Holding Out For A Hero: SEALs, Soldiers, Spies, Cops, FBI Agents and Rangers (154 page)

He could have turned away, but the house called him. Without another thought he started down the driveway. Griff didn’t question why he was compelled to walk toward the house and what he’d do when he arrived at the door. The driveway meandered around the strange rosebushes and curved left and then right. As a trained observer he looked for signs that someone had run over the bushes. No recent tire tracks marred the dirt. Yet the bushes lay broken. He squatted by one rosebush and noted the blackened, dried petals. All of the flowers looked as if they’d been dead for days, dry and crumply even with the recent rain. Check that. One bloom on one bush was white with red veins running through the petals. Weird.

Shaking his head, he stood and examined he house as he continued walking. The driveway ended at the garage, which looked big enough for two cars. Had the house ever been updated? Paint peeled, cracks showed, and dirt crusted the facade here and there. As he walked along the dirt driveway, his heart picked up speed. His skin prickled as he took one step after another, every instinct telling him to get the hell out.

Maintain, marine. It’s not like you’re taking point into an ambush
.

His body argued differently. He craved a weapon, but he’d left his gun back in his room locked in the safe. It never occurred to him he might need it on a hike. As he reached the door everything within him screamed that he did need a weapon. Logic tangled with instinct until panic made his breath come short. In his twenty years as a marine, he’d been award medals but now his bravery was shredded. Shame mixed with determination. He swallowed hard as he arrived at the entrance. The lock box was no longer on the door. He could knock, but if someone answered what the hell would he say? Your freakin’ house drew me here? The air felt thick, as if he’d taken a swim through molasses. A compelling urge to open the door made him grab the doorknob. Ice cold metal touched his palm.

A word stuck in his throat.
No.

Another instinct kicked into gear.
Leave. Leave now.
With effort he released the door knob, turned on his heel and hurried off the porch. It took everything he had, but Griff managed the path back to the road. When he stepped onto the dirt road, the strange miasma that had gripped him dropped away. A new instinct struck him, this one more powerful than his encounter with the house. He needed to return to Cassie. He had to find a way to mend the chasm he’d created after she’d revealed her history. More than that, something pushed him up the hill to the Point. He didn’t like leaving her there alone.

* * *

Cassie jerked in surprise at Dougray’s voice. Was this guy for real? Was it simply coincidence he continued to turn up wherever she was? Today the Scot looked as rugged as the military man he’d claimed to once be. Dressed in a flannel shirt, black cargo pants, hiking boots and with a huge backpack, he looked ready to climb Mount Everest.

“Dougray, I didn’t hear you walk up.”

“My military buddies always called me the ghost.” Arrogance dripped from his words.

“What are you doing up here?”

His smile disappeared. “It’s a free country last time I heard. What are you doing here?”

The man was a twit. “Sketching.”

Dougray sat on the rock next to her, and she shifted away from him. He looked at the sketch before she could close the book.

“Weird,” he said. “Why all the odd colors on the mountains?”

“Why not?”

“Surely you had a plan when you did this. A reason for taking the real colors and making them slightly off.”

She looked him in the eye. She heard criticism in his tone, and she didn’t like it one damned bit. “With art there doesn’t have to be a why. It’s what you feel and what you want to show.”

He grunted softly. “I don’t like modern art.”

She shrugged. “I prefer realistic landscapes, but when I draw I create whatever appeals to me at the moment. I’m not creating world peace with this drawing.”

Dougray didn’t answer but he reached over and flipped a page to the roses.

“Do you mind?” she said, angry that he was manhandling her sketch book. She slammed it shut.

His expression went from cocky to shocked. “Where did you see those roses? This one with the white and red?”

“In front of the house on the west side of the road. Back down the hill.”

He swallowed hard, looking disconcerted. He didn’t explain his reaction, but took a deep breath. For once his cockiness had disappeared, and she saw a hint of vulnerability.

To her surprise he snatched the sketch book from her hand and flipped more pages. She was so surprised she couldn’t think what to say for a moment.

