in faraway places.
Frannie Beaudine was a sweet young thing not unlike you. Yet her bones lie bleached by the elements, her flesh no more, her body and spirit dead and gone. Do you want to share her fate? Behave yourself, Penelope. You know what you’ve done wrong.
She stared at the screen, paralyzed. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t blink. The words blurred, and her eyes stung until tears formed. Finally she hit the key to reply. But the person on the other end was no longer available. She jotted down the user ID. It would be useless, she knew—who would send such a message if it could be easily traced?
She typed a reply, deleted it. Maybe she should pretend she hadn’t received the message, hadn’t read it. Just ignore the thing. Don’t do anything to stir the pot.
Her hands shook, and suddenly her whole body was shaking. She gulped for air, felt the bile stinging her throat.
“Well, Aunt Mary,” she said, “you should have your front row seat.” Because she was scared. There was no other word for it.
She returned to the great room, where the warm fire of the wood stove helped to calm her. She could call the police. Andy McNally would roar out here. But what could he do?
It was a kook, she told herself. The Internet was full of kooks. No one took instant messages seriously. She’d once had one asking her if she liked to skinny-dip in Lake Winnipesaukee. The whole world knew she’d claimed she’d found Colt and Frannie’s plane. She should have anticipated such harassment. Andy McNally would tell her as much.
Her stomach ached, and she had to fight dizziness, a pulsing pain behind her eyes. She was Penelope the Fearless, the woman who could live on the lake in her grandfather’s cabin, who loved adventures and thrills and action and scoffed at things that went bump in the night.
Yet as the sky slowly went black and the fire crackled in the stove and she couldn’t even hear the caw of a crow, she couldn’t shake her fear. The reporters, Wyatt Sinclair, a Sinclair investigator, her mishap in the air, her own lie—and now a creepy message on the Internet. It was all too much.
She made herself go out to her woodpile and bring in wood, five trips, five full armloads, until her wood box was overflowing, because she had no intention of letting the fear get to her. She hadn’t this afternoon when she’d realized she was low on fuel. She wouldn’t now.
She dumped the last load into the box. A log rolled off and narrowly missed her toe. She jumped back, out of breath from exertion and too much adrenaline pumping through her system. There were more logs on the floor—five at least. She’d tossed in one load after another, not concerned about neatness, only about the need to force herself to keep moving.
Hearing a car negotiating the pits and ruts of her spring-ravaged dirt road, she prayed it would continue past her cabin.
It didn’t.
She groaned. “Now what?”
Picking sawdust off her fleece shirt, Penelope went to the side door off the kitchen. Maybe it would be her father, telling her he’d changed his mind and she wasn’t grounded, after all.
But there on her doorstep, as if he’d known his timing couldn’t be any worse, was Wyatt Sinclair.
Five
He wasn’t wearing his leather jacket, as if he expected to go straight from warm car to warm house. Penelope could feel him taking in the bits of sawdust and wood on her shirt, her difficulty in getting a decent breath. “Your road’s nothing but mud,” he said. “I sank up to my hubcaps.”
“It’ll freeze overnight. Of course, it’ll be all mud again by noon.”
“What happens if you have to get out of here in a hurry?”
“I use my four-wheel drive.”
Wyatt paused, studying her. She wondered if she was pale, if she had a wild look in her eyes. He said, “May I come in?”
Just what she needed. “Sure. I’m a little out of breath from filling my wood box.”
He glanced past her into her front room. “Looks as if it’s plenty full.”
She raked a hand through her hair, ignoring the snarls, the bark chips. “I kind of just dropped the last two loads. I’m more tired than I thought.” Changing the subject was her only hope. “Have you eaten yet? I was just about to heat up some chili.”
Wyatt didn’t move. “Penelope, are you all right?”
“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be? Here, come inside before we let the cold air in.”
He came in without comment, and she shut the door behind him. The quiet thud made her heart skip. What if he’d sent her that instant message and now he’d come to see the results of his handiwork? Except he seemed more direct, more the type to tell her straight to her face that she’d lied.
You know what you’ve done wrong.
She didn’t know! Was it telling about the plane in the first place? Or changing her story? What was so wrong about trying to keep the spotlight off an old hermit and her crazy cousin? They were alive. Colt and Frannie weren’t.
But Colt’s family was, she reminded herself. She shook off the thought. The message was from a nut, someone intent on upsetting her after she’d dashed expectations of ending the mystery of what happened to Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine. Well, mission accomplished. She was upset.
“I’ll fix your wood box,” Wyatt said, his gaze on her, narrowed, wary. “You can heat the chili.”
“Don’t feel obligated to stay.”
He smiled. “Already regretting your invitation?”
She didn’t know if his steadiness was a tactic to throw her off guard or if he was simply trying to be nice. Either way, she found his presence reassuring. Suddenly she could feel the warmth of the fire, and her breathing was less shallow. Wyatt got to work arranging the overflow logs still in the wood box. Penelope caught herself watching him, then quickly pulled open the refrigerator for the quart of chili her mother had given her yesterday. She scooped it into a bowl and heated it in the microwave while Wyatt continued his work.
“Did Harriet give you directions?” Penelope asked.
“Don’t skewer her, but, yes, she did.”
Her cousin would never give such directions to a guest she didn’t know, but if most people in Cold Spring demonized the Sinclairs, Harriet romanticized them. Penelope couldn’t blame her for telling Wyatt where she lived. She chopped onion and grated cheese, got out bowls and spoons, and when the microwave dinged, she put everything out on the table.
Wyatt had the wood box straightened, the extra logs neatly stacked in front of it. He joined her at the table. The hissing and crackling of the fire, the sudden darkness outside, the scratch of her chair on the floor all made her aware of how isolated she was, how far from any help if Wyatt Sinclair was a nastier son of a bitch than she thought he was. She was on her own with him.
“Was there something I could do for you?” she asked, keeping her tone formal and distant.
