Last Safe Place, The (22 page)

Pedro looked at her with such compassion she quickly looked away and changed the subject. “About that party …”

“It is a birthday party at my house, which is in the back of the store. All three of you are invited, and Puppy Dog, of course. The whole town will be there—which is only slightly more people than you can comfortably shove into a Volkswagen bus.”

She couldn’t go, of course. The whole point of coming here was isolation. Making friends wasn’t part of the game plan. Although the people she’d seen in St. Elmo appeared to be of the Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry and
Farmer’s Almanac
persuasion—not horror fiction fans. But people surprised you sometimes. If even one of the Tony Lama boot, Stetson hat–wearing citizens of St. Elmo had ever seen her picture on a book jacket …

But she was surprised to discover how badly she wanted to go, how much she wanted to spend time with Pedro. And how she ached to be in the company of normal people—not wacked-out musicians, money-hungry publicists, or weird groupies.

“When’s the party?”

“Next Saturday night, 7:30.”

Saturday. June 26. A full moon.

That night, Gabriella woke from a sound sleep as if an alarm had gone off in her head. She lay in the dark, stared out the window at stars the size of hockey pucks on the black satin sky and tried to puzzle it out. A fragment of memory, a detail from the horror she’d shared with Pedro that afternoon now itched in her mind like a mosquito bite.

When she told him about finding Grant, she’d described how she slid in a puddle, skinned her knee and soaked the leg of her jeans, how she brushed against a tree limb and drenched the left side of her shirt.

But how could she have been
dry?

There had been a monstrous storm. Grant had been out in the pouring rain looking for her and Garrett when lightning struck him.

If she and Garrett had been out in the storm, why wasn’t she soaked? And if they hadn’t been out in the storm … where
had
they been?

CHAPTER
10

B
ERNIE
P
HELPS
’
S MIND WAS ALWAYS SPINNING
. I
T HAD GONE AROUND
and around from one thing to the next, bang, bang, bang, his whole life. He knew what nobody else knew about that, though. He knew it was the spinning that kept him upright and moving in the right direction. Like the gyroscopic action of the tires on a bicycle, his whirling mind powered him. If he ever calmed down, stopped rushing, making deals, playing the odds—and the ponies—chasing the babes and corralling his golden-egg-laying goose, he was certain he’d fall over dead like a bike that hits a wall.

But his mind was spinning now with the force of a tornado—fast even for Bernie. No, make that a hurricane. His mind was spinning so fast it might just lift up out of his head, unhook from his spinal cord and float up into the sky like those stupid balsa wood helicopter toys you could buy on the street corner in New York with the rubber-band launchers that fired them up into the nearest tree.

And no, he wasn’t high on coke. At least, not right this minute. But as soon as the thought entered his mind, he could feel a yearning itch in his bones and longed to suck a line of power and competence up his nose.

Oh, he wasn’t an addict. He could stop anytime he wanted to. Anytime. And right now he didn’t need cocaine or ecstasy or meth or any of the growing list of recreational drugs with which he entertained himself. He could get stoned for a week on the words in the email on his computer screen.

He glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite his desk. Then examined it more closely, ran his hand over the top of a head as perfectly round and smooth as a marble. Maybe he’d get a hair transplant. Why not? He’d be able to afford it. With $5 million, he could afford
anything.

No, not $5 million. Four million five hundred thousand. The other half million would go to some member of the Rebecca Nightshade Fan Club.

Bernie had it all figured out. His whirring mind had sliced and diced it and come up with a plan half an hour after he learned Yesheb Al Tobbanoft had offered to pay $5 million cash to whoever located Gabby. And Bernie had an edge on all the other guys. He wasn’t just
one
investigator. He was thousands of investigators. Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of people in big cities and small towns all across America. Rebecca Nightshade’s
fans.

Al Tobbanoft might have financial resources, but Bernie had human resources. He had access to an army of rabid fanatics who would drop whatever they were doing to beat the bushes for their literary heroine. Rebecca Nightshade had a cult following; her fans were like the Grateful Dead’s Dead Heads and Star Trek Trekkies. Bernie’d even heard that one of them, some wack-job in Tacoma, had used a razor blade to give himself a forked tongue like the Beast. That was hardcore. When Bernie set them loose, all those fanatic fans would turn America upside down and shake it looking for the Beast’s creator. One of them would end up $500,000 richer and Bernie would be set for life.

