Secrets of His Own

“Why?”

Cochburn hesitated. “Something about a letter she received, I gather.”

“And what does any of this have to do with me?” When Draco placed a foot on the porch, it was all Cochburn could do not to back away. Unfortunately, he had no place to retreat.

He moistened his lips. “I wondered if you’d seen her lately…say, in the last day or two.”

Draco gave him a quizzical look. “I thought you were paying me to fix the roof, not keep tabs on your tenants.”

“Yes, of course. But it did occur to me that your paths might have crossed. It’s a small island. Not much in the way of distractions.”

Draco’s gaze narrowed. “What are you getting at, Cochburn?”

Sensing he was treading on dangerous ground, Cochburn immediately backpedaled. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I just thought I’d alert you to the fact that we have company on the island. If Carrie Bishop doesn’t find her friend, she may come down here looking for her.”

“Then maybe you’d better pass on a friendly piece of advice.”

The edge in Draco’s voice chilled Cochburn’s blood. “What’s that?”

If possible, the gray eyes went even colder. “You go poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong, what you might find is trouble.”

“TIA? ARE YOU IN HERE? It’s me…Carrie.” She paused just inside the door of the apartment to allow her eyes time to adjust to the dimness.

Slowly the room came into focus, and Carrie glanced around with interest. To the right of the French doors was a small sitting room furnished with wicker chairs and gauzy white curtains and to the left was a kitchenette. Straight ahead an arched doorway led to a shadowy hallway and presumably a bedroom and bath.

It was cool inside the apartment, which meant that the stucco walls were thick enough to keep out the heat. And sound, Carrie realized. Inside, she could no longer hear the generator.

Her gaze moved back to the sitting room. A tiny niche in one wall provided just enough space for an old ebony desk. The surface had been neatly cleared, but the chair had been shoved back and left askew, as if someone had risen abruptly. Carrie frowned when she spotted it.

The misplaced chair was the kind of detail no one else would even have noticed, but she knew her friend too well. Tia was a stickler when it came to her personal space. Everything had to be orderly. Throw rugs positioned precisely. Pillows arranged on the sofa just so. Her tidiness was the one thing she could always control, no matter what.

So what had brought her up from the desk and driven her out of the apartment so quickly that she hadn’t taken the time to straighten the chair or lock the door?

Carrie tried to convince herself she was making too much of that chair, but the premonition that had gripped her for days wouldn’t let go. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

Had Tia’s nightmares come back? Had they driven her from her own wedding and brought her here, to the almost complete isolation of Cape Diablo? Had she tried to shut them out by pulling the blinds over the windows and immersing herself in another family’s tragedy?

Or was something far more sinister at work here? Had Tia inadvertently stumbled upon the answer to a thirty-year-old mystery?

Carrie turned to search the rest of the apartment. As she made her way down the narrow corridor, she became aware of a smell. Something faint. A lingering odor of decay that turned her stomach and made her heart pound in agitation.

It was only a trace. She’d watched enough crime shows to know that the stench from a dead body would be overpowering so she tried not to panic.

Tia is fine, she told herself over and over. The apartment needed airing out, was all.

But as she stepped into the tiny bedroom, her gaze darted almost fearfully around the small space. Her first reaction to the spotless condition of the room was intense relief.

“Thank God,” she whispered, realizing that she had been bracing for the worst ever since she’d gotten off the boat.

Like the rest of the apartment, the room was immaculate. The bed was made and the floor free of discarded clothing. Tia’s things were stored in the closet and her suitcase shoved out of the way on the overhead shelf. Everything was in its proper place, just the way she would have left it.

So why did she still feel that terrible sense of doom? Carrie wondered.

Walking over to the French door, she drew back the curtain and stared out at the overgrown garden. She unlatched the door and pulled it open, allowing a fresh breeze into the room. Almost immediately the scent from the hallway faded.

Carrie started to turn away when a movement beyond the garden stopped her. Someone was coming up a path that led back into the mangrove forest, and for a moment, she thought it was Cochburn.

But as the man emerged from the trees, she saw that he was younger and taller than the attorney, with closely cropped hair and a lean, muscular body. He wore faded jeans and a shirt that hung open, revealing a bronzed chest and—Carrie would have sworn—the handle of a gun protruded from his low-riding waistband.

Nearing the house, he buttoned his shirt as he glanced over his shoulder. There was something oddly covert about his movements, and Carrie remembered her conversation earlier with Cochburn about the unsavory element in the area.

Quickly, she closed the door, then stepped back into the room before the man spotted her. He seemed to be heading directly toward her, but at the last moment, he veered off the path and disappeared back into the trees.

Who was he? Carrie wondered with a shiver. And why did he have a gun?

She watched for a moment longer, but when he didn’t appear again, she turned and walked over to examine a framed photograph Tia had left on the dresser.

The picture had been taken at summer camp the year she and Tia turned twelve. They were both beaming with arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. The two of them had been inseparable back then.

How odd that Tia had kept the photograph all these years and brought it with her to Cape Diablo. Carrie had long since put away everything that reminded her of that summer.

The knot in her chest tightened. It still hurt to see their shining faces in that snapshot and know what the future held for them. She and Tia had been so happy that day. So eager for a summer adventure.

But a week later, their lives had been changed forever. In the blink of an eye, the innocence had been lost, replaced by the kind of horror most people could hardly imagine.

The day of the abduction had started out like so many others that summer. The sun had been out. Carrie could still see the way the light dazzled off the man’s wristwatch.

He’d seemed cute and harmless at first. It was only later when she’d seen that terrible tattoo on his chest that she’d begun to have an inkling of just how evil he really was.

“Don’t leave me here, Carrie. Please, please don’t leave me….”

She squeezed her eyes closed as Tia’s desperate plea echoed through her head, followed by her own hollow promise.

“I won’t leave you, Tia. I swear I won’t….”

But she had left Tia. She’d left her all alone in that hellish place. Carrie had managed to get away, and the police had later told her that her escape had probably saved both their lives. But Carrie hadn’t seen it that way, and neither, she feared, had Tia.

In spite of everything, though, the two of them had managed to resume their friendship, but nothing was ever the same after that summer.

It had almost been a relief for Carrie when the two of them had gone off to separate colleges and eventually lost touch. Away from Tia, the nightmares and guilt had finally faded.

Then, just a few months ago, Tia had come back into Carrie’s life. She’d called out of the blue one day, shocking Carrie from the pleasant complacency her life had become.

“I’m getting married and I want you to be my maid of honor. There’s no one else I’d rather have with me than you, Carrie. We’ve been through so much. Please say yes.”

Of course, Carrie had said yes, even though she’d had some trepidation about renewing the friendship. After years of struggling to ‘find herself,’ she’d finally gotten her life on track. She had the job of her dreams with a local magazine, a great apartment, a small circle of friends. So what if she hadn’t met that special someone. So what if at times loneliness threatened to engulf her. She’d finally put the past behind her and that was all that mattered.

Or so she tried to tell herself.