Whispers

  ALONE IN THE WOODS

  “Let me go, you bastard!” Tessa’s heels dug into the dirt and caught on an exposed root. With a sickening rip, her blouse caught on a branch and tore.

  He clamped a hand over her mouth and felt her teeth sink into his palm. But he didn’t so much as flinch. Let her struggle all she wanted. Right now she was his. She was scared now, he could feel the change in her body, the tension. “Don’t you know that no one messes with me, Tessa? Haven’t you figured that one out yet?”

  He dragged her over stones, past berry vines that clung and clawed, over fallen logs to a clearing where his car was parked. He was sweating and breathing hard, but they were far enough away from Dutch’s house that even if she was stupid enough to scream, no one would hear her. She wouldn’t win. No matter what.

  With one hand he reached into his pocket and found his knife. With a click it was open, and he held it in front of her eyes. “Don’t do something stupid and you won’t get hurt . . .”

  BOOKS BY LISA JACKSON

  TREASURES

  INTIMACIES

  WISHES

  WHISPERS

  TWICE KISSED

  UNSPOKEN

  IF SHE ONLY KNEW

  HOT BLOODED

  COLD BLOODED

  THE NIGHT BEFORE

  Published by Zebra Books

  LISA JACKSON

  WHISPERS

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  ALONE IN THE WOODS

  BOOKS BY LISA JACKSON

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One - 1996

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Part Two - Sixteen Years Earlier

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Part Three - The Present

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  To Anita. Agent. Mentor. Friend.

  You will be missed but never forgotten.

  Dear Reader

  Okay, this is the first time I’ve done this, but I’m really excited about it. This book is a spanking brand new edition of WHISPERS, the story of three sisters and one deadly secret. I’ve completely revamped, retooled, and updated the book, including some new twists and turns to the plot. Essentially, the characters you love including Claire St. John and Kane Moran are still the same, still the center of the novel. I’ve just expanded the story line and notched up the suspense and tension a bit, adding new scenes and deeper insights into the minds and lives of the characters.

  I think you’ll like this new version, but be sure to let me know by writing me at my Web site www.lisajackson.com.

  While you’re on line, check out www.themysterymansion.com. , a Web site devoted to my books. This Web site is interactive, with games, puzzles, contests, and a quest. It will introduce you to characters in all of my books, including WHISPERS and allow you a chance to win some interesting prizes.

  Thanks for reading WHISPERS. Whether it’s your first time through it or the fifth, I hope you enjoy it!

  Lisa Jackson

  Part One

  1996

  Prologue

  “Bitch.” Harley Taggert was drunk, but not drunk enough. He needed another bottle of champagne to dull the pain cutting through his soul and he stumbled as he walked along the deck of his father’s sailboat. The night was clear, the salt smell of the ocean invading his nostrils, the boat gently rocking against its moorings. How could she do this to him? How could she give him back the goddamned ring?

  Because she’s a heartless bitch. She gave you back the ring didn’t she?

  He glanced down at his curled fist and saw the diamond ring winking in his sweaty palm and remembered pieces of her rehearsed speech about their relationship not working and her wanting to be “friends” or some such rot. Yeah, right. Like she was “friends” with Kane Moran, that two-bit hoodlum? She was probably on her way to screw Moran’s brains out right now.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and saw her face in his mind’s eye. God she was beautiful, but then all the Holland women were.

  Claire. Jesus. Why?

  Damn it, he’d loved her.

  More than he’d realized. More than he thought possible.

  And she’d cheated on him.

  With that low-life poor bastard.

  Harley swayed a little as he reached the prow and looked skyward to the skeletal masts rising into the starry night. He felt tears sting his eyes and was ashamed. It was the champagne. Had to be. Because he was a man and men didn’t ever cry—especially not the sons of Neal Taggert. Never them.

  “Shit,” he muttered and looked westward past the bay to the open sea. He should leave. Forever. Or . . . do as he threatened and end it all. Just jump into the frigid water and breathe deep. That would show ’em. Or else he should have another drink . . . but first . . . he needed to get rid of the ring. With all his might he pulled his arm back and heaved the sickening diamond as far as he could throw and fell against the railing with the effort just as he heard a distinctive plop as the damned engagement ring settled into the depths of the bay. “Good riddance,” Harley muttered, pulling himself onto his feet as he felt rather than saw someone with him.

  He turned quickly, but he was alone. No one had climbed aboard. No one lingered on the dock. It was just his mind playing weird games with him. The hot summer night was getting to him. Even the breath of wind rolling in from the Pacific was warmer than usual for summer in Oregon.

  Another noise. From the dock. Fear zinged up his spine. He squinted but saw no one lingering beneath the lights strung over the worn planks. He was alone. Aside from the old coot dozing in the marina office and the people playing some old Eagles album . . . he was just jumpy—too many emotions and too much booze. Or not enough.

  From the corner of his eye he saw movement and he twisted his head around in time to see a bony cat slip around a lamppost.

