The Presence (29 page)

“Aye, it could have been stolen,” Jonathan had told him. “But don't you think it's rather a coincidence if it was the one used with the Internet providers?”

“Maybe too much of a coincidence,” Bruce had told him.

“Meanin'?”

“Could he really be that stupid?” Bruce had asked.

Jonathan had shrugged. “He's a Scotsman, Bruce. And, aye, it might well have been a Scotsman to have way more information on you than anyone else. Bruce, it's lookin' as if someone's really pretended to be you.”

“They took my identity, but the Internet site was a total setup!”

“Aye.”

There were still discoveries to be made. But they would be made.

He sat in front of the fire awhile longer. Jonathan had told him who the people having lunch with Toni that afternoon were. He'd done the research on them himself,
and he'd been astonished. Low-key, low profile. Harrison Investigations didn't advertise on television, didn't promise to fix anyone's love life or connect anyone with deceased relatives.

Still, they investigated strange and unusual occurrences, trouble spots. Ghosts. Hauntings. No matter what the hell they wanted to call it!

As if they hadn't enough real problems around here! He could be glad that a family mystery was solved, but there was fraud in his own house. A killer, leaving victims in the forest. And the last damned thing he wanted around was a psychic!

He could hardly kick the pair out of the village, but he damned well could make sure that they weren't invited into his home! Yet as he stared at the fire, nothing of logic, truth or the simple fact that he did own the property seemed to mean anything. Her last few words stung.
I thought I knew you.

She had been the one angry before, but she had come back. If he just waited…maybe she would come back again. Because she was frightened? he wondered, mocking himself. Ego or not, he couldn't accept that she had come back into the bedroom the night before out of fear.

He
could
go to her. Actually, he could
apologize. Except that he wasn't in the wrong.

The fire continued to crackle. Time passed and he was still there, staring at the flames. At last he rose, turned out the lights and went to bed. But he didn't sleep. He realized that he wasn't sleeping because he was waiting. And after a while, he realized that she wasn't coming.

Donning his robe, he went through to the bath. She
hadn't locked the door on her side of it. He tapped lightly. There was no answer, so he opened the door and walked over to the foot of the bed.

She slept, her hand curled beneath her chin, hair splayed around her. He wouldn't wake her, he decided. But as he stood there, she suddenly bolted upright, staring at him with alarm.

“It's just me,” he said. “Real. In the flesh,” he added. She still stared. “Not a ghost,” he told her.

She nodded after a minute, still staring at him.

“Do you want to be alone?”

“Is that an apology?”

“Did you apologize last night?”

“Was I wrong last night?”

“Am I really wrong now?”

She looked down for a moment, lashes sweeping her eyes, the fall of her hair concealing her features. “Does it really matter?” she said very softly.

Those words touched him in a way he couldn't quite fathom, and did more than any argument. “I'm sorry,” he murmured.

“For what?” she asked him, looking up.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I really don't want a psychic here. I hate it when you see those programs with cheap special effects as a handheld camera follows a purported medium around a house. I think we have enough problems here. I'm sorry I spoke the way I did. And I…I wish I could believe you. I believe that you believe your dreams are very real.”

She rose, brushing by him, heading for the connecting door. There she paused. “You really do have the better bed,” she told him. He followed her.

They were awake another hour. Then, they both slept.

Toni awoke thinking that it had to be very late, or nearly morning. But the room was in deep shadow. The fire had died in the grate and the lights were out, except for one that remained on in the bath.

She felt Bruce's arm around her. But still, she had the feeling that they were not alone.

She looked to the foot of the bed. And he was there. Once again, standing, looking at her, sword hanging from his hand, bloodied. He looked at her, and she knew he wanted her to follow.

At her side, Bruce stirred. “Toni?”

“Yes?”

“Is he here?”

She didn't know if the question was mocking or not. She was staring at the apparition. She told the truth. “Yes.”

She heard a soft groan, but he pulled her closer. “Tell him to go away. Tell him that
I'm
here.”

She looked at the apparition. “Go away!” she whispered. Words formed then, unspoken on her lips.
Please. I don't know what you want!

He inclined his head, as if bowing to her desires. Then, as she stared at him, he faded until he was nothing more than a shadow in the night. She lay back down, glad, gnawing upon her lip.

There had to be something else that he wanted…but what?
What the hell
was
it that he wanted?

Toni was determined to find out, whatever it took, wherever it led. She would swallow fear and find out why he kept coming back….

With that settled, she moved in tightly next to Bruce.
His breath teased her nape. His hand rested on her midriff. Her back was solidly to his chest, and he gave her tremendous warmth. Like a cascade of warm water, the touch filled her with comfort and ease. She closed her eyes and fell back to sleep. She didn't waken to darkness again.

In the morning, Bruce was up and gone when she awoke.

 

“You're joking with me, right?”

Bruce sat across the table from Robert Chamberlain at the pub, having received a message to meet him there at eleven. He was surprised that Robert wanted to meet in the village; he usually chose Stirling.

But he was even more surprised by his friend's words.

Robert shook his head gravely. “I've asked them to meet us here.”

Bruce groaned. “I don't believe this. Not from you.”

“Bruce, law enforcement has resorted to such tactics many times. I wouldn't have called over to the States myself—”

“Why should you? It's not as if we don't have our share of quacks in Great Britain,” Bruce said.

Robert grinned. “I wouldn't have known that they were here if you hadn't logged on to the police line to investigate them. But since I saw your inquiry, I looked them up.”

“Harrison Investigations,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “They go into places where unusual events have taken place.”

“They're discreet, but not secretive,” Robert said.
“There's no sensationalism regarding the corporation. They've been called upon by law agencies in many places. They've worked for congressmen and senators, even a U.S. president—”

“Whoever said that men and women in the government were sane?” Bruce asked him.

