The Phantom of Black's Cove (12 page)

Caution pulsed inside of him. Which way? The light represented the most risk. Someone had turned it on. And someone could still be inside the room.

He moved left, focusing his senses completely on the strip of light.

They reached the door and he pushed it open, prepared to take on whoever was inside, but the place was empty except for an LED light sitting on the window sill.

Jack stepped inside, seeing a trail of footprints in the layer of dust on the floor.

Two sets of tracks. Two people had recently been in the room, but what were they doing here?

“Jack, look at this.”

He turned in time to see her step toward the opposite corner of the room.

“It’s my laptop!”

“Don’t touch—” Before the warning was off his tongue, Olivia bent down and picked up the computer.

Jack felt the vibration of the explosion under his feet.

The floor shifted.

Reaching out he pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her and encased them in a protective shield.

Falling, they were falling.

The floor fell away, sending them crashing down into the basement thirty feet below.

They hit bottom.

The impact jarred Jack’s bones, but he maintained his grip on Olivia.

Tons of debris rained down on them, impacting the shield and burying them alive beneath it.

Olivia’s heart pounded so loud that he could hear it without trying. “Relax, we’re going to be fine.” He brushed his hand against her hair, feeling her terror ease.

Seconds later, the last piece of debris rained down and the air stilled.

“What happened?”

“The laptop was booby-trapped. Picking it up set off a charge that blew out the floor from underneath us.” Worry sliced into him as he stared up at the mess piled on top of them.

He was immediately thankful for the impenetrable darkness that prevented Olivia from seeing the inside of their tomb. If he released the bubble to clear it away, they’d be crushed. If he did nothing, they would die.

Searching in the darkness, he spotted a measure of hope rising up out of the chaos, a main support pillar less than three feet to their right. If they could reach it and take cover behind it, he could release the bubble and let the debris settle into the void, making it possible for them to climb out.

It was a risky plan, but it was the only chance they had.

He let go of her and stood up. “We’ve got to push three feet to the right. There’s a support column there.”

“Can’t you just sweep this stuff away?”

“No. If I release the shield, the debris will bury us.”

She was silent in the darkness. He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt the invasive tension charge the air around them.

“You can only do one thing at a time?”

“Yes.” The admission pulled his nerves taut and made him feel inadequate. “It seems our tormenter has mastered what I haven’t. The ability to manipulate more than one object simultaneously.”

“He can juggle a couple of things at once. So what?” She stood up next to him. “He can’t read your mind or he would have known what you planned to do in the
alley and after the car accident. He’s good, Jack, but you’re better.” She reached for him and he escaped into the feel of her body against his. All these years, his skills had gone unchallenged. He wouldn’t cower at the first sign of resistance.

“Push,” he said, grasping her hands in the dark and placing them on the shell of the shield. “We can manipulate this energy field until we get to the column.”

Olivia tried to understand the texture of the bubble encasing her and saving her from becoming a human pancake. The skin was tough under her hands, but it also gave with the pressure and she felt the entire mass move forward a couple of inches.

“Good. Again.”

Another laborious shove. More movement.

“I wish I could see where we were going.”

“No, I don’t think you do.”

She smiled in the darkness, thankful he was beside her. Without him, she’d have died in the fire that created the hole they found themselves in now. Without him, the newfound emotion coursing in her veins wouldn’t exist.

“Good.” Jack reached through the barrier and smacked the pillar with his fist, making sure it was intact. Structurally, the building was sound, at least that was the engineer’s take on it after the fire had gutted the basement. Still, he planned to have it razed in the spring.

“It’s risky, Olivia.” Jack reached for her and lowered his mouth to hers, melding them together in the silent darkness. He pulled back, struck by something that hadn’t fully registered in his head until this moment.

He more than cared for her…

“The instant I release the shield, take cover behind the pillar. The debris is going to settle. I’ll hold it back, but whatever you do, stay put.”

“I’m ready.” Fear ground across her nerves. It would help if she could see. At least she’d know what was coming.

Jack took her hand. She gripped his back so hard that her fingers tingled, but hanging on to him was her only tangible hope at the moment. Trust worked its way through her and settled in her head. She did trust Jack. With her life. But with her heart?

He yanked her forward, catching her off guard.

The ground under her feet shifted. She sucked in a mouthful of dust.

“Grab hold,” Jack yelled as small bits of debris rained down on her in the dark.

He pulled her left, then back to the right, putting her hand in contact with a massive column she estimated to be at least three feet around.

“Hang on.” Jack splayed his body over hers, covering her, protecting her.

Olivia closed her eyes, trying to stay calm as boards clattered around them and splintered against the solid pillar.

She choked on the thick air. Reaching down, she pulled the neck of her T-shirt up over her nose and mouth to filter out some of the dust.

