Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) (15 page)

Oddly, though, he’d never thought of Sophie in sexual
terms.  In fact, since meeting her he had never looked at any slender blonde
the same way.

“It sure as hell is dark out here,” Daniel said in greeting.

“You’re a city boy at heart,” Elias said, surprised by the
stir of amusement.

“Cape Trouble isn’t much of a city.”

Elias shrugged.  “Lights stay on all night.”  Streetlights,
security lights, porchlights, and then there were the gas stations, restaurants
and convenience stores along Highway 101, open all night.  Heading into the
house, he said, “I don’t suppose you have good news.”

Hannah looked up when they entered the kitchen to the
piercing whistle of the teakettle.  Apparently she was oblivious to it.  She
did say a polite “Thank you for coming.”

As Elias silenced the teakettle, Daniel laid a hand on her
shoulder for a moment.  “Anything you need, Hannah.  Sophie says the same.”

Her smile was painfully wry.  “She’s pregnant.”

“Not even six months along.  She’s not letting it slow her
down much.  If you need her—”

Hannah only nodded, but they all knew she wouldn’t be
calling on her pregnant friend.

Elias set a mug of chicken noodle soup in front of her.  As
he poured two cups of coffee, he asked, “Did you find Dunn?”

With a sigh, Daniel pulled out a chair and sat down.  “No. 
He had a half-cave he’d taken over from Larry, but Sean Holbeck found it
abandoned.  He left a note there anyway, in hopes Dunn might stop by.  Looks
like Dunn didn’t feel safe there anymore after police located the encampment
this spring.  Every cop in the county has an eye out, but he rarely appears,
and especially around anyone in uniform.  And, while he seems to trust Holbeck
up to a point, Sean has no way to make contact.”

Hannah looked stricken, but Elias nodded, unsurprised.  Too
much of the county was wooded.  It had been logged at one time, but felt
primeval again.  And they all knew how many miles a man who still thought he
was being hunted could cover in a single day.

Daniel pulled a lined notebook and pen from a pocket, then
focused on Elias.  “Okay, let’s get started.  Is there more you didn’t tell
me?”

Hannah gaped from one to the other of them.  “What are you
talking about?”

Elias winced.

“Unsubstantiated rumors about Elias have floated around for
years, according to the couple long-time residents I’ve spoken to,” Daniel said
frankly.

Elias tried not to react visibly to Hannah’s uneasiness.  It
stung – but she’d be a fool not to wonder how credulous she’d been.

“They can’t be substantiated because they’re not true,” he
said flatly.  “But once people hear whispers, they never forget them.”

Daniel sipped his coffee and set the mug down.  “Do you know
when they started?”

Elias tried to stretch the taut muscles in his neck and
shoulders without being obvious.  “A few years after I returned to Cape
Trouble.”  Reminding himself that both the others were relatively recent transplants,
he explained, “I graduated from high school here, but left for college. 
Whitman, in eastern Washington.  They have a strong art department.”

Both Hannah and Daniel nodded.  Whitman was one of the
top-ranked liberal arts colleges on the west coast.

“I made friends, had a couple of relationships with women.” 
Those four years had been the most carefree of his life, away from his mother’s
poorly-veiled grief.  “Since I hadn’t done a semester abroad, after graduating
I decided to travel.  First in the U.S., then Europe.  Ultimately, I knew this
was what I needed to paint.”  His gesture encompassed the landscape of his
childhood, one that still fascinated him.  “I’d tried as a teenager, but I
lacked technique.  With a shrug, he added, “Aside from my art, Mom is here.  My
only sibling died as a child, my father died when I was a kid.  She has
friends, but that’s not the same.”

Expression arrested, Daniel said, “No wonder—”  He broke off
with a shake of his head.

Elias lifted his eyebrows.  “No wonder?”

“Your paintings depress the hell out of me.”  He grimaced. 
“Not all of them, but I wouldn’t call any of them cheerful.”

“‘Melancholy’ is the word you’re looking for,” Hannah said
unexpectedly.  “They’re stunning.  I’d have bought one if I could afford it,
but they make me feel…lonely.”

