Terror Mansion (Decorah Security Series, Book #12): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella (3 page)

Wyatt edged closer, staying to the side of the doorway.

Curly hair was saying, “This is the fifteenth of the month, Hillman. You didn’t sell any of the jewelry I left?”

“I sold one piece, but as you know,” the man behind the counter answered. “I don’t pay for consignment items until you’ve reached $75 dollars.”

“Most of my items are almost that much.”

“Yes, I know,” he answered in a flat voice.

“I was counting on some money from you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Wait a minute. What was that crack about my pricing?”

Hillman shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I wasn’t making a crack.”

The woman leaned forward menacingly. “I suppose you sold a lot of Kate Kingston’s stuff.”

The man shrugged. “I’m not at liberty to discuss her business with anyone else.”

“She’s undercutting the rest of us. When she drives us out of business, she’ll raise her prices.”

The store owner pulled a long face. “It doesn’t work out so well for me, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can probably figure it out.”

The woman gave him a hard look. “I’ve been here for ten years. She just arrived, and she’s acting like she owns the place.”

“You . . .”

“It’s not just me,” the woman snapped.

“What—you discuss her over lunch?”

Curly hair turned and marched out the door, her gaze fixed straight ahead.

Wyatt waited several beats before going inside. He found the man still behind the counter with an exasperated look on his face.

“Something wrong?” Wyatt asked.

“No. Everything’s fine,” he answered, apparently sticking to his policy of not discussing other people’s business. “Can I help you?”

Wyatt stuck to his own story. “I was looking for a present for my girlfriend.”

“What does she like?”

He thought about the wives of some of the other Decorah agents and said, “Well she loves handmade pottery.”

“We have some excellent pieces over there.” The clerk pointed to shelves along one wall holding bowls of various sizes, mugs, and pitchers. Some of the best pieces were displayed on a table in front of the shelves.

Wyatt wandered over and looked at them, picking up a mug with interesting horizontal stripes and putting it down again.

“Maybe something a little more personal would be better,” he said.

“We have a nice selection of jewelry over here,” the man said, pointing to a shelf inside the glass-topped counter.

Wyatt looked at the pieces and the price tags. “They all look very nice, but some are a lot more expensive than others. Are they all sterling silver?”

“Oh yes.”

“Then why are some so much less?”

“One of the artists in town is able to turn out superior work quickly.”

“Lucky for me.” He could have said he was going to keep looking, but a pretty little silver cat-shaped pin caught his eye. And it was only twenty dollars. “I’d like to buy that,” he said.

“An excellent choice.”

“And I’d like to tell my girlfriend who made it.”

“The artist is Kate Kingston.”

Keeping up the pretense, he said, “I was down here last year, and I don’t remember that name.”

“She’s new in town.”

Wyatt offered his credit card.

“Would you like to purchase something else as well?” Hillman asked.

“No, this is fine.” He waited while the man put the pin into a decorative box.

He held up the candy. Do you have a bag big enough for both items?”

“Of course.”

He left with his purchase. Although it was late in the afternoon, the stores were still open, and he could have continued his shopping—or rather fishing expedition. But he thought he had enough information to understand the big picture. He might not know specific names, but apparently the other silversmiths in town wished they weren’t competing against the interloper, Kate Kingston.

Did that mean one or a group of them would do something to harm her?

Curly hair had looked mad enough to do it. But there was a big step from wanting to strangle a rival to actually doing something to injure her.

After witnessing the encounter between the artisan and the shop owner, he wanted to rush back to Kate’s workshop to share the information, but he thought she wouldn’t find it as compelling as he did. Instead, he returned to the Crow’s Nest and emptied the saltwater taffy into a candy bowl in the parlor.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Babson inquired as she saw the bowl filling.

“You caught me.”

He wasn’t going to tell her he’d bought the candy to help him look like a typical tourist. Instead, he improvised, “I couldn’t resist the impulse buy some sweets, then decided I didn’t need all those calories.”

“Well, thank you. Saltwater taffy is one of my guests’ favorites.”

“So where’s a good place to get seafood in town?”

She directed him to a restaurant on the other side of the little harbor.

He strolled over, passing Kate’s workshop and forcing himself not to stop. At the carry-out counter, he got a crab cake sandwich, a bottle of local beer with a duck on the label, and a Styrofoam carton of cream of crab soup, thinking, “When on the Eastern Shore, do as the natives do.” Or maybe the rich soup was more of a tourist attraction.

It was almost dark when he started back with the food. There was a light on at the back of Kate’s building. Did she leave it on for security? Was she working late? Or did she also live there? Probably he could find out in the morning.

He brought his dinner back to his room and sat in the semidarkness at the table by the window, looking out at the silversmith workshop and wishing Miss Aggressive hadn’t dismissed him so quickly.

While he ate, he fired up his laptop and looked up Kate Kingston in some databases. He came across several entries with that name, but he didn’t think any were the woman who had pointed a gun at him a few hours earlier. They were either too young or too old or they had an entirely different profession.

The first mention of this Kate Kingston was in an article about a craft fair in York, Pennsylvania, a few years earlier. She’d been selling silver jewelry there, and a reporter from the local paper had interviewed her.

He read the article, then went on to other sources. It appeared that Kate Kingston has sprung into being five years ago. Before that there was no record of her at all, which must mean she had assumed the identity.

Why?