“Olivia?” he said against her ear. “Are you okay?”

Squeezing her eyes open, she was shocked to see a
dim blanket of light covering the opening straight up and to the left of them. Dawn was breaking.

“Yeah, I need a bath and some fresh air, but I’m fine.”

Jack let go of her, stepped back and stared up at the jagged hole in what was once the basement ceiling. A waist-high pile of debris lay in front of them and had streamed out on both sides of the pillar. They were trapped against a concrete wall. The only way out was up.

“Do you want to fly?” he asked her, watching her mouth bow up into a grin from under a layer of grime. She could be covered in mud for all he cared, but he’d still believe she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“You’re going to toss me up there?” She nodded to the gaping hole.

“Yes.”

“How are you going to get out? Can you fly?”

“No. I can manipulate you, but I have to do it the old-fashioned way, climb.”

“There used to be a ladder in the kitchen. I had to move it to get down into the file room. If it’s still there you could use it to get out.”

“Okay. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

Reaching out, Jack lifted her up just above the debris field. The clearance was tight.

“Pull up your legs.”

She immediately did as he asked and he pushed her through the opening in a beam of energy, hearing her feet touch the ground overhead.

“Are you clear?”

“Yeah. I’m going for the ladder.”

Jack heightened his senses, tuning into her hesitant footsteps against the hardwood floor. Her heart rate was escalating, her breath coming in ragged gasps. What was going on? Why was she so frightened?

Olivia screamed. Her voice high-pitched and terrified.

Razors of worry sliced across his nerves.

He lunged for the debris pile, pawing over shattered boards, chunks of plaster and concrete.

O
LIVIA STOOD AS STILL
as she could, the blade of a knife pressed to her throat, its edge biting into her skin, just enough to cut her. Blood trickled down her neck in tiny rivulets she couldn’t brush away.

Had he lost his mind? Or was he a victim of telepathic manipulation? Being forced into doing something he wouldn’t normally do?

“Stop, Stuart,” she pleaded, “you’re hurting me.”

“You have to die.” The unnatural cadence of his voice rocked her to the core.

Where was Jack?

“Please let me go. Jack needs help.”

No response.

The pressure on the knife increased.

Terror burned through her.

Stuart Redmond was going to kill her.

Jack cleared the jagged opening and crawled out, the cuts on his hands and arms leaving a trail of blood on the dirty floor.

Pulling in information from around him, he came to his feet.

Olivia’s scream had come from near the kitchen. He sucked up next to the wall, easing down the narrow hallway on its path to the dining room.

Light infiltrated the building through broken windows and soot-covered panes.

He reached the end of the hall and glanced around the corner, catching sight of Olivia being held at knife point by…Stuart?

Caution locked into step with his anger. Reaching out, he grabbed the knife in a beam of energy and flung it across the room.

Stuart immediately released Olivia and fell back.

Jack rushed across the room. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s superficial.” She brushed at her neck.

He turned his attention to Stuart, who sat on the floor, looking dazed and confused.

“Stuart?” Jack knelt next to the man who’d been caring for his family for over thirty years. Reaching out, he shook Stuart’s shoulder.

“Where…where am I?” Stuart looked up at him, recognition passing over his features like a cloud passes over the sun. “Sir? Oh dear, what have I done?”

Jack helped him to his feet and turned his attention back to Olivia. The knife marks on her neck were tiny, but when he thought of how close he’d just come to losing her…

“How’d you get here, Stuart?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go home.”

“Very well, sir.” Stuart turned for the main door and Jack took Olivia’s hand, following him to the exit.

He stared at Stuart’s shoe prints in the dust on the floor. Caution invaded his thoughts and drove him to an odd conclusion. Stuart’s prints were remarkably similar in size and shape to the ones he’d seen near the light in the room upstairs. Had he been manipulated to do that as well? It was certainly possible.

Foreboding attached itself to his outlook. Anyone at anytime could be used as a weapon against them. People they loved and cared about. Vigilant, he had to remain vigilant.

Outside, the air was shrouded in mist, obscuring the landscape around the clinic. Stuart’s pickup sat in the driveway just outside the gatehouse.

Jack scanned the fog, coming up empty. Nobody else was out there.

Uneasiness churned through him like a tidal wave. Was it possible Stuart was still acting under telepathic manipulation? If so, was Olivia still in danger?

“I’ll drive.”

Stuart dragged the keys out of his pocket and handed them to him.

Jack studied his face. He seemed like he was back to normal, but he reached for Stuart’s thoughts to alleviate his concern.

“I’ll have eggs for breakfast. And some bacon. I really like Muriel’s cornbread muffins. I think I’ll have a couple of those….”

Jack pulled back, satisfied the control over Stuart had run its course.

