Eye of the Storm

THIRTEEN



“I can do this alone.” Gerard watched Megan duck into the passenger side of her car parked in Kirstie’s driveway.

“You’ve never even been to Barnes Lodge and Resort, much less seen the inside.” She reached into her glove compartment and came out with her Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.

“I know how to find my way around an unfamiliar building in search of dangerous people, but my job would be easier if I didn’t have a sidekick to protect.”

“You know arguing won’t do you any good,” she said as she checked the seven-chamber cylinder.

“Yet I still do it because someday I think you might listen.”

She pulled a tiny flashlight from the console. “What do you think that says about you?”

“Maybe I keep expecting you to use common sense.” He wanted to add for once, but that was unfair. She typically used a great deal of sense. She’d just lost sight of it since Joni’s death.

She flipped on the powerful little light and shone it up from her chin, placing the intriguing lines of her face into shades of gray, white and black as she made a face at him, obviously unaware that her nose was red from crying. She then closed the car door and turned toward the woods beside the house. “Let’s go see if there are bogeymen at the resort.”

He followed close behind and switched on his own light. “I see you and Lynley made up quickly.”

“Force of habit. Any time we fought when we were kids, Kirstie made us hug each other and apologize immediately. We just haven’t fought like that since we were kids.”

“Why now?”

“Good question. She’s onto us already, Gerard. Kirstie was calling my name when we found her and Lynley threw a jealous fit. It was enough to make me wonder if Lynley hasn’t somehow been affected by whatever’s causing Kirstie’s blackouts.” There was a pause. “Actually, I wasn’t much better myself. I offered to set up a slap fight for later.”

Gerard bit his tongue to keep from laughing, but concern sobered him quickly enough. “Do you think we should leave them alone at the house if they’re both affected?”

“Good try,” Megan said with a glance over her shoulder, “but I think I’ve convinced Kirstie to stay at Nora’s for a while. Where she goes, Lynley will go. Nora’s coming over in a few minutes. Kirstie’s going to have work done on the house, and I’m going to suggest she and Lynley buy new clothing, shoes, toiletries, everything before they go to Nora’s.”

“Now you’re thinking like a cop.”

“I’ve been around you too long.”

Gerard disagreed. He didn’t think she’d been around him nearly long enough. “Anyway, good job.”

“We’ll see what she says once she’s thought about it.” Megan kicked her pace into high gear and Gerard followed, admiring her speed.

She reminded him of Kirstie. “You had a good mother substitute.”

Megan looked around at him. “Kirstie? Yeah. Kind of strange, though, don’t you think? She took my mother’s place in my life after her husband took my father’s place in bed?”

“Kirstie doesn’t know about that?”

“I’m not like Lynley. I don’t tell all I know, and I think Kirstie knows enough already, so why load her down with more? Anyway, is it necessary for us to get into this conversation while we could be stalking a perp in the darkness through a haunted lodge?”

“No such things as haunted lodges if you pray over them right,” Gerard said.

“Then maybe it isn’t haunted because Lawson Barnes is a praying man, but there were lights up there earlier, and you apparently have the only keys in town. Did I tell you I threatened to give away my mother’s dirty little secret if she didn’t stop seeing Barry?”

“And yet you didn’t give her away?”

“She told me she would never see him again. I believed her. She was pretty broken up about it.” Megan paused. “At least she pretended to be.”

“Do you know if she ever saw other men?”

“I don’t think so. You didn’t see her expression when I walked in on them. It was as if her world had just exploded.”

“What about your world?”

“I was angry.”

“You’ve never forgiven her for it?” Gerard asked.

“I think I was angrier with Barry. You’d have to know my mother. She struggled with depression off and on, and I felt Barry took advantage of that. Sometimes I wonder if I’m to blame for Barry Marshal still getting away with wicked activities. I often wish I’d spoken up.”

“But that would have made everything more real.”

Megan’s footsteps slowed. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “What’s this special gift you have of knowing what’s on my mind? And don’t tell me it’s because I’m so readable.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“I guess I could say my mother did me a favor because the memory of finding her and Barry like that stuck with me through my teens and kept me chaste in the face of Alec’s demands.”

Gerard wanted to shoot his fist into the air and cheer. “I’m glad something good came out of it.”

“But if Barry’s somehow poisoning his family in order to get Lawson’s money for himself, then I could be partially to blame for what’s happening to them now. Maybe Kirstie would have kicked him out years ago if I’d told her.”

Gerard hated the sound of anxiety in her voice. “You think someone living with a childhood trauma should be blamed for the actions of another person? He was the reason for your trauma, Megan. You’re not the reason for what’s happening now, and I doubt any word from you could have been a revelation for her.”

“You think she knew?”

“I think she knew a lot, and you weren’t the cause of the lifelong pain of her marriage. You were a child.”

A moment later, Megan aimed her light up the hillside to reveal the lodge-style front of the resort. “There it is.”

