Vision of Darkness (22 page)

“Good idea.” Pru stood on her toes, kissed his lips, and took the blanket from him. “Let me.”

“Pru—”

“No, don’t start the macho shit. It’s more practical that I do it. Some of these rocks aren’t stable and I know this area better. I’ll be faster.”

It went against his grain, but she had a point. He let her go. Blanket in hand, she walked a ways down the beach, carefully choosing her footing over the rocks toward the water’s edge. She hopped off a flat outcropping and disappeared from view.

Alex waited. One long second. Two. Three. Forty. Fifty. A minute. She didn’t reappear.

“Babe?”

No answer. His heart plummeted. He raced to the spot she had disappeared fifty yards away. “Pru!”

She stood on the thin strip of pebble beach below, a hand raised to her mouth.

“Pru, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She gazed up at him. Her face was a pale heart in the moonlight. “There’s…a body down here. A dead girl.”

Alex braced a hand on the rock to jump down to the beach. The corpse lay on her side, curled around a jutting rock as if she’d snagged there when the tide rolled out, her arms flung over her head, legs crossed at an odd angle.

“Stay back.” He nudged Pru behind him, using his body as a barricade even as he inched closer. Scraps of a red tank top and jeans hung from the girl’s withered body. Empty eye sockets stared at them through twisted hanks of black-tipped blonde hair. Her nose had rotted off and the grayish-brown, papery skin around her mouth had peeled back to reveal a gruesome smile. A red gem glinted from her navel.

“God.” Pru gripped his shirt with trembling hands and buried her face in the hollow between his shoulder blades. “Is that…?”

Alex swallowed a surge of bile as the old missing poster flashed before his eyes, crumpled, grease-stained, and forgotten between the pages of the menu at Mae’s Diner. Navel ring. Red tank top. Blonde hair. If he turned the corpse over, he had no doubt he’d find a bird tattoo.

“Yeah, it is. We need to call the sheriff.”

CHAPTER 23

The VanBurans lived in a sugary-sweet house the color of a robin’s egg on School Street in Bar Harbor. Halloween decorations—the G-rated kind—hung from a wrap-around porch while four jack-o-lanterns grinned on the front steps. Each had a name neatly painted around its top: Bruce on the biggest, Denise on the next, Lila on the third, and Brayden on the smallest.

A clean-cut, all-American family.

Riiight.

Alex had to look away. The pumpkins’ empty eyes and maniacal grins reminded him of Lila’s rotting face.

Damn, he didn’t wanted to do this, to see this family grieve. When Denise VanBuran called with an invitation to come over, Pru insisted it was only right they put in an appearance. They had, after all, found the VanBuran’s daughter.

Maybe it was right, but that didn’t make him want to run for the hills any less.

Coward,
his inner cynic said.

Hell yeah. And he wasn’t the least bit ashamed about it either.

His gaze landed on the dinged up 1970 Pontiac GTO that sat in the driveway, jarring the homey vibe of the place. Theo, he thought with a small smile, would have a stroke to see such a beautiful car gone to shit.

The vehicle was completely incongruent in front of this house, in this neighborhood, like a mangy mutt in a dog show. Either Mr. VanBuran was a gearhead like Theo with an interest in restoring classic cars—and the dull Ford minivan parked next to the GTO made Alex doubt that—or someone else was here.

Hired muscle? He wouldn’t be surprised since he spotted several reporters at the end of the street, looking pressed and polished and appropriately sad as they spoke into their respective network’s cameras. Years of ingrained habit had him turning his face away as he and Pru headed toward the house. The last thing an undercover agent wanted was to have his face splashed across every television in New England, especially since Nolan O’Shaughnessy was probably searching good and hard for his disappeared number one money launderer, Alex Locke.

Pru stopped short before reaching the porch steps, and he almost bumped into her. He put his hands on her waist and drew her back against him, steadying her, enjoying the feel of her body next to his. He pressed a kiss to her temple and inhaled the scent of strawberries. “You okay?” 

The casserole dish in her hands wobbled, and he took it from her, afraid she’d dump it and waste the two hours she’d spent in the kitchen this morning.

After a second, Pru firmed her lips, lifted her chin, and took the casserole back. “I just had a momentary flashback.”

“The pumpkins?” He rubbed her back as she let out a breath and nodded. “Yeah, me too, babe. I’ll never look at them the same.”

The front door opened just a hair, and hard, blue-gray eyes peered out from a harder face that hadn’t seen a razor in a good week.

“Mr. and Mrs. VanBuran are not doing interviews,” the man said in a voice that had repeated the same line many times. He started to shut the door in their faces, but Alex palmed the frosted glass window.

