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“I’m self-employed,” he replied, irritation clear in his tone and his face. He acted as if each word were being wrenched out of him. “I’m an investment advisor.”
“How interesting.” She was playing his game with a coy vengeance, becoming more chatty and polite in proportion as he grew irritated and terse. “And where are you from, Mr. Henning? Surely you’re not from these parts, or I’d recognize you.”
“Look, Miss Adams, I don’t mean to rush you. Or to offend you. But I really do need to hurry. Could we just skip all the polite chitchat? My flight leaves soon.”
Again the imperious tone was back, as if he were the lord of the manor and she some lowly supplicant.
Constance fished the key out of her purse. Instead of unlocking the heavy slab door, however, she deliberately aimed for the back corner of the cabin.
“Oh, but Mr. Henning, you simply must see the creek and the bridge first,” she insisted, her voice saccharine-sweet. “The owner herself insists. It’s positively charming back here.”
He scowled and lingered in front of the door, his face exasperated. He tapped his watch.
Tap it till it cracks, Constance thought, willing away her attraction to him. I don’t live in your pocket.
“Nonsense, Mr. Henning, you can see them from here. I promise, you won’t miss your plane or muss your shoes.”
If he felt the barb she’d just thrust into him, Constance couldn’t tell it. He gave up and headed toward her. She wasn’t sure if he was simply limping, or limping and trying to cover it.
“Look at that! Dead of winter, yet the fox grapes and wild mint are flourishing back here,” she pointed out. “The mint makes a delicious mountain tea.”
“How interesting,” he replied from a stoic dead-pan, mimicking her. His voice sounded machine-generated.
Not bothering to get his permission, Constance walked the short distance to the bridge. She wondered how he could not be captivated by the beauty of this spot.
The creek formed a clear little pool beneath the stone arch of the bridge. The water’s calm, glassine surface wrinkled with each wind gust. Golden fingers of sunlight poked through the leafless canopy of trees surrounding them. From the bridge she could look straight down and glimpse the silvery flash-and-dart of minnows.
He joined her on the bridge, pointedly ignoring the view. His cool, smoky stare riveted to her.
Why, his face is sweaty, she noted. But it was quite brisk weather up here, practically no humidity. She felt chilly even with her wool blazer, while he had no topcoat at all.
She pointed toward some mossy boulders half-submerged at the water’s edge. “Those always put me in mind of green-upholstered stools. Aren’t they fascinating?”
His stony silence implied he couldn’t care less. Constance noticed how his shadow seemed long and sinister in the waning light. She’d left her sunglasses in the Jeep, and when she looked up at him she was forced to lift a hand to shade her eyes from the low sun.
“Miss Adams,” he began, laboring to speak, “I confess I don’t give a tinker’s damn about those rocks. Now…are you going to unlock that cabin or not?”
Or not? His pointed emphasis on those last two words altered her mood. Suddenly she was fully aware of his intimidating physical advantage over her. She wondered, for just a moment, what might happen if she said not. But she decided she didn’t want to find out.
“Of course.” She gave in, stepping around him and walking down off the bridge. “But to be frank, Mr. Henning, I can’t imagine you being very…at home up here. As you can see, this is a nature lover’s hideaway. The place isn’t even wired for electricity.”
“I’ll use a portable generator,” he replied curtly. “It’s just for vacations, anyway.”
By now her dislike for this rude, intimidating man made Constance desirous of discouraging him. Like Hazel, she wasn’t simply interested in selling the cabin—she wanted to match it up with someone who appreciated its rustic charms. This creep would be bored by the Grand Canyon.
She unlocked the heavy padlock, slid it from the hasp, and swung the front door wide open, flooding the dark, musty interior with light.
“Pretty basic,” she told him, which was certainly true. The unfurnished cabin was partitioned into two rooms, with a sleeping loft over the largest.
Only a few braided rugs covered the floorboards.
“I need a little more light,” he told her, crossing to one of the shuttered windows. He slid it up, slid back the bolt lock on the heavy batten shutters, and swung them wide.
She only wanted to be rid of this man. She stayed back in the doorway, saying nothing to further a sale.
He glanced around indifferently.
