“Hello.” Jonah caught her in his arms. Had he tripped her? He couldn’t believe it. Not when he’d promised himself he’d keep his distance from her. But that seemed damned impossible in a town the size of Moriah’s Landing. Even if he’d wanted to.
She looked surprised—either that she’d tripped on seemingly nothing but thin air—or that he’d rushed in to catch her with such quickness. She also looked a little suspicious. Imagine that.
She shook herself free of him, dark blue eyes sparking with anger and a little fear. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” Oh that mouth. He desperately regretted having not kissed her last night.
It was obvious she’d found out about their “date.” He scanned the small crowd that had gathered around the brawling drunks, but he didn’t see anyone he knew in the faces. “Sorry about last night,” he said, turning his attention back to Kat. “Not sorry about the date. Just that I didn’t mention, I wasn’t him. My name’s Jonah.” He held out his hand.
She ignored it. “You took advantage of the situation.”
He smiled. “That I did.”
“You aren’t in the least bit sorry, are you?” she snapped, and started to turn away.
He caught her arm and leaned close to her ear, the scent in her dark hair intoxicating. “The only thing I regret is that I didn’t kiss you when I had the chance.”
“You blew your chance,” she snapped, pulling free of him. “And since you won’t be around long, with the FBI looking for you…”
He caught her by the wrist. “What did you say?”
“A man who said he’s an agent from the FBI is showing your picture around town, asking if anyone knows how he can find you.”
Deke Turner. Damn. “What did he look like?”
“Stocky, with gray eyes and a small crescent-shaped scar—”
He swore and released her. Definitely Deke. Definitely the man he’d recognized in the fog last night. The same man who’d recognized him—just before Jonah ducked inside Kat’s office.
“So you do know him.” Did she sound disappointed?
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll be leaving town,” she said, looking way too hopeful. So that’s why she’d warned him about Deke.
He could still feel the warmth of her wrist between his fingers even though he was no longer touching her. Just as he could still sense something around her like a bad aura. “You suppose wrong.” He couldn’t leave now, even if he wanted to.
“Too bad,” she said, and walked away.
He stared after her, still shocked by what he’d felt when he’d touched her and angry with himself for feeling anything. He blamed it on being back in this town. But unlike last night when he’d felt only an ominous presence around her, today he’d definitely detected something much stronger, much more dangerous.
Kat Ridgemont was in some kind of trouble. He could feel it. And if there was one thing he knew, it was trouble.
He considered going after her, trying to warn her. Yeah, like Arabella had last night?
“I see danger in your future,” a woman said behind him.
He turned to find the fortune-teller leaning against the wall, watching him from her dark hooded eyes.
“And I see dead people,” he answered, stealing a line from a movie.
“You will see a lot more if you aren’t careful.” With that, she pushed off the wall and disappeared back into her booth, her jewelry jangling after her.
He shook his head as he went back inside the bar. As if he didn’t have enough problems, now he had a damn fortune-teller telling him things he already knew.
His biggest concern right now, though, was Deke. No, he thought, it was not getting involved in whatever trouble Kat Ridgemont was in. He didn’t need more trouble. He had enough of his own. But he couldn’t forget the feeling he had when he was around her any more than he could forget her. Both a problem.
“I think you’ve finally found your calling,” the owner of the Wharf Rat jeered as Jonah stepped behind the bar again. Brody Ries straddled a stool at the far end, a cigar hanging from his thick lips, his small brown eyes narrowed against the smoke spiraling up. “You seem to have a real talent for mean-drunk tossing.”
“You might be right, cuz,” Jonah said, hiding his irritation, which alone was a full-time job.
“Maybe getting kicked out of the FBI was the best thing that could have happened to you,” Brody said, and laughed, never one to pass up the opportunity to kick a man when he was down. “Working for me, you get to learn about real life. Not like that fancy-ass school you went to, I can sure as hell tell you that.”
Brody had always resented the fact that Jonah had gotten a scholarship his freshman year in high school to go to Wentworth Academy in Boston. It was there that he’d put his past behind him. Moriah’s Landing. His family. And all that both meant to him. He’d never looked back, going on to college and then getting into the FBI. If he’d had his way, he’d have never come back here.
But plans change.
“You know, it’s odd,” Brody was saying, “one of your old buddies was in here just last night, not two hours before you showed up. An ex-FBI agent by the name of Deke Turner. Ring any bells?”
Just that loud clanging one that reminded him how dead he was if he ran into Deke again. “Maybe, but then the FBI is kind of a large place, you know, Brody.”
