Endless Night (4 page)

Coughing into his hand, Jake hefted an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”

Instead of answering, Megan crossed to the kitchen window and leaned to look outside.
God help him.
He caressed her curves with his eyes as she bent over, and jerked his glance up when she turned around. She stood with her arms crossed and chewed on her bottom lip.

“Harriet says the bridge is out.”

If he had smiled at that declaration, he probably would have earned a slap. Instead, Jake spoke sensibly to the woman who’d started to shake again.

“How long is it usually out?”

Megan turned back to the window. He saw what she saw. The deluge persisted but seemed all the more treacherous as night beset them.

“When the rain stops.”

“And when is the rain supposed to stop?”

Stark eyes met his. “Monday.”

“Alright, look. You’re obviously uncomfortable with me being here. It’s okay, I understand that. I can sleep in the car and when the rain breaks, I’ll just drive away.”

“It’s not going to break for three days.” Megan’s voice cracked. “And don’t be ridiculous.”

A long sip of coffee, a deep breath, and she seemed to regain some control. “I have several bedrooms upstairs—that is, if you don’t mind a little dust.”

Jake sank onto one of the oak arrowback chairs and placed his hands on his knees as he tipped his head and listened to the sounds of the house. Within the confines of Wakefield House, the heavy rain was muted to a dull throb, like someone was popping popcorn on the third floor. Age produced its own unique symphony, with a multitude of subtle creaks and groans orchestrated by the wind. And here in the kitchen, the refrigerator motor whirred and joined the cantata.

“Do you hear that?” He was filled with awe.

Megan frowned. “Hear what?”

“When I fall asleep at night,” he said quietly, “I hear sirens on the street below. I hear the college kids getting out of the local pub at two in the morning. I hear dogs barking at the college kids, and I hear the next-door neighbor’s alarm go off at five, shortly followed by the thud of newspapers growing closer and then passing by. And somehow I manage to doze a few more minutes, but soon a man with a jackhammer will start chopping up the sidewalk at 6:00 a.m.” He hesitated. “But in this house, there are no sounds of life. I mean, none of the energy or activity of the city. Just peace.”

There was that beguiling semblance of a smile on Megan’s face. Such a timid gesture. It tugged at him, making him feel he was privy to a sight few had beheld.

“What I hear,” Megan whispered, “is the wind. It sounds like a woman.” She continued, “A woman crying. And no matter what room I go to, she follows me. Sometimes I sleep with a pillow over my head, the sound is so persistent.”

“You have trouble sleeping at night, don’t you?” Jake spoke, thinking it was obvious in the faint shadows beneath her eyes and the weary set of her shoulders. “So do I,” he empathized. “I lie there and listen to those kids. They come out of that bar with aspirations of taking on the world. The future’s next great lawyers, politicians, scientists. I listen to them and wish—”

“Wish you could do it over again?” she whispered.

Shadows now consumed the kitchen, warded off only by the muted glow cast from a gold Tiffany lamp. In the far reaches of that glow, he watched Megan sitting in the box bay with her hands clasped together on her lap.

“Yes,” he said softly.

“But it sounds like you are one of those success stories. What would you possibly want to change?”

There wasn’t a quick answer for that. Jake toyed with the handle of his coffee mug and said, “I am a success because I sacrificed everything else. Work was more important than family—than a wife. If I went back—” his voice lowered, “—I might have found my mother instead of showing up on your doorstep and discovering that she died last week.”

Megan’s breath hitched. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Hey now, I wasn’t saying that to make you feel sorry for me. I was saying it because I wish I had done things differently,” Jake soothed. “My sister tried to pretend that she didn’t want to know who her biological parents were, but I could tell how curious she was. It was in the way
she watched people on the streets, always wondering.”

“And you?” Megan leaned forward so that her elbows rested against her knees. “You didn’t wonder?”

“Too busy,” he quipped. “My parents told me at an early age that I was adopted and asked if I wanted to pursue my heritage. I think back then I just wanted to pretend I didn’t hear them correctly. I wanted them to be my biological parents and I never wanted to learn the truth. Well, that was until I received Gabrielle’s letter.” He shook his head to discard the thought. “But what about you, Megan? What would you change?”

With the absence of their voices, Jake was aware of the raw whistle of the wind. It
did
sound like a woman crying. It was a haunting pitch, and he wondered how Megan could possibly stay in this old house by herself and not go insane with the frightening ensemble in the background.