“Well,” he said after a few moments, adding nothing else. She noticed that his eye coloring was variable according to the light—the smoky tint she noticed outside seemed almost like a teal blue in here. He really was extraordinarily good-looking, if one could see past that sneer of cold command. And that ashen complexion…it seemed curiously unhealthy in light of his robust build.
“Thank you,” he told her with another cursory dismissal. “I’ll give it some thought and call you.”
Despite her desire to be rid of him, Constance could hardly believe her ears. The man had been downright desperate to see the place. But now, clearly, his tone was cold—he had no intention whatsoever of calling her, she could tell.
“Fine, Mr. Henning,” she replied with a bare minimum of civility. Never mind her wasted time; at least she’d be rid of him. “Now I really must get back to Mystery.”
“Let me close the shutter and window,” he offered quickly as she started toward them. She could have sworn his limp seemed more pronounced when he crossed to the window. For the first time, she noticed the small tear in his trousers on the back of the left thigh. A dark stain ringed it. The tear and the stain was at odds with the man’s impeccable attire, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that he was in a hurry.
“You forgot to bolt the shutter,” she pointed out as he turned to join her.
“No, it’s fine,” he assured her, his tone brooking no debate on the matter.
She was on the verge of pointing out that it clearly was not locked—she could see a seam of daylight where the shutters failed to join tightly.
Then she spotted it on the bare wooden floor, brightly illuminated in the sunlight flooding through the front door: a glistening scarlet drop that could only be fresh blood.
For a long moment she paused, on the edge of her next breath, cold dread filling her limbs as if they were buckets under a tap. She glanced around and spotted another drop, another—several of them, all marking places where he had walked.
A terrible sense of foreboding gripped her. She had to grab hold of the door to steady herself. Henning, meantime, had stepped outside, waiting for her to lock up.
“Mr. Henning?” she said without turning around.
“Yes?”
“Are you…I mean—Mr. Henning, are you…bleeding?”
The moment she asked, some instinct warned her she should have pretended not to notice. His next comment verified her instinct.
“I’m sorry you had to notice that, Miss Adams. I truly wish to God you hadn’t.”
Fighting a sudden, watery weakness in her calves, she turned toward the yard to confront him. And encountered the single, unblinking eye of the gun in his hand.
Chapter 3
The moment she spotted the gun, Constance felt her heart surge. For a few seconds, an exploding pulse made angry-surf noises in her ears.
He wasn’t actually pointing it at her, but he certainly hadn’t pulled it out for show-and-tell, either.
“I’m sorry, Miss Adams,” he repeated. “You’re too observant for your own good. It would’ve been much…simpler if you hadn’t noticed those bloodstains.”
Maybe it was the influence of too many movies, but the possible significance of his words made her go numb with fright.
That same fear must have addled her reason, she decided, judging from her next comment—which surprised her at least as much as it seemed to surprise him.
“You deceitful bastard!” She spat the words at him with a contempt unmitigated by her fear.
Bastard…the word had a B-movie feel in her mouth, yet it came out automatically from the depths of her anger and indignation. If she had been burned by a dishonest fiancé, this was infinitely worse. So far as she knew, Doug had never sunk to the level of holding a gun on someone.
However, even more surprising than her comment was his reaction to it.
The impact on him was visible and startling. Something desperate and frightened flashed in those variable eyes of his. Not anger, precisely, but somehow she had touched a very raw nerve.
“No,” he told her. “No. It’s…”
His voice trailed off, and he waved his free hand in a dismissive oh-what’s-the-use gesture. “It’s not what you think,” he finished, offering no more.
“Mr. Henning, please, I don’t—”
“It’s Quinn Loudon, not George Henning.”
“Well who ever you are, I don’t understand. You say it’s not what I think it is. I assure you, I don’t know what to think.”
He still stood outside in the newly gathering darkness. Instead of answering her, Loudon cast a nervous glance back toward the road. The temperature was going down with the sun, and she saw him shiver in his business suit.
“Come with me,” he told her.
Alarm made her pulse race. “Where…where are we going?”
“Look, just get a grip, would you? We’re not going anywhere. I’m not a rapist or a killer, and believe me, I don’t want you here any more than you want to be here. Right now I just want to hide the cars behind the cabin, and I want you in my sight while I do it, all right? Do you think both vehicles will fit back there?”