Megan led him between two looming buildings to the front of the huge double doors that were the lodge entrance. She turned to Gerard, and a half-smile touched her face in the shadows of the porch roof. “Thank you.”

“Welcome. And since you’re opening up about that, how do you feel about yet one more subject?”

Her smile died.

“I just want to make one point, Megan.”

She sighed. “Okay, I can see you’re going to start spewing steam from your ears if you can’t have your say.”

“I’m glad you told Lynley about Joni. I wish you’d keep talking about it, telling more friends, sharing the load. It’s what friends are for. Another reason I drove here last night was because I couldn’t get Evelyn Murphy off my mind. Remember her?”

“How could I forget? She had compartment syndrome. She lost her leg.”

“And you explained how that happened. Her blood supply was cut off from her leg. Ever since you left I’ve thought about her, even dreamed about her.”

“After Joni’s murder and Stud’s death at Christmas and your own sister being stalked and almost killed, you’re thinking about a case from last year?”

“I’m pointing out that it’s exactly what you could be doing to yourself emotionally and spiritually if you don’t ask for help.”

“You think I should find a therapist.”

“Most definitely. You can’t keep that bottled up inside and expect to heal from it. You’re a doctor. You know better.”

“But I need time.”

“You don’t have time. Evelyn didn’t have time, remember? It was tragic, especially because it was preventable. You said so yourself.”

Megan shook her head. “This isn’t the same thing.”

“You’re shutting yourself away from your main source of help. You were getting to know Him again after all these years.”

“I can’t go there yet, Gerard.”

“He’s your spiritual strength.”

She shook her head. “That blood supply you’re so sold on was poisoning me.” There was a tremble in her voice he hadn’t heard before. “It’s hot in Texas in more ways than one. I can’t do everything God expects me to do.”

“He only expects you to lean on Him. Believe me, I know it’s hot. I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. You’ve always been so sure of your calling.”

“I’ve been burned multiple times.”

“You’re not the one who saw it happen.”

“I was there, Megan. Remember? I heard the shot. I came running.”

“You weren’t the one who shot and killed Guffey.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “It seems all I can do is cry tonight.”

“I wish I’d been there when he arrived. Then maybe you wouldn’t be going through all this.”

She closed her eyes. “And the blood…all the blood. Joni’s lifeblood…”

He touched her wet cheek. “You saved the baby—you didn’t kill the mother. She was already gone, and you know that.”

“Cutting her like that.” A sob escaped, and Megan raised her hands to her face as if she might be able to physically block the flow of emotion.

Gerard took her hands, and she let him. He drew her into his arms. She went. She pressed her forehead against his chest and wept.

“You not only stopped a psychopath on a murdering spree, but you performed a postmortem C-section right there on the clinic floor and saved little Daria.”

“It wasn’t a C-section—it was an invasion. A slaughter.”

“A rescue.”

“And it shouldn’t have had to happen. I knew how to shoot, I had my weapon, kept it close after Stud’s death, but I still couldn’t stop him.” Megan looked up into Gerard’s eyes. “I couldn’t do anything to stop him, and I can never go back and redo it.”

“Who knows how many other lives you saved when you took him down?” Gerard said softly. “Two days later Sean and I received a report that Bryant Guffey had killed at least sixteen people in other cities.”

Megan caught her breath and withdrew. She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a tissue. She wiped her face, obviously struggling to put herself back together again.

“You’d have been next,” Gerard said. “And then maybe Tess, or Sean or me.”

“I’ve told myself that many times, but it’s never enough.”

“It’s enough, Megan. More than enough. No police officer I know could have done what you did to save Daria.”

“Except save her mom.”

Gerard watched helplessly as the mask of cool control slipped back over Megan’s face, belied only by her red eyes and nose. Once again she was withdrawing into herself. And yet she had relented and talked to her best friend about it. Granted, she’d most likely done so because she knew Lynley needed at least a few answers, but now that the subject had been broached, he had to believe Megan would feel some relief.

He reached up and dabbed at a stray tear on her cheek. Unable to stop himself, he leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead. “I guess we should take a look at this mansion.” He pulled the lodge keys from his pocket. Kirstie had shown him which one opened the doors, and Megan held her light on the lock. The doors opened without a sound.

The place smelled faintly of a citrus grove. “Someone keeps this place up.”

“Didn’t Kirstie tell you?” Megan entered a magnificent great hall with gold-and-white-marbled floors and a carpeted staircase more than two stories high. “She’s the caretaker. When it needs a deep cleaning she hires the help and oversees the work.” She reached to the right and touched a circular light switch. “There’s a grand piano, a stage and dance floor up the—” The lights came on and she cried out, grabbing Gerard’s arm.

A man’s body lay sprawled on the marble directly beneath the polished mahogany railing that edged the upper floor. Blood pooled beneath his head.

“Stay back.” Gerard pressed her behind him and sprinted across the marble floor. He dropped to his knees beside the man and felt his carotid artery. The body was still warm, but he was dead.

“That’s Barry Marshal,” Megan said softly from the doorway.