A Dark Lure Read online

  She snorted. Yet an uneasiness coiled in her gut at the look of determined ferocity in the Old Man’s eyes—she feared suddenly he might take his own life, on his own terms. Using all those pills.

  “Well . . .” She hesitated, reluctant to leave him alone. “Night, then.” She started down the passage.

  He startled her by calling after her. “Why do you do this, Olivia?”

  She turned. “Do what?”

  “Push a dying old man around. Humor him. What do you want from me?”

  A bolt of hurt cracked through her.

  “Don’t, Myron,” she said quietly. “Do not think you can push me away too, now. I’m not that easy.”

  He glowered at her, his hands fisting on the armrests of his chair. “You think I pushed my kids away? You think I alienated my own son—is that what you think?”

  “Did you?”

  He spun his chair around and wheeled himself through the door into his room. “Go to hell, Liv.” He slammed the door behind him.

  “Been there,” she yelled back at him. “Done that!”

  Silence.

  Damn the old bastard.

  “I know your game, Myron!” she called through his door. “You’re too damn weak to man up to your own emotions, that’s what! Compromise takes too much work, so you just cut everyone off!”

  No response. Just the old grandfather clock ticktocking down the hall.

  Olivia muttered a curse as she turned and stomped down the passage. She clattered down the massive three-story staircase, memories suddenly hounding her on the way down. She’d cut off her own family, her ex, her community. All she had left was a dying old man for whom she cared far too much, and Ace and Spirit. That was the extent of her family now. Home was her tiny log cabin on the lake in a grove of trees with no electricity or computer to connect her to the outside world, and it was not even hers. It would go to Cole and Jane, probably sooner than later.

  It was all going to shit under her feet.

  Buck up, buttercup, you’ve come through worse. Nothing you can do about the old man dying . . .

  But there was something. She stalled outside the library. There was one little thing she could still do. She could call his children. She could give them the choice to come home. To say good-bye. To bridge the gap of broken years. She could give them a chance she never got.

  She could give Myron the chance to say he was sorry.

  Olivia strode through the library to the annex at the back that served as Myron’s study. The fire was dying to glowing embers. Ace was still there in front of it, sleeping like the dead. Inside the study, Myron’s dark wood desk was cluttered with papers. A fat manila envelope rested atop the clutter. On it was scrawled “Last Will and Testament.” Another stark reminder that things were coming to an end.

  She opened the top left desk drawer, from which she’d once seen Myron take his Rolodex. Inside the drawer, next to the Rolodex, was a hardcover book with a bookmark between the pages. Surprise washed through her. It was Cole McDonough’s most recent publication—a work of narrative nonfiction titled simply Survivors.

  She opened the cover, read the inside jacket.

  Why does one person miraculously survive against all odds, while others perish when all they had to do was wait to be rescued? In this examination of the psychology of survival, Cole McDonough dissects true, bone-chilling encounters with death to expose a surprising set of traits that explain why certain individuals can avoid fatal panic, and go from victim to survivor . . .

  Olivia’s chest tightened with complex emotions. She liked to think of herself as a survivor—one who’d outlasted and outwitted the Watt Lake butcher. But had she? His evil still touched her deep inside. On some level she knew she’d always be struggling to outrun him, the memories. The person she once was. Maybe Olivia was the survivor, but Sarah Baker was not. Because he’d killed Sarah. And she’d helped him.

  Olivia decided to borrow the book. She was sure Myron wouldn’t mind.

  She flicked through his Rolodex, found the entries for Jane and Cole, scribbled them down on a piece of paper. Whether the cell numbers were current or not, she’d soon find out. Replacing the Rolodex, she closed the drawer. As she did, she knocked over a small brass figurine. It clunked loudly to the wood floor. She cursed, picked it up and set it straight. Then stilled as a noise came from the library. Her pulse quickened.

  “Hello?” She entered the library cautiously. “Who’s there?”

