Day Of Reckoning Part 8

He gave chase but the intruder was quickly swallowed up by the rainforest. Ford swore under his breath. He couldn't even be sure if it had been a man or a woman. Nor could he make out a footprint in the mossy ground outside.

Closing the patio doors, he found marks where a tool had been used to break the lock. So why had the front door been open? Had someone just wanted him to believe they'd broken in when in truth, the intruder had used a key and not closed the door properly?

He closed the drapes and pulled a chair up under the doork.n.o.b of the patio door for the night. He would do the same to the front door when the time came.

As he turned back to the room, he saw that his things had been gone through. His papers were scattered on the floor where they'd been dropped.

Adrenaline shot through him. Where was his laptop computer?

He hurried around the bed, relieved to see it lying next to the bed on the floor. Even before he reached for it, he knew that the disk would be gone.

It was.

He swore again. Whoever had stolen the disk now knew as much about Liam Sawyer's find as Ford did. But then again, whoever had broken in here had already known something or he wouldn't have come here tonight.

Ford mentally kicked himself. He'd provided the thief with the perfect opportunity by staying away so long. But that was the least of his worries. That disk had more than Liam's find on it. If any of that information should get to Rozalyn- He rubbed his sore s.h.i.+n where she'd kicked him earlier in the garden and thought about, of all things, the kiss.

He'd lied. It hadn't been nothing. nothing. In fact those few delightful moments in the garden made him curious enough to want to kiss her again. He swore at the thought, reminding himself of the kind of woman Rozalyn Sawyer was. The kind who would risk her life for a phantom stranger at a waterfall. In fact those few delightful moments in the garden made him curious enough to want to kiss her again. He swore at the thought, reminding himself of the kind of woman Rozalyn Sawyer was. The kind who would risk her life for a phantom stranger at a waterfall.

Just his luck that the one person who actually might be able to help him would be the least predictable and the most honest.

ROZ STOOD, her back to the sewing room as the heartbreakingly familiar record began to play on the phonograph again. A chill skittered across her skin, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rising. That same song had been playing the day her mother jumped from the fourth floor widow's walk to fall to her death. No one had believed Roz that the song had been playing any more than they believed that she'd heard voices in the attic before her mother was found.

Nor would anyone believe that Roz had turned off the record player.

And that someone someone had turned it back on. had turned it back on.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spied her mother's scissors on the cutting table. Holding her breath, she grabbed for the scissors. The instant her hand closed over them, she whirled around, brandis.h.i.+ng the sharp weapon.

There wasn't another soul in the room. Just as she knew there wouldn't be. The record whirled on the phonograph. The music filled the room. She was completely alone.

Tears of terror blurred her eyes as she rushed back in, grabbed the cord and jerked the plug from the wall. A final note hung in the air as the needle scratched across the vinyl, the arm dropping away from the record.

She stood over the phonograph, the silence louder and more eerie than the music had been. She stared down at the 45 as if she half expected the record to begin spinning again and the needle to rise and drop to the scratchy vinyl surface.

The scissors clattered to the floor. She grabbed the record from the turntable and began to break it into tiny pieces that fell to the floor like dark confetti until her trembling hands were empty and she ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

She wanted to keep going, out of this house, out of this town, away from all the painful memories. But she couldn't leave her father. She ran to her bedroom and hurriedly locked the door behind her.

Nor would she be frightened away.

Checking under the bed, in the closet and even behind the shower curtain in the bathroom, she tried to still her panic.

Lightning splintered the sky beyond her window, followed moments later by a deafening boom of thunder. She cried out, backing up against the wall as she watched the sky outside flash with light.

She had to calm down. Someone was trying to scare her and d.a.m.n but it was working. Exhaustion made her brain foggy. She tried to think, tried to get her composure back. Her mother's spirit hadn't started that phonograph playing. Nor was it the electrical storm or some quirk of nature. Someone had to have rigged the phonograph to keep playing even when she'd turned it off.

Emily! The woman had resented her from the beginning. She definitely didn't want her here. Drew was the only one who seemed to care anything about her.

