She chose the big chair in the corner of the living room. “And yes, I got some writing accomplished.”

“Can I read it?” he asked, bracing on his elbow to look at her.

“No, and what about Andrew? He’s not likely my stalker. A--he lives too far away and B--he’s much too young to go after someone like me.”

Zack sat up and clasped his hands over his knees. “That’s why I wanted to have him checked out. That call this morning was the information I asked for.”

“You had him checked out?”

Zack held out his palms. “Hey, after what you said about him being in the house when you arrived and the weird looks I got when he saw me here, hell yeah, I had him checked out.” He scratched the stubble of his unshaven beard. “Besides, it’s my understanding that your threats have come from email and postal carrier. You don’t need to live in the same town to accomplish that.”

“But this person… this stalker, he’s referenced things that only someone who could see me would know. So, it can’t be Andrew, right?”

Zack shrugged. “I have to check every possibility. Whether he is the guy sending you threatening emails or not, you have to admit his behavior has been weird.”

“Maybe it’s just a crush.”

“Could very well be. But we won’t know until the local forensics guys get out here and do a plaster cast of the shoeprint I found this morning.”

Kacey’s blood chilled. “Where?”

“Just the other side of the hedges. Near the patio where we both heard a noise the other night.”

“Do you think he was spying on me?”

Zack raised his brows. “Don’t know, but apparently there was a similar incident last fall at another cabin across the bay. Another single woman staying alone.”

Kacey wrapped her arms around herself and curled up in the seat. In all the years she’d been coming to the resort, not once had she ever been concerned for her safety. “What are we going to do?”

“Get a cast of this shoe, see if there’s a match, and then, if necessary, have a little talk with Mr. Andrew.”

“But he hasn’t hurt anyone.”

“True, but skulking around patrons’ cabins in the middle of the night and having entry access to any one of these cabins places him in a high-risk category. Left alone, it’s likely only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.” He stepped around the coffee table and knelt before her. “You understand this is protocol. Not just for
your
safety, but for the entire resort. If Andrew needs help, then we have to help him get it.”

Kacey nodded.

“Tell you what. I’m betting you haven’t eaten lunch. Why don’t we get out of here and you can show me where this Betsy’s Pie place is. Let me judge whether bumbleberry is as good as you claim.” He reached up and tucked an errant wisp of hair behind her ear.

“I’m not very hungry.” The possibility that somehow she might have been watched in the one place she considered her safe haven nauseated her.

“I know how you must be feeling. How much this place means to you. I’m sorry that stuff like this has tainted your view of it. It’s still a great resort and like you told me, you’ve been coming here every year and you’ve been fine.” He stood and held out his hand. “Come on, take a ride with me. It’ll help, I promise. A change of perspective often does wonders, you’ll see.”

“What about Andrew? What if it isn’t him? What if whoever it is comes back?” Cold suddenly, she hugged herself.

“If that shoe matches Andrew’s, they’ll take care of it quietly and discreetly. You likely won’t even have to be involved.” He touched her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “As to the rest, that’s why I’m here I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Understand?”

She leaned into him, needing to feel his arms around her, feel him close. Before now, the threats had been on paper—ambiguous, easy to set aside, distant. Suddenly, it seemed real, personal, and much more frightening. “Promise that you’ll stay until this is resolved.”

He grinned. “That’s what they pay me the big bucks for, darlin’.” His expression sobered and he cupped her cheek. “Count on it.”

Chapter Seven

Zack glanced at her from across the table. She’d picked at her soup, opting to stare out the window throughout the entire meal. She’d tossed him a couple of nervous, quick smiles, but managed to avoid making conversation. Yeah, he’d had about enough of this.

He tossed the fork down on his plate and sat back. “You plan to tell me what’s on your mind?”

Kacey glanced up, surprised it seemed by his very presence.

“Is this about last night?” He watched her face, trying to gauge her reaction.

She stirred and poked at her soup, then shook her head. “No. Just a lot on my mind, I guess.”

He caught the young waitress’s eye and nodded that he needed more coffee to go with his second piece of pie. At this rate, he’d have a whole one finished by the time they left. “Okay, if it’s not about last night… which, by the way, I don’t regret. Do you?”

Her gaze flickered to his. He knew it was smarter to leave it alone. Just let it be a one-time consensual thing between adults. The trouble was that until she was safe, they were going to be spending a lot more time in each other’s company.

“No, I don’t regret it,” she said, setting aside her meal.

Her lack of enthusiasm wasn’t exactly convincing. Still, he knew she had a lot on her plate, so he’d make it easier for her. “Meaning it can’t and shouldn’t happen again. I get it. You don’t need to explain.”

She reached over and covered his hand. Sixty minutes of damn near total silence and her singular touch slammed into him with the impact of a tidal wave. He glanced at her hand and gently removed it. “I’m a big boy, Kacey. No regrets. No repeats.”

“You don’t understand.”