He reached the picture of Griff in the military uniform. “You like the military, darling? Who is this? A boyfriend?”

Darling? She didn’t like the endearment or the questions. “Give that back.” She snatched the book out of his hands and stood up. “Are you always this rude?”

His eyes narrowed, their blue icy and intent. “Why isn’t that boyfriend here with you?” Dougray threw a smart-ass grin at her. “If you were my girlfriend, I wouldn’t leave you sitting up here alone.”

Pissed, she stuffed the sketch pad in her pack and started back down the hill. “I’ve really got to go.”

“I’ll walk with you. You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

He started down the path after her, and she didn’t like him behind her. No, she wanted to hightail it. To run like hell. She was halfway to the old ranch house when she saw Griff heading back to her. Relief made her walk faster.

“Here comes the hero,” Dougray said loud enough for her to hear him.

When Griff reached them, the Scot continued his obnoxiousness.

“Hey, Griffin,” the Scot said. “You shouldn’t leave your lady alone up at the Point. It’s not safe there.”

Tension rippled in Griff’s body and in his hard expression.

Griff said, “Thanks for the advice, but I think she can take care of herself.”

A part of Cassie warmed to Griff’s acknowledgment.

“Maybe.” The Scot said, his accent a tad thicker. “But there’s something weird as hell going on up here at the Point.”

Cassie’s curiosity pushed her to ask, “Such as?”

“She knows something is wrong here.”

Griff looked at her. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“Beats me,” she said.

Dougray pointed down the hill. “That house. It has those damn rose bushes, and she sketched one that I’ve seen there. One that comes and goes all on its own from one minute to the next. That is seriously screwed up.”

“Dude, what is this all supposed to mean? So she sketched some flowers. Who cares?” Griff said.

The Scot’s eyes turned sad, an emotion inside them she wouldn’t have expected to see from him. “My sister went missing at that house a year ago. Walked right in and never came back out.”

Shocked by this news, Cassie asked, “What happened to her?”

Dougray’s frown appeared sincere. “Wish to hell I knew. She was hiking here with some other friends from Scotland. She went into the house; they followed her. They had this story about what happened but…”

When he trailed off Cassie found she wanted to know more. “But?”

“Never mind.” Dougray shrugged and started away from them. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Wait.” She followed Dougray a few steps. She couldn’t let it go. “What did they say?”

Dougray looked from her to Griff and back again as if gauging whether he could trust them. “They said when they went in the house to look for Sally she simply wasn’t there. She bloody well disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“I’m so sorry. That’s awful,” she said, feeling the bite of his grief.

“That house swallowed her whole.” Dougray punched the air with his index finger. “Get away from this place and don’t come back. Or you might disappear, too.”

Griff reached for her hand. “Come on. Let’s take his advice.”

Surprised both by what Dougray had said and Griff’s compliance, she allowed Griff to lead her away. Once they were far enough down the hill and Dougray hadn’t followed them, she couldn’t take it anymore.

“What was all that about?” she asked, pulling her hand out of his.

“He’s a nutcase.”

She closed her eyes a moment and let out an impatient sound. She stopped right in front of the house they’d all been talking about. She pointed at the building. “If he’s a nutcase than I must be, too. Something isn’t…” She hesitated, unsure and fumbling for the right explanation and the right words. “Something isn’t right with that place.”

Griff put his hands on his hips and sighed. “Okay, so maybe the guy is unhinged because of what happened to his sister. We shouldn’t be anywhere around that guy.”

Conflicting emotions danced around inside her. “You are two of the screwiest men I’ve met in ten years. At least with my ex I understood what he was and who he was. With Dougray and you there’s always this mystery that never gets explained.”

She took one deep breath, or at least she tried to. Granted it was high altitude in the area, but this felt as if the air had thickened, clogging the lungs and the senses. When she glanced over at the house, what she saw there was the final straw. The roses bushes lay strewn apart and destroyed. Obliterated by something…she didn’t know what. “What happened to the rose bushes?”