Roz saw the second piece of chocolate on the plate by her bed and almost dove for it. Once in her mouth, the rich chocolate began to melt, and Roz felt her heart rate drop a little. She would never be able to sleep unless she got a hot bath even as late as it was. She was too worried about her father. Too keyed up over everything.

But she'd also seen too many movies where the heroine foolishly climbed into the tub not realizing the killer was in her bedroom. She double-checked the closet, under the bed and made sure the window was locked, then she barricaded herself in the bathroom after first looking behind the shower curtain again.

The chocolate was starting to take effect. She felt a mellowness wash over her as she turned on the faucet and the large claw-foot tub began to fill.

She could hardly hear the thunder rumbling outside. Without a window, she couldn't see the flashes of lightning. Maybe by the time she was through bathing, the storm would have died down to just rain.

She tried not to worry about her father, praying he would have regained consciousness by morning. She also tried not to think about the phonograph. Or the open window she'd found earlier in her bedroom. Or the fact that someone had gone through her suitcase.

As the tub filled, she opened the bottle of jasmine bubble bath that had been set out for her and poured a large dollop into the water. Drew again?

She yawned, stripped off her clothing and stepped into the tub, groggily sinking neck-deep into the warm water and jasmine-scented bubbles. The water felt like silk as it caressed her skin, warming her to her core. She closed her eyes.

Heaven. She was surprised how drowsy she felt suddenly, and behind her lids, saw a figure in a yellow raincoat running through the golden beams of her highlights and the pouring rain, heading for the brink of a waterfall.

Her eyes flew open. She shoved the image away. She didn't want to think what the sheriff would find at Lost Creek Falls.

As she lay back in the tub, she let herself drift to the soft lap and warm feel of the water, pretending she was supine on a raft under the summer sun, the ocean beneath her the color of Ford's eyes.

Her eyes closed, her lids too heavy to keep open. Ford's image appeared as if conjured up. Those insolent sea-green eyes met hers. His gaze caressed her face, her neck, her- Her eyes flew open and she sat up, slos.h.i.+ng water in the tub. She looked around the room. His image had been so real that she expected to see Ford standing over her. The room was empty. Of course it was. The door was locked. She must have dozed off. She could have drowned.

"That's enough of that." It seemed to take all her energy to pull herself from the tub, rub herself dry with the towel, don the long white cotton nightgown she'd brought and unlock the bathroom door let alone climb into bed.

As exhausted as she was, she found herself fighting sleep, afraid to close her eyes for fear of what she might see. Worse, what she might hear-the unbroken favorite 45 playing again on her mother's phonograph in the next room.

She stared hard at the ceiling, willing her lids open. It took all her effort. The old house creaked and groaned. Lightning flashed beyond the window curtains, thunder rattled the gla.s.s, echoing like a heartbeat inside her. Roz didn't even remember closing her eyes.

FORD COULDN'T SLEEP. After tossing and turning for a while, he finally gave up. He pulled on only a pair of jeans and padded barefoot into the kitchen to make himself a drink. He could feel the electricity in the air and smell the scent of the approaching rain as he took his gla.s.s out to the covered porch.

The wind groaned in the swaying tops of the trees, as lightning cut huge zigzagged seams in the darkness and thunder cracked like a shot overhead. He waited out the storm, restless and edgy.

The first sip of Scotch burned all the way down. Just what he needed. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep until the storm moved on, until the rain fell in a monotonous downpour.

He looked toward the house, wondering if Rozalyn was asleep. She'd looked exhausted at the hospital. Why wouldn't she be asleep after the night she'd had. He tried not to feel sorry for her. A weird stepfamily. Her father in the hospital in a coma. And maybe even worse, Ford Lancaster dropping into her life. Talk about bad karma.

And there was her past. Her family's history of instability. He knew how that could haunt a person. It certainly could explain her reaction at Lost Creek Falls tonight. Of course, he hadn't seen a thing. Another sore point between them. Another reason she wouldn't want to trust him. As if she needed any more reasons.