“Oh yeah?” Brody looked disappointed. And skeptical. “Too bad. You two have a lot in common. It seems he got booted out of the FBI, too. Only, I would have sworn he said he knew you. What’s wild is that he said he just got out of the slammer and heard about your trouble with the feds and decided to come looking for you. Seems he just missed you. Maybe he’ll come back in today.”
Jonah busied himself behind the bar, trying to keep from looking toward the door and letting Brody see just how worried he was about Deke showing up right now.
“So, what exactly are you going to teach me, Brody?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light, trying to change the subject.
“Oh, you’ll see, cuz. We’ll see how you do behind the bar first.” He studied him. “I’ll be watching you real close. The only reason I’m trusting you at all is because we are blood.”
Don’t remind me, Jonah thought. I’ll be watching you even closer, cuz. He’d seen Brody’s expensive sports car, the fancy clothes, heard about the ostentatious home outside of town, the money-hungry ex-wife and the semiclassy influential friends, all out of Brody’s league. Either the bar made a lot of money and Brody’s manners had improved, or his cousin was into something dishonest but highly profitable. Jonah would bet on the latter.
“I can’t tell you what your giving me a job means to me,” he said honestly. The Wharf Rat was the heartbeat of the wharf area. Something illegal going on? This was the place to find out. Brody had his fingers in anything and everything—including a poker game with a man Jonah was dying to meet.
“We’ve all been down on our luck,” Brody said, still eyeing him. “But all the way from an FBI agent to barkeep, that’s one long fall.”
He’d expected Brody to be suspicious—and he was. Jonah would have to watch himself. His cousin was no fool.
“Even you, it seems, can hit the bottom of the barrel,” Brody said, as if in awe. “Maybe if you play your cards right, you won’t always have to be a bartender.”
Jonah was counting on it.
BACK AT HER OFFICE, Kat took out her frustrations doing the job she hated most: filing, which included kicking a few file cabinets and slamming a few drawers.
Her face still burned, Jonah’s words still buzzing in her ears, the memory of his touch branding her skin with a fire his words had done little to put out.
She was totally disgusted with herself.
She couldn’t believe she’d felt relieved to find out he had a job in town and wasn’t just some drifter passing through. Right now she’d love to see his backside heading out on the highway.
Especially since she hadn’t missed his reaction when she told him about the “FBI friend” asking about him. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was a bartender at the Wharf Rat, she suspected that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Digging into the huge stack of filing, she reminded herself of her plan to get a receptionist. The problem was, every time she thought about hiring someone, something came up. This time, it was a new furnace for the house. She also wanted to help with Emily’s tuition in the fall. Kat was determined that girl was going to college. If not Heathrow, then somewhere else.
Their father had left them both insurance money, but it wouldn’t be enough if Emily got into a good college. Kat had been given the greater share because their father had known she would have to finish raising Emily if anything happened to him. Emily wouldn’t get the bulk of her inheritance until she turned twenty-one, which had become a sore point with her sister.
“Daddy didn’t trust me,” Em had cried.
“I’m sure he just thought you would appreciate the money more when you finished college.”
Her sister had given her one of those eye-rolling looks. “I’d appreciate it right now since I’m not going to college.”
Kat hadn’t pushed it, but she wanted more than anything for her little sister to get an education. Em didn’t have any idea how much fun college could be. But Kat did. Her best friend, Elizabeth, could attest to the good times they’d had. Kat had taught her to loosen up and Elizabeth had taught Kat how to study—the only reason Kat had gotten her degree. Elizabeth had also encouraged her to go into criminology and open an agency with the money Kat’s father had left her. It had been the best two things Kat had ever done.
To her surprise, it was almost seven by the time she finished the filing. She walked to the Witch’s Brew to finally meet Ross, her real online blind date, hoping he’d make her forget all about her mystery date from the night before.
JONAH CLIMBED UP the back stairs to his apartment over the bar, checking to make sure no one had been inside since he’d left. He knew Brody had a spare key and had come in while he was gone this morning. No doubt to look around for proof that Jonah was as down on his luck as he’d said.
But this time, the short piece of dental floss he’d left out of habit in the door was still in place and the second-story windows were still locked. He knew nothing had been touched as he glanced around, a deep gut knowing. The intensity of the feeling scared him, making him only too aware what being back in Moriah’s Landing was doing to him. Another cause for concern.