  A soft scuffling sounded in the hall. Ace wasn’t on the mat. Tension quickened through Olivia. She moved fast and quietly as a cat, suddenly acutely aware of the hunting blade she habitually wore sheathed at her hip.

  She entered the hallway. A figure moved around the corner and under the staircase. Olivia caught the flash of a pale blue dress.

  “Adele? Is that you?”

  The housekeeper stepped out from behind the staircase, Ace behind her. Flustered, she smoothed her skirt.

  Anger spurted through Olivia, fired by adrenaline. She hated being scared. Fear brought the possibility of flashbacks.

  “Was that you in the library?” she said too brusquely, heart thudding.

  “No . . . I mean, yes,” Adele said. “I saw that Mr. McDonough’s dinner tray was still there. I cleaned it up and was just going to leave for the night when I thought I heard someone moving in his study.” Her gaze dropped to the piece of paper and book in Olivia’s hand.

  “It was me,” Olivia said curtly, stuffing the paper with the phone numbers into the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Yes. Well, good. I . . . thought it might have been an intruder. I’d better be on my way.” She bustled to the front door, grabbed her coat from the hook. She punched her arms into the sleeves, then hesitated.

  “Did you find what you needed, then? In Mr. McDonough’s study.”

  Suspicion unfurled in Olivia. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Adele waited a minute. Olivia said nothing.

  “Good night, then.”

  “I’ll follow you out,” Olivia said, grabbing her own jacket and a flashlight from the shelf.

  She locked the front door behind her while Adele made her way around the side of the house where she parked her Subaru. Olivia heard the engine start. From the porch she watched the housekeeper’s vehicle heading down the dirt driveway, headlights’ twin beams disappearing into the blackness. Above, the sky was a dark vault pricked with stars.

  As the sound of the Subaru engine faded into the void of wilderness, a heavy, cold silence descended, and a strange unease settled over Olivia’s shoulders.

  She flicked on the flashlight and crossed the lawn with Ace at her heels. As they entered the unlit grove of aspens, dead leaves and dry grasses rustling and whispering about them in the night breeze, she heard the sharp crack of a twig.

  She froze.

  Another crack.

  Olivia stuffed the book down the front of her jacket and bent down to grab Ace’s collar. She panned her flashlight around into the shadows. Ace growled. Her heart beat faster. She waited, listened.

  Nothing more. Just the clapping and whispering and rustling of dead leaves and dry branches. Yet the sense of being watched from the darkness remained acute.

  Still holding on to Ace, she ran her beam through the trees again, expecting the reflecting gleam of green eyes. Or red. Depending on whether it was a night-vision animal or something warm blooded.

  But she could discern nothing but shadow and darkness. Keeping a firm grasp on Ace’s collar, she quickly made her way to her cabin. Ace didn’t stand a chance against coyotes or a bear. He didn’t stand a chance against much at all, going blind and lame as he was.

  Once inside she lit the kerosene lamps and a candle. Warm light quavered into her small living area. She immediately felt more relaxed.

  Olivia reached for the dead bolt on th
e door, hesitated, then dropped her hand. She suffered from panic attacks when confined. She also refused to be scared out here. Sebastian George was dead, and not locking her cabin door was her statement of freedom, her personal line of triumph in the sand. Yet she stood there, rubbing her arms, nausea churning her gut. Why feel like this now? As if something dark was coming? It was Myron’s looming death—that’s what it had to be.

  Drawing the blinds, she stoked up what remained of the glowing embers in the woodstove and set a pot of soup onto the stove. Ace curled up on his mat in front of the fire. Checking her watch, she figured it would be close to midnight in Cuba, and about six a.m. in London.

  It was both too late and too early to call.

  She paced her open-plan living area, still rubbing her arms. A nervous tic.