Elias tipped his head in acknowledgement.  He’d heard all of
that and more.  “It’s…not a conscious choice, but is why critics like my work. 
There are plenty of people talented enough to paint a beautiful landscape.”  He
didn’t say,
that’s not art
, but couldn’t help being dismissive.

“How did your sister die?” Daniel asked.

Elias told him, and about his father’s sudden death.

Daniel cast a quick glance at Hannah.  “And then there was
Michelle.”

“Elias told me he had a teenage crush on her,” she said
wryly.  “Of course, I already knew about her because of everything that
happened last summer.”

Everything
being a serial killer who had returned to
Cape Trouble and chosen Sophie as his next victim.

“Michelle’s death was one too many,” Elias said.  “I didn’t
realize for years how profound an impact it really had on me.  At the time, I
didn’t want anyone at school to know about my puppy love.  Being a teenager, I
did allow myself to brood while refusing to talk about my suffering.”

Hannah rolled her eyes.  “And the girls ate it up.”

Under other circumstances, he’d have laughed at his youthful
self.  As it was, at least she’d sounded tart, so he did smile.  “For all the
darkness infecting my soul, I somehow managed to play quarterback on the
football team – we made it to state – and nab the prettiest girl in school.  We
were Prom King and Queen.”

For all the complicated mess of grief and anger he had
stuffed out of sight, Elias knew he’d also been cocky and typically
self-centered at that age.  He’d been the golden boy – valedictorian, wildly
successful jock, able to have any girl he wanted.  He didn’t much like who he’d
been in high school.

Maybe most people didn’t.

“So let’s talk about the girlfriend,” Daniel said, pulling
Elias’s thoughts back to the grim reason for this conversation.

He moved in a way that probably betrayed his discomfort. 
“There’s…not much to say.  Her name was Laurel Price.  We broke up the summer
after graduation.”

Daniel hadn’t made a note yet.  Now he did.  “When you left
for college?”

Something skittered just below the surface of Elias’s
awareness, yet he couldn’t nail down the feeling long enough to figure it out. 
So he shook his head.  “I was an ass.  She was hurt because I didn’t have time
for her.  Yeah, I had to work to earn money for college, but the truth is, I
preferred to spend my free time painting than hanging out with her.  She hooked
up with Fletch that last couple months, but of course they broke up when it
came time for us all to go our separate ways to college.”

“How’d you get along with her father?” Daniel asked.

Elias stared at him.  “Her father?  What does he have to do
with anything?”

A shrug.  “Just wondered if she made up stories about you,
say.”

What the hell?  “Not as far as I know.”

“All right,” Daniel said.  “Best guess, when did the rumor
first surface?”

He almost had to count on his fingers.  He’d been
twenty-four when he returned home to Cape Trouble, so…  “I suspect the first
outbreak was thirteen years ago, but I can’t be sure, because nobody would have
told me.  I’d have been twenty-six then.”

A private man, he didn’t like sharing any of this, and he
liked even less that Hannah was listening, and entitled to hear.

Pretty, single women were often open to some fun when they
were on vacation.  Occasional sex, no real draw on his time, and he’d been
happy.  That had been enough for him until he’d met a nurse at the hospital,
Willow Dykstra.  A fine-boned, slim blonde, of course.  Whether the
relationship would have become serious, Elias didn’t know.  After a couple of
months, she became cool almost overnight, told him she’d found a new job and
was moving.

“I couldn’t figure out what went wrong,” he admitted.  “One
minute, we were fine, the next she’d packed up and was gone.  Six or eight
months later, I had a gallery opening in Seattle, where she had supposedly
moved.  I called Willow’s mother to ask for her phone number.  She said, ‘My
daughter does not want to hear from you.  Please don’t call here again.’”  He
remembered the message word for word.

A couple more relationships had ended as abruptly.

“I confronted one of the woman.  Selena Montgomery.”  His
interest in her had been tepid enough, he probably wouldn’t even recall her
name had it not been for the way she cut him off.  “She said she knew I’d been
lucky to avoid jail for battery, and she wasn’t having any of it.”  Her
expression of contempt tinged with fear had felt like a blow.  When he tried to
argue, she slammed the door in his face.  “That’s when I asked around.”