He took another sip of his drink and smiled ruefully. He'd pretty much blown it with her. Except maybe for the kiss. For that moment he'd thought he had her right where he wanted her. She had been responding quite nicely. Until she kicked him.

He shook his head, amazed she'd come back here after her mother had committed suicide in that house. The woman had grit, that was for d.a.m.ned sure. Look at how she'd stood up to Emily and the rest of them. He smiled to himself. Look how she stood up to you. Look how she stood up to you.

He walked to the edge of the porch railing. This was the last place in the world he wanted to be. Worse, he hated what he was going to have to do. One thing was for certain, he couldn't let Rozalyn find out the truth from whoever had taken the disk. Not before she helped him find whatever it was Liam Sawyer had discovered in the woods before his injury.

Ford glanced toward the main house again. He couldn't see most of the structure because of the trees. But he could see the attic windows clearly. At first he thought he'd just imagined the flicker of light behind one of the windows.

He waited for the light to come on again.

It didn't.

Lightning ripped through the darkness in a blinding flash. A heartbeat later, thunder boomed.

Still no light flickered in the attic. Odd. Maybe he had just imagined it. Or the glow had been the reflection of lightning on the windowpane.

He looked down at his gla.s.s, surprised it was empty, and went back in to make another drink, trying to convince himself that whatever happened to Rozalyn Sawyer, she wasn't his responsibility. He would just get what he wanted and get out. Like he always had.

Inside the guest house, he sloshed a little more Scotch into his gla.s.s. The screen door banged against the door frame as the storm picked up. The first few drops of rain splattered loudly on the porch roof.

Ford could feel the power of the storm in the cold air blowing in through the screen door. He was already wired but now the night held an odd expectation that made the hair rise on his forearms.

He slipped on athletic shoes and a T-s.h.i.+rt, picked up his drink and went back out on the porch again to watch the storm. Between the crashes of thunder, he could hear the rain pelting the leaves out in the darkness as the storm centered itself over the town as if hunkering down for the duration.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Finally. Rain. Wonderful monotonous rain that would let him sleep. He realized he didn't need the Scotch and dumped the contents of his gla.s.s over the railing, anxious now for the oblivion of sleep, the one place he might find peace.

But as he turned to go back inside, he made the mistake of glancing toward the house again. This time there was no mistaking the flicker of a flashlight beam behind one of the attic windows. He watched the light bob across the attic and wondered what someone was doing up there. He imagined most of the family agreed with Suzanne; they wouldn't be caught dead up there.

The flashlight went out as a lamp flared in the right-hand corner of the attic. Odd. The person who had turned it on was behind a pillar. He waited for the person to step out.

Instead, the movement came from off to the right. A figure in a long white nightgown appeared as if an apparition. Even from this distance he recognized the hair. Long and strawberry-blond, it floated around her shoulders, s.h.i.+mmering in the lamplight.

She moved to one of the windows at the center of the attic. For the first time he noticed the widow's walk.

His gla.s.s slipped from his fingers. He was already running toward the house as Rozalyn Sawyer opened the windows wide and climbed out onto the widow's walk four stories above the ground, the wind whipping the cloth of the white nightgown around her slim body, her strawberry-blond hair now aglow in the light of the storm, as rain fell in large, hard and angry drops from the darkness.

Chapter Seven.

Ford let out an oath as he barreled through the dense vegetation of the garden to the back of the house. Above him, Rozalyn balanced on the edge of the widow's walk-just as she had at the falls. The hem of her nightgown snapped in the wind through a curtain of rain.

He didn't dare call to her. Didn't dare draw her attention downward. Running to the back door, he tried the k.n.o.b, not surprised to find it locked. Bang on the door. Get someone up there. Quick. Bang on the door. Get someone up there. Quick.

He rejected the idea as quickly as it had come. The noise alone might cause her to jump. Looking upward, he realized there was only one way to reach her. He'd have to climb the tree next to the house.

The cold soaking rain beat down on him as he quickly began to climb. Lightning fractured the darkness. Thunder detonated overhead.

