Cold Case Affair

She shook the surreal notion, and stepped into the room. The attic air stirred softly around her, cobwebs lifting in currents caused by her movement. Muirinn halted suddenly. She could swear she felt a presence. Someone—or something—was in here.

Again Muirinn shook the sensation.

She set the oil lamp on the desk and seated herself in her grandfather’s leather chair. It groaned as she leaned forward to pull open the top drawer. But as she did, a thud sounded on the wooden floor, and something brushed against her leg. Muirinn froze.

She almost let out a sob of relief when she saw that it was only Quicksilver, her grandfather’s enormous old tomcat with silver fur, gold eyes, and the scars of life etched into his grizzled face. He jumped onto the desk, a purr growling low in his throat.

“Goodness, Quick,” she whispered, stroking him. “I didn’t see you come in.” He responded with an even louder rumble, and Muirinn smiled. Someone had clearly been feeding the old feline since Gus disappeared because Quicksilver was heavy and solid, if ancient.

The lawyer had mentioned that Gus’s old tenant, Mrs. Wilkie, still did housekeeping for him. She must’ve been taking care of the cat, too.

As Muirinn stroked the animal, she felt the knobs in his crooked tail, broken in two places when he’d caught it in the screen door so many years ago. Again, the sense of stolen time overwhelmed her. And with it came the guilt.

Guilt at not once having come home in eleven years.

The cat stepped into the open drawer and Muirinn edged him aside to remove the bunch of keys, her hand stilling as she caught sight of a fat brown envelope. On it was scrawled the word Tolkin in Gus’s bold hand. Muirinn removed the envelope, opened it.

Inside was a pile of old crime scene photos, most of which Muirinn recognized from a book Gus had written on the tragedy. A chill rippled over her skin.

Had Gus still been trying to figure out who’d planted the Tolkin bomb?

Despite the protracted FBI investigation, the mass homicide had never been solved. Yet while the case had turned old and cold, her grandfather had remained obsessed with it, convinced that his son’s killer still lived and walked among them in Safe Harbor.

Clearly, not even writing the bestseller had put his curiosity to rest, thought Muirinn.

She opened the drawer and spotted Gus’s laptop tucked at the very back. Her curiosity now piqued, she decided to take the envelope and the laptop downstairs to her old bedroom and look at them in bed. Perhaps she’d learn why her grandfather had gone down into that dark shaft of the abandoned mine, alone.

Jett Rutledge reached forward and turned up the volume of his truck radio. “I believe in miracles” blared from the speakers as he drove, arm out the window. In spite of the dark storm rolling in, he felt happier than he had in a long time.

He’d had a hard workout, a good dinner, a few beers with his dad at the airport club, and he’d taken some time off flying. He was now going to use this period when Troy was away at summer camp to focus on his big dream project. He wanted to prepare several more proposals that would secure financing for the next phase of a fishing lodge he was building in the wilderness farther north.

He turned onto the dirt road that snaked down to Mermaid’s Cove, heading for home. His parents had ceded their rolling oceanfront property to him years ago, opting to relocate closer to town themselves. His mother still worked occasionally as a nurse at Safe Harbor Hospital, and everything was generally more accessible from the new house—including his dad’s physiotherapy.

Few jobs aged a man quite as fast as mining. Especially working a mine like Tolkin.

The ground at Tolkin was solid rock, which meant fewer cave-ins, fewer deaths, but it also meant the company had racked up a disproportionately large number of other injuries related to the kidney and back-jarring stress of high-impact drilling.

A miner’s equipment was heavy. The men were constantly wet. Cold. The thunderous din and fumes of diesel equipment were rough on ears and respiratory tracts. And jarring along the drifts in massive trucks took its toll on bodies. So did negotiating the black ground on foot—the tunnel surfaces were invariably booby-trapped with water-filled potholes that wrenched knees, ankles and shredded tendons.

Which was what had happened to Adam Rutledge.

Jett’s dad had taken his fair share of a beating, and his injuries were worsening with arthritis and age.

But he was still alive, still watching his grandson grow, and now he was helping out with communications at the airstrip, a job Jett had scored for his father. All in all, Jett couldn’t ask for more.

