Krewe of Hunters 8 The Uninvited (28 page)

Tyler walked through the woods, away from the cabin, calling
out to Sean, who was following the same path but thirty feet closer to the main
road below. When he was near the edge, he came across a pine with a large broken
branch. He dropped down to the earth and he could see the dirt and needles that
had been disturbed. Just beyond the broken branch, the forest began to dwindle
and an overgrown embankment led down to the road.

Their quarry had indeed fled.

He saw Sean break through the trees.

“He was here,” Tyler said.

Sean joined him. “Find anything?”

“I found out how he got away.”

“Did Standish say anything? Did he see anything?” Sean
asked.

“Yeah, voices in the woods. Ghosts in the woods.”

“This guy is using technical devices,” Sean said. “I believe he
has a copy of the Beast Bradley painting, and he substitutes it for the other
when he’s stalking his prey. He has some kind of mechanism to throw his voice.
I’ll bet he lured Standish to the water that way. He’s not stupid—Standish had a
shotgun. If we’re lucky, our guy dropped something. I’ll have Logan see if we
can get a crime scene unit to go through these woods.”

“We’ll
need
a unit. It’s almost
impossible to see in here with the canopy of branches and the mist.”

Sean rested a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t protect everyone
who ever walked into the Tarleton-Dandridge House,” he said.

Tyler couldn’t shake his anger with himself. “I should have
known. Hell, someone called him three times, and he felt enough anxiety to head
out. He said no one knew where he was going except for his daughter, but…this
person knows the area, Sean. This is someone who’s read everything that’s been
written about the house. The board and the other guides were aware that Allison
was working on a paper—and that she’d studied what Standish wrote.”

“Tyler, quit beating yourself up. We couldn’t have known that
Standish would be in danger. And it looks like you got to him in time,” Sean
told him.

“Barely, and I don’t know if he’ll make it. He’s not a young
man.”

“He’ll make it,” Sean said. “I can hear the sirens now.”

* * *

Allison stepped aside when the EMTs arrived with their
medical bags and stretcher. She looked on as they set up an IV and took
Standish’s vital signs.

“CPR?” one of the young men asked her.

“Yes, he wasn’t breathing at first.”

“Has he spoken?”

“Briefly.”

The EMTs didn’t care about voices or ghosts in the woods; their
only concern was for the injured man.

“He was in the water?”

“Yes. Facedown. We don’t know how he got there, if he was
injured, tripped—pushed. We don’t know,” Allison said.

She watched, stricken, while the team worked on Standish. Then
one of them glanced up at her and smiled.

“I’m an EMT, not a doc. But I think he’s going to be okay.
Thank God you came along when you did.”

She smiled back weakly.

It was a shame she’d ever contacted the man. She’d unwittingly
put him in danger.

Sean and Tyler returned from the woods, their expressions grim,
as Standish was placed on a stretcher. It was decided that Kelsey and Sean would
go to the hospital and guard Martin Standish there. Logan seemed to think it was
important that Allison be at the house.

She and Tyler waited, standing by the beautiful little bubbling
stream, as the EMTs moved out. “It’s my fault,” Allison couldn’t help
saying.

Tyler shook his head. “No. I was the fool,” he said harshly. “I
should’ve had someone watching him from the minute we found out about the
missing article.”

Allison was afraid that he felt his interest in her might be
keeping him from making the best judgments.

“No,” she said, “you don’t understand. If I hadn’t gotten it
into my head to publish another paper on the house, maybe none of this would
have happened.”

“Allison, it’s no one else’s fault when someone commits murder.
It’s the work of the bastard who believes his life or agenda is greater than the
lives of anyone else. And I don’t think the killing started with your paper. I
think it started before. Obviously, no one living now was responsible for the
death of a Civil War soldier or the suicide of a distraught young woman—things
that took place years ago—but as to the kid who was electrocuted, and the guide
who had a heart attack in Angus’s study…I think we may be looking at the same
perpetrator.” He turned away suddenly, and she realized he’d heard movement from
the trees.

“Crime scene techs are here,” he said. He walked away to greet
the team, and she could hear him explaining the situation succinctly, including
a chronicle of the actions they’d taken since they’d come.