His friends admitted they’d heard the shit.  All insisted
they ignored it because they knew none of it was true.  But he’d seen gazes
slide away a few times, and discovered it could destroy you to know even
long-time friends couldn’t help speculating.

So far, Elias couldn’t read Hannah.  Her gaze stayed on him,
but he didn’t like meeting her eyes when he was laying out his entire sexual
and romantic history.  So far, he’d covered the pathetic part.  Now he’d
reached the tragic.

He ached to shift, to fidget, to somehow release this
tension, but he felt vulnerable enough already.  So he just kept talking.

“I figured someone had just been stirring the pot.  Then I
started seeing Polly.  Jennberg,” he added, when Daniel’s pen paused over the
page.  “She’d finished grad school, was just passing through, doing the same
kind of thing I had except she intended to be a writer.  We hit it off, I let
her stay with me.  The couple weeks she’d intended to be here turned into a
couple months.  Then one day she came home pissed because someone told her she
should be careful, that I had a history of abusing women.”

“Someone?” 

“A couple of women.  Polly had taken a job as a waitress at
the Waves.”  The restaurant was attached to a local resort.  “She handed these
women menus, and one of them said, ‘Oh, I’ve seen you with Elias Burton.’  It
went downhill from there.  Polly didn’t know either of their names, so I
couldn’t call and say, What the hell?  We shrugged it off, but then another
time she overheard some people talking at one of the booths.  No indication
they knew she was there, or who she was.”

“She start to wonder?” Daniel asked.

“No.  She knew me.  I drink in moderation, I rarely raise my
voice, and if I’m angry, I get quieter and go off alone.  I have never in my
life hit a woman.”

Daniel contemplated him.  “A man?”

Elias shrugged.  “I did play football.  Pick-up basketball
games.  And, yeah, I was in a few fights in high school.  Aren’t most guys?”

“I’ll take the fifth on that.”

Hannah mumbled something that might have been
“Testosterone.”

Elias said abruptly, “Polly was driving that stretch of
highway just north of town.  Way above the ocean, only a guardrail to keep a
car from plunging over.”

Apprehension parted Hannah’s lips.  She looked like she
might not be breathing.

“Someone forced her off the road.  Vehicle the same color as
my Land Rover.  ‘Sort of an SUV’ was the best she could come up with.  Her car
almost went over, but by some miracle the rear axle snagged on the guardrail. 
They had to winch her car up before they dared try to get her out.  She was
injured badly enough, once she was released from the hospital she decided to go
home to recuperate.  She knew investigators had looked at my Land Rover and
found no scratches, but she was skittish, and how could I blame her?”

“She never came back,” Hannah said softly.

He hoped that was sympathy and not pity in her beautiful
brown eyes.

“No.”

Daniel crossed his arms on the table.  “You must have made
some effort to find out what was being said about you and where it originated.”

“I did, and so did my mother.  People remembered who’d told
them, so we’d work our way up the line until someone would shake his head and
say, ‘I just heard.  Maybe at a party or something?  Sorry, no idea.’”

“Bet your mother was steamed.”

Elias grunted.  “That’s putting it mildly.  She quit
speaking to some friends because they’d heard that crap and probably even
passed it along without telling her.”

Daniel nodded, then glanced down at his notes.  “Okay. 
Anyone else before, uh—” he flipped pages until he found what he was looking
for “—Amy?”

Elias had to unclench his teeth.  “No.  I kept my distance
from women for a good while.  And she didn’t go by Amy.  Apparently that was
too ordinary for an artist.  She was Mackenzie.  I only heard her real name…later.”

Now wary, Hannah looked from one to the other of them.  “Who
is Amy?”

Daniel spared Elias by answering.  “She’s the one who died.”

Daniel’s voice drifted in from the front porch.  “You have
to figure out who hates you so much.”

Hannah let everything she’d heard, not just this, percolate
in her head.