As he neared Gus’s place, he wondered what was going to happen to the old man’s property now that he was gone. A thought flashed briefly through his mind that he might make an offer, join the Rutledge land with the O’Donnell acreage. But that idea led to thoughts of Muirinn O’Donnell and he instantly quashed the notion. She’d probably inherited the property. Putting in an offer would just bring him into contact with her. Jett figured he’d rather forgo the option of buying it if meant ever seeing, or talking, to her again.

His hands tensed on the wheel, anger flooding into his veins at the mere thought of Muirinn. She hadn’t even shown up for Gus’s funeral. That told him something.

It told him that she didn’t care.

She didn’t give a damn about the people she’d left behind in this town. She’d turned her back on it all—on him—and never once looked back.

Eleven years ago, Muirinn had been doing a summer stint at her grandfather’s newspaper where she’d discovered a passion for journalism. Around the same time a Hollywood production company had blown into town to do a movie on the Tolkin Mine murders, based on Gus’s book. The presence of the movie crew had turned Safe Harbor upside down, and it had fired a burning coal in Muirinn’s belly. She’d started going out to the set every day, reporting on the production, interviewing the actors and crew. In turn, the actor playing the part of Muirinn’s father had interviewed Muirinn as the surviving O’Donnell family member. In Jett’s opinion it had messed with her head, giving her a false sense of celebrity.

Then one of the crew members had suggested that Muirinn’s writing was really good, saying he’d put a word in for her at his sister’s Los Angeles magazine, and Muirinn had become completely obsessed by the idea.

Lured by absurd notions of fame, fortune and escape, she’d packed up her life and followed the crew to LA. Jett had literally begged her not to leave. He’d been so in love with that woman. He’d planned to marry her, never a doubt in his mind that they were meant for each other. But she’d been as stubborn as mule.

They’d argued hot and hard, and it had led to even hotter and angrier sex. Afterwards, she’d tried to convince Jett to go with her, but he couldn’t. He was born to live in the wilds of Alaska. It would’ve killed him to move to L.A. She’d taunted him, saying that if he really loved her enough he’d do it. And Jett, feeling her slipping from his grasp, had retaliated by saying if she did leave, he’d never forgive her, never speak to her again. He’d hate her for walking out on what they had.

Clearly, she’d taken him at his word, because the next day she’d boarded that plane and he’d never heard from her again.

Muirinn had always had a way of bringing out the irrational fire in Jett, something he regretted to this day. Because even through all his anger, Jett never had managed to let Muirinn go, and it had cost him his marriage. It had cost them … He slammed on the brakes suddenly, on the road just past Gus’s house.

A light was flickering faintly up in Gus’s attic window.

Someone was inside.

Vandals? A fire?

He put his truck into reverse, quickly backed up the road and wheeled into the rutted driveway with half a mind to alert the police before deciding it was likely just old Lydia Wilkie in there, probably using an oil lamp since the power had been disconnected after Gus’s death.

Still, it was past midnight; not a time the crazy old lady would likely be up and about inside Gus’s house.

He’d better check to make sure.

Muirinn’s sleep was shattered by a violent clap of thunder.

She jolted upright. Then she heard it again—not thunder—a thunderous banging on the door downstairs. Quicksilver shot off the bed and bolted down the hall.

Muirinn groped in the dark to light the lamp. Holding it high, she negotiated the stairs, careful not to trip over her nightdress. She halted in the hallway, glanced at the old clock. It was past midnight. Who on earth could be beating on Gus’s door at this hour?

The banging shuddered through the house again. Fear sliced into her.

She set the lamp down, reached for the bunch of keys she’d left on the hall table before going to bed. Fumbling for the right key, Muirinn headed for Gus’s gun cabinet. Another wave of banging resounded through the house.

Unlocking the cabinet, Muirinn removed Gus’s old shotgun. Hands shaking now, she loaded a cartridge, chambered the round and went to the door.

“Who is it?” she yelled.

Wind rattled hard at windows, swished through the conifers outside, branches clawing on the roof. Whoever was out there in the storm couldn’t hear her, and the pounding began again, so hard the door shook. She sucked in a deep breath and swung the door open.

And froze.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_efa8b49d-1dcb-5184-9605-bbce7d04da0a)

“Muirinn?”