And that meant he wouldn’t have to wait to reap the rewards of the marketing campaign he’d designed to launch a merchandising machine associated with
The Bride of the Beast
to rival
The Lord of the Rings
and
Harry Potter
. He’d been shrewd enough to exclude those rights from her contract with Hampton Books. Zara and The Beast action figure dolls. Replicas of Zara’s black heart necklace and her ruby scorpion broach. Gabriella was set to make a fortune—with his 15 percent off the top, of course, just as soon as the sequel was released. Pure genius!

But like so many other geniuses, Bernie was underestimated and undervalued. He knew that. It was impossible to miss Al Tobbanoft’s disdain for him. The man would be singing a different tune, though, when he handed Bernie $5 million in exchange for Gabby’s whereabouts.

Bernie wondered as he had dozens of times before what a filthy rich, drop-dead gorgeous man like Yesheb Al Tobbanoft—probably in the top ten of most eligible bachelors in the world—saw in a scar-faced woman like Gabby. Oh, she’d been pretty once, but now … What was the man’s fascination with her? Bernie didn’t buy that the guy was crazy like Gabby claimed he was, that Al Tobbanoft thought he was the
real
Beast of Babylon. You didn’t get to be a billionaire oil baron with
that
many screws loose. No, there
was something else, some other reason for the man’s attraction to Gabby, but for the life of him, Bernie couldn’t figure out what it was.

Well, whatever his motive, it was clear he would stop at absolutely nothing to find Zara/Rebecca Nightshade/Gabriella Carmichael.

For a moment, Bernie allowed himself to wonder what Al Tobbanoft intended to do with her once he found her. It certainly didn’t seem to Bernie like the man’s obsession had anything to do with the slander and murder charges he’d lodged against her. Those were merely ruses to get her back to Pittsburgh. But once he got her here, or went out and found her somewhere else, what did he plan to do with … or
to
her?

Bernie believed that Yesheb had broken into Gabby’s house—sailed right past that pricy home security system Bernie’d sprung for to shut Gabby up when the guy first started to get weird. Like Gabby’d said to the police—she didn’t bite off her own earlobe.

Which meant Al Tobbanoft did. What did that say about the guy’s marbles? And there was the other nagging issue—what happened to that armed guard and Lassie? Neither of them had shown up yet—more than three weeks after they disappeared.

Maybe Bernie was mistaken here. Maybe this Al Tobbanoft guy really was the psycho Gabby claimed.

So what if he was? That wasn’t Bernie’s problem. He had to look after Number One. Right now, Gabby’s legal problems splashed all over the press, coupled with her disappearance, had launched her book sales off the charts. But the public was fickle. Who knew what—

Bernie had a horrifying thought: What if she never came back? Never did any more book promotions?
Never finished the sequel?

Yes, sir, $4.5 million in the bank was worth a whole herd of books in the bush.

Then his jaw tightened. She’d slapped him. In his own house after he sheltered her family in the middle of the night. Called him a slimy, bottom-feeding lowlife.

“If you’re holding your breath waiting for me to feel sorry for you, sweetheart,” he said aloud, “you may now resume your regularly scheduled respirations.”

He squared his thin shoulders and began to type. It didn’t take long to tell the story, not long at all to seal the fate of Rebecca Nightshade. As the
administrator of her Facebook fan page, he was the only one who could make changes to its content. He read what he had written another time through before he hit post.

Hey there, Rebecca Nightshade fans. Listen up!

How’d you like to win $500,000? CASH!

That’s right—half a million bucks. No tricks, no gimmicks. All you have to do is FIND REBECCA NIGHTSHADE.

She’ll be introducing a NEW book just in time for Christmas. Yes sir, the rumors are true and you heard it right here first. Rebecca Night-shade is working on a sequel to The Bride of the Beast! That’s why she DISAPPEARED!