Allison walked closer to the stream. She stared down at the
water. It seemed to glitter. As the water skipped over pebbles and rocks, it
reflected rays of sunshine, which shone like scattered diamonds.

Something caught her eye and she cried out.

Tyler spun around, his face anxious.

“I see Standish’s rifle,” she said. “There—it looks as if he
threw it. As if he was hit from behind, and then threw it.”

Tyler and the crew of techs walked over to her.

“Good eye,” one of the techs said.

He sloshed through the stream to collect the rifle and then
glanced at Tyler. “We’ll comb this part of the woods,” he said. “We’ll get back
to you with anything we have, down to gum wrappers if there are any.”

Tyler thanked him, then led Allison back through the woods to
his car, parked in front of the cabin. “Let’s get back to Philly,” he said.

She was hesitant as they drove. “Tyler, maybe
I
should go away. People around me, even people I
hardly know, seem to wind up dead or in the hospital.”

“What? Go back to your house? No. Don’t you see, Allison? That
would mean one or two of us having to patrol your house to make sure no one’s
figured out a way to break in. Besides, you’ve been around all these people for
years. Any one of our suspects could have a key.”

“I meant fly away somewhere,” she said.

“If that would keep you safe, I’d have you do it in a second.
But this person is a step ahead. He’d find you, Allison. He’d go after you. He
found Standish.”

“I just feel that…”

He reached out, squeezing her hand. “Yeah, I know,” he said
huskily. “But we need you where you are. I need you with me—where I know I can
keep you safe.”

She smiled at that. “I like being…safe,” she told him. “But I
can’t stop feeling that I’m a catalyst for others being hurt. And killed.”

“What will solve this is finding out the
who.
That will prevent more people from being hurt or killed. I
think we’re just about onto the
why.
Our killer
knows that, and it’s making him desperate. And when a killer gets desperate, he
gets careless.”

She leaned back in the passenger seat, closing her eyes.

When they were a little more than halfway back to the city,
Tyler’s phone rang. He asked her to pick it up.

It was Sean, and she put the phone on speaker.

They both listened as Sean told them that Martin Standish was
going to make it. “He’s conscious again and clear in his mind. He was knocked
out by a massive blow to the head. He would have drowned if you two hadn’t come
along when you did.”

“I’m so thankful we did,” Allison said.

“He’s going to have some tests done because it was a pretty
nasty blow,” Sean continued. “He says he heard voices calling to him from the
woods. At first he was afraid it might have been his daughter, that she’d come
up and gotten lost and was wandering through the woods. Then he heard voices
that seemed to come from a number of directions. As if the woods were filled
with ghosts. He heard another noise and got angry, so he followed it to the
stream, thinking he’d be safe. The man is good with a shotgun, from what I’ve
been told.”

“And then?” Tyler asked.

“The next thing he knew, he felt a sharp pain against his
skull, and he fell into the water. That’s the last he remembered—until he felt
Allison ‘kissing’ him,” Sean said.

Tyler smiled. “That must’ve been nice for him.”

“Yeah, the guy has quite a sense of humor for an old coot.
You’re not going to believe this. He’s still in pain, but he seems happy now. He
says someone’s finally paying attention to him, and he thinks his research is
going to change history.”

“It will—but only in our small corner of the world,” Allison
said.

“Anyway, Kelsey and I will hang out here,” Sean finished. “It’s
not a huge hospital and their security is pretty flimsy. One of us will be in
his room at all times. And could you look for that other painting?” he asked. “I
know it exists.”

“We’ll do that,” Tyler promised.

* * *

When they reached the Tarleton-Dandridge, Kat was at the
morgue, going through the autopsy reports on everyone who’d died at the
house.

Jane and Logan were in the salon, where the antique dining
table had been turned into a workstation. Julian was with them, trying to move a
piece of paper.

He stood, relieved to see Allison. He tried to give her a
hug.

She tried to hug him in return. With limited success.

Then she went to take a quick shower and Tyler planned to do
the same as soon as she was out.