Elias had followed Daniel out, leaving her alone while he
shifted her car into the garage.  She wanted to believe having both their cars
out of sight for the night would confuse him, but not make him too angry. 
She’d already spent the day agonizing over what he might have done to Ian out
of frustration over the failed ransom drop.

Was Ian trapped in a small, dark place?  Tied up?  Had he
been fed or given anything to drink? 
Dear Lord, please, keep him safe.

It didn’t even occur to her to stand up, to explore while
she waited for Elias.  Arms crossed tightly, she only sat in the same place at
the kitchen table where Elias had placed her.  She had to deal with the
knowledge that Ian had been abducted not out of anger at her, but to lash out
at Elias.  Or maybe both of them.  Right before he left, Daniel had reminded
her about the two women in town who had had a secret admirer before her.

“Best guess, you compounded this guy’s rage by turning to
Elias.  But even if you hadn’t, we might be in the same place.  He became
enraged with both those women.  Not enough evidence was saved for me ever to
prove it, but I don’t think Lori Dressler killed herself.  I’m convinced she
was murdered.  And Beth Stanford was smart to get out of town when she did.”

“But this,” Hannah said in bewilderment.  “Taking a child.” 
He could have done anything to her.  Anything at all, if only he’d left Ian
alone.

“This is about money.”  Daniel’s tone was soft, his
expression grim.  “He wants revenge and money this time.  We’ll get Ian back,
Hannah.  You need to have faith.”

Right this moment, she felt like a dry husk.  For all the
prayers she had offered up, faith was an impossible concept.

Elias looked ten years older when he walked back into the
kitchen.  “You’ll be safest here for the night,” he said abruptly.

With her mind moving so slowly, she had to think about what
he was trying to say.  Finally, she said, “You mean…you think I should go
somewhere else in the morning?”

“No!”  His head fell forward and he pinched the bridge of
his nose.  “No,” he said again, hoarsely.  “But you can’t be feeling very
positive about me right now.”

“You think I blame you.”

“Shouldn’t you?”  His eyes, bleak, met hers.  “I knew I
should stay away from you.  I tried.  But somehow I convinced myself everything
that had gone wrong before was just shit happening.  Nasty gossip.  Mackenzie –
Amy – was careless.  At the time, I worried.  I’d warned her enough times about
tides, but there was no solid reason to believe her death was anything but an
accident.”

Daniel seemed to agree.  Too all appearances, Mackenzie had
been caught by the incoming tide on the rocks that jutted out from Cape Trouble
Point.  Her battered body washed up on Jasper Beach, and parts of her easel
were found broken, wedged between rocks when the tide receded.

Still watching her, Elias said, “It’s been long enough, I
thought…maybe I could have you.”  Muscles jumped in his jaw.  His voice was
harsh with self-condemnation.  “If I had tied it all together before I ever
said a word to you but ‘Coffee, please’, you’d be tucking Ian into bed right
now, maybe planning to give yourself a little time to read, a chance to stand
outside and admire the stars while Jack-Jack peed.  You and Ian wouldn’t—”  He
shook his head hard and swung away, presenting his back to her.

If it weren’t such an effort to hold herself together, she
would have gone to him, hugged him from behind.  She couldn’t do that, but she
could say something.

“Didn’t you hear what Daniel said about Lori Dressler and
Beth Stanford?  Neither of them had ever even met you.”  Seeing that the
rigidity in his shoulders hadn’t eased, Hannah took a deep breath, swallowed
and said, “And I’d have been alone through all this.  If you’d never been
anything but a customer, I wouldn’t have you when I need you so much.”

For a moment, he stayed still, as if he hadn’t heard her. 
Or she hadn’t said the right thing.  But then he turned slowly, the devastation
on his face bringing a cry from her.

“Elias?”

“Thank you—” his chest rose and fell with a rasping breath
“—for saying that.  For trusting me.”

Because of the other women.  This deeply solitary man had
suffered so much loss.  Every time he made himself vulnerable by lowering his guard,
allowing himself to care, he’d been betrayed, and not just by an enemy whose
motives were unimaginable.  How could any woman who knew him well believe for a
single second that Elias Burton would ever hurt her?