She definitely wasn’t pleased with the question. Just when he thought he was getting the reclusive woman to open up, Megan shut down, a turtle retreating into her shell.

“Let’s get something straight.” Like the long shadows cast from the overhead lamp, she rose and loomed. “There’s no way for you to get back into town tonight, and I am not so inhuman as to make you stay in your car.”

Nothing seemed to quell the tremble of Megan’s limbs, although her voice was remarkably steady, maybe a bit husky.

“But you are a stranger, Mr. Grogan,” she continued. “Don’t think that a cup of coffee and a few moments of conversation give you the right to probe me with personal questions.”

Her censure piqued Jake’s curiosity.

Still, it was obvious how nervous Megan had become, and it didn’t appear that he was the source of her newfound discomfort. Her narrowed eyes slanted to each corner of the room as if the heavy shadows concealed a foe. That same troubled gaze kept jerking toward the window as if she expected a Cyclops with two-inch teeth to be lurking out there.

“I’ll show you to your room if you’re done with your coffee.” She stood expectantly in the arched doorway.

Jake reached the sink and rinsed out his coffee mug.

“I’ll take care of it in the morning,” she hastened.

“Too many years of my mother telling me to wash what I use.”

Megan didn’t respond to his grin. Instead, she moved out into the hall and stood with her hand grasping the thick banister at the base of the staircase. Jake’s eyes slid up that shadowed flight, disturbed that the top was cloaked in darkness, the kind that nurtured nightmares.

For the first time, he had an uneasy feeling about this house. He was too old to believe in ghosts—too old to feel this edgy—but Megan was climbing the stairs and there was no way he was going to be left behind.

At the point of his ascent where he passed the scope of the downstairs light and became immersed in the shadows of the second floor, Jake began to scale mechanically, his trepidation growing with each step. Suddenly, amber light flooded the stairwell as Megan stood at the top, eclipsed by a golden halo. A porcelain lamp hung on a tarnished brass limb behind her, its circle of light exposing discolored wallpaper with cracks that produced a spiderweb effect. She had a slim profile, with her shoulders held back and her head held high, but she seemed so small in the overwhelming vastness of this house.

“You move like an old man.”

“Been a long day.” Jake reached the last step. “Cut me some slack, Miss Summers.”

Her face remained impassive. He thought surely he could have goaded her into a smile, but Megan’s troubled countenance seemed permanent.

“That room.” She nodded her head toward the first door. “You can sleep there.”

Wary, Jake reached for the beveled glass doorknob and had to exert some effort to push the door in. A puff of musty air billowed out and he jerked back, coughing.

“When was the last time you had a guest?”

“I haven’t.”

Megan slipped past him and groped her hand along the interior wall till she reached the light switch. The room was illuminated unevenly due to the missing bulb from one of three milk-glass flute lamps hanging from the ceiling. Jake was amazed the mere motion of flipping a switch didn’t electrocute them. In an old structure such as this, he knew electrical fixtures were not grounded. In modern constructions, if there was a leak it would be grounded into the earth—but in places like this the grounding would occur in the poor soul who happened to flip the switch.

Jake tried to mask his incredulity by rubbing a hand over his chin. He felt he’d been transported in time to a room that was very spartan to say the least. Megan had said that everything was sold off except for the essentials. The essentials in this case were a Dutch linen closet and a dusty armoire, its tarnished mirror casting his reflection back in a macabre caricature. He fled that unsettling image for the iron bed adorned in a yellowed quilt, its faded floral patches coming apart at the seams. Even now as he dared a step across the wooden floor, he cringed at the raucous creak.

“For crying out loud, it’s not that bad.” Megan strode up to the bed and smacked her hand down on the spread.

To Jake’s amazement, no torrent of dust erupted.

“I wash the linens in every room. It helps to get rid of the mildew smell,” Megan said, glancing around the room. “I’ll admit I haven’t dusted in here in a while, but—” She met his eyes. “You always have your car…”

And thirty-degree weather with no heat and cramped quarters almost sounded appealing.

“No, no, this is absolutely charming,” Jake said.

Finally, he had goaded a smile out of Megan.

Too bad it was at his expense.

The blown-glass lamp beside the bed managed to hold some of the shadows at bay, but Megan drew her knees up under her chin. She tipped her head back against the oak headboard and listened to the house groan. It suffered so against the onslaught of wind and rain. Let nature scream all she wanted. Wakefield House would never yield to the ocean.

