The Witch of Stonecliff (8 page)

Eleri gripped one shoulder and tugged it off the hanger. She had no idea who the coat belonged to. Last month, during the night Ruth had tried to kill her sister, the nurse had drugged both Eleri and Brynn and left them at The Devil’s Eye. Eleri had woken first, still groggy and disoriented from whatever Ruth had injected her with. She hadn’t been able to rouse Brynn, so she tried to make her way back to the house for help. Instead, she tripped and lost consciousness in the woods. When she woke, she was on the settee in the study wrapped in this coat with no memory of how she’d gotten there.

Now Eleri’s grip tightened on the soft fabric, lifted it to her face, and she inhaled deeply.

The scent on the coat had grown faint over the past weeks, but it was still discernible. And smelled just like Kyle. Not similar to, but exactly like Kyle.

Cold swept through Eleri like an icy wind. He’d been the one to find her in the woods last month, to return her to Stonecliff. He’d lied tonight. He had been here before. No doubt his sudden attraction to her was a lie, too. Pain zinged through her quick and sharp, like sugar on a rotted tooth.

Why go through the trouble of making her believe he was interested in her? What did he want?

Possibilities played in her head—he was working with Harding, related to someone who disappeared from here. A wave of anger swept through her and smothered the hurt.

Whoever he was, whatever he was planning, by God she was going to find out.

* * *

He shouldn’t have kissed her.

Kyle drummed his finger against the steering wheel and focused on the dark road before him. The white glow of his headlamps was the only respite in the endless black.

Kissing Eleri James, he was playing a dangerous game. And if he wasn’t careful, the whole situation would explode in his face.

He’d only meant to flirt with her a little. The way her eyes had flared when her gaze fell on him the minute she’d entered the study, he’d seen his opportunity. She was attracted to him, and he could work with that.

God knew he had in the past.

A little flirting, a little charm—it had been a while since he’d used either, and he was admittedly rusty, but it had come back to him—and he might just get close enough find out if she’d played a role in his attack, or knew who did. His plan had been working, too. Despite Warlow’s probing questions meant to put Kyle on the spot, Eleri had blushed prettily—she looked better with a little color in her cheeks—and tried desperately to change the subject.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her, though. He’d been rattled when their conversation shifted to the reporter.

When he’d left home and moved to London, he’d been eager to put as much space as possible between himself and the life he’d grown up with, to be something more than the third of the four Peirs children. He’d started using his middle name, Jamison, professionally, soon shortened to Jack by friends and colleagues.

Tonight, listening to Eleri speak so casually of his old persona, a strange split gripped Kyle. Part of him felt like he was talking about someone he used to know, someone who had died and Kyle didn’t particularly miss, while the other part of him flashed back through time, and he was once more naked and bound before The Devil’s Eye.

Sick fury had built slowly inside him. She must have seen it in his face. She’d shut down, closed off. She’d wanted him gone. He’d kissed her as a distraction, hoping she might even believe his weird behavior was a result of his pent-up attraction. Whatever, so long as she opened up to him again.

He hadn’t considered how her eager response would catch him like a kick to the gut. How perfectly her small frame would fit against him. How soft her skin would be. How sweet she’d taste.

It had been ages since he last thought about sex. Getting through a single day without the memories of The Devil’s Eye crippling him was about all he could manage most of the time. But the moment he’d tasted her mouth, want had slammed into him like a truck. Without thought or regret, he could have easily hoisted her onto the counter and lost himself between her legs.

What in the hell was wrong with him?

Maybe coming back to this place and facing the past that had haunted him for so long had left him stronger, and his sex drive was returning.

Or maybe, and far more likely, when he stuck his tongue into a pretty woman’s mouth he was bound to respond. Either way, he would be sure to be more careful with Eleri in the future.

Kyle turned off the road and steered up the winding drive. Black closed in on him, thick and almost tangible. Only the beams from his headlamps cast a pale gray glow over gnarled trees and long grass, the eerie lighting somehow worse than the pitch dark.