In the face of her silence, he said, “I would do anything
for you.  Or for Ian.  I hope you believe that.”

“I do.”  Her eyes filled with tears.  “I know that, Elias.”

Maybe it wasn’t just her; maybe he was trying to redeem
himself because he hadn’t been able to do anything to save Amy.  No, more than
that, Hannah realized; as a child, how could he not have wondered if somehow
his sister’s death, his father’s, were his fault?  And then there was Michelle.

“God.”  He was suddenly on his knees beside her chair, his
arms wrapped around her, his face buried against her belly.  His shoulders
shook.

Face wet, she bent over him the way she had that damn duffel
bag today.  Protecting.  She stroked his broad back, let her fingers slide into
the thick silk of his gilt hair.

They stayed like that for a long time.  She felt when the
rigidity left his muscles, when he quit crying, if that’s what he had been
doing. 
I love you
, she thought, but couldn’t say, not now.  Not yet. 
And maybe the words weren’t even true.  Her emotions were so raw right now,
Hannah reminded herself.  Her gratitude could be influencing her.

With a heavy sigh, he straightened, his arms falling away
from her.  His eyes were dry when they met hers, but reddened.  “Hell of a
guardian I’ve been so far.”

Her smile shook.  “What else could you have done?  An unseen
enemy is the worst.”

“The adult’s version of the monster under the bed.”  He
shook his head and got to his feet without his customary grace, even staggering
a little.  The stress was taking a toll on him, just as it was on her.  “I keep
waiting to be hit by a bolt of lightning that will tell me who could possibly
be doing this, but it hasn’t come yet.  There are people who don’t like me, but
that’s not the same thing.  This has been a concentrated campaign to destroy my
life, and it’s been going on for…”  He appeared to count.  “At least twelve
years.  But what could I do?  If I’d gone to the cops, they’d have thought I
was crazy.  And all this time, he’s been around.  Does he say hello when he
sees me?  Do I play football with him, have an occasional beer with him?  Does
he pretend to be a friend, or is he someone I hardly know who hates me for
doing something that seemed trivial enough to me at the time, I don’t even
remember it?  Who is he?”

Hannah couldn’t bear his torment.  She found the strength to
rise to her feet and put her arms around him.  “You’ll figure it out.  I know
you will.”

Still vibrating with frustration, he looked down at her with
eyes darker than usual.  “How?  Tell me how, Hannah?  And will it be in time?”

*****

Elias regained his outward composure, but the words stuck
with him.

Hannah had gone off to take a hot bath in his jacuzzi tub. 
She had to sleep if she were to keep functioning.  Maybe the bath would help.

Listening to the hot water run, he imagined her peeling off
her clothes and finally stepping into the tub.  All that creamy skin, the lush
curves.  The pictures in his head had him painfully aroused.  He was only glad
Hannah was shut in the bathroom and not in the kitchen to notice.  She’d have
every reason to be offended.  Being male meant he couldn’t seem to control his
reaction to the small sounds that meant she was naked, and so close he could
stand up and walk into the bathroom.

No, she’d have locked the door.

Maybe.

Elias groaned and buried his face in his hands, scraping his
fingernails into his scalp.  Thinking about sex right now made him feel like a
creep.  Anyway, he had to concentrate.  Somewhere in his head was the one
memory that would end this insanity.

Who had he hurt?  When?

In his years of driving, he’d had two car accidents.  The
time his Land Rover was rear-ended wasn’t his fault.  He stopped for a red
light, the idiot behind him had assumed neither had to stop.  The Land Rover
was a solid vehicle; the car that hit him suffered more damage, as did the
other driver, who had also had to be taken to the hospital.  But he’d been a
North Fork resident at the time.  Elias had never set eyes on the guy again. 
And, anyway – that happened maybe ten years ago.  He hadn’t yet heard about the
ugly rumors, but he thought now they had already been spreading.