The apartment looked worse than it had last night—and that was saying a lot. Last night he’d been too exhausted to care if it resembled a Dumpster—it already smelled like one. The moment he’d opened the door with the key his cousin had given him, he caught the entrenched scent of long-ago fried fish and spilled beer. The plasterboard walls had holes in them the shape of fists, a sure sign of what kind of renters had been here before him.
The place was small. Just a studio, with the orange shag carpet of a lost bad era, a lumpy stained gold couch that doubled as a bed, two mismatched kitchen chairs with bent legs, an ancient metal table with unimaginative graffiti carved in the top and a makeshift kitchen with a fridge that ran all the time.
The bathroom was so small he could barely turn around. It contained only a toilet and a standing metal shower stall. No sink. But as Brody said, “There’s a sink in the kitchen, and hell, it’s better than living on the street, right?”
Jonah would have much preferred the street. But living over the bar fit better into his plans. He closed the blinds and reached under the couch, pushing aside the ripped underlining for the thin shelf he’d attached to the frame. Carefully he withdrew the small, state-of-the-art laptop he’d sneaked in early this morning with the groceries, and booted it up.
Last night he’d been anxious to get on the computer, but Brody had kept him up most of the night, giving him the third degree about his expulsion from the FBI. Then he’d had his first shift at the bar early this morning, no doubt just so Brody could search his room.
Anxiously, he now typed in his access number, waited for the satellite online connection, then found himself typing “The Landing Gazette, archives, obit, Ridgemont.”
He told himself he was just curious. Kat said she was three when her mother died. If the mother had died in Moriah’s Landing…A list of obituaries for Ridgemonts appeared on the screen. Only four were female, two were much too old to have been Kat’s mother, the third too young. He brought up the fourth obit, startled by what he saw. Kat was the spitting image of her mother, Leslie Ridgemont, at the same age.
But that wasn’t the only thing that shocked and scared him. Kat’s mother had been murdered.
He clicked back to the archives and called up the stories on the murder, becoming more intrigued and worried as he read. The body had been found in the gazebo just feet from the witch-hanging tree on the town green—and only yards from the house where Kat lived.
A chill washed over him. The twentieth anniversary of Leslie Ridgemont’s death was only days away. He didn’t need to check the Farmer’s Almanac to know that the moon would be full on that night—just as it had on the night of her death.
He swore. Some people in Moriah’s Landing believed the vengeful dead rose from their graves on the first full moon. Others swore it was on the anniversary of their deaths. When he’d left town, he’d put those kinds of beliefs behind him. But he couldn’t shake a bad feeling that Leslie Ridgemont was anything but gone and buried for good.
Twenty years ago. He tried to remember. He would have been eight that summer but it wasn’t likely that he’d forget a murder everyone was talking about. In the newspaper articles, it said Leslie Ridgemont worked as a waitress at the Beachway Diner, so that meant his family might have known her.
The more he thought about it, the more he recalled the hushed discussions and the rumors that ran rampant throughout Moriah’s Landing. Half the town blamed McFarland Leary, out of his grave and on a killing spree. But then the rumors had quickly changed to a vampire killer on the loose in the town green.
During his time at the FBI, Jonah had learned that some little thing usually got a rumor started—and that that thing often had a grain of truth. So what would have started talk of a killer vampire, especially when according to the news reports, Leslie Ridgemont had been strangled?
He reread the article, struck by how few details the press actually had. But one fact leaped out at him. The body had been discovered by Arabella Leigh. The crazy woman who’d accosted him and Kat on the street last night.
He read the rest of the stories, learning little more. Leslie Ridgemont had been strangled with a white silk scarf she’d been wearing earlier that evening. Her purse was full of change from the tips she’d made working that night at the diner, ruling out robbery. No sexual assault, but she had put up a struggle.
Reminding himself that this had nothing to do with him, Jonah found himself going through the list of possible suspects based on people who’d been seen on the town green at the time of the murder—or in close proximity.
It had been a stormy spring night, a night when the moon was full, but still the list was fairly long: his cousin, Brody Ries, high-school dropout, then age seventeen; Geoffrey Pierce, one of the town’s leading residents and a would-be scientist who never made the grade, then age twenty-five; Ernie McDougal, owner of the Bait & Tackle, forty-six; Marley Glasglow, high-school dropout, fifteen; and Arabella Leigh, seamstress, sixty-seven.
The last name on the list caught Jonah’s attention. Dr. Leland Manning, promising geneticist, then age thirty-five. Manning, at the time, had only recently moved back to the old Manning place due to his father’s death and was building a modern, high-tech lab on his property. He’d been driving by when he’d seen the commotion at the gazebo, according to the newspaper.