They climbed into the pickup and Jack fired the engine. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he scanned the fog, watching the last vestiges of the clinic disappear in its icy hand.

Maybe he shouldn’t wait until spring to demolish it. Maybe he should do it now.

O
LIVIA PUT THE
morning paper down on the table and picked up her cup of coffee. Raising her gaze, she found Jack staring at her.

His look of longing spoke to her on a visceral level and she could no longer deny that she loved him, but her days in Black’s Cove were numbered. She was a journalist. She needed another story, like a junkie
needed another fix, and she could never betray the trust he’d given her by telling his secret to the world.

“When do you plan to stop running, Olivia?”

The question caught her off guard, but it was useless to try and maneuver her way out of it; he’d simply reach into her mind and read it for himself.

“Ya caught me with my racing shoes on, didn’t ya?”

“Sometimes you have to stand and fight. Face the guilt and resentment you feel toward Ross and your parents for the lack of a normal childhood and beat it down. Relegate it to the past and move on. You can never get back those years and those relationships. Acceptance could go a long way toward healing.”

He was right, dammit. Tears stung the back of her eyes and she swallowed hard.

“Let the chips fall where they may and stay out from under them?” The answer sounded so easy in her own words.

“Yes. That’s all you have to do. That’s all you’ve ever had to do.” He stood up, reached for her and pulled her up into his arms.

She buried her face against his broad chest, feeling a ten-ton weight lift off her. Maybe she was a little like Dorothy with the ruby slippers; she’d always had the capability to go home, but not the know-how to get there.

“You could have a life…here, with me.”

She pulled back, staring up into his handsome face. A face she’d come to love, on a man she’d come to need more than the air in the room. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Don’t give me an answer now. Stay until I find and stop the madman who wants to rip you away from me forever.”

He pulled out her chair for her and released her into it. She sat back down feeling dazed. Could she make a life with Jack?

Reaching up she touched the spot on her neck where he’d dressed her knife wound. Not if their unknown tormenter had his way.

“Tell me about Stuart. What’s his relationship to your family?”

“He’s been here since I was born. He has a son, Benton, three years older than me. We used to play together as kids, until he went away to boarding school. Stuart’s late-wife, Mildred, was my grandfather’s lab assistant. She went through all of the research, development and disbursements of NPQ.”

“Where is she now?”

“She died ten years ago, just weeks after my grandfather passed away. She nursed him through his illness. He provided quite nicely for her, and Stuart in his will. Unfortunately, she didn’t live to enjoy any of it.”

“That’s dedication.”
Or was it more than that?
she wondered as she picked up the mug of coffee and raised it to her lips. Sometimes the answers were right under your nose.

The shuffle of footsteps racing down the hallway pulled her out of contemplation.

“Sir!” Frances burst into the room, her cheeks flushed, her breath coming in gasps. “Your hotel, sir. It’s on fire!”

J
ACK STARED AT
the billowing funnel of black smoke twisting up from the horizon and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The Mercedes picked up speed.

The hotel was filled to capacity with a convention of grain growers. Lives were at stake.

“Take it easy, Jack! The hotel has smoke alarms and a sprinkler system. I’m sure everyone is safe.”

Olivia’s attempts to reassure him helped, but he couldn’t shake the sound of the thug’s threats from his brain. Had this fire been set intentionally to hurt him, to hurt people he cared about?

He slowed the car and made the corner into town, thumping over the train tracks and whizzing down back-streets until he pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, slammed on the brakes and came to a stop.

Horror laced through his bloodstream, constricting every vessel in his body. The parking lot was full of patrons, milling around in various states of dress.

The south side of the fourth floor was fully involved. Flames licked out of window openings, reaching for the fifth floor in their ravenous appetite for fuel.

Smoke spewed from the windows on the fifth floor. It was only a matter of time before the fire broke through.

Jack climbed out of the car and raced for the fire chief, Fred Baxter, standing next to the command vehicle.

The searing heat almost pushed him back, but he remained focused.

“Fred!” Jack yelled over the drone of the pumps.

The chief looked up, spotted him and strode forward.
“Hell of a blaze, Jack. Called in around 5:00 a.m. We’re beating it down, but it’s stubborn.”

“Did everyone make it out?”

Fred’s features dropped, leaving Jack with only one answer. Anger sluiced in his veins and he stepped closer.

“How many, Fred?”

“One couple from the fourth floor is unaccounted for. Everyone else made it out alive.”

Jack stared at the blazing building, growing more dangerous with each passing second.

He had to go in. He had to find them. He took several steps forward.

“No, Jack! You can’t do it. It’s too dangerous. The fire could flash over anytime!” Fred grabbed his arm.