Robert shrugged. “Bruce, you have told me a dozen times yourself that we should be tearing the forest apart, looking for the remains of Annie O'Hara.”

“The last two victims were found there,” Bruce said. “That's logic, not intuition.”

“I still think it was more than logic when you nailed the killers ten years ago.”

Bruce shifted uncomfortably. “It seems to me that there's a great deal more we could—sorry, the law could be doing without resorting to…mumbo jumbo.”

“Be polite, please.”

“Hey, times have changed. I'm not the ruler of my own little kingdom. I own the castle and a lot of property. I have the title, but you can buy a title on the Internet these days. I can hardly order these people to get out of my village by sundown,” Bruce said.

“On a more realistic note,” Bruce said, “I met with Jonathan yesterday. The boys in computer tech are apparently having some pretty good luck tracking down information on the phony corporation that rented the castle.”

Robert nodded. “I've seen the reports. I've kept out of it. Jonathan is the local constable.”

“He's got it out for Thayer Fraser, I'd say.”

Robert shrugged. “We can't make any arrests on what we have right now. But the man's bank account pretty much matches the amount the Americans put up.
And he reported a bank card stolen. If it proves that the bank card was used at the Internet Café in Glasgow where the site was formed…well, then we'll have to bring him in for questioning, at the very least.”

“Doesn't make sense. He'd have to know he'd be caught.”

“Aye, but there's a certain defense in that, too. They're trying to track his money now, as well. That will help. Naturally we need legal resources to do all that.” Robert leaned back. “You won't see this one in the papers, because we've been keeping the inquiries quiet, but I've had my men go a lot deeper into the disappearance of the barmaid in Stirling.”

Bruce frowned. “She'd cleaned out her room. She was packed up, bag and baggage.”

“But no one knows where she went. She didn't take a bus or a train. She's just gone. Annie O'Hara could have gone back to Ireland, but I don't believe that. And our boy, Thayer, was seen with the barmaid that same day.”

“Wait, you're accusing him of fraud—and of being a serial killer?”

“I'm not accusing him of anything,” Robert said. “I'm telling you what we've got.”

“It doesn't gel,” Bruce said. “It sounds like grasping at straws.”

“Straws are all we've got.”

“With a good attorney, the man could skewer the force,” Bruce warned.

“We can't make an arrest. But since the fellow is living in your castle…”

Bruce shook his head. “The fraud is one thing. But
to assume the man might be a killer because he was in a pub…that's pushing it, don't you think?”

Robert didn't answer. “They're coming,” he said. He and Bruce stood as the handsome American couple strode over to the booth.

“Hello,” Bruce said, shaking hands along with Robert. “What did you think of the tour at the castle the other night?”

“It was quite remarkable,” the woman said.

Bruce stared at the man. The fellow didn't look like a quack. “So, did you feel anything in the castle?” His words were polite, but he couldn't keep his tone as cordial.

“No, but then, I'm not the one who would,” the man said.

“Matt is actually the sheriff in a town named for his family,” Robert explained.

Bruce cast Robert a dry stare.
Might have mentioned that before, old chap!
But of course, Robert had refrained on purpose.

“I didn't ask them to meet about the castle,” Robert said.

“No, of course not.”

“It's a beautiful place,” Darcy told him. She wasn't obsequious, just pleasant. Still, he knew he had a chip on his shoulder regarding them.

“Saturday, I've got men coming in from a number of the surrounding areas,” Robert explained. “We're searching for the body of a woman almost certain to be a victim of a serial killer. I was hoping that you would be willing to search with my men.”

“Of course,” Darcy said, glancing at her husband.

“Naturally.” Matt glanced at his wife.

Robert nodded. “Naturally,” he agreed.

Darcy Stone looked across the table at Bruce. “You'll be there, won't you, Laird MacNiall?”

“I will.”

“Of course,” she said. “You feel a responsibility.”

“The forest borders my castle.”

She nodded. “It's interesting, Laird MacNiall. You really haven't spent much time at your castle in the last decade or so.”

He arched a brow.

“Well, there's the place you have in New York and the horse farm up near Loch Ness. You even have an interest in a breeding facility in Kentucky.”

Bruce stared at her levelly. “All that,” he murmured, “and you didn't even ask to see my palm.”

He started to make a move, but she placed her fingers on his hand.

“We, too, have access to the Internet, Laird MacNiall.”

“Ah,” Bruce murmured, wondering why the couple made him feel as if he should be wearing full body armor. There really was no call for him to be rude. Robert wanted to see if they could help. It was on the wrong side of good sense as far as he was concerned, but they certainly appeared respectable enough. The woman was hardly dressed in black with a veil, nor did she carry a crystal ball. There was no reason to be so instantly hostile.

He wasn't so sure he liked the scrutiny they had put on his life, though. And he didn't like the idea that Toni had called Harrison Investigations in the first place. Despite the fact that he believed her conviction that she'd never heard the story about the great MacNiall before,
he was sure there was a logical explanation. There was surely even a logical explanation for her knowledge of the crypts. And it was pure luck and circum stance that she had come upon the remains of Annalise after the rainstorm.

After all, it was luck and circumstance that he had caught the husband-and-wife team of killers, all those years ago.

“The castle is your ancestral home,” Darcy Stone mused, “but it does seem as if you've spent years running away from it.”

That was it, his cue to leave. He rose.

“It's been a pleasure,” he said, “but you will have to excuse me. I have some business in town. I'll see you both Saturday, then. Robert, keep me informed.”

He shook Matt Stone's hand and strode out of the café, suddenly wishing to hell that he was in New York right then, on the streets somewhere, watching a flood of living, breathing, pierced-tongued, green-haired teens and young adults walk by in a hurry to get their next tattoos.