Against the Wild (10 page)

“That is the most annoying sound,” his housekeeper said.

“We'll figure it out. If we're lucky, it won't start up again tonight. Go back to bed. I'll check on Emily when we go upstairs.”

Winnie glanced between them, taking in their bare feet and disheveled appearances, but made no comment, just shuffled back down the hall and disappeared into her room.

Dylan sighed. He had hoped to spend the rest of the night making love to Lane, but one glance at her cool expression and he knew that wasn't going to happen. She was already having regrets, worrying whether or not she had done the right thing. But Dylan had no regrets. He only wanted more of her.

They climbed the stairs together, and both went down to Emily's room. When he opened her door, he saw she was still fast asleep.

“I think she could sleep through an earthquake,” he said.

Lane looked up at him. “I . . . umm . . . think I'll be able to sleep now, too.”

He reached out and cupped her cheek, read her uncertainty, didn't say what he could see she didn't want to hear. “Good night, love.”

“Good night, Dylan.” He kissed her at the door to her bedroom and saw Finn standing guard just inside the door, tail wagging as he waited for his mistress to come back inside.

Running a hand through his hair, Dylan returned to his room, doing his best not to think of Lane, trying not to want her again so soon.

He almost smiled. Clanging pipes aside, he had a feeling tonight they would both be able to sleep.

 

 

She shouldn't have done it. At the time, it had just seemed so right, so perfect. Now she worried that she should have waited, been more sure of him, been more sure of herself.

But when she had heard him leave his room, Lane had known the reason, known it wasn't ghosts but the murders in the lodge that haunted him. When she had found him standing in front of the window in the great hall, long legs splayed, the muscles in his broad back tense as he stared out at the sea, her heart reached out to him.

She shouldn't have made love with him. Not yet.

But she had, and the truth was, it had been amazing. She had climaxed twice, which had never happened to her before.

Guilt swept through her. She thought of Jason and how much she had loved him. They'd had sex often and it had always been good between them. But there was none of the hunger, the deep restless need she felt for Dylan, none of the hungry need he seemed to feel for her.

She wasn't sure what to do next. She still wanted him, ached for more of the bone-deep satisfaction he had given her. But she was thousands of miles from home, and though she was enthralled with the beauty up here, she couldn't stay.

She owned a business. She had clients, responsibilities. She had mortgage payments, rent on her studio, people who worked for her. The hard truth was, she had a life and it would never include Dylan Brodie.

As she tossed off her robe and climbed into bed, she thought about the reasons she had come to Alaska. She had wanted an adventure. Wanted to visit a beautiful place she had only seen in pictures. She'd wanted to tackle an intriguing, challenging project that paid extremely well.

And she had wanted to sleep with the ruggedly handsome man she'd been attracted to since the moment she had set eyes on him.

Lane relaxed against the pillow. Everything would be all right, she told herself. All she had to do was remember the reasons she had come. She was here, enjoying the adventure, enjoying the work she was doing on the project.

And after three long years of mourning for Jason, she deserved to enjoy a satisfying physical relationship.

For as long as it lasted, Lane intended to do just that.

Two days passed. Dylan was giving Lane time to deal with her past, but he wasn't going to wait much longer. Sex with Lane had been even better than his fantasies about her. Physically, they clicked in a way he never had with another woman. And he could tell by her body's response that she had felt it, too.

Tonight, after Emily was asleep and Caleb had gone out to his cabin, Dylan intended to pay a visit to Lane's room. After the heated glances they had shared through supper, he didn't think she would turn him away.

In the sitting room of the master suite, he set aside the book he'd been trying to read and checked the time. Midnight. Barefoot and wearing just his jeans, he started for the door to the hallway, hoping he had read the signals right and Lane would welcome him into her bed or join him in his.

He had almost reached the door when a woman's high-pitched scream sliced through the silence. Jolted into action, Dylan jerked open the door and spotted Lane standing in the hallway, her eyes huge and her body trembling.

“I-I saw it, Dylan! The ghost! I-I saw it!”

After a scream that would awaken the dead, even Emily had been roused. She stuck her head into the hallway and Finn trotted out of the room beside her. Dylan strode toward her, leaned down, and gave her a hug.

“It's okay, honey. Lane saw a vole and it scared her.” A vole was the Alaskan version of a mouse, which so far he hadn't seen inside the lodge. “Everything's okay. Go back to sleep.”

“Everything all right up there?” Winnie called out.

“Everybody's fine.”

Emily looked up at him, then reached down and stroked Finn's furry head. She patted her leg, silently calling the dog back into her room, went inside, and quietly closed the door.

Dylan checked the empty bedrooms and found nothing. He headed downstairs and made a quick search of the house, then came back up to where Lane still stood in the hall. Leading her into his sitting room, he eased her down on the sofa in front of the fireplace and went into the bathroom to get her a glass of water. When he returned, he pressed the glass into her hand.