Zack sighed and glanced out the window. Dammit. He hadn’t intended for this to happen; didn’t mean to let emotions screw up everything. It was better to nip this in the bud right now before things got any messier. He felt her gaze studying him. “Listen, Kacey, I do understand.” He leveled her a look.

“Tell me about your girlfriend.”

A cast iron skillet to the head would have been less painful. He pushed from his chair, ready to leave. She grabbed his hand.

“Please, I want… I’d like to know.”

He took a deep breath, glad they’d chosen a table in a screened porch adjacent to the main diner. He looked in her eyes and realized that
this
is what had been on her mind. How she knew was another question. He settled back in his chair and stared at the tall pine trees just a few yards from Betsy’s parking lot. Once an old house, the little diner sat back from the main road. The clapboard structure with its number of additions was nestled on three sides by dense Minnesota forest. Right now, he wanted to walk through those trees and get lost. He unscrambled his thoughts before he spoke. “How did you know?”

“I spoke to Harold this morning.”

“Checking up on me?” He chuckled, tossing her a quick glance.

“I admit I was curious to know more about you… after last night.”

“If there was something you wanted to know, why not ask me?”

“That’s what Harold said.”

“Seems like a smart guy.”

She looked down at her tea mug. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“What did Harold tell you?” He wasn’t sure that it was necessary, even wise, to delve any further into this conversation since after her stalker was caught, the chances of seeing her again were slim to none.

“Only that you’d known her a long time and that she disappeared. Nothing more, which”--she looked up at him--“I guess made me a little more curious.”

He held her gaze as a moment ticked by. The muted sounds from patrons in the next room infiltrated the silence.

“Her name is Jessica.” He refused to use her name in anything but present tense. Even though it had been over two years, a body had ever been found, but there’d been no trace of her, either.

Kacey wrapped her hands around her cup, clearly waiting for him to continue.

He stared at his half-eaten pie. “We met at the grocery store, of all places. Dated off and on for about a year, when she decided it was time to take the next step in our relationship. Wanting it… us… to work, I agreed and she moved in.” He shrugged, thinking back, assessing the new beginning of their relationship. Hindsight, as they say is twenty-twenty. “Jess was... is a passionate woman, and by that, I mean we had our arguments. Had neighbors bang on the walls once in a while, but never anything serious.” He shook his head. “Stupid stuff, really, like putting the cap back on the milk jug. Rinsing the sink after I brushed my teeth.” He paused and glanced at Kacey. Her expression, solemn, hadn’t changed. “I won’t read any of this fictionalized somewhere down the road, will I?”

She crooked her head. “Give me some credit, Zack. You told me about your brother, and now this? I don’t know how you’ve managed to deal with it.”

He offered a half-smile. “One day at a time, I guess you could say.”

“What happened… I mean, if you’d rather not talk about it, I’d understand.”

He held her gaze. “But you’d still be curious about me.”

She pressed her lips together with a challenging look. “Probably, but it’s because I care about you.”

He stopped her with an upturned hand. “You barely know me.” Those eyes spoke volumes. Damn. “Kacey, what we shared was very special. I don’t know… maybe Jessica’s disappearance—it not being resolved—is my problem.”

She nodded. “And I’m a big girl, Zack. I don’t expect that, because we slept together, you’re going to get down on bended knee and propose. Believe it or not, I understand your hesitancy to get involved with anyone until you have resolution. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you. No matter what happens, I’d like to think we can be friends. Have you ever talked to anyone about any of this?”

“Only about seventy sessions with a court-appointed counselor.”

“Court?”

He sighed. “Jessica had a cousin who’d gotten in with a bad crowd—Mexican drug tie-ins—bad news. Drugs, prostitution, gambling—you name it. She didn’t want me to know, but I knew she’d given him money on more than one occasion to get him out of trouble.” He raised his brows. “I tried to talk to her about it, but she refused to listen.”

Kacey’s gaze narrowed. “That’s really dangerous stuff. What was she thinking?”

Zack shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she thought she could change him. Maybe she hoped I’d have some influence. Who knows?” He shook his head. More times than he could count, he’d advised her that she was letting her cousin manipulate her and that eventually he’d do something that would get her into serious trouble. But she’d pleaded for him to understand, said they were raised together as children and that he was really a good person.

He pressed his palms to his closed eyes, remembering the morning he woke in his apartment, lucky to be alive. “She called me one day, said that we were going to celebrate our one-month anniversary of her moving in. She’d ordered my favorite pizza and while waiting for delivery, she handed me a glass of wine and shuffled me off to shower.” He glanced at Kacey, who quickly averted her eyes. “I downed the wine and the next thing I remember was waking up with a sizable gash on my skull and a nasty-ass headache.”

“Oh, Zack.” She started to touch him, and he pulled his hand away.

“No, don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve been down that road and about a dozen others, believe me. I don’t want or need your pity.”