“We were invited.”

He eyed them again with open suspicion, his gaze flitting over Alex to linger on Pru. Interest sparked in his eyes and Alex resisted the urge to wrap his arm possessively around her as she stepped forward and introduced them.

“We’re not here to cause the family any more pain.” She offered the casserole. “I made this for them. It’s not much, but I know how hard it is to think about everyday things like cooking at a time like this.”

The man looked at her like she had three heads. Her smile never wavered although Alex knew with the way she fussed over the food this morning that rejection would all but crush her.

Pru nudged the dish in the hired muscle’s direction again. “They really did call us, but if they decided they’re not ready for visitors yet, I’ll just leave this with you and we can come back.”

“Let me see it.” Carefully, he opened the door wider, took the dish from Pru, and lifted the edge of the tinfoil cover to sniff.

Suspicious bastard. Alex gritted his teeth at the blatant insult to Pru’s honesty. Did the guy really think they would hide a microphone or camera in a casserole dish?

Well, duh. Alex would have thought the same thing in his shoes.

“Wait here,” he said and shut the door, taking the casserole with him.          

“He’s charming,” Alex muttered.

Pru elbowed him in the side. “Stop. He’s just doing his job.”

“His job doesn’t include oogling you.”

“It wasn’t me, you Neanderthal. It was the food.” She rolled her eyes, but smiled and gave him a chaste kiss on the lips that sent a shot of lust straight to his dick. He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her hair. The scent of Pru, strawberry from her shampoo and spice from the kitchen, didn’t help his half-mast erection, but he needed to hold her like he needed his next breath.

For a selfish moment, he wished they’d never found Lila VanBuran. Instead of dealing with cops—first the local yokels, then the state detectives, then the feds—all night long, they would have walked back to the lighthouse, cozied up in her bed, and made love until neither one of them could move. They would have woken up this morning, warm and loose, and had lazy morning sex before breakfast. Probably after breakfast too. Hell, they would’ve skipped breakfast altogether if he’d had any say in the matter.

Pru sighed and nuzzled into his chest. “Last night was so horrible.”

Not the words a guy wanted to hear after making love to a woman. He knew what she meant, but it was still a kick in the balls. “Yeah.”

She raised her head to meet his gaze. Tears magnified the blue of her irises. “I wouldn’t take it back, though. Even knowing how it turned out. Does that make me selfish?”

“Aw, babe.” He cupped her cheeks and leaned down for another kiss as the door popped open.

The hired muscle arched a brow. “When you lovebirds are done, the VanBurans want to meet you.”

Pru flushed pink and pulled away from him, stepping into the house as the bodyguard moved aside and motioned them in like a foot servant.

The living room was a long rectangular space done in soft, earthy tones, a little too cluttered by oversized suede furniture, a giant-screen TV, and the handful of toys scattered over the beige rug. Denise VanBuran sat on the couch with her feet tucked underneath her butt, a mug clenched in both hands, her eyes puffy from crying. An older version of Lila, without the funky hair and face jewelry. Her husband, Bruce, sat in the recliner kitty-corner to her, his head cradled in his hands, looking like he’d just stumbled in from a hard night on the town. The ice between them was palpable.

As they entered, Denise rose and mustered a tremulous smile. She held her hands out to Pru, who went into her arms like they were old friends.

“Thank you for finding my baby,” Denise said.

Pru hugged the smaller woman tight. “I wish it had been a better outcome.”

“No. This is the best we could have asked for now.” She stepped back and wiped her eyes. “I’d lost hope that she was alive a long time ago—”

Behind her, Bruce snorted.

She continued, pretending not to notice. “And I almost resigned myself to the fact she’d never be found. So thank you for bringing her home to us.”

Bruce shoved to his feet and disappeared into the back of the house. Denise watched him leave with tears rolling down her cheeks.

The waterworks show made Alex edgy and when Pru started leaking too, he inched out of the room after Mr. VanBuran. It wasn’t heartless, he told himself, to leave them to comfort each other. Okay, maybe it was, but he’d rather go back to the sandbox and face down a hundred insurgents than sit with two sobbing women.

In the narrow kitchen at the back of the house, he found the bodyguard helping himself to a plate of Pru’s casserole.

Well, whaddaya know. The guy actually had been oogling the food.

“’Sup,” the bodyguard said. He balanced a heaping plate in one hand, dug a fork in with the other, and propped himself against the kitchen counter, crossing his ankles. The boots he wore cost more than a month’s rent in a Boston high rise. Nice kicks for a scruffy hired muscle who drives a forty-year-old, beat up GTO.