  To hell with it. Myron could be dead tomorrow. She unsheathed the stubby satellite phone on her belt—a small Globalstar GSP-1700, one of her few indulgences. She didn’t spend much on clothes, barely anything on makeup. She rarely went into town, unless for chores. Her extravagances were expensive bamboo rods, fly-tying equipment, pricey fly line and reels. And she owned and carried a sat phone, not because cell reception out here was crap, not because she wanted contact with the outside world. But despite her proclamations otherwise, despite the fact she refused to be a victim, or afraid, a dark permanent thing had lodged deep inside her psyche—she wanted a way to call for help, wherever she was. In spite of her bravado, she never again would be totally cut off without a safety line.

  First she dialed Jane’s number in London. Her call went straight to voice mail. She hung up, pausing as she heard something outside. She listened carefully, that dark feeling closing tighter around her. She glanced at Ace—her radar. But her dog was sound asleep. She dialed the number for Cole McDonough.

  He picked up on the fifth ring.

  CHAPTER 3

  Florida Keys. Black’s Marina Bar. Thursday, almost midnight.

  The night was sultry, the bar crowded. Windows were flung open wide to the salt air, but it did little to dissipate the smoky, jazz-filled atmosphere. Perspiration gleamed on the dark skin of the Cuban ex-pat jazz musicians crowded upon the tiny stage, and on the faces of patrons who laughed, and whispered, and drank and swayed to the palpable beats on the marina’s tiny dance floor.

  A female vocalist took the mike. Lovingly. And began to sing, her voice low and dark and full with mystery and ancient heat. Sensuality burned like heavy incense into the air as the couples on the floor moved with the rhythm of her voice. Candles trembled in jars, and the floor seemed to shift a little under Cole’s chair.

  Or perhaps it was the booze. And the weed they’d smoked on the boat. He blinked, trying to marshal his consciousness. His lids were heavy. He sat nursing a beer at a small round table with his old mate from the war trenches, Gavin Black, a photojournalist who’d packed it all in to open this dockside bar in the Keys and run fishing charters on his boat. He and Gav had been up before dawn, and they’d fished until after dark. They were sunburned and salt-stung, and their muscles ached in a good way.

  Gav had lured Cole stateside a month ago, claiming he needed a hand with his fishing gig. It was a lie.

  What Gav Black really wanted was to save Cole from himself. Word was out that he was wasting away in Havana bars and beds, trying to write some ass-crap about Hemingway’s need for risk.

  The vocalist, Cole realized through his booze fog, was singing about a sinner-man who was trying to run from the devil. Rather than focusing on the words, he squinted at the woman’s features through the haze. Her skin was ebony, her eyes were low lidded, and her lips, voluptuous, seemed to make slow love to the microphone. She reminded him of a face he’d seen in the Sudan. Which in turn reminded him of Holly and Ty. His skin felt hot.

  “You need to find yourself a new story, mate,” Gavin said, reaching for his beer, watching him closely.

  Cole glanced at his friend. Gav’s face was blurry around the edges.

  “I’m done.” Cole raised his hand and motioned for a server to bring them another round. “I might as well face it—the muse, she has left.” His voice felt thick. His words came out slurred.

  Gav leaned forward, his tanned and powerful forearms resting on the small round table, a tattoo flexing under hard muscle—a tat to commemorate Afghanistan. Cole had first met Gav Black in the Hindu Kush. His photojournalism had shocked the world. Gav used to do with pictures what Cole could only hope to achieve with words.

  “What about tackling that piece you always wanted to do on Zambian witch doctors and the black-market trade in human body parts? It’ll take your mind off stuff.”

  Stuff.

  Anger swelled softly into his drunkenness, a kind of black, torpid acrimony that had more to do with self-loathing and self-recrimination than anything else right now. Probably self-indulgence, too. On some level he knew this. He knew Gav was right. He needed to find something that fired the old juices. But he just couldn’t reach that level of interest in anything anymore. His pursuit of story no longer felt noble. He didn’t see the point in telling his tales to the world. Not since the paradigm of his experience had shifted in the Sudan.