“To hell with pity, something horrible happened to you. You don’t remember how you hurt your head?”

“Only when I was able to get my bearings and take a look at the disaster that had been my home and realized that an old trophy from a Big Brothers football tournament was missing, along with a number of other items which likely wound up selling on Craigslist within the hour.

“And Jessica?”

“Gone. They found trace amounts of blood that they suspected were hers, leading to the trunk of my car. At one point, I became a suspect instead of a victim. How the hell they thought I’d staged hitting myself on the head, I still don’t get. But I was a cop and rumors were rampant—that’s when I discovered how deep into things Jessica’s cousin was. There was speculation that I’d been involved in crap on the side—a bad cop taking bribes to take care of his girlfriend’s connections—and that something had gone wrong and somehow I was involved in her disappearance.”

“My God, Zack.”

“Yeah, makes you think twice before getting involved with me, right?” He gave her a wry smile and looked away.

“Zack, I don’t know what happened. But I know you aren’t responsible for her disappearance.”

He looked at her face, so innocent, so trusting. It was hard not to blame himself. That had been the worst hurdle to deal with. He should have been more insistent she cut herself off from her cousin.

“Were you tested?”

“Tested? Oh, you mean the wine? Yeah, there was nothing traceable in my blood. But the glass disappeared along with Jessica.” He offered a heavy sigh. “So there you have it.”

She smiled then and he was able to breathe again.

“I’m sorry to say this, Zack, but it doesn’t sound like Jessica was a victim, other than being stupid enough to continue to help this guy.”

He nodded. “Eventually, that’s pretty much how it all shook down. It took me a long time to wrap my head around the truth, but I still have more questions than answers.”

Kacey nodded as she studied him. He could almost see the gears working in her head. “Ask.”

She tipped her head, looking pensive.

“Whatever is going on up there, go ahead and ask me.” He waited for the inevitable question, the one he’d been asked over and over until it was inked in his brain.
Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of Jessica Consuelo?

She hesitated before speaking. “Do you still love her?”

He hadn’t seen that coming. Then again, after last night he could understand why she’d be curious. “I did, for a long time. I guess I wanted to believe she’d been a victim, that she’d been forced to leave, rather than think it had been staged, or that she’d somehow been a part of it.”

Kacey nodded. “How’d you finally decide she wasn’t a victim?”

“One of the guys assigned to the case discovered that I’d helped put away the brother of the drug lord her cousin worked for. They figured maybe Jessica’s cousin convinced her to help.” He looked away. “Or it was a set up from the moment we met.”

“By setting it up to look like you were responsible for her disappearance and ruining your credibility, which would effectively ruin your career.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I could be a cop.”

He chuckled, as if he hadn’t thought that very thing more than a million times in the past two years. But it had been Riley’s support, his tenacity in clearing Zack of any wrongdoing and continuing to search for the truth that had been his greatest inspiration to stay on the force.

“Why do you do it? Be a cop, I mean?”

He shrugged. “To get the bad guys. Save the damsels in distress. Help old ladies across the road. Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” He grinned.

“Zack, seriously, why?”

“I don’t know. Why are you a writer? I wanted to be a cop for as long as I can remember. Maybe I have an overblown sense of responsibility.”

She stood then and pulled him to his feet, taking his face between her hands. She kissed him lightly before stepping away, but her gaze held his. “Thank you. I’m glad that you’re here.”

At that moment, he remembered the way her body fit his so perfectly, the taste of her sweet mouth, the scent of her soft skin. And he knew that he wouldn’t survive losing her. Better to end any notion of long-term now. It’d be better for them both. “Let me get this.” He picked up the check and ushered her toward the door.

***

Their talk had only fueled her fantasy that he’d opened up to her on another level, meaning that he must trust a little bit in what was happening between them.

It was dark when they pulled into the drive beside the cabin. She’d left the lights on to make it appear she was home.

Zack turned off the car and they sat together in the still darkness. The rain had stopped and a full moon cut a bright path across the water, offering a serene view of the lake. “Would you like to go down to the beach?” she asked.

He glanced at her. “You go on. I’ll be along shortly. I want to call in and see if they’ve found out anything on those footprints.”

“I can wait, if you like.”

He smiled. It was a pleasant smile. Tolerant. “Go on, I’ll keep an eye on you from here.”

“Oh, I’m not… I--” She pressed her lips together to avoid total humiliation if she continued to beg. “Sure, okay.” She unbuckled and hurried across the yard, suddenly needing to be alone.

A breeze brushed against her face as she neared the rocky shore. The sound of waves crashing against the rocks never failed to soothe her spirit. Spotting a lone Adirondack chair scooted close to the water, she sat down, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. She let the sound of the surf and the cool summer breeze pacify her.

A few moments later, she felt his hands, large and firm, settle on her shoulders, gently kneading away the tensions of the day. “That feels so good,” she said, appreciative of the impromptu massage. “If you ever get tired of this cop gig, you could open up a spa.”