“I really couldn’t tell you,” she said cautiously. “Hiding cars from the law isn’t my specialty.”
“Who said I’m hiding anything from the law? Maybe I am the law.”
She looked at the gun in his hand. “No you’re not. You’re just a criminal swaggering around like a big man, frightening unarmed women. What’s next, a raid on a daycare center?”
Now anger did indeed spark in those compelling eyes of his. But he slipped the gun back into its holster under his jacket.
When she still refused to move outside, he seized her under one elbow and tugged her out into the yard. His grip felt strong as a steel trap and intimidated her into passivity. He could do plenty of damage without a gun, she had to admit to herself with a chill inching down her spine.
“Get in,” he ordered her, opening the passenger door of the Jeep.
The moment she did, she remembered the keys were in the ignition. By the time he’d limped around to the driver’s door, she had managed to lock both doors and scoot behind the steering wheel.
She keyed the ignition and the engine coughed to life. She ground the gearshift into reverse just a moment before he smashed out the driver’s window with the butt of his gun.
She went nowhere. The parking brake held. His hand like a warm vise pressed into her throat.
“Don’t test me,” he growled in a low, rough voice. “I’m a very desperate man, Miss Adams.”
Only one question looped through her mind: Would he really hurt her?
One part of her didn’t think so—some things about him just didn’t seem to tally up as criminal—a violent criminal, at any rate. His speech, for one thing, and his appearance.
Then again, she recalled bitterly, he wouldn’t be the first callow man who fooled the decent with good tailoring. Doug, too, had been a natty dresser with impeccable manners. And face it, she admonished herself. He’d played her like a piano.
Closing her eyes, she surrendered the need to fight. The crime playing out now wasn’t about credit cards and sweet lies of love. She knew nothing about the man before her. The only thing she did know was that he was at least giving her a warning—something Doug had never done. If she was a fool and underrated the man’s evil capacity, she could end up dead. So she had to take heed. She had to.
He leaned one meaty shoulder through the window and took the car keys. She moved over into the passenger’s seat as if he burned her.
Noticeably favoring his hurt left leg, he climbed in and drove the Jeep around back. He parked as close to the cabin as he could.
“Should be just enough room for my car,” he muttered, thinking out loud, his face lean and pale.
“You’re not really an investment advisor, are you?” she asked as he pushed her in front of him as they went around the cabin for his car.
He shook his head. “I’m a lawyer. I’m with the U.S. Attorney’s Office out of Billings. Or at least I was,” he added in a bitter afterthought.
A great cover, she told herself, for a criminal to pose as the law.
On the other hand, she did note he had the serious lawyerly type down pat.
Except for the hole in his leg.
They got into the Lexus and moved it to the rear of the cabin. In the ensuing silence, she finally asked the question she feared she already knew the answer to. “So what’s wrong…what happened to you?”
“I was shot,” he told her bluntly. “About three, four hours ago. At the courthouse in Kalispell.”
She ratcheted up her courage a few more notches and asked, “By whom?”
“I couldn’t tell you the gentleman’s name. He was one of these rude assholes who shoot you without introducing themselves.”
She said nothing. There was no point in tossing back a retort, such as maybe he was shot because he was doing something he shouldn’t have. By the tight expression on his face, she wasn’t going to get any more information out of him. For right now at least.
When he did finally say something, mostly to end the painful silence between them, he was still evasive.
“I understand how all this must appear to you, but the process of observation defines only one reality. Others you haven’t observed are just as real.”
“Well, you certainly can talk like a lawyer.” Or his guilty client, she thought pointedly.
He surprised her by smiling, although there was no mirth or playfulness in it. “I suppose I do. But I don’t put the noose before the gavel.”
He pushed her inside the cabin.
“With those shutters closed it’s getting dark in here,” he observed. “Any lanterns or anything?”
“Candles, I think,” she responded reluctantly. “Try the cabinet near the sink.”
He limped over, rummaged in the cabinet, and produced several squat votive candles and a box of kitchen matches. He lit two of the candles, and set both of them on the floor. Then, emitting a weary sigh, he gingerly sat down between the candles and supported his back against the cabinet. She noticed he was shivering again.