“Here, drink this.”

She accepted the glass, but her hand was shaking so badly she spilled some of the liquid over the rim. Dylan steadied her hand, held the glass to her lips.

“All right,” he said. “Everything's okay. Now tell me what happened.”

She swallowed, looked up at him. “I was . . . I was coming to your room. I thought it was what you wanted. It was what I wanted, too.”

“It's exactly what I wanted. I was coming to you, Lane.”

She nodded, swallowed a little more water, set the glass down on the coffee table. “It was just like before. I heard footsteps in the hall, but I thought it was you. I went to the door and pulled it open, but you weren't . . . you weren't there. Instead I saw this . . . this thing, this man standing in the hallway. An Indian in full warrior dress—like those pictures I saw at the airport. He was covered in blood and he had a kn-knife in his hand.”

Dylan tried to be sympathetic, but part of him was getting annoyed. “There was no one out there, Lane.”

She looked up at him. “I know, but I saw him.”

“You saw a blood-covered warrior in the hallway.”

“Not exactly.” She took a deep breath, released it slowly. “The thing is, he was a man, but . . . Dylan, he was kind of this weird blue color and I could . . . I could see right through him.”

Dylan slammed a hand down on the arm of the sofa. “Goddammit.” He got up and paced over to the window, stared unseeing out into the darkness. Turning, he paced back to where she sat. “Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

Lane moistened her lips. “I know. I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't seen it myself.”

“There was no one in the hall, and I don't believe in ghosts. You read what happened in the newspaper, how the Natives murdered Carmack's wife and daughter. Now you're imagining things.”

She shook her head. “No. I was wide awake. I saw it clearly. It was a ghost.”

He was angry now. Everything he had worked for was in danger. He towered over her. “There are no such things as fucking ghosts.”

Lane pushed him back, came up off the sofa. “Yesterday I would have agreed with you. Not now. Not after what I saw tonight.” She was angry, too. “I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning.” Turning, she stormed away from him out into the hall. He didn't relax till he heard her door close a little too firmly behind her.

Dylan raked a hand through his hair. He didn't believe in ghosts. But he had seen Lane's face and he didn't believe she was simply making things up. Whatever had happened, she believed she had seen something out of the ordinary.

An idea began to form in the back of his mind. He had a friend, a psychiatrist he had met after Mariah had left, when he had been flying out of Juneau.

Amelia Boyle had been in a group he had taken on a sightseeing excursion. She was pretty and smart and easy to talk to, and they had wound up in bed. At the end of the week, Amelia had gone back to Seattle, but they had stayed in touch over the years, seen each other a couple of times when he had been in Seattle. Though he hadn't heard from her in at least two years, tomorrow he was going to call her.

Maybe Amelia could help him figure out what the hell was going on.

 

 

Dylan made the call to Amelia Boyle, PhD, as soon as her Seventeenth Avenue office in Seattle opened the following morning.

“I'd like to speak to Amelia,” he said to the receptionist who answered. “This is a friend of hers, Dylan Brodie.”

“I'm sorry, the doctor is in with a patient. If you'll leave your number, I'll have her return your call.”

Dylan left his cell number, then paced back and forth in the great hall, waiting for the phone to ring. Never a patient man, he went upstairs to check on the crew. Caleb was working, helping them put up some wallboard. Spotting Dylan, he motioned him down the hall, out of earshot of the men.

“What's up with you and Lane? You two have been looking daggers at each other all morning.”

Dylan sighed. He hadn't mentioned the murders they had uncovered or what had happened last night, but he trusted Caleb and he could use the input. He started to fill him in when his cell phone began to ring.

Dylan dug the phone out of his pocket and pressed it against his ear. “Brodie.”

Caleb waved as he walked back to join the crew, and Dylan headed for the stairs, moving away from the clatter of hammers and the buzz of saws where he could have some privacy.

“Hello, Dylan, it's Amelia,” a familiar voice said. “My secretary gave me your message. Are you in Seattle?”

He kept walking, heading back to the windows in the great hall, where he could talk without being disturbed.

“'Fraid not. This is kind of a professional call, Amelia. I'm hoping you can help me.”

A faint pause. “All right. Tell me what's going on.”

“The thing is, this problem isn't the kind you usually deal with and it isn't me, it's a friend of mine.” Briefly, he told her about the lodge he had purchased, told her that in the mid-thirties, a woman and child had been brutally murdered, and ever since, people had been claiming the lodge was haunted.

“Lane and I researched the archives in Ketchikan and Waterside. That's how we found out about the murders. It's been on both of our minds ever since. Last night, Lane freaked out. She believes she saw the ghost of a warrior covered in blood. It really shook her up.” Hadn't done him a whole lot of good, either, but he didn't say that.

“Lane? That's your friend?”

“That's right. She's an interior designer. She's up here helping me remodel the lodge.”

“I see.”