An odd mix of suspects. None really had alibis, since Leslie Ridgemont was killed just moments before Arabella found her. Arabella’s scream brought the others.
They’d all reported seeing each other—but no one else. The killer had never been caught, Jonah noted. Why did that worry him after all this time?
An instant-message box flashed on the screen with the words: “About time I heard from you.”
“I’ve been busy,” he typed, and hit send. He could see his boss dressed in one of her charcoal-gray pinstripe suits, sitting at her desk, ramrod straight, looking like an old-time schoolteacher. Or a nun.
“Everything fine?”
Jonah looked around the apartment. “Dandy.”
“Heard from our anonymous source. We’re looking for a boat called the Audrey Lynn.”
Jonah knew that their online transmissions were encrypted so no one could intercept them, but still he felt jumpy. Probably because the anonymous notes the FBI had received made him nervous. And damned suspicious.
“Still no idea what’s on the boat?” Jonah typed, convinced he was on a fool’s errand in a place that could get him killed. It had already possibly gotten another agent killed, Max Weathers. And now Jonah found himself interested in Leslie Ridgemont’s murder—and feeling things he didn’t want to feel about her daughter.
“No. Still having reservations?”
That was an understatement. Jonah cursed the vague anonymous tip that had him back in Moriah’s Landing. All he knew was that a boat was coming in sometime soon. It was suspected to be bringing in illegal medical supplies of some sort for someone in a secret society of scientists working out of Moriah’s Landing, a society as old as the town itself and its members all secret.
But this wasn’t the first boat to bring in such a shipment. Another boat had come in a month ago. Another agent had been on the case. Now that agent was missing, presumed dead, leaving Jonah to worry what had been on that boat.
“What about scientists at Heathrow College?” she wrote.
“I’ll rattle their cages tomorrow.” He wasn’t optimistic.
“Word is the Audrey Lynn won’t dock until end of the month,” she wrote.
He swore. End of the month? He’d planned to be long gone by the full moon and that was only days away.
“Seen Dr. Manning yet?” appeared on the screen.
“Might have way to meet him. Need some poker tips though.” He knew Dr. Manning played in a private weekly poker game put on by Jonah’s cousin Brody. Brody had already hinted that Jonah might get lucky and be invited. Brody knew a mark when he saw one.
“Tips how to win?” she typed.
“How to lose big.”
“Need more money?”
He smiled to himself. “Not yet.” He thought about his most imminent problem, one of many, but the one he’d called her about last night—former FBI agent Deke Turner. Deke had recognized him even in the fog last night just before Jonah ducked into Kat’s, and it seemed he was asking around town about him. Just what Jonah needed right now, a psycho like Deke Turner dogging his trail.
“Gotta have Deke out of my hair before boat comes in.” If the boat existed. He couldn’t help worrying that someone might have purposely gotten him back to Moriah’s Landing knowing full well just how dangerous it could be for him.
“Picked him up. Can only hold him forty-eight hours though. Sorry.”
“That will have to do.” In just over seventy-two hours the moon would be full and Jonah planned to be miles from this town by then. At least he’d better be.
“Remember. Officially, you have no net.”
“Or rules.” In order to cover his ass, the FBI had booted him—at least on paper.
“You’re there just to find out what happened to Max, not to avenge his death.”
That was assuming he was dead, which they all thought he was.
Jonah stared at the screen, feeling a wave of guilt. He should have taken the assignment when it was offered to him. He shouldn’t have let Max Weathers come to Moriah’s Landing without knowing just what he was up against. But even as he thought it, Jonah knew he couldn’t have warned Max about Moriah’s Landing and Jonah’s own history there. And even if he had, Max would never have believed him.
“Anything else?” she typed.
As a matter of fact…“Need copy of a local murder file.”
The screen stayed empty for a few moments.
“Connected to assignment?”
“Possibly.” It wasn’t really a lie.
“What name?”
“Leslie Ridgemont.”
UNFORTUNATELY FOR KAT, her online blind date turned out to be exactly what she’d originally expected—a computer nerd complete with Coke-bottle-thick glasses and a pocket protector.
Unlike her date from the night before, he talked about nothing else but himself, telling her a lot more about his abilities with computers and the Internet than she’d ever wanted to know. Too bad he wasn’t the man of few words he’d been online.
And, of course, he’d tried to kiss her as they left the Witch’s Brew. Just her luck.