  “What did you go and sit in Cuba for, anyway? Some idiot homage to Hemingway—was that seriously your idea for your next book? Because it’s been done. A thousand times over. You’re better than that.”

  “Why don’t you fuck the hell off.” He punched his hand higher into the air, motioning irritably again for the barkeep, pointing at the empty bottles in front of them. “If I wanted a shrink I’d get one.”

  A server came weaving through the thick crowd toward their table with two more bottles of beer.

  But Gav’s gaze continued to bore into Cole’s. “Why do you think I opened this place in the Keys, called it quits? You think you have sole proprietorship over suffering? ’Cause you don’t, mate. The work can bite anyone in the ass.”

  The server placed two full bottles in front of them, smiled. Cole reached immediately for his drink and raised his bottle.

  “Cheers. Best escape from ‘stuff’ is right here.” He took a deep, cold, frothy swig from his bottle.

  A phone rang as he swallowed—he heard it ringing somewhere, along the edges of his consciousness, under the music, below the pulse of a drum. The smell of sweat and salt was thick. His skin, his shirt were wet.

  “It’s yours,” Gav said.

  “What?”

  “Your cell.” His buddy nodded to the phone buzzing along the surface of the table. “It’s for you.”

  Cole stared at it, slightly bemused someone was even calling him. He reached for it, fumbled to connect the call, put it to his ear.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cole McDonough?”

  A voice. Female. Noise in the bar was too loud. He put his finger into his other ear.

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Olivia West. I’m the Broken Bar Ranch manager, and I’m calling about your father, Myron. He’s . . .”—her voice cut out, then back in—“. . . decisions . . . doctor says . . .”

  “Hello? You’re breaking up. What did you say?”

  “. . . needs . . . come home . . .”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  He glanced at Gavin. “Gonna take this outside.” He stood, stumbled, caught himself on the table, swore. He pushed through a throng of glistening dancers and patrons huddled by the door.

  Outside it was just as hot. He could hear distant surf crashing on the barrier reef, and he could scent something sweet and flowery in the humidity. The face of the big clock on the marina store glowed just after midnight.

  A group of women, ebony skin glistening, bright, tight dresses, offered him glittering white smiles, laughing and making lewd suggestions as they passed him. The promise of sex drifted in their wake. More mindless, fucking, hedonistic sex . . .

&
nbsp; He stumbled over to the boardwalk railing, leaned his hand against it for balance, and put the phone back to his ear.

  “Who did you say you were?” His words came out slurred. Phosphorescence shimmered on the surface of the heaving ocean.

  “The ranch manager, Olivia West. Your father needs his family. He’s dying.”

  Cole’s brain stalled.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The doctors say he doesn’t have long. The cancer has returned full force. He’ll need to move into some sort of palliative care very soon, which means there are decisions to be made.”

  “I spoke to Jane, my sister, the other day. She said he’s fine . . . he told her that he was . . . fine.”

  “Other day? What day was that?”

  He sank his fingers into his hair, thick and stiff with humidity and salt. Needed a cut. He hadn’t bothered since . . . he couldn’t remember when. A month ago? How many months had passed since Holly had walked out on him? How many months since Ty had gone back to his father . . .

  “Are you there?”

  “Ah . . . yeah. Look, I don’t know who the fuck you are. But—”

  Anger lashed into the woman’s voice. “Your own father is dying. I thought you might like to know. I thought you might like a chance to say good-bye. But if you don’t the hell care, if you think sitting in some Cuban bar—”

  “Florida. I’m in Florida.”

  “Whatever. Wherever you’re wallowing in your own self-pity, drinking yourself into a stupor every night is not going to bring your family back to you. You’re no survivor, you know that? You know dick about surviving. All you know is your own narcissistic pursuit.”

  Shock, then drunken rage, imploded into his stupor.

  “Who . . . who the fuck do you think you are?” he yelled into his phone. “Who are you to get off on talking about my—”

  But the phone went dead.

  “Hello? . . . Hello?”

  Silence.