  Get a grip. You’re losin’it. man. Either jump into the water and end it or go back into the cabin and raid the old man’s liquor cabinet. There’s a fifth of Black Velvet with your name on it.

  He took one step toward the cabin when he saw her . . . just a quicksilver image of a woman sliding quickly through the shadows. Every hair on the back of his neck rose. Had Claire returned? Rethought her heartless decision to cast him aside? Well, it was too fuckin’ late . . . but . . . there was something wrong about her. It didn’t seem right. Or was the champagne clouding his judgment. He blinked and she seemed to have disappeared. But he knew better. Felt her eyes—hidden condemning orbs. Whoever it was seemed used to slinking around and hiding in the shadows, someone who loved to spy. Someone who wasn’t quite right. Someone like his sister.

  Swallowing back his fear, he took a tentative step forward, toward the prow, easing closer to the railing. “Paige?” he called, hoping to sound steadier
than he felt. “Is that you? Come on outta there—”

  Something flashed by the side of his head and he turned quickly to see a gloved hand raised high. “What the hell?”

  Bam!

  “Die, bastard,” an evil voice snarled.

  He caught a glimpse of a rock hoisted high.

  Before he could move, it crashed down.

  Bam!

  Pain exploded in his skull.

  White light flashed behind his eyes.

  Harley staggered backward, blood running in his eyes, fear sliding down his spine. His hips hit the railing and he tried to catch himself, but it was too late. Momentum pitched him over the side of the sleek craft and he was falling . . . falling.

  Thud!

  The back of his head cracked the dock.

  Pain screamed through his skull. His body convulsed. Blindly he groped, reaching, scrabbling for anything to hold on to, his fingers scraping the side of his father’s boat only to lose their grip as he hit the icy water.

  You’re going to die. Right now . . . Fight, Harley, fight!

  He tried to scream. Saltwater filled his nose and throat. His reactions were slow, out of sync. Help me, please, someone help me! But the words were lost in his mind. Pain ricocheted through his brain, through the dark frigid water. His lungs burned. He flailed wildly, thrashing and churning as his clothes weighed him down. Sluggishly he tried to kick upward but his foot was held tight, tangled or . . . or gripped by someone under the dock. His lungs were on fire, threatening to explode. Frantic, he fought, kicking, looking up to the surface where, beyond the rippling veil of the waterline he caught a glimpse of his attacker as she stood beneath a lamppost on the dock.

  The surface was so far away . . . he was going to die . . . she’d killed him. Why? Oh, God, please help me! Jump in here, call nine-one-one, do something. He tried to swim upward, but whatever was holding his foot wouldn’t let go! His entire body screamed in agony. The image overhead rippled before his eyes as he struggled, a pale watery face illuminated by the lights of the dock, a face twisted in horror while the manacle on his ankle seemed to tighten, as if the Grim Reaper himself were holding him fast, ensuring his horrid death.

  There wasn’t any more time. In one last effort, Harley kicked and tried to scream.

  His tortured lungs shattered. Air spewed, bubbling upward, taking with it any chance of survival. Saltwater flooded his throat. Cold as death it burned like hell. Wave after wave of burning water crushing him from the inside out . . . and then it came . . . the blackness, an eerily seductive calm teased at the edges of his brain, closing in on him as he quit struggling and the last bit of air bubbled up from his lungs. His eyes rolled up in his head, offering him one final glimpse of the world through a watery curtain where he saw the ghostly face of his killer as she inched backward, away from light and into the darkness.

  One

  All’s fair in love and war.

  Or so the old saying went. Kane wasn’t entirely sure he could adopt the adage, not when Claire Holland’s future was at stake, but then what the hell, she’d never cared for him anyway. Never given him the time of day except once, when she’d let her tightly laced guard down. He stepped hard on the emergency brake as he cut the engine and reminded himself that she was married, separated but married, and her name was now Claire St. John.

  Rain peppered the windshield, drizzling down the glass in jagged streaks as Kane stared at the shack he’d inherited—a three-room cabin on the shores of Lake Arrowhead. Shingles were missing from the roof; two windows were covered with plywood now decorated with graffiti; rust ran in orange stains from downspouts clogged by years of leaves, needles, and dirt; and the front porch sagged like a broken-down cart horse’s back. Stumps, mutilated by a chain saw and blackened from years in the rain, had toppled over long before they became his father’s works of Northwest art. The attic window—the only source of natural light in the cramped space that had been his bedroom—had been smashed, and pieces of glass still littered the porch roof.

  Welcome home, he thought sourly as he climbed out of his rig, threw his duffel bag and bedroll over one shoulder, and ducked against an icy blast of wind. Hot pain shot through his hip, compliments of a stray piece of shrapnel he’d collected on his last assignment overseas. He winced and hitched the bag higher on his shoulder as he cursed the fact that he still limped a bit, enough to throw off his gait when he wanted to move fast.