She hadn’t wanted to hear that someone was poking around her workshop, but obviously there was a reason for going under cover.

The witness protection program? Or had she done it on her own?

He focused on that puzzle for several minutes and was pretty sure he wasn’t going to figure it out tonight.

He typed an e-mail to Teddy Granada, one of the Decorah IT guys, explaining the situation and asking for any information he could dig up.

A few minutes later, he got a query from Frank, asking why Wyatt was interested. He drafted a quick explanation, leaving out the personal urgency he’d felt. He knew Frank wouldn’t call him home, not when Wyatt was down here as the result of a dream.

He was leaning back in his chair, gazing toward the warehouse, when he saw a flicker of movement outside the building and sat up straighter. It was Kate. She had stepped outside and was looking around. From his window, he admired her lithe figure and graceful movements and was charmed as she unclipped the barrette at the back of her neck and shook her hair loose. The clip must keep it tamed while she worked, and now she was done.

She stretched, then went back inside the building.

He hadn’t solved the puzzle of who she was, but he couldn’t stop himself from going into a little fantasy.

What would happen if he walked into her workshop and reached for her? He laughed. Probably she’d pull her gun again. But this was
his
fantasy, he told himself, and he preferred to imagine that she would respond to him with the same need that he felt for her. He closed his eyes, seeing himself pulling her close and lowering his lips to hers for a long drugging kiss. He imagined her opening for him so that his tongue could sweep the inside of her mouth and taste her.

He grew hard as he let the scenario unspool in his mind, like a tantalizing YouTube video that he’d watched over and over.

Then he ordered himself to stop making himself hot and stick to business—which was protecting Kate, although she had been very clear that she thought she didn’t need his help.

She reminded him of a gritty pioneer woman who was willing to risk everything for a new start. But she was also vulnerable. From her reaction to him, he was sure someone had hurt her in the past—and that made it difficult for her to trust. He’d been the same way, until Frank Decorah had shown him he could open up with the right people. The Decorah family had given him the confidence that had been beaten out of him when he was growing up—being careful about everything he said for fear he’d be talking about some future event. He didn’t have to worry about that with Frank Decorah and the rest of the team. For the first time in his life, he had dared to be happy about his life.

He wanted that for Kate Kingston, too. Which sent him back to thinking about holding her in his arms and making her realize she didn’t have to push him away. Physically or any other way.

Again, he struggled to stop focusing on a relationship he wished he had with her. She was in trouble, even if she didn’t want to discuss it with him, and he couldn’t romance her until he’d made sure she was safe.

Romance? Was he actually using that word? It was pretty foreign to his vocabulary. When he thought about women it was generally in terms of sex. But this time sex was only a small part of what he craved from her.

The autumn light was fading, and there was a bit of a nip in the air. By the time he’d drunk half the beer and finished the meal, it was dark, and the traffic along the waterfront had slowed considerably. Apparently St. Stephens was a town that closed up early—at least at this time of year. He stayed in the dark by the window, looking toward the building with the weathered siding.

Then he sat forward, thinking he might have seen something—a shadow moving stealthily nearby. A trick of the lighting, or was someone prowling around down there, someone wearing dark clothes that made them hard to see?

He was almost convinced he’d made it up so he’d have an excuse to go over there. Still, he kept doggedly staring at Kate’s property, and when he saw a flash of light along the side, he tensed. It was just a momentary flash, and he waited for it to come on again. But it seemed that someone had blipped on a light at the side of the building for just a second to see something, then cut it off almost immediately.

Although it could be Kate, he didn’t think so.

Seized by a sense of urgency, Wyatt got up from the table, hurried out of his room and down the steps. Moving rapidly but quietly, he headed along the path that led to the bridge. As he approached Kate’s workshop, he saw a figure near the back door—someone wearing dark clothing and a fisherman’s hat. They seemed to be poking around in one of the trash cans he’d seen nearby.

Moments later, flames leaped from the metal can, and the person who had set the fire dashed away toward the downtown area.

Wyatt sprinted toward the workshop and was instantly enveloped in foul smelling smoke. Looking frantically around for something he could use to push the can away from the building without getting burned, he spotted a rake standing against the siding. With the business end of the tool, he was able to shove the burning can several yards away. Then he knocked on the door of the workshop.

“Kate. Are you in there? If you are—someone set a fire out here. Watch out for the smoke.”

He had eliminated the threat to the building—unless there were explosives in the can. But he didn’t think so because they would have done their thing already.

Wyatt was torn between putting out the fire and catching the bastard who had set the blaze.

After several seconds of indecision, he took off in the direction where the perp had disappeared, although he was pretty sure that his stopping to move the can and warn Kate had probably given the person a chance to escape. But he kept pounding along the blacktop path that followed the side of the harbor and led to a wide municipal parking area.

When he reached the open space, he saw that it was almost empty. A figure dashed toward a pickup truck about fifty yards away. Wyatt followed, knowing he was too far away to see much.

He waited for a blink of light when the truck door opened, but the cab remained black.

Wyatt put on a burst of speed, trying to get a look at the license plate as the vehicle skidded out of the parking lot with a squeal of tires. But all he saw was a smear of mud.

And as the vehicle pulled away in the darkness, he couldn’t even tell the color.

He cursed under his breath. If his car had been here instead of the B&B, he could have followed. Instead he turned around and started back to the workshop.