The other accident, he had been responsible, but only out of
inexperience.  He’d had his clunker of a car packed with buddies when he
misjudged distances turning onto the highway.  They’d been hammered by a pickup
unable to stop soon enough.  Elias had been a little embarrassed at the time
because he walked away without any damage while all of his friends suffered
bruises at the least.  The two most seriously injured had been sitting on the
side of the car that had taken the brunt of the impact.  Kenny Carruthers
suffered a broken collarbone, Fletch a broken leg.  Elias wasn’t sure they’d
all realized then how lucky they had been.

Not an athlete, Kenny wallowed in sympathy from the girls
and had once thanked Elias.  Fletch was a little more pissed because he missed
most of the football season their senior year.  He, too, probably had more
attention from the girls than usual, however, and it wasn’t as if they’d been
scouted by major college football programs.  Or as if he’d have been recruited
if any scouts had seen him.

Fletch got maddest when he developed an itch inside the
cast.  Since he lived with Elias that year, after his own family disintegrated,
he had plenty of opportunities to give Elias a hard time.  They’d been friends
long enough, that’s all it amounted to.

Okay, what else?

Laurel had been plenty mad at him as well as hurt after
their breakup, but to the best of his knowledge, she’d never come home to Cape
Trouble except for visits to her parents.  She also wasn’t male, and that voice
on the phone, however muffled, definitely was.  Anyway – she was pretty, no
genius but had been happy to go to Oregon State, and had already gone through
another boyfriend before she left.  Elias knew she’d been married.  Whether she
still was, he had no idea.

There’d been moments in college.  One of his professors in
particular treated him differently than he did anyone else.  A fellow student
who was used to being the star felt slighted and complained constantly.  Rylan
Garvey.  A few years back, out of curiosity Elias had searched his name on the
internet.  He hadn’t popped up, which suggested he hadn’t achieved success as
an artist.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t making big bucks designing graphics for
games or logos for corporations.

In retrospect, Elias knew he hadn’t handled the jealousy
well.  He hadn’t come right out and said,
I’m more talented
, but he
might as well have.  Twenty-year-old kids weren’t known for sensitivity.  An
excuse, but also true.

I’m reaching
, he thought, but would mention the name
to Daniel anyway.

At least his erection had subsided.

If the trouble really had begun with Hannah, the name that
would have jumped to the top of his list was Randall Bresler’s.

Elias hadn’t joined the group standing out on the highway
waving signs at passing motorists in protest of the resort being built, but he
had expressed his unhappiness about it.  He’d spoken at a couple of county
council hearings and worked his way up the administrative chain of the Oregon State
Parks Department.  The lighthouse on Cape Trouble Point was a state scenic
outlook.  Having deteriorated, the lighthouse itself wasn’t open to the public,
but it drew tourists and was often photographed.  The gift shops and galleries
in town featured endless paintings of the lighthouse.  A local woman
screen-printed pictures of it on scarves and T-shirts.  Elias still didn’t
understand how Bresler had received the necessary permits to build a major
resort on the same point and so close to it, even if the resort buildings
climbed down the steep slope to Jasper Beach and weren’t visible from the trail
circling the lighthouse itself.  Nobody would be photographing it again from
that side, however.

He had once exchanged a few tense words with Bresler – but that
was in the last year, and even if Daniel hadn’t verified that Bresler was in
Seattle at the time of Ian’s kidnapping, Elias’s gut said the hate was too
personal, too long-lived, for a man who’d gotten his way despite a few delays.

Ron Campbell.  Elias had tangled with him a few times, too,
mostly over environmental issues.  Ron was all about development, Elias in
favor of protecting the dunes and forest that remained.

He kept circling back to high school.

The two hadn’t had much to do with each other in high school
– except for the caricature he’d drawn for the school newspaper.  Then running
for student body president, Ron had been spitting mad about it.  Caricature
could be sharp, or it could be cruel.  Elias was afraid his had fallen into the
second category.  After seeing it, students laughed at Ron as he walked by. 
But he’d also won the election and continued to reign as the big man on campus
until graduation, so why would he hold a grudge?

Because he wanted Hannah, and Elias had gotten in his way?