This was exactly the type of fortress Megan had needed. She strained to hear any signs of Jake moving about in his room. Two empty bedrooms lay between them, but in this house that was no buffer. She was attuned enough with the rhythm of Wakefield House that the patter of a mouse slinking along the dining room wall below would not go undetected.

The handsome stranger wanted to know why she would stay in such a secluded relic. It was simple. No one could sneak up on her here. If the weather wasn’t so bad, she could hear the purr of a car approaching nearly a mile away. And if they got past the first line of defense, the bridge, the porch was her personal moat and the revealing planks were her alligators. If a stranger were to tread across the porch, a rudimentary alarm sounded within Wakefield’s dark walls.

So now, if Jake should move about, Megan would hear his footsteps even though two
rooms separated them.

Jake.

Who was he? And how in the world did she let him past all her defenses…into her home? If Gordon sent him, she was as good as dead, but Megan didn’t think that she had completely lost her judgment of character. There was something about Jake that made her feel slightly more protected tonight.

Granted, his dark, sexy looks might have something to do with her leniency. Those hazel eyes, with their kaleidoscope effect, reduced her to helpless babbling at one point. Some remote part of her, a ghost of her former self, wished she could go to him now. Climb into those arms that looked sculpted by years of labor or magnificent genes, and sleep in his embrace.

Well, that was an absurd notion.

Instead, she would try to rest. Usually she was only good for a couple hours of troubled sleep.

Tonight would likely be no exception.

She was on the cliffs.

It was night and there was no moon to offer even a fragment of light. All she could rely on was sound. Her ears rang from the roar of the surf and the wind screaming at a demonic pitch. Over it, her tread marked an eerie staccato against the brittle surface of ice and dirt.

In less than a heartbeat, the darkness took on a cylindrical feel and the precipice gave way to a long corridor, dimly lit, with one out of every five fluorescent bulbs left on. She recognized the empty offices of Rosenberg and Fortran. She was here to work on tomorrow’s trial, but the case against their client, Andre Kohut, seemed solid. Kohut was a member of the Boston Tech basketball team. He shot his teammate, Gregory Barnes III, in the chest with an HK P-7. To make matters worse, he shot Barnes in the locker room in front of the entire team.

Gregory Barnes III was the son of an established Beacon Hill businessman, so the case was receiving a lot of publicity. It surprised Margaret that Gordon even took on the defense for Kohut, a Russian citizen.

Progressing through the suite and into the communal kitchen, her heels clicked on the floor, although the sound was diffused by the ocean—and it was not linoleum beneath her, it was frozen grass. She could see the refrigerator and coffeemaker, but behind that kiosk, the ocean loomed. She moved toward it. The ebb and flow of the waves were like auricular fingers, crooking and beckoning her. The edge was near—close enough to feel a salty mist douse her cheeks.

Margaret heard muffled voices coming from an office close by. Some of the kitchen returned to view, but she could still feel the sting of the cold wind. A strange sound, similar to a sneeze, drifted from the cliff. She craned her neck and the sound repeated. Disoriented—wondering why the hallway floor was made of bedrock, she noticed the door to Gordon Fortran’s suite was ajar. A pie of light cut into the hall, but the voices she heard were now obscured by the surf. Wind wrapped around her, its talons clawing and drawing her to the office door.

Listening to those voices, she detected the throaty intonation of an Eastern European dialect. Since the defendant was a Russian citizen, she assumed Gordon was working as hard as she for a last-minute trump card.

“Mr. Fortran?” Margaret called as her fingers touched the surface. It felt cold. Rivulets of ice meandered down the wood grain. She pushed gently and at first saw the roiling surf crashing against the rocks below.

Then she saw the body.

It was hard to miss. She was pushing on the door, which nudged the inert figure. She supposed she gasped. The blood was just now starting to expand across someone’s plump belly. The puffy face and shaggy blond-gray hair were unrecognizable. Not due to the gunshot—she just didn’t know this man.

She looked up.

“Margaret?”

The wind tickled her ear with the menacing call as Gordon Fortran watched her with shrewd black eyes. Eyes that, for a moment, were hypnotic enough to wrench her gaze away from the gun in his hand. The puff she had identified earlier was the silencer affixed to the silver barrel—the same silencer that was now leveled on her chest.