Erin put her hands on her mother’s shoulders and pressed her onto the bed. “Yes. You should go next year.”
“And see Cecilia? I’ll tell her to beware of you.” Sylvia’s mind wandered again. “You’re a monster like your father and your brother, only worse…”
“Such a good idea to warn Cecilia.” Erin helped her mother lie on the bed. She pulled up the blankets, tucked her in, made her comfortable.
Sylvia smiled into her daughter’s face. “I always knew you were the worst of them.”
“Yes.” Erin picked up a pillow.
“But I love you anyway.” Sylvia petted Erin’s cheek. “My daughter. My monster. Tomorrow I’ll warn Debbie about you. She’ll tell Cecilia.”
“That’s a good idea, Mother. Tomorrow. You do that.”
14
Kellen was exhausted. She should go back to her cottage right now, get some sleep before getting up tomorrow for another replay of today. But she was frazzled, worried about Annie, about the resort’s staff, about a gruesome death committed somewhere close, and the body… So many questions about the body. And the killer. Was the killer lurking in the winter’s dark and observing as they reacted to the recovery of Priscilla’s body, hands removed in some cruel dissection?
Lights gleamed from the windows of the maintenance garage. Someone was there, working or cleaning up. Kellen let herself in out of the weather. And heard a familiar sound: the click-release of a safety on a firearm.
She froze.
Birdie sat at a table with her feet up, a steaming mug before her, a book in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Kellen waved tentatively. “Hello?”
Birdie clicked the safety back on and slid the Glock 21 SF into the holster she had attached to the table leg. “Shut the door behind you. You’re letting in a draft.”
Kellen let the metal door thud shut. Outside, the storm was roaring, but in here it was quiet and safe. “You heard the news, I see.”
“Yes. Poor kid. When I’m here alone at night, I keep a pistol near at hand.” Birdie smiled without humor. “Although not usually this near at hand.”
Kellen took a moment to breathe in the familiar scents of tires, grease and sweat. Electronics from an ATV were scattered in pieces across the floor.
“Where’s your weapon?” Birdie asked.
When the two women left the military, they had invested in firearms, Birdie because her husband was a police officer and that put her in the line of fire, and Kellen because for a brief and harrowing time she went into security. After examining and handling weapons, they’d both decided on the Glock 21 SF, legendary for its accuracy and light recoil and holding thirteen rounds. They’d both obtained concealed weapons permits.
“In my cottage,” Kellen said. “Carrying a gun is frowned upon in the hospitality business.”
“Are you rethinking that policy?”
Here at Yearning Sands Resort, Kellen had always felt safe, but now she admitted, “I am.”
“Here.” Birdie shoved a thin black metal flashlight across the table.
Kellen examined it. It was small enough to fit in a pocket or purse, had a concentrated beam bright enough to blind an attacker and a jagged edge around the bulb end that could be used as a weapon. She nodded slowly. “I like this. I like this very much.”
“I thought you would. Keep it.”
Kellen slipped it into her shirt pocket. For someone like her and like Birdie, trained in hand-to-hand combat, the flashlight was weapon gold. “First day on the job, I didn’t expect to find myself dealing with murder and mutilation.”
“I remember in Afghanistan when you showed up, all pretty and unsmiling. We pegged you as a typical butterbar. Remember what happened next?”
“We took shelling and we had to move the convoy to meet with reinforcements. Wow. That was a mess.”
“You got us through with no loss of life and only one jeep down.”
“I appreciate your confidence, but there’s no comparison. The resort is different, you know? In Afghanistan, we were soldiers. We were there because we volunteered. We knew full well we could die. Here, we have innocent guests and some nice people who work in a spa.”
“Like civilians.”
“Except in Afghanistan the civilians could kill you. Although, come to think of it, I suppose one of the guests could be a murderer.” Carson Lennex’s face popped into Kellen’s mind, and his foray into the resort’s darkened corridors. Perhaps his movements were innocent. But in these circumstances, she could hardly dismiss them out of hand. She looked around. “Where are the guys?”
“Temo has gone to LA.”
“He said he needed to go to see if he could lure friends up to fill the positions for his staff. But tonight?” Kellen’s finger circled the air.
“It’s not staff he went for. Family shit is coming down. He says he’ll be back late tomorrow.”
“He’s going to be pooped.” Kellen was going to need him to clean up after the storm tonight. “Where’s Adrian?”
“Bed.”
“Mitch?”
“Hot promise.”
“A date? It never takes him long, does it? Who’s got him now?”
“That snooty girl at the reception desk.”
“Frances? Wow.” No wonder Frances had smirked when Kellen told her to call him. “That woman…well, she’s not as bad as Sheri Jean.”
“That’s like saying Dracula’s not as bad as Hannibal Lecter. They’re both going to kill and eat you.”
“Think Mitch is in trouble?”
“I think if Frances eats him, he’ll be a happy man.”
Kellen was tired. It had been a long day. She was worried about Annie, the body, the communications blackout. She leaned her head on her hands and giggled. Finally, she looked up. “What about you? Why are you here so late?”
“I sleep in maintenance most nights, what sleep I get. I had them put a cot in the loft.”
Kellen looked up at the spiral staircase, the open-mesh metal floor, the steel railing. “A little industrial up there, isn’t it?”
“I feel safe here. Tonight especially. If the ghosts wake or the grief comes on too strong, I can always wake up and go to work. You remember. You used to do that…in the war zone.”
“I remember.” Kellen did remember leaning against a boulder blasted out of an Afghan mountain peak, watching the sun rise and spread glory across the broken landscape and seeing that hint of something Not Quite Right. An hour later, the unit was hunkered down, taking fire and returning it, and all because of Kellen’s sleepless night.
“You were a legend. They said you couldn’t be killed.”
“And here I am.” That general, the way he’d looked at her when he told her of her discharge, as if he knew about her missing year, as if he wondered what she had done and what she could do…and who would die.
Birdie sipped her hot chocolate. “Lately I’ve been sorting through the old maintenance manuals they store up there. No one has ever thrown one away. If you can believe it, there was a vehicle manual for a 1957 Dual-Ghia D-500.”
“Whoa.” Kellen felt the awe. “I wonder where the car went.”
“I don’t know, but I saved that manual. Most of the rest are trash. I fill a box full, recycle it, fill another box full. It keeps me off the streets.”
Kellen indicated the ATV. “Can I help you?”
“Not tonight. I’m winding down and you should be, too.”
“I am. But for a few minutes, I need something to do with my hands. It takes my mind off…what’s on my mind.”
“Have at it, then. You have a way with circuitry, and that damned thing has a short somewhere and I haven’t been able to locate it.”
Kellen fixed herself a mug of hot chocolate, pulled on a pair of Birdie’s coveralls, slid an LED lamp onto her forehead and went to look at the mechanics and the wires.
In a conversational tone, Birdie said, “I told the guys you got that scar on your forehead when you were a teenager in Turkey.”
“Huh? Oh. This is your story about me? What was I doing in Turkey?”
“I told them you were raised by a spy family.”
Kellen lifted her head from her work. “Birdie! You didn’t!”