“Beats the hell out of me. They were like that when I came down here, too. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for all of it.”

“Maybe Dougray is right.” She couldn’t believe she gave credence to the idea. “What if there is something off about the house?”

At first he stared at her blankly, his sunglasses shielding her from knowing exactly what he thought. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to think this McPhee character is an okay guy.”

She shook her head, more confused than she could remember in a long time. “No. But he reacted strangely when he saw my sketch of the rosebushes. Why did he do that?”

“I don’t know.”

She tossed an exasperated look his way that must have given him incentive to change his mind.

“Fine. Let’s go back to the resort and have a drink. Maybe we can work out what the hell is happening,” he said.

So she followed him, deliberately avoiding looking at the house again.

* * *

The hassock by the huge pine tree looked like it could hold both of them.

That odd thought popped into Cassie’s head as they took their bottles of lemon flavored water out to the recreational area behind the resort. No one else was in the area, which included a playground, picnic tables under trees, a horse shoe pitch, volleyball, and a fenced off heated pool. She could look at the water in the pool without reacting in a panic. She was proud of that much.

They settled at a big round table with an umbrella near the back entrance to the resort. Since the umbrella shielded them from direct intense sunlight, she took her hat off and shook her hair out. She felt Griff staring at her, but his sunglasses were so dark she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes. Eager to talk, she unzipped the backpack at her feet and retrieved her sketch pad.

She opened it to the roses, and shoved the pad across the table toward him. “McPhee had a strong reaction to these roses. He asked me where I’d seen them, and I explained that I saw them at the house.”

He drew his sunglasses off and lay them on the table. “I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

He looked up at her. “When I went down the hill I was curious about the house. I wanted to understand why the roses are blooming one day, dead the next, then alive again.”

She gave him a sardonic smile. “You didn’t just leave because you didn’t want to answer my questions about your past?”

“That too.” He tapped the sketch of the rose with his index finger. “But the roses…the house pulled me there. I went there because I was curious.”

“Not because you feel there’s anything…well, weird about the place?”

“Weird?”

“You know.” How could she say this? She decided coming out with the bald truth would work best. “Haunted?”

“You believe in the paranormal?” His tone was laced with disbelief and maybe a tad scorn.

“I’m a skeptic for the most part, but there are things have happened to me that aren’t easy to brush off.”

He stared at her a long time before ducking his gaze to the sketch of the rose bushes. “What makes you think the house is haunted?”

“Why did you want to go back there?” She persisted. “Was it just because you were curious about what we both saw? Or was it because you didn’t want to argue with me?”

He rolled his eyes. “Cripes, Cassie, you are a bulldog on the questions.”

She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, well, so are you.”

He puffed air out between his lips. “Like I already said. I was curious. And before you can ask, no, I don’t believe in the paranormal.”

“Because you’ve never experienced anything you couldn’t explain?”

“I didn’t say that. I figure there’s a logical explanation for everything. Just because we can’t come up with one right now doesn’t mean it’s all woo-woo.”

She shifted in her chair, sinking down farther to get more comfortable. Unfortunately the hard wood didn’t give an inch. “Okay, do you have any theories?”

“Yeah. Someone moved in there since Sunday.”

She sensed he was hiding something again, leaving her in the dark. “What happened when you went down to the house by yourself?”

He kept his gaze on the sketch pad, flipping to the picture of the Point she’d drawn on Sunday and the one she’d drawn today. “Like I said before, I walked down the driveway and checked out the rosebushes. I didn’t see tire tracks, but it looked like they’d been run over.”

“Do you think Dougray did it?”

“I didn’t see him with a car, did you?”

“No.” She drew her hands through her hair, wishing she’d tied it into a ponytail this morning. “Did you see anyone else at the house?”

“Not a soul. I went up to the front door. I didn’t knock.”

When his gaze met hers, she saw confusion within him. “You could have cleared up the mystery of the possessed roses if you talked to the people who’ve moved in.”