The Hidden

Finally the road curved, they passed through a break in the trees and arrived at the Conway Ranch. Diego let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

The main house was built of wood and handsomely varnished in its natural shade. To the left were the museum and stables, both nicely restored, as well. To the right, two more outbuildings—the smokehouse and the bunkhouse.

And surrounding everything was a dense forest that draped like a cloak over the mountain to the valley below.

Up the mountain he could see the bright yellow crime-scene tape, though the bodies were long gone. A lone officer sat in a patrol car in the parking lot, his head back and his fingers tapping on the steering wheel, presumably keeping time to whatever music the radio was playing.

Matt, who was driving, pulled up out front. Yes, everything here was magnificent, Diego thought, but the only nature he was interested in was the force of nature that was Scarlet.

*

Of course Scarlet had screamed as if every hellhound from the dark unknown had come after her.

And of course no one heard her.

Something she would need to remember.

She’d leaped from the bed, staring at the thing in terror, all the while telling herself it was a mannequin, just a damned mannequin.

That meant someone alive and stealthy had carried it up the stairs and left it there to terrify her. But the doors had been locked, and only she, Ben and Trisha had keys.

After her initial shock of fear, her instinct had warned her that someone might still be in the building with her, lurking, waiting...

Well, they would know, after the way she had screamed, that she was now awake.

Were they waiting for her?

Next she thought of a weapon. She could grab a big knife from the kitchen. She wished she was a black belt, but she wasn’t.

What she needed was a gun.

The place was full of guns, of course.

But they were all downstairs.

She did have one thing. Her spear gun. She’d brought it with her when she moved, since she didn’t own enough stuff to make renting a storage locker worthwhile. She’d gotten the spear gun in case of a visit from a too-inquisitive shark when she went diving, one of the things she loved about being a Floridian.

It was in her closet. Staring warily at the mannequin, as if half believing it could move on its own, she backed over to the closet and found the spear gun, then clicked the spear into the mechanism.

Ridiculous.

She lifted the gun toward the mannequin. “Don’t you move—and I mean it,” she said.

The effigy of Nathan Kendall just stared back at her.

She slipped from the room and into the kitchen, then down the hall to the living room and then on into the second bedroom. No one.

She dared to go downstairs. Inch by inch she swept the place—nothing had changed.

Nothing, of course, except that the pedestal near the stairs where Nathan Kendall usually stood was empty.

A key started to turn in the lock of the front door. She was standing there in flannel pajamas, a spear gun in her hand.

“Scarlet, coming in!” someone called. It was Ben.

In that moment she stood there as different scenarios flashed through her mind like wildfire.

Tell Ben what had happened? Accuse him or Trisha of having moved a mannequin upstairs in the middle of the night to give her a heart attack? Accuse them of giving someone else a key?

Someone was guilty of something, that much she knew.

Ben had found the bodies.

Could Ben have killed someone? Surely not.

Then she remembered her feeling of being watched during the night. Had someone really been out there observing her? Had that someone gotten in and brought the mannequin upstairs?

Was that someone Ben?

She had to keep her wits about her, had to keep silent. It was broad daylight now. Even if he was a killer, surely Ben wouldn’t dare do violence right here in his own museum.

But if she told him what had happened...

She could wind up back at the police station with everyone thinking she was a lunatic, at the very least.