You’ve all been wondering what happened to her. Now, you know. She vanished to give her loyal fans a sneak peek into
Apocalypse in Babylon
—because that’s what happens in the book—Zara vanishes! I won’t tell you any more than that. You’ll have to read it to find out.

But you know all you need to know right now—she’s gone and if you can find her, you’ll win $500,000 in cash. And you’ll become a part of her national marketing campaign, too, appear with her on
Good Morning America
and
The Tonight Show,
talk to Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Springer.

You’ll get all that if you can FIND REBECCA NIGHTSHADE!

She could be anywhere. She might be the woman who just moved into an apartment down the street from you in Missoula. Maybe she’s in that beach house in Hilton Head where you clean the swimming pool. Or in a brownstone in New York where you deliver the mail.

She’s out there somewhere. And with a face like Rebecca’s, she should be easy to spot.

Half a million dollars. Think what you could do with that kind of money—and start LOOKING.

Message me here if you’ve seen her. Leave a name and phone number where you can be reached. When your sighting is confirmed, we’ll turn over the cash.

Happy hunting!

That should do it. Give these people a few days and they’d flush her out. Bernie hit “post” and got up to get himself a cup of coffee. He
noticed his reflection in the mirror again, turned his head from side to side, looked at it from different angles. Yeah, a hair transplant. It’d make a new man out of him.

* * * *

Gabriella sat on the deck outside her bedroom and watched darkness drain out the hole in the sky created by the rising sun. A chill rippled through her, raised the hairs on the back of her neck and she nestled deeper into the Snuggie she’d found in a closet.

Theo had snorted in disdain when he saw one advertised on television when they were in a motel room in Amarillo. Said it was a scam, aimed at the same “witless idiots” who actually paid for water in a bottle.

“I’ve had a Snuggie all my life,” he’d said. “Just didn’t give it no advertising department name.”

Ty had taken the bait.

“What’d you call it, Grandpa Slappy?”

“Called it Wearin’ My Bathrobe Backwards.”

Gabriella liked the blanket with arms, especially in the chill of early mornings in the mountains. She shivered again; she never should have come out here in the first place, should have stayed in her bed where it was warm.

And lie there staring into the dark?

No, it was better to watch the sun come up out here than to jump at every little creaking sound in there. Even though she’d placed P.D. on guard downstairs, she could not force herself to close her eyes. Hadn’t been able to last night either. The average person couldn’t manage two nights without sleep. But then the average person wasn’t waiting for a crazy man to show up and bite off her other earlobe—and worse.

The average person wasn’t awaiting The Beast on a night when the moon was full.

Thirty days ago, Yesheb had shown up at her house in Pittsburgh. She unconsciously reached up and felt her mauled ear. Hadn’t had time to determine if her plastic surgeon could repair it. But really, what was the point? It’s not like it was detracting from an otherwise beautiful face.

When the moon cleared the horizon a few hours ago it had filled the valley below with a light bright enough to read the ingredients label on a
bottle of aspirin. And the Moon Cliffs on Mount Princeton to the north had glowed like the banks of stadium lights at Heinz Field.

When the sun that was coming up now began to set ten or twelve hours from now, the
full
moon would rise and shine even brighter. More beautiful. And infinitely scarier. The maddeningly rational voice in her head tried to convince her she was safe, of course, that she’d found the perfect hiding place, but she still expected to see Yesheb bopping up the jeep trail in his Mercedes.

Her heart slugged away in her chest, fear a cold sludge in her belly that sloshed when she moved, made her nauseous.

The sun slowly climbed up the sky behind the mountains on the other side of the valley, sending beams of brilliance over the peaks. As the light struck Gabriella, a beam of clarity did, too. She was so tired she couldn’t fight it anymore; all her defenses collapsed. Staring out over the valley in the gray light between night and day she faced what she’d been dodging for so long.

The truth still in the husk was chilling: She was afraid of
way more
than Yesheb Al Tobbanoft. The terror she felt right now was far beyond a reasonable fear of what Yesheb could do to her, what he planned to do to her and to her son. All of those things, any one of those things, was reason enough to be terrified. But she knew her fear was bigger than that.