“I’m looking for Mr. VanBuran.”

The bodyguard gave Alex an assessing once-over, then tilted his head toward the back door and shoveled another bite into his mouth. “Bruce took a fifth of Jack and headed out. By now, he’s well on his way to getting faced.”

“Taking it hard?”

“His daughter was murdered.” Something moved behind the guy’s blue-gray eyes. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Guess so. That what the cops are saying? She was murdered.”

“Hah. They don’t have a fucking clue, which is why Bruce hired me to look for her in the first place.” He stabbed his fork into the glob of casserole and crossed himself, then wiped his hand on a very expensive pair of jeans and held it out for a handshake. “Name’s Mikhail Harkov. Mischa for short.”

“Alex.” He accepted the shake, purposely leaving off his last name. He wasn’t going to lie anymore if he didn’t have to. Besides, if Mischa was half as good at his job as Alex suspected, and felt so inclined to dig around, he’d find a way to suss out the truth. “So you’re a private investigator?”

“Yup. Specialize in finding the missing. Hate finding them like this, though,” he said, but it didn’t seem to affect his appetite and he returned to the casserole with relish. “Mm, dude, your woman’s a goddess in the kitchen. I’ll worship the ground she spits on if she’ll make me something for the road. A man just can’t live on fast food and gas station fare.”

Pride swelled in Alex’s chest. His woman. He liked the sound of that, probably more than he had a right to. “No doubt she’d agree with you.” He considered the back door and decided chasing Bruce VanBuran was a waste of time. He’d get more info out of the P.I. Info about what, he didn’t have a clue, but a sensation niggled the back of his mind about this whole deal, demanding he take notice.

Coincidence. That’s what it was. Too many, and his inner cynic balked at the idea of coincidences. When a girl turns up dead on Pru’s property in the midst of all the so-called accidents, they had to be linked somehow.

“So,” he said to the P.I. “What do you think happened to her?”

“Lila?” Mischa shrugged. “Met the wrong guy, got into a situation she couldn’t handle, met a bad end. Isn’t that how it always goes?”

“I heard the family never believed she ran away.”

“Neither did I. Yeah, the girl was a pistol and she and Denise fought over whether it was night or day, but she loved her brother. She’d never have up and left the little guy. And then there’s the fact that her cell phone last pinged off a tower in Three Churches two hours after she was last seen, when she told her best friend she was going to meet some people up there. ‘A crew the ‘rents wouldn’t approve of’—her friend’s words, not mine.” Mischa finished his food, set the plate aside on the counter, and licked the remaining sauce off the fork. “So I hear the body was mummified.”

Lila’s withered face and blank eyes flashed in Alex’s mind. He nodded. “Calcified is a better word. She’s been dead for a long time, but her body was exposed to the elements for only a couple days.”

Mischa scratched the side his scruffy jaw. “Lotsa caves up and down the coast. Disposal in one might do that to a corpse.”

“Read my mind.”

He flashed a grin that was all teeth. “I have a talent for it. You’re in law enforcement.” It wasn’t a question.

Alex opened his mouth to deny it, but Mischa held up a hand. “Nah, don’t bother. Your secrets are safe with me. Don’t blame you for them either. Lotsa weird stuff happening up there in Three Churches.”

He should deny it anyway, but—hell, what was the point? It was all unraveling faster than he could weave it. He wasn’t very good at this undercover stuff anymore. Burned out. Even if the DEA decided not to fire him, he wouldn’t be able to go back to working UC. That realization should put a hole in his gut, he thought. Instead, he felt like he’d dropped fifty pounds of weight off his back.

“Think I could see Lila’s room?” Remembering the pumpkin with Lila’s name painted on it, he assumed the VanBurans hadn’t touched her room since she disappeared. If there was a connection between Lila and Pru’s streak of misfortune, it might be in there somewhere.

Mischa lifted a shoulder. “Not much there. Typical teenage girl room, but knock yourself out.”

He was right, Alex realized after a few minutes in the black-and-white, art deco room. Framed prints of Paris and London decorated the walls. The canopied bed overflowed with girly pillows featuring gemstone words like
diva
and
princess.
And…
slut?

“Wow, that’s classy.”

Mischa grunted in agreement.

God, she was so young. Standing in her room, the truth of it smacked him in the face. Barely out of childhood.
She’d had a desk that appeared used only as a laptop stand and dust catcher, a dresser cluttered with jewelry and other female accessories, and a vanity covered with enough perfume and make-up to doll up an army
.
Photographs of friends and a little blond boy lined the frame of the vanity’s mirror.