He stopped his car in front of the lodge, but didn’t cut the engine. The house stood dark before him. When he switched off the car, the headlights would fade until he would be engulfed in darkness. A shudder rippled down his spine and his stomach pulled tight. He should have left a bloody light on inside.

He switched off the car, got out and hurried to the lodge’s front door. He stepped on something hard, the sole of one shoe rolling over a hardened lump. His pulse jumped. What in the hell was that?

He unlocked the door, shoved it open and hit the switch on the wall. The ugly, overhead fixture filled the small hall will pale light, the glow spilling out onto the stone step and illuminating an old shank of knotted rope.

His pulse beating so fast he could taste it, Kyle sank onto his haunches for a better look. Brown rust had hardened the fibres. He plucked up the rope with his thumb and forefinger and narrowed his gaze. Was that paint, or—his stomach shrivelled—blood?

He straightened, gaze sweeping the pitch black surrounding him. The hair on the back of his neck bristled. Someone had left this for him because it sure as shit hadn’t been there when he had left.

Who?

But part of him already knew the answer: whoever had tied the rope around his wrists in the first place.

II

“Jack, you need to tell your mother that you’re coming home with me. She seems to think you’re going to Dorchester with them.”

Jack’s dead
. The words popped into Kyle’s head so quickly, he would have blurted them out if speech had been possible. Instead, he watched Leigh hurry about his hospital room with a quick efficiency that he used to admire, but now left him dizzy and a little nauseous. To be fair, the nausea wasn’t Leigh’s fault. The delightful cocktail of painkillers turned him light-headed and made his stomach queasy—but they also left him fuzzy and too detached to care.

According to his doctor, he was healing nicely. Due to the jagged angle of the cut, there would undoubtedly be scarring, but there was a chance that he might speak again.
Might
.

In the meantime—he glanced over to the pen and paper on the table next to his bed—he could still write. He should be grateful for that, at least. After all, he lived by his pen.

No,
Jack
lived by his pen, but Jack was dead. Besides, writing had landed him in this mess to begin with.

“I know they’re worried for you,” Leigh continued, refolding the clothes his mother had folded into his bag earlier that morning. Checkout time was tomorrow, and a thin sliver of fear wriggled through his bleary indifference like a persistent worm every time he thought of it. Maybe he needed another pill. “But you have a home of your own. God knows you’ll recover faster with me than you will smothered by that lot.”

Kyle reached out for his pen and pad. His responses from his conversation with police earlier that morning seemed to glow from the top sheet. They hadn’t believed him, not a word.

He crumpled the paper into a tight ball. Leigh glanced up as he started to print on the clean page.

I want to go home

“I know you do,” she said, a soft smile lighting her lovely face. She was a stunning woman with dark brown, almost black, hair and brilliant blue eyes. Normally, she could get anything she wanted from him with that smile, but right then he was completely indifferent to it, to her. Maybe it was the drugs. “The doctors and specialists in London will be better than anything you’ll find in bloody Dorchester, I can promise you that. And once you’re settled, we’ll have a little welcome home for you. Nothing too big, just a few friends. Everyone’s been asking for you.”

Cold knotted his insides. The stares. The questions. He tapped the tip of his pen on the paper to get her attention.

to Dorchester.

Leigh frowned. She never liked to be told no. “I realize what you’ve been through was traumatic, but you can’t simply hide from the world. The sooner you’re home, back to your routine, the sooner you’ll be back to normal.”

He would have laughed at the very idea if he could. Normal was gone and never coming back. He underlined
Dorchester
, hoping Leigh would finally understand.

Fat, glossy tears welled in her eyes and her mouth pulled down at the corners. She could get her way with her smiles, but Kyle never reacted to her tears, even before The Devil’s Eye.

“What about us?” she asked in a small voice. “What about you and me, Jack?”

Before he could even register just what he was doing, his pen scratched quickly over the paper.

Jack’s dead
.