Logan listened to his report on what they’d discovered, then
said he was going to keep searching through the records they’d amassed. “I think
you should give Detective Jenson a call. The local police were going to keep
tabs on Oxford, Addison, Pierson, Fanning and Lawrence.”

Tyler agreed and made the call. Jenson told him, “Oxford left
his house in the ten minutes between my patrol car’s drive-by. Lawrence’s car
hasn’t moved. No one’s seen anyone come or go from the Addison house. Pierson
had a meeting at a bank downtown. He left his place about twenty minutes ago.”
Jenson paused. “I’m not sure how much any of that will help you.”

Tyler thanked him, saying, “It helps.” He related everything
about the trip he and Allison had taken to see Martin Standish and what had
happened that morning.

“I can double the patrol,” Jenson said. “But it’s hard. We’re
not allowed overtime with the current budget cuts.”

“We appreciate whatever you can do.”

It was growing late. Logan ordered food. When Allison was done
with the shower, Tyler went in. The hot water felt wonderful; he hadn’t realized
how cramped and stiff he was from getting soaked in the cold stream.
Fortunately, the water stayed hot just long enough.... When he came out, he felt
invigorated.

He knew Allison was with Logan and Jane. Logan was questioning
her, once again, about the people she’d worked with at the house.

He went back to the entry and sat down at the bank of screens,
rolling through the images quickly to watch the hours since they’d left.

Late in the middle of the night, Lucy Tarleton had appeared.
She’d gone to the study and looked in, then hurried through the house to the
back.

He wondered if, night after night, she repeated that same
circuit. If so, he assumed it meant she was sneaking out of the house, heading
over to the stables to get Firewalker and take off into the night, carrying her
information to the patriots at Valley Forge.

There had been no other activity.

He felt a touch on his shoulder. “Give it a rest,” Logan said.
“Start over in the morning. Standish survived and he has two of the best guards
around. Get some sleep.”

Tyler nodded. “Thanks,” he told Logan huskily.

Allison was already upstairs in Lucy’s room. He found her in
bed, wide-eyed and waiting for him.

“Should I be here?” she asked.

Tyler felt the day’s tension, his own self-reproach, fall away
as if he’d shed an irritating coat. She had that effect on him. It wasn’t that
she made him forget; she made him see more clearly.

“I’m grateful you are,” he said, “and there’s nowhere else I
think you should be.”

He stripped off his clothing and lay down beside her. He
touched her hair softly, looking into the deep blue of her eyes, getting lost in
them. “So, the last man you were seeing was something of a rock star, huh?”

“It was a while ago now,” she said.

“What was he like?”

“Good guy, nice guy, but for the longest time, I thought there
was something wrong with
me.
He’d plan to pick me up
and wouldn’t show. At that point I knew about the alcohol but not about the
drugs. Later on, I went to a few Narcotics Anonymous meetings. And I knew he
cared about me, but he refused to acknowledge the addictions. I ended the
relationship. I don’t know what he’s doing now. I pray he’s alive.”

He stroked her hair. “It’s a terrible thing, addiction,” he
told her, drawing her close.

She lay against him for a minute in silence, a silence that
seemed relaxed and comfortable. Pulling her closer he kissed the top of her
head.

She stirred, and he kissed her again. He felt her naked body
slide against his, and her slightest touch was instant arousal.

He loved the fact that she could make the world go away. And
that she could so easily return to it. He found himself wondering if she’d ever
leave her beloved Philadelphia. Virginia wasn’t that far, but…

He forgot the past and future as they made love.

And then they slept peacefully together.

In the middle of the night, he felt her move. He woke as she
slipped out from the covers and stood there for a moment, framed in the pale
moonlight that filtered through the drapes.

She walked away from him. Tyler rose quickly, watching her; she
wasn’t awake, he thought. She wasn’t aware of him.

For a few seconds he was afraid she’d take off through the
night stark naked. She didn’t. She went to the foot of the bed and pulled on her
robe, although she didn’t bother with slippers. She hurried across the room to
the wall where there was nothing—nothing that he could see. She bent to pick up
something, cradling it tenderly against her body. She paused, head bent, as if
she was praying, and then hurried to the door.