  On the stoop, he inserted his key into the old lock, and the latch gave way completely, the door opening with a groaning creak, sawdust filtering down from the useless dead bolt.

  Years of dust, dead air, and the general feeling of lost dreams crowded around him as he walked over the threshold. Second thoughts were his companions for the first time since deciding upon this mission. Maybe moving back here was a bad idea. Maybe the guy who came up with the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie” knew something Kane didn’t.

  Too bad. He stepped over an upended coffee table. Now wasn’t the time for turning back. He dropped his duffel and sleeping bag onto a couch in the corner—a once-rose-colored contemporary sectional, now a dingy pink-gray, with the stuffing exposed in several spots. The windowsills were dry and peeling, covered with the remnants of spiders’ meals, brittle carcasses of insects. In one corner of the ceiling, where the tiles drooped, a half-decayed yellow jacket’s nest hung loosely. The knotty pine walls were mildew-stained, and the dank smell slipped through the cabin like a fetid shadow.

  He’d camped in worse places than this over the years, seen hovels in the Middle East and Bosnia that made this old cabin look like a palace, but none of those wretched abodes had he ever called home. Only in this place was his soul stripped bare and bleeding, this run-down cottage where he’d been reared in his earlier years by a mother whose shoes had wafer-thin soles because she walked so many miles behind the counter of the Westwind Bar and Grill.

  “You take care of yourself, honey,” she’d said, touching him lightly on the shoulder and slanting him a sad smile. “I’ll be home late, so lock the door. Your daddy, he’ll be home soon.” A lie. Always a lie, but one he never questioned. She’d brushed a kiss across his cheek. Alice Moran had always smelled of roses and smoke, a mixture of cheap perfume and bargain brand cigarettes. For years the top drawer of her dresser had been filled with coupons from the backs of cigarette packs, collected and used to buy something special other than the barest of necessities. Most of the Christmas and birthday gifts Kane had received had been compliments of his mother’s nicotine habit.

  But that had been a long time ago, when life, though lean, had been simple for a boy of eight or nine. Right around the time of Pop’s accident, when their sorry lives had changed for the worse.

  There wasn’t much reason to dwell on the past, so he ignored the raw anger in his gut as well as the pain in his hip. He found a yellowed newspaper from fifteen years ago and felt like he had as a gawky, rebellious teenager—horny as hell and burning with a need for more from life, a taste of better things, a desire to be as good as the Hollands and the Taggerts, the richest families on the lake, the social elite of this tiny coastal burg as well as the city of Portland, some ninety miles to the east.

  And he’d wanted Claire. With a brain-numbing lust and a fire between his legs he’d fantasized about her—the rich, unavailable daughter of Dutch Holland.

  He wadded the old newspaper in his fist as he remembered how many nights he’d lain awake, trying to devise plans to be with her, none of which had materialized into anything more than a frustration that had caused sweat to bead on his upper lip and his cock to become stiff as a flagpole on a windless day.

  He didn’t want to think about Claire. She’d only complicate things, and he’d never been good enough for her anyway. No. She’d had her adolescent sights set on Harley Taggert, son of her father’s biggest competitor. Except for one time. One magic morning.

  “Hell,” he growled, trying to chase her image from his mind. Despite the rain, he threw o
pen the windows, letting in a harsh, wet breeze that carried the scent of the Pacific Ocean. Maybe the cold air would blow away the lingering sense of despair and lost hopes that clung, like stubborn cobwebs, to the faded curtains and scattered pieces of cheap furniture in this dump.

  He let the door stand open as he made one more trip to the Jeep for his briefcase, cell phone, laptop computer, and pint of Irish whiskey, the label of which boasted his father’s favorite cheap blend. It was ironic, him drinking the same liquor as Pop, a man he’d detested, but it seemed fitting somehow. Hampton Moran had been a miserable son of a bitch, mean to the bone and, after the accident that had left him wheelchair-bound, he’d become a violent drunk, filled with self-pity and seething rage. Before the fall that had crippled him, he’d drunk too much and beaten his wife and boy. Afterward with only Kane to take care of him, Pop had been reduced to a bitter shell of a man who sought solace and relief from the bottle. Black Velvet, when he could afford her, became his favorite lady, Jack Daniel’s a sometime but too expensive friend. More often than not he was left with rotgut Irish whiskey to fuel his broken dreams.

  No wonder Kane’s mother had left after a while. She’d had no choice. A rich man had wooed her, promised her a better life as long as she left Hampton and her son. The man didn’t need the extra baggage of a wild boy; he had half-grown kids of his own. And a wife. Kane had never known the bastard’s name, but every month, like clockwork, a money order for three hundred dollars in Kane’s name arrived in the mailbox. Hampton, sober for the first time in thirty days, would wait for the mail carrier, have Kane retrieve the letterless envelope, and force him to cash the anonymous check. Pop was generous. He gave Kane five dollars, and the remainder would tide him over for the rest of the month.