Dangerous Secrets

The little bell on her shop’s door jingled and cold air swished inside. In the off-season, Sylvie didn’t usually look up from her monitor to see who’d come in. But today it might be Ginger.

She glanced up. Not Ginger.

Ridge Matthews looked back at her. He stood there against the wall, which was lined with shelves and shelves of books.

Waves of recognition on so many different levels undulated through her. So much history lay between them. A tide of remembrance billowed in the conscious silence between her and Ridge. Ridge was still tall but not too tall, still broad-shouldered, and still possessed the same dark brown, nearly black, very serious eyes. Only a few glints of gray in his short-cropped hair reminded her that eighteen years had passed since he’d been a year-round resident of Winfield.

“Sylvie,” he acknowledged her with the grave voice he’d acquired that awful summer night eighteen years ago.

“Ridge,” she returned the greeting and forced a smile. She rose, holding out her hand. I’m surprised to see you, Ridge, but not unhappy. Never unhappy.

As if there were an invisible line etched in sand between them, he hesitated a split second and then came forward and gripped her hand—briefly.

He was still as buttoned-up as his black wool winter coat. Last December, she’d glimpsed him at a wedding, another of his rare visits. And now she thought she knew his reason for appearing here today. “Are you looking for Ben?” she asked. “He’s running an errand for me.”

Ridge digested this in several moments of silence. “My mother said he doesn’t come home after school. Every day he walks here from the bus stop.”

Yes, going home to your parents’ house is way too depressing for any kid. For a long time, the Matthewses’ home had been nothing but a house, merely four walls, a roof and floor. That was why Ridge had forsaken Winfield.

“Thanks for being kind to Ben.” His low tone curled through her.

Resisting his effect on her, she forced another smile. “Ben’s a good kid. Are you here to visit him for a few days?” she added, hoping his answer would be yes.

“I’m moving him away this weekend.”

She stiffened with shock. “With you to Madison? Now?”

The door opened behind Ridge. More frigid air rushed in.

“No,” Ridge said, “an opening has come up unexpectedly in a good military school near Milwaukee. Ben was next on the waiting list. He’s scheduled to start bright and early on Monday.”

Just inside her door, blond-haired and freckle-faced Ben halted, looking as if he’d just received the death sentence.

She took an involuntary step toward him. Military school? For Ben? No.

“Military school?” Ridge’s orphaned ward echoed her aloud. “Monday?”

Sylvie wanted to pull Ben, now white-faced, into a protective hug. But at twelve, he was too old for that.

Caught between the two of them, Ridge shifted sideways, eyeing both. “Ben, you know I told you that my parents are too old to keep you.”

Besides being too self-centered, too self-absorbed, Sylvie amended silently. The constant ache in her damaged hip twinged at this thought. Ridge, don’t be so cold. He’s just a kid and he’s been through so much.

“I thought—” Ben’s voice thinned “—you were going to get a place big enough for me to come live with you.”

Ben’s plaintive tone stung Sylvie.

Ridge had enough conscience to look uncomfortable. “My job doesn’t make me good guardian material, Ben. I travel all over the state on homicide cases. Or I get embroiled in local ones that keep me out all hours of the day and night. This way you won’t be shifted around from house to house while I’m tied up on a case. You’ll be at school and I’ll come and get you at least one weekend a month.”

“What about this summer?” Ben asked, an edge of panic in his voice. “Sylvie said she’d teach me how to snorkel.”

Ridge looked distinctly uneasy now. “I’ve signed you up for summer camp—”

“No!” Ben burst out.

“Ridge,” Sylvie put in, overriding Ben’s heated stream of objections, “my dad and I want Ben to spend the summer with us. I meant to ask you.”

Silence.

“Really?” Ben asked, approaching her as if she were his last hope.

The spur-of-the-moment invitation had been forced out of her. She reached for Ben and he came to a halt beside her. She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, and Milo planned to hire you to help him at the bait shop.” Her father hadn’t said so in so many words, but he liked kids in general and Ben in particular.

“Really?” Ben repeated, color coming back to his cheeks.

“Really.” She squeezed Ben’s shoulder and then glanced at Ridge, reading his chagrin, wanting to shake him, reach him. “You trust us with Ben, don’t you, Ridge?” She knew this last phrase would make it impossible for him to say no. He wouldn’t stir the murky waters of the past.

“Of course,” he said brusquely. “Time for us to go, Ben.” Peremptorily, he turned toward the door.

Again, some impishness prompted Sylvie to refuse to let Ridge have his way completely. Perhaps it was Ridge’s aloof, almost insensitive handling of Ben that made her want to throw another speed bump in his path.

“Just a moment,” she said. “Let me shut down my computer and we’ll go upstairs. Ginger’s back. She’ll want to see you. Just got in last night.”

“From Alaska?” Ridge asked, showing that he wasn’t completely out of touch with Winfield.

“Yes, she plans to ‘hole up’ and finish her master’s thesis. I haven’t seen her at all today. She’s probably still glued to her laptop upstairs in her apartment. I need to pry her loose. Then we’ll go to pick up the pizza I ordered and then I’ll take Ginger home with me to eat it.” Sylvie bustled around turning off her computer.

Ben, who’d spent every afternoon after school with her since he’d moved in with the Matthewses last fall, went around turning off lights, helping her close up as usual.

Within minutes, Ridge and Ben stood near as she locked up, protecting her from the stiff wind. Ridge’s presence made her feel everything more intensely—the cold, the wind, the early darkness. But without revealing this, she locked up the front door of the two-story Victorian that she rented from Ginger’s mother. Once it was secured, the two males followed her limping gait. As they walked the narrow shoveled sidewalk around the side of the house, their footsteps crunched loudly in the clear early night.

The only other sound was the cutting wind blowing from Lake Superior at their backs. Sylvie tried to think of some way to hint to Ridge that she wanted to discuss Ben with him. But if the past was any guide, she knew Ridge would do anything to avoid being alone in her company.

The threesome reached the rear door of the enclosed two-story porch that shielded the back staircase. Sylvie unlocked and opened the door, ready to call up the stairs to her cousin. Then her heart stopped for one beat.

At the bottom of the steep staircase lay her cousin, crumpled. The deep winter dusk made Sylvie doubt her eyesight. She hurried over the threshold. “Ginger! Ginger!”

No response.

Sylvie threw herself onto her knees beside Ginger’s body. No one alive would lie in that rigid, twisted position. Sylvie knew she must be dead. “Ginger!” she keened. “Ginger! No!”

Ridge heard the hysteria in Sylvie’s voice. Taking the scene in at a glance, he recognized all the signs of death—death that had taken place hours before. He shoved Ben back out the door. “Go home. Now!”

“But…but,” Ben sputtered.

“She’s dead,” Ridge hissed beside Ben’s ear. “You need to go home and stay there.”

“Sylvie—”