He wondered how much she really did see and if it bothered her to think of him with another woman. They hadn't been together in years. But still . . .

“Isn't there something called hysterical hallucination?” he asked. “Where a lot of different people claim to see the same thing at different times?”

“There is. You're talking about something like when people who say they've been abducted by aliens and all report the same experiences.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“In this case, people hear the house is haunted and convince themselves they've seen a ghost. But hallucinations can also be a sign of alcoholism, a lot of different things.”

He shook his head. “A lot of people besides Lane say they've seen things, heard things. And Lane isn't much of a drinker.”

“You say this happened in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. Lane walked out of her bedroom into the hall. That's where she claims she saw it.”

“There's a mental pathology called hypnopompic hallucination. Hang on a minute. I've got a text right here. Let me refresh my memory on this.”

She came back on the line a few minutes later. “Here it is. Hypnopompic hallucination is a state of consciousness leading out of sleep. It's something certain people experience in the first few moments after they wake up. The hallucinations may vary. People can experience an actual physical sensation, a smell, a sound, even an image that isn't really there.”

“You're saying the person is still partly asleep.”

“Yes. It's emotional and credulous dreaming.”

He thought of the dream Lane had had of the raven and the cemetery. “So she might have been having the remnants of a dream though she was mostly awake.”

“It isn't really that uncommon. And if the two of you had just been discussing the murders, that might have led her to dream something about them.”

“Sounds plausible. Thanks, Amelia. I think maybe that's what happened. I really appreciate your help.”

“Call me if you come to town.”

“Sure.” But he wasn't planning a trip to Seattle anytime soon, and he had no real desire to see Amelia again. At the moment, the only woman he was interested in was barely speaking to him.

Dylan ended the call and inwardly groaned when he turned to see her standing right behind him, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Hallucinating? That's what you think. You think I'm crazy?”

“I don't think you're crazy. Other people claim to have seen ghosts here, too.”

“Who the hell was that?”

“A friend of mine in Seattle. A psychiatrist.”

“Amelia? Someone you used to date, right?”

“It was years ago, and that isn't the point. Dr. Boyle thinks maybe what happened is that you weren't completely awake when you walked out into the hall. You saw something that was an extension of a dream you were having. It's not uncommon. It's called a hypnopompic hallucination.”

“That is so much bullshit. I was wide awake when I stepped into that hallway. Do you know how long I lay in bed trying to work up the courage to knock on your door before I left my room?”

He hadn't considered that, but he could imagine how hard it would have been for her. “Maybe you fell back asleep for a few minutes, then woke up again.”

“That's not what happened. And the next time you decide to have one of your ex-girlfriends psychoanalyze me—don't.”

When Lane turned and marched out of the great hall, Dylan didn't try to stop her. Lane wasn't crazy, and eventually she would at least entertain the possibility that what she had seen was something other than a visitor from the other side.

At least Dylan hoped so. In the meantime, all he could do was leave her alone and hope in time they could get past this. He still wanted her. Badly.

That she claimed to have seen a ghost didn't change that.
Damn.

 

 

“So what's going on?”

Dylan, who'd been tackling a pile of logs he had cut and brought down from the forest but hadn't yet split and stacked, looked up to see Caleb walking toward him. They hadn't had a chance to talk since his blowup with Lane.

Dylan set a log on the stump, swung his ax and split the wood into pieces that flew into the air.

“Lane saw a ghost,” he said.

“Shit.”

“Exactly.” Dylan stripped off his plaid flannel shirt and the T-shirt he was wearing underneath and tossed them over a bush.

“Man, that sucks,” Caleb said as Dylan picked up his ax again. “The last thing we need is for our guests to freak out in the middle of the night or not come out here at all.”

“It gets worse.” Dylan swung the ax, splitting another log in two. “During our little research expedition the other day, we found out the original owner's wife and daughter were murdered in the lodge. The killings were headlines in old
Sentinel
newspaper accounts.”

He went on to tell Caleb about the brutal murders and the two villagers who had been hanged for the crime and buried in the cemetery.

“Jeez. I heard something had happened. Never knew exactly what it was. Lane's pretty rock solid. Even if she thought she saw a ghost, I'm surprised she said anything.”

“Are you kidding? She screamed the house down.”

Caleb grinned. “What'd she say it looked like?”

Dylan felt a trickle of irritation as he remembered her description. “I'm supposed to believe he was an Indian warrior covered in blood, except he was blue, and she could see right through him.”

“Whoa.”

“Any idea what could have set her off?” Dylan asked.

“She must have seen something. She doesn't strike me as the type to make up something like that.”

“She knew about the Carmack family murders. We'd talked a lot about it. Amelia Boyle thinks it was kind of a half-awake dream.”

“Amelia? The shrink? The one you used to sleep with? You called her?”

He nodded.

“Tell me Lane didn't find out.”

“Walked up behind me when I was on the phone.”

Caleb whistled. “No wonder she's pissed.”