Horror stilled him, turning to resolve in his veins as he stared up at the roof, catching sight of flailing arms through the intense smoke.

“Where’s the ladder truck?”

“Ours is too short. We’ve got the mutual aid structure truck coming in from Soda Springs.”

Raising his finger, he pointed at the far northeast corner of the roof, where the missing couple waved frantically.

Hope surged in his veins. He turned back toward the car where he’d left Olivia. The passenger door was open; the car was empty. He looked for her in the crowd who’d exited the fire and spotted the top of her head.

She’d be doing what she did best. Asking questions.

He had to rescue the couple before the roof gave way or the acrid smoke asphyxiated them.

Pulling back, he turned and raced for a grove of trees
on the perimeter of the parking lot. He needed cover to work, to protect the Phantom’s anonymity.

H
E WAS CRAZY
, nuts, deranged.
Olivia fought the man who’d pulled her out of the crowd and was now dragging her through the hotel lobby.

“Who are you? What are you doing?”

He stopped, pulled open the stairwell door at the back of the burning building and shoved her inside.

“Go to the roof,” he demanded.

Fear slammed into her brain. Resist.

She whirled on him. “No!” Lunging at him, she ducked under his arm and aimed for the exit door in her desperate attempt to escape.

Olivia yanked on the handle, but the door wouldn’t open.

“Go to the roof.” His dark eyes narrowed.

She shook her head. “We have to get out of here.”

Slowly, he extended his good hand; the other was in a sling. She felt her feet leave the ground. Staring at him in horror, she tried to understand who he was.

He manipulated her toward the stairs, pushing her up them with the same power Jack possessed. “Jack’s here! He won’t let you hurt me.”

No response.

She tried to shake loose, but it was like being a fly stuck in a spider’s web.

Panic ignited in her veins as they moved past the fourth-floor door. She could feel the heat radiating from the other side. What was he doing? She had to talk some
sense into him because she certainly couldn’t overpower him.

“My name is Olivia Morgan. I’m a journalist.” Nothing. There was something familiar about him. The hospital, he was the man who’d come in with a shoulder injury the morning they brought in Judy Bartholomew. He was Rick Dowdy.

“You’re hurting me, Rick.”

For an instant, he looked at her and she almost thought she saw recognition in his eyes. This was the man Jack suspected had something to do with the attempts on her life. The man they’d planned to speak with this morning after breakfast.

“Rick!” she yelled, desperate to get through to him.

They passed the landing marked by a large 5 above the exit. Smoke seeped through the crack under the door and burned her eyes as it filled the stairwell above them.

“The hotel’s on fire! We’ve got to get out!”

They reached the sixth-floor landing and he dropped her. Olivia scrambled to her feet.

He pulled open the door and shoved her out onto the roof.

J
ACK SURROUNDED
the couple together in a bubble of protection, raised them up over the edge of the roof and lowered them safely to the ground from his hiding place in the trees.

Relief washed over him as he pulled back, taking one more look at the burning hotel.

His breath caught. His throat closed.

Heightening his senses, he focused on a man and woman moving precariously close to the edge of the roof.

On the ground below, a collective intake of breath whispered over the airwaves and ground in his ears.

Rick Dowdy…and Olivia.

Caution tempered his first response, to jettison Dowdy from the roof and slam him to earth where he’d never be able to touch her again.

He reached for the man’s thoughts instead, finding them easily in the chaos swirling in his head.

Kill her…she has to die…push her.
Telepathic manipulation? Or the conscious rambling of a madman?

Dowdy lunged forward, shoving Olivia.

She went airborne, off the roof.

Her shriek of terror glanced off Jack’s eardrums.

Reaching out he caught her three stories from the asphalt below.

Time to die.

He picked up Dowdy’s thought, but it was too late. In a sickening second, Rick Dowdy plunged off the building before Jack could get Olivia to the ground.

Jack closed his eyes for a second before he manipulated her away from the horrific scene and put her down near a squad car where an officer rushed to her side.

Why had he done it? Committed suicide…and he’d tried to take Olivia with him.

Jack’s gut fisted. Was it possible Dowdy was behind everything? Did he have abilities that went unreported? Or was he a victim along with the others? Now they would never get the chance to find out.

He stepped out from behind the trees and headed for Olivia, who had quite unceremoniously collapsed on the ground in shock the moment he’d released her.

J
ACK PULLED THE
Mercedes into the garage, unable to shake the uneasiness spreading through him like wildfire.

Where was Stuart? He’d always been there to offer his assistance when he arrived home.

“Something is wrong,” he said in a low voice, glancing at Olivia in the seat next to him. “Stuart isn’t here. Let’s go inside quietly.”

Her blue eyes went wide. He could hear her heartbeat amp up. She’d had more than enough excitement for one day and he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and help her forget.