Climbing a tree in a thunderstorm. Great, Lancaster. Great, Lancaster. And all to save a woman who was bound and determined to kill herself. If he lucked out and didn't slip and fall from the wet tree limbs, he'd probably get struck by lightning. And all to save a woman who was bound and determined to kill herself. If he lucked out and didn't slip and fall from the wet tree limbs, he'd probably get struck by lightning.

And as if his luck couldn't get any worse, the tree wasn't high enough to take him all the way to the attic. He crawled out on a limb near one of the windows on the third floor. He started to break the window but saw that someone had already broken the lock. A screwdriver lay on the edge of the windowsill out of view from inside.

He took the screwdriver, inserted it between the window and frame in the same grooves made earlier and lifted. The window rose with a groan.

A flash of lightning illuminated a girl's room. Rozalyn's former bedroom?

Still hanging on to the limb, he swung over to the windowsill, then ducking down, dropped into the room with a thud. A cat burglar he wasn't.

On top of the open suitcase on a trunk at the end of the bed was the rust-colored sweater Rozalyn had been wearing earlier. It was her bedroom all right. Except she should have been sacked out, sound asleep. But the bed was empty, the covers thrown back.

He rushed out into the hallway wondering how to get to the attic as he glanced toward the staircase. Not that way. He swung his gaze back down the hallway and felt a chill. There was a dark s.p.a.ce between the paneling and wall at the end the hall. A secret door of some kind.

He ran down the hall. Definitely a secret door. A faint light glowed at the top of a set of steep narrow steps that rose upward. On the closest step he saw one small barefoot print in the dust. Rozalyn.

With only a moment's hesitation at the thought of the door closing behind him and being trapped inside, he scrambled up the steps, hoping he could get out at the top as easily as he'd gotten in.

He hadn't gone far when he heard something that made him miss a step. A shudder tore through him. Cripes, what the h.e.l.l was that?

But he knew even before he reached the top of the stairs, grateful to see another hidden door-also open, and beyond it the source of the light and the bloodcurdling sound.

A small lamp glowed in a corner of the huge attic. Most of the room was filled with antiques that had been piled along one side, leaving the side along the windows open.

His breath caught when he recognized the source of the high-pitched keening. Rozalyn. He followed the horrific sound and her dusty barefooted prints across the attic, drawing up short just behind the widow's walk.

The hair rose on the back of his neck. Rozalyn stood framed against the darkness, her feet balancing on the six-inch wide railing, nothing else but air between her and the ground four stories below. Her head was thrown back, the hideous pain-filled cry emanating from her throat.

"Rozalyn?" he said softly, afraid that he might startle her. He thought of when he'd grabbed her earlier tonight at the waterfall. Unfortunately, he wasn't as close this time.

He took a couple of steps toward her. The old wooden floorboards under him groaned. He froze.

She hadn't moved, hadn't seemed to have heard him over her cries. Her arms stretched out as if she planned to do a swan dive off a high board. Her soaking wet nightgown clung to her body, the hem snapping in the wind.

He took another couple of steps toward her, afraid to say anything this close to her for fear she might fall. Or jump. Another step or two and he would be close enough to make a grab for her. But her flesh would be wet and slick. She'd be d.a.m.ned hard to hang on to.

The keening sound stopped with a suddenness that rattled him. The deathly silence that followed was almost more frightening. Suddenly her head jerked to one side as if she heard something on the wind.

His breath caught in his throat as she turned her head slowly toward him. He feared seeing him would frighten her.

Her eyes. Oh G.o.d, her eyes.

He swore under his breath and grabbed for her.

The moment his fingers clamped over her wrist, she blinked, the glazed eyes fighting to focus on him. She let out a cry of alarm, swaying on the railing. Her wrist was slick from the rain. He got his arm around her waist as she tried to pull away, seeming confused, frightened, disoriented.

She looked down then at the ground far below her and let out a startled cry, staggering backward. He caught her in his arms and carried her away from the widow's walk and the four-story drop back into the attic.

"Where is she?" Rozalyn cried the moment he set her down a safe distance from the windows. She sunk to the floor as if her legs wouldn't hold her. She was trembling and her eyes were still gla.s.sy. "Where is she?"

His heart quickened.