After saying goodbye—for good—to Ross, Kat had called home. No answer. Restless and hoping she’d see her sister, Emily, she walked down Waterfront Avenue. Sometime over her third cup of coffee with the incredibly boring Ross, she’d decided she couldn’t go on being afraid. She had never run from Moriah’s Landing or her family’s history here and she wasn’t going to let some stranger in town intimidate her.
One way to do that was to find out everything there was to know about Jonah—including his last name. After all, she was an investigator. But she was also smart enough to know just how dangerous learning more about him might be—in more ways than one.
She couldn’t help but remember that her uneasiness had begun last night before she’d learned he wasn’t her real date.
At the same time, she couldn’t deny that he thrilled her. She’d known last night that he was dangerous. Dangerous to her because he was just the kind of man she shouldn’t be attracted to.
But was that the only danger she had to fear from this man? She needed to know why he’d pretended to be her date. She also needed to know who had left the daisies. Not Ross, who denied sending them. That left her mystery date. And that other set of footsteps she’d heard following her last night.
At the end of the street, the hulking remains of the old abandoned cannery loomed up. Music drifted from the bars and shops, mixing in a cacophony of excited sounds as the first wave of tourists wandered the streets, picking up local color and curios, hoping to see a present-day witch or scare themselves with the stories of Leary’s ghost or a visit to the cemetery late at night.
Unlike the night before, the evening was clear, the almost full moon golden above the treetops. Out over the water, though, mist rose ghostlike among the boats moored there.
Kat had always loved this time of year in Moriah’s Landing. She didn’t even mind the tourists or all the witchcraft fanfare when shop owners dressed as witches and a hearse cruised the drag, offering cemetery tours. In the winter, the town seemed to hunker down against the nor’easters that moved up the coast bringing wind, rain and even snow.
She liked the feeling that anything could happen this time of year, and she’d never felt it more than she did tonight, a tingling mixture of excitement and fear as she neared the Wharf Rat.
“Why, hello.”
She turned, startled and yet ridiculously hopeful, as she followed the sound of the voice into the shadows at the edge of the building. But the voice was all wrong. So was the face.
Marley Glasglow stepped from the deep shadows into the light, a misanthropic sneer below the brim of his dirty straw hat. He was a big, burly, ill-tempered man who made no secret of his dislike of women.
“Oh? Did I disappoint you?” His lips curled. Not a smile. Nor was the sound he made a laugh. “What? You were expecting someone else? Maybe the new bartender? Sorry, Jonah already left.”
She realized that Glasglow must have seen her earlier today when she was talking to her mystery date in front of the Wharf Rat. Glasglow worked for the bait shop’s owner, Ernie McDougal.
She started to walk on past the bar—and Glasglow, too stubborn to let him think he intimidated her.
“Did he tell you he was kicked out of the FBI?”
Marley must have seen her surprise. He let out a snort. “You sure are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?”
The words stunned her as sharp and hurtful as a slap. Before she could respond, he was swallowed up again in shadow, the sound of his footfalls retreating between the buildings. Then a door opened at the back of the Wharf Rat and Marley disappeared inside.
Kat hugged herself from the chill the man had left behind. She wanted to yell after him that he was dead wrong about her. But she was too upset by what he’d said about her—and about her mystery blind date. Kicked out of the FBI? Maybe the man in the army coat hadn’t been lying after all. She could really pick ’em, that was for sure.
She stood for a moment, scrubbing her original plan to go into the Wharf Rat and try to find out more about Jonah. She didn’t want to see Marley again. Nor did she like the sound of raised voices inside the bar. And hadn’t she found out more than enough about Jonah already?
Behind her she could hear the sound of waves as a boat came into the cove. But it was something closer that drew her attention—the sound of paint coming out of an aerosol-spray can.
She crossed the street, working her way past the dark, empty bait shop to the corner of the building where she could see the wharf with its huge weathered dark pilings stark against the water and mist. She could hear the spray cans and the whisper of voices as she edged closer, deeper into the dark.
From across the street, the front door of the Wharf Rat banged open and a couple of men came out, both talking loudly. The sound of the spray cans stopped abruptly. Kat hurried around the corner of the building just in time to see three figures running away, headed north past the old cannery.
She knew she’d never be able to catch the vandals, not in the platform sandals she had on—even if she’d been able to move. Instead, she watched the three escape, too shocked to take even a step. One of the vandals was small and definitely female, her hair dark and shoulder-length. The girl was wearing a bright new red jacket, exactly like the one Kat had bought for Emily, the one she just had to have.