Chapter Six

Watery sunlight cut between the thick trees, casting long shadows over the narrow path which, despite the brilliant blue sky overhead, couldn’t quite penetrate the forest’s overall gloom. Eleri’s footfalls crunched the carpet of dead leaves, mingling with the soft titter of birds fluttering between the budding branches.

Normally the woods filled her with anxiety, an invisible pressure pushing at the base of her skull and a gnawing sense she was being watched. All these years and she was never sure if someone was tracking her from the shadows or the sensation was merely a result of her growing paranoia.

This morning, though, she was oblivious, too wrapped up in her own anger to pay much attention.

Kyle Peirs had lied to her.

Heat crept into her face when she thought of kissing him last night. What a fool she’d made of herself. He must have gone back to the lodge congratulating himself on how easily he’d wrapped her around his finger, pathetic cow that she was.

A faint tingle burned at the back her nose, but she hardened herself against the sensation. Not a chance she’d let a man like him get under her skin. Besides, he hadn’t managed to fool her for long. She knew exactly what he was about. Well, not
exactly
. She didn’t know what he was after, but when she finished with him, she’d have every detail.

The wind kicked up, whispering through the trees. She drew the corduroy coat tighter around her.

Last night, she’d been so concerned with what to wear. Today, the only the item of clothing she’d put any consideration into at all was the oversized coat hanging heavily from her shoulders.

She could hardly wait for Kyle to get a look at it, to see his face once he realized.

The trees fell behind her as the path gave way to the clearing at the side of the lodge. Kyle’s car wasn’t parked out front.

All her righteous fury deflated like an old balloon.

“Now what?” she muttered.

She stared at the silent house and nipped the corner of her lip. Just because the tenant wasn’t about didn’t mean she couldn’t get the answers she wanted. In fact, she may have a better chance with him not at home.

Eleri marched to the front door and pressed the latch. Locked, of course. She needed the spare key Warlow kept in the study’s desk.

It took her less than fifteen minutes to retrieve the key from Stonecliff and return to the lodge. Still no sign of Kyle.

She entered the house and closed the door behind her, shutting out the midmorning sun and turning the small foyer dark and shadowy. Eleri blinked, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the low light. The smell of freshly brewed coffee lingered in the air.

Wherever Kyle had gone, he hadn’t left long ago. Who knew when he’d be back? She needed to move.

Eleri breezed through the rooms on the first floor. Besides the kitchen, there was no evidence he used any of them. The lounge and dining room were exactly as they had been two days ago, but with a thin layer of dust forming on the furniture. While the kitchen showed slightly more evidence of Kyle—a mug in the sink, a tin of biscuits and loaf of bread on the counter—there was nothing to give any more insight into the man than she already knew.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a small bathroom, the master only two feet square larger than the other. The furniture was sparse: a sagging, unmade double bed, an old chest of drawers and a night table with a chipped porcelain lamp.

She made quick work of searching through his dresser drawers, but aside from discovering he had a taste for designer names on his clothes—which she’d already suspected—there was little else to learn about the man.

With a sigh, she dropped onto the edge of the bed. What had she suspected? A handwritten confession detailing his true purpose for coming to Cragera Bay? Nice, but unlikely.

She leaned back, fingers sinking into his rumpled bedding. Immediately images of Kyle’s lean frame stretched out over the mattress flashed through her mind. She had no way of knowing what Kyle slept in, but during her search through his clothes, she hadn’t come across any pyjamas. And in her mind’s eye, she imagined him bare chested, with flesh smooth and unblemished except for the scar zigzagging across his throat. Her skin heated, tingled. She jerked to her feet and scurried from the room.

The man was a liar and she was imagining what he looked like in bed? She’d finally lost it.

Shaking her head, she pushed open the door across the hall and froze.

Jackpot!

This room had less furniture than the master—a twin bed pushed against one wall and large writing table tucked in the corner next to the window. Here Kyle had set up a makeshift office complete with laptop computer, files and notepads stacked next to it. He’d